El Paso: That City of Walls
Check out this cartoon. Then check out the landscape of El Paso. The cartoonist is so taken with the horror of the planned border fence (whether real or virtual) that s/he doesn’t see the irony in their own back yard.
El Paso is littered with rock walls. Practically every home has a wall surrounding its back yard. Businesses are divided by them. Streets and schools enjoy the coolness of the shadows they provide. FBI agents lurk behind them, looking for the next bribe-taking local yokel politician stumbling toward a wad of cash.
Fact is, El Paso is the embodiment of the sentiment expressed in this cartoon: it seems people think that some problems in El Paso can apparently be solved by building rock walls everywhere.
If they don’t think that, then why do they build so many of them?
–Walls to keep out news of suicidally-drunk underage teenage drivers screaming down Country Club at three in the morning.
–Walls to keep us from seeing the legion of abused and neglected pets in our unthinking neighbors’ yards.
–Walls to keep us from viewing the latest TAKS scores from our next generation of geniuses (or bribe-takers).
–Walls to hide us from the view of white and African-American beggars at street-corners, selling candy and bullshit at Airway & Montana, Fred Wilson & 54, or Redd & North Desert.
–Walls to keep out the latest bad news of the antics of the Commissioners Court.
And one more thing. The author of the article, listed as a Professor Emeritus at Sul Ross, should go back to school. His analogy to the Berlin Wall misses on a main point: it was East Germany that erected that wall, not West Germany. To bring his fantasy to reality, then, it would be Mexico building the wall on the Southwest Border, not the United States.
Well, “emeritus” means “retired” in academic circles, and for that, we can come out from around our own wall, and be thankful.




