  
Photograph by Bruce Berman
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A PHOTOGRAPHER'S VIEWPOINT:
EL PASO SHOULD HONOR, NOT ERASE ITS MEXICAN IMAGE
By Bruce Berman
THIS SUMMER, as part of a slide show that was presented during a special closed session of the El Paso City Council, there was an image of a Viejo walking down, what is supposed to be, a street in South El Paso (although it's actually Ciudad Juárez). Next to the image were these words: Male, 50-60, Gritty, Dirty, Lazy, Speak Spanish, and Uneducated.
The image was just one of many presented by the Glass Beach Brand Consultant firm to the City Council to let our city movers and shakers know of how we are perceived by the outside world, what our “image” is, how to “sell” our city. For the price of $100,000—dished out by El Paso’s taxpayers—the out-of-town consulting firm proposed as part of its marketing strategy that the city needs to clean up its “Mexico-heavy” image and replace it for one represented by two clean-cut actors who just happen to be Anglo and European and who are young, “educated and enjoy entertainment”.
The City's Downtown-Segundo plan will try to do exactly that: it will forcibly replace the “old, dirty, lazy Spanish speaking people,” and their neighborhood, with the young upwardly-mobile people that “enjoy entertainment.”
This Downtown Plan, this kind of prejudice viewpoint in the form of a marketing strategy, when turned into action, is tearing us apart.
The originators and supporters of the Plan cannot imagine why anyone would not want what the Plan offers. Opponents of the Plan cannot fathom how someone would impose such an idea, without ever having asked residents of the affected area if they wanted it, or what, exactly they did want.
For sure the power of those who push the Plan is formidable. Conversely, those who oppose the Plan are notoriously powerless. Thus, we have come to a bad place.
A FEW WEEKS before the Glass Beach marketing study reached the public eye, I exhibited my photographs at UTEP, at the Rubin Gallery. The title of my work was, Border Document: 1985-2005. The title is fairly self-explanatory. For many years I have lived and worked on the border, concentrating on the population south of the expressway, in El Paso, and, north of the newer neighborhoods of Juarez. Almost always, the work depicts the working people of La Frontera.
The body of work is, more than anything, an homage to the people of the border, a putting a face on a community that may be invisible to many, an honoring of the hard working, culturally rich people of the border and the environment that is uniquely theirs.
The exhibition, for me was successful because people from all parts of our city (and I think of Juarez as part of us and vice versa), contacted me and said that the work meant a lot to them. Whether Latino or Anglo, people seem to feel that the world that was depicted was something special, unique and, somehow, important. What was significant to me was that those comments came from all sectors: business people, politicians, lawyers,, Doctors, artists, writers, academics, and, most importantly, the people who were depicted in the photographs.
I thought, and I hoped, that those photos might be a bridge between the various levels and classes of our city.
I am beginning to think that I was wrong and that that hope was not well founded. What is my point?
If that is how we are perceived (the Viejo image and words), I think that our task is not to change our reality, but to explain to the world of what a treasure we have here, in La Frontera.
Spanish Speaking is one of our treasures, Dirty isn’t dirty, it’s called sweat and this city, Juarez/El Paso sweats because we do real labor here. Lazy? Hogwash…this is a city of people who work. This city is based on a Mexican culture that works long and hard and well and deserves praise for doing so. Uneducated? Perhaps undereducated, but that isn’t a terminal noun. Ask people like Dr. Diana Natalicio about education and Mexican-Americans. Under her leadership, the university has valued this demographic and endeavored to provide opportunities for it. She should be congratulated and anyone who thinks we’re “uneducated,” has not watched the progress made at our university (and Community College) over the past twenty-five years.
Finally, the description of our perceived culture as Gritty, struck me as especially poignant. I agree! And that’s a good thing.
It takes grittiness to be who we are. So many people here will tell you their family’s story and one can only nod in admiration and awe. So many people’s families came from the south, with nothing, dislocated from their ancestral homes, victims of violence, dislocation, dictatorial indifference, revolutionary violence, and economic barbarism.
And they have survived. In fact, if you think El Paso/Juarez is as wonderful a place, as I do, I would say people have prospered and we are all better for it. It took grit.
So, instead of changing people’s perceptions of our image, I suggest that our city leaders change people’s ignorance and about their perception and what we really are. We are not like any other North American city. I am very proud of that. I have photographed that fact and attempted to do so with humility because I have learned that the journey from the south to here is no different than other American’s journey to this country. It was made in peril and the spirit that made it is an extraordinary tale of bravery and accomplishment.
If you see a man of sixty years, walking down a Southside street with his vaquero straw hat and he happens to be Spanish speaking, he is the person our culture has been built upon. He could be our father, or grandfather or uncle.
He should be honored. His “image,” for me, is just fine. His reality is even better.
Perhaps it isn’t his image that needs changing. Perhaps those that do not find the true El Paso acceptable should expand their thinking. We can make progress without eliminating the very things that have always made El Paso a safe haven for those needing one. We can go forward without denying our true selves. We can all be winners in our efforts to move forward. But we must respect each others realities.
Hopefully, perhaps, we could all do a little cross education. Perhaps we could, as the Border Project did for me, attempt to learn about one community’s beauty, so another community can understand its heart and soul, its true animo, and realize how fortunate we are to live in a community with that Viejo, his neighbors, and, have rich neighborhoods like the Second Ward where he has made a home.
Do we really want a war between us, or do we want to be what we have always attempted to be: a city of great pride, good intentions and a hope for a better tomorrow for all of us?
Is that so hard to understand? Would that be so hard to achieve?
(Bruce Berman is an El Paso photographer who freelances for the New York Times, Newsweek and Texas Monthly. The photograph entitled "Jefe", below the two Glass Beach images, was part of the Rubin Gallery exhibit titled Border Document: 1985-2005. This article was first published in the Border Observer.)
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