HOME

HISTORIC BARRIOS

FAQ

PASO DEL SUR GROUP

 

 

Manifest Destiny

 

 

Avert your eyes children, here they come again.  The barrio

is under siege.  The town has gone too brown

again, and balance must be restored.  Once

it was a war on adobe—to make room for dance halls

and movie houses.  And when the gentry, bored with

the familiar, took their money west

and east they left behind the brick and brownstone

and the barrio emerged again.  Avert your eyes, children,

the siege has come again.  Now it is a war on swap meets,

clothes by the pound, and family owned fruit stands

owned by the “wrong” families.  Avert your eyes, children.

Wealth is at it again.  Be aware that your future, in their

eyes includes a red Target vest, black back brace,

and a placard in the lobby with your smiling

face.  Good little brown boy.   Avert your eyes, viejitos.

The familiar paths you walked—to Bertha’s house

for caldo, up two blocks beside the church, are not

yours.  They belong to eminent domain.  You alone were not

reason enough for them to fix the cracks in the sidewalks. Their

neglect buckled those walk ways. But, that buckled path

is now a “blight,” and must be smoothed for BorderWalkers who

will someday stroll the Border Mall, taking in the local culture

like a Disney tourist at Epcot Center’s Mexican

pavilion. Avert your eyes El Paso, manifest destiny is here

again.  And once again, it is a gold

rush.  It is the hunger to mine, to plumb

the earth for riches and displace

whatever was there.  (They won’t remember. Wealth

prefers to forget. And wealth writes the history

books.)  Don’t worry viejitos, they will

keep the names you’ve given the streets.  Mustn’t lose that local

color. And they will keep your churches always open. This is

their promise to the padres.  Don’t worry, padres.  There will be

poor aplenty wanting sanctuary at the doors

of your churches.  Only now, they will be dispossessed.

Avert your eyes El Paso, conquest is an ugly affair.  And as long

as our voices remain apart—children, viejitos, padres, El Paso—as long

as our voices do not unify, this is our manifest destiny.

 

—C. Seda

 

Carmen Seda earned her M.FA from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in 2004.  She is currently editor of BorderSenses.  She teaches history at Riverside Middle School, and is a lecturer at UTEP's College of Education.

 

Website design by BST