Local Blogs
Happy 2019!
Bernie Supporters Slam Beto O'Rourke?s Progressive Bona Fides but Mostly Ignore Pot, Immigration, and War
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House Dems' Plan to Reopen the Government Probably Won't Work. Thank Trump.
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Sanctuary Cities Aren't to Blame for Killing of California Cop
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John Kelly Blames Jeff Sessions for Family Separations That Kelly Touted As a Deterrent to Illegal Immigration
Source: John Kelly Blames Jeff Sessions for Family Separations That Kelly Touted As a Deterrent to Illegal Immigra...
Looking Back and Looking Forward
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Despite a few achievements, 2018 has been a year of many lost opportunities in the world of immigration. ...
'We've Moved Off the Five.' Trump Already Caving on Border Wall Demands. Good for Him.
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UCLA grad student documents experience of cross-border commuters at Juarez-El Paso bridges and other ports of entry
EL PASO – Before sunup on a recent breezy Monday morning, Estefania Castañeda-Perez, 27, stood outside the Sun Metro’s Santa Fe Street downtown bus transfer center with a stack of surveys in her arms. Her mission: to further research on the experiences of people crossing the border bridges from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso. The ambitious project, she says, hits close to home.
“I began to regularly cross the border when I started to attend middle school in San Diego,” said Castañeda-Perez, a political science Ph.D. student at University of California Los Angeles.
Castaeñda-Perez was born in Tijuana and, as an infant, her parents began crossing her back and forth across the border. When she was older, she began to cross to attend school in San Diego.
“During this time, I had to make various sacrifices that most students in my school did not have to endure, including sleeping less than five hours daily, waking up at 3 a.m. to cross, and enduring harsh questioning about my identity and citizenship status from Customs and Border Patrol on a daily basis,” she added.
The surveys she collected recently during a trip to El Paso are the data collection phase of her dissertation and part of a larger project with Professor Sergio Garcia-Rios of Cornell University, who is supporting and guiding the project.
“We think that this research will help us present to the rest of the country a closer look at the border and one that is often ignored. In other words, a ‘fronterizo’ view of the border,” said Garcia-Rios, who studies Latino and immigrant identity at Cornell.
It is an extension of a senior honors thesis she completed as an undergraduate student at San Diego State University. At UCLA where she is a second-year doctoral student, her studies have been supported by the American Political Science Association, the National Science Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.
Castañeda-Perez has already collected 1,300 surveys in El Paso, and in Tijuana has obtained 770 responses from individual border crossers. Next on her list of places to visit to collect data are the border towns of Brownsville and Nogales.
In El Paso, she recently enlisted seven UTEP student volunteers, and, with the support of UTEP Professor Hector Padilla, recruited several students from Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juarez to help administer the surveys to border crossers as they drive or walk over the Santa Fe and Cordova bridges from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso. She spent about two weeks in the Sun City to supervise the data collection.
“Through this research, I seek to amplify our understanding of how border enforcement impacts the lives of individuals residing in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands,” Castañeda-Perez said.
In addition to one day publish her findings in an academic journal, she said she hopes to “create one of the first public databases from the survey responses on trans-fronterizos.”
With the time-consuming data collection phase still underway, Castañeda-Perez does not yet have an end date for completion of the project.
The one-of-a-kind survey, which is anonymous, includes questions about the experiences of people who cross through U.S. border ports of entry, and how negative contacts with Customs and Border Patrol officers affects their sense of legal empowerment, sense of belonging, and physical and mental health.
El Paso student volunteers said approaching strangers as they crossed by foot or in cars into El Paso was no easy task.
Andrea Daniella Mata, 24, a sophomore sociology major at UTEP, helped Castañeda-Perez pass out the surveys at the bus transfer center from Monday through Friday one recent week in October.
“I can’t imagine how exhausting it might be for (people to cross the border every day) but it shows everyone has a story and everyone is important,” said Mata, who lived in Lubbock before moving to El Paso to attend college.
She said it’s important for El Pasoans to be “aware of why people might be crossing… and not just assuming” why they cross.
“I think (this) research is so important,” she added.
UCLA Political Science and Chicano Studies Professor Matt Baretto, who is dissertation adviser to Castañeda-Perez, said her research is important to cross-border commuters.
“The research project Estefania is undertaking is one of the first in the country to fully understand, document, and analyze the experience of cross-border commuters. Her research challenges the notion that crossing the border is a simple transactional event, and places it within the full context of both sides of the border region,” he said.
He added that the survey “is uncovering the persistent rights abuses that happen at the border to legal border crossers, and how these negative experiences go on to impact the identity, psychology, and even health of people who cross.”
Dr. Irasema Coronado, a UTEP Political Science professor who has done extensive research and writing about border issues, said Castañeda-Perez’ research focus will contribute to public understanding of the many reasons why people cross from Mexico into the U.S. and how they are treated by Border Patrol and Customs agents.
“It is important to gather data so that policymakers can make better decisions,” Coronado said. ” We all hear anecdotes about border crossing experiences; this research will provide data that will substantiate or refute the stories that we hear on the street or from our family and friends.”
She said border crossers sometimes feel intimidated by the attitude or questions they are asked by border agents as they wait to be cleared for entry into the U.S.
“These folks have a lot of discretion” when questioning border crossers, she said.
The post UCLA grad student documents experience of cross-border commuters at Juarez-El Paso bridges and other ports of entry appeared first on Borderzine.
Learning the Wrong Lessons from Children's Deaths
Source: Learning the Wrong Lessons from Children's Deaths
--Center for Immigration Studies feed.
Man Bites Dog, or the Case of the Citizen, in Fact, Abusing an Alien Spouse
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I had never, over a period of half a dozen years watching thes...
Border Security, Government Shutdowns, and Political Chicken
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Thank You For Your Support in 2018
Mollie Tibbetts' Mom Takes in the Son of Undocumented Immigrants
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This artist is asking how border residents think about air, water, land
Zeke Peña, an illustrator and cartoonist has spent most of his work as an artist living on “la frontera,” the border, reflecting the reality and issues faced by Chicano and Mexican-American generations.
“I think about how the border identity is binary. It isn’t about this side or that side, it’s way more complicated. But that’s the beauty of it,” he says.
Illustrator/Cartoonist Zeke Peña in his studio. Photo credit: Jacqueline Aguirre
Sitting in battered, squeaky wood chair in front of a drafting table that displays his work in his studio, the 35-year-old Peña looks the part of a committed artist with his black-rimmed glasses and his shoulder-length dark curly hair and black ball cap. He has several buttons pinned to the pocket of his olive green shirt jacket displaying his sense of activism.
The Las Cruces native currently lives in neighboring city of El Paso. His nomadic cultural identity stems from his family roots asof farm workers from Mexico who immigrated to various farming communities on the U.S. side of the border, Peña proudly claims the title of border child with a strong U.S.-Chicano heritage.
He claims that although the experience of other border residents may be different from his life as a fronterizo who crosses often between Juarez and El Paso, they all share the same nomadic identity.
Zeke Peña’s previous work- a personal graphic biography of photographer Graciela Iturbide.
Peña’s illustrations focus on historical narratives about politics, social justice, national and cultural identities along the border.
His early stories were inspired by cartoons and comics and later matured into refined concepts inspired by ordinary border residents, activists, poets and theorists such as the Rio Grande Valley’s acclaimed Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldúa.
Peña says in his work he reflects on his personal border identity and how it relates to his community to produce resistencia (resistance) one cartoon at a time.
Peña sketching in his studio in Central El Paso. Photo credit: Jacqueline Aguirre
While Peña didn’t initially consider his work “border art,” he feels a responsibility to represent his community on the frontera. As a natural and organic response, Peña illustrates stories to shed light on issues of immigration, family separation, and the environment showing the faces of Mexican-American men, women and children of the borderland.
“I have to be sensitive to people’s stories and representing them to be sure that images of people in tent cities and people crossing rivers is with consent and care to who they are,” Peña says.
Image courtesy Zeke Pena
He says his storytelling focus is changing because of heightened civic engagement and activism on the border and nationally about Latino or Hispanic issues.
In January, Peña begins work on a new exhibit at his favorite space, which he refers to “el punto final,” the culmination point for his art – The Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts based at UT El Paso.
Working with UT El Paso art students, Peña will “create a bridge” between art and the community by installing a didactic exhibit to show through photos and illustrations how border residents think about air, water and land.
Kerry Doyle, director of the Rubin Center, says her mission over the past five years has been to bring art and concepts about the border to the gallery for an international conversation on contemporary art that includes working artists from all over the world.
“I think the reason that art is so important right now is because art is more about asking a question rather than making a statement,” she said.
Doyle has lived on both sides of the border for the past several years and has seen the growing militarization of the border in real-time. She views the border as a “physical manifestation of political polarization,” and attempts to blend local with international artist voices to keep the conversation about local and international borders flowing.
“It’s always a privilege to immerse (artists) in a border community one way or another. We give them information and they make art in response,” Doyle says.
Peña says his work has been inspired by “the thousands of people that have come before me in my community” as well as from outside artists that are creating art around border subjects.
“It’s self sustaining,” he says, “like a community.”
The post This artist is asking how border residents think about air, water, land appeared first on Borderzine.
Why Trump Needs a Border Wall Shutdown Fight
It?s a recognition that he is going to sink or swim politically in 2020 by standing with his base.
Source: [url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/opinion/trump-shutdown-border-wall-fight...
Tell us what you are thinking
Its open forum Saturday.
Last week was interesting.
Brutus
CBP Faces New Scrutiny After Second Child Dies in Their Custody
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Sun Metro’s 2017 results
I was looking for the city’s 2018 comprehensive annual financial report and was only able to find the 2017 one.
I suppose that the new one will be out soon.
In the 2017 report I found this:
Sun Metro Mass Transit operating revenues decreased $676 thousand to $11.6 million primarily due to decreased revenues from fares. Ridership has slipped as lower gas prices offer alternatives for transportation. The sales tax subsidy increased $862 thousand.
Operating expenses increased $1.1 million to $80.1 million…
Fuel expense decreased $774 thousand..
Maintenance and repair decreased $985 thousand
Let’s recapIt cost $80 million to run the service. They collected $11.6 million from their customers.
They lost customers. They benefited from lower fuel prices.
Yet even after the fuel and repair savings they spend $1.1 million more.
We deserve better
Brutus
