<\/p>\n
Benjamin Alire S\u00e1enz in 2021.<\/p>\n
This essay originally appeared in the October 2026 issue of Texas Highways Magazine. Benjamin Alire S\u00e1enz died on July 28, 2026, during the editing of this essay. The editors took great care to preserve his vision.<\/p>\n
I have spent the better part of the last six months in and out of the hospital. At one point, my visit became a four-month staycation compliments of an insurance policy that was part of my retirement package from the university where I taught for 23 years. I came very close to knowing what comes after death. I knew I was in trouble when a few close friends came in from out of town along with my older brother and my nephew. A friend of mine who paid a visit said, softly, \u201cI hate to see you in such suffering.\u201d While it is true that I was very ill with a pneumonia so virulent it almost killed me, my suffering was a comfortable one. I was in the ICU in a nice bed, and I received all the medical attention I needed. The staff and the doctors were almost all Latino\u2014my people\u2014and they were, each of them, kind, professional, and compassionate. I resisted the prescription medicine that would have made me too drowsy to write, inspired by my caretakers to fill these pages. There is a sense among El Pasoans that we are all in this together.<\/p>\n
I have been in a passionate love affair with the city of El Paso for over 50 years. When I applied for a tenure-track position at the University of Texas at El Paso, my mentors at Stanford University told me I was making a mistake and selling myself short. \u201cYou cannot make a living by writing about the border,\u201d they said. All these years later, I can proudly say I have published several books about the border: short story collections, novels, young-adult novels, children\u2019s books, and poetry. And I have two new books coming out this fall.<\/p>\n
El Paso opened my eyes to the realities of my life and gave me a language and an identity I treasure. El Paso has been my finest mentor. I\u2019ve learned to embrace drought and thirst and the miracle of rain. I\u2019ve learned the desert is a place of encounter, a place you meet your demons and your God. I\u2019ve traversed the streets and alleys and hiked the trails in this part of the American frontier to discover that I do not feel very Texan, nor do I feel very Mexican, nor do I feel very American. I feel as if living here has taught me that I am a citizen of the world and that borders cannot keep us from belonging to each other. A sense of belonging is a human trait and a human necessity. That we are hardwired to be connected to each other is a matter of science.<\/p>\n
Situated at the western tip of Texas and sandwiched between two countries and three states\u2014Chihuahua, Texas, and New Mexico\u2014one could say El Paso is not just a border city but a city of borders. It seems odd to say, but crossing these boundaries is an ordinary, everyday activity. Borders are so familiar they have become almost easy to ignore. Almost.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The El Paso Strong mural by artist Gabe Vasquez created created shortly after the Aug. 3, 2019, mass shooting in Central El Paso.<\/p>\n
El Paso Inc. file photos<\/p>\n
I fell in love with El Paso when my grandfather took me to see the alligators in San Jacinto Plaza, the heart of the city. Even today, the living alligators long gone and replaced by an alligator sculpture, there are some people who still refer to the plaza as Alligator Park. When I think of those reptiles, I think of how out of place they must have felt with people always throwing pennies at them. Animals have their own dignity\u2014and we certainly robbed the alligators of theirs. They could never thrive in a city where they were nothing more than transplants in a place that only meant exile.<\/p>\n
I felt like the alligators as I wandered through city after city, a young man out of his natural habitat, a nomad who dreamed of becoming a writer. Denver, Colorado; London, England; Leuven, Belgium; Lafayette, Louisiana; Alamogordo, New Mexico; Houston; Iowa City, Iowa; Menlo Park, California\u2014those are the cities I lived in. But no city has lived in my heart like El Paso. The others seemed too tame, too overly constructed to interest me. I like a city with rough edges.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t romanticize about the harsh realities of the people\u2014Mexicans, New Mexicans, Texans\u2014who live on all sides of El Paso\u2019s border. This corner of the world may be geographically isolated from the rest of Texas, but you can hardly call a Borderplex with a population of over 2.5 million people \u201cisolated.\u201d We have finally woken up to the fact that we have enough human resources\u2014homegrown artists, writers, dancers, musicians, filmmakers\u2014to tell our own stories and become our own center of culture. I am currently witnessing an El Paso that is moving into an artistic renaissance.<\/p>\n
Growing up in a city so intimate with poverty does not make it ugly, nor does it induce violence. Anybody who knows anything about this city knows it is anything but a war zone\u2014El Paso has been ranked as one of the safest cities in the U.S. for the last 20 years. It is a profound irony that our neighbors across the Santa Fe Bridge, in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, are forced to live in a city where violence is a way of life. But that isn\u2019t anything new. I think most of us who live here ignore what separates us from each other and instead embrace what brings us together. We are a live-and-let-live city, and we keep moving ahead as best we can. After the 2019 Walmart shooting, this community stood firm and tall\u2014and \u201cEl Paso Strong\u201d began. There were no riots, no unruly protests, no burning, no looting, no looking for revenge\u2014that\u2019s not our style. We focused on supporting the victims and their families.<\/p>\n
This was a difficult time for me. I was still battling the trauma of losing my 13-year-old niece in 1990 to a shooting at a bowling alley in Las Cruces, New Mexico. A wound like that is an old god who never dies. One of the reasons I love El Paso is that it is peopled with survivors. We have learned to transcend our pain by welcoming the hungry people who arrive at our doors.<\/p>\n
The border isn\u2019t just a metaphor\u2014it\u2019s like any other place where people live, work, and love, where the working poor are present almost everywhere you go. But whatever your career is, and no matter where you live in El Paso, you cannot help but notice people are happy here. That is this city\u2019s greatest strength.<\/p>\n
You can see the poverty across Interstate 10 in the houses built on the side of the Ju\u00e1rez mountains.\u00a0 But the people of Ju\u00e1rez belong to us just as we belong to them. We are neighbors. Both cities are far away from the cultural, artistic, and political centers of their respective countries. El Paso is 576 miles from Austin, and Ju\u00e1rez is over 1,000 miles from Mexico City. In the meeting of two cultures, we have had to create our own.<\/p>\n
The two languages that fill the air belt out a lovely, lyrical song. Sometimes those two languages fight a battle inside of me. I am literate in Spanish as well as English, and though Spanish was my first language, my default language is English\u2014probably because I received my education in the latter. There are times when I have to resort to Spanish when I\u2019m speaking English and vice versa. Languages aren\u2019t neutral, and speaking both languages I feel defeated when I can\u2019t find the right word for what I want to say. I accept my defeat graciously\u2014some words or phrases are untranslatable. The two languages give El Paso its identity, but that identity is always shifting. I cannot imagine what my life and experiences would be like if I only spoke one language in this city that demands we bend to its identity.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Benjamin Alire S\u00e1enz, left, stops for a photo with Daniel Anchondo at the 2023 Texas Medal of Arts Awards in Austin.<\/p>\n
El Paso Inc. file photo<\/p>\n
Ju\u00e1rez is a big part of the El Paso I love. My father would take his four boys to get a haircut there whenever he thought we were looking shaggy. We crossed the Santa Fe Bridge on foot, and there were boys my age, 6 or 7, who made cones out of newspapers to catch coins people would toss at them. After the first time crossing over, I always managed to make sure I had at least a dime in my pocket.\u00a0 I\u2019d toss a coin to the boy who seemed to be left out. Looking back, I realize that being the fourth of seven children, I often felt left out.<\/p>\n
El Paso is a place where history is alive in the present. We have Pancho Villa\u2019s stash house. We have a historical marker in front of the building where the iconic novel of the Mexican Revolution, Los de Abajo (The Underdogs), was written by Mariano Azuela. Reporters and thousands of El Pasoans viewed the three battles of Ju\u00e1rez from their rooftops. I own a black-and-white photograph of Pancho Villa riding his horse toward the third battle of Ju\u00e1rez, where he and his troops were forced to surrender, signaling the end of the revolution.<\/p>\n
One of my favorite things to do when I was younger was to walk across the Santa Fe Bridge into Ju\u00e1rez with a group of friends and have a drink at the Kentucky Club, or the Hawaiian, or the infamous Cave. We\u2019d make a night of it, then we\u2019d walk back over the bridge to El Paso. I always had a good time in Ju\u00e1rez. Avenida Ju\u00e1rez was full of people in those days and had a celebratory air.\u00a0 The feel of Ju\u00e1rez\u2014the people, the smells\u2014alive in ways El Paso wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the 20th century, El Paso was growing and bursting with life\u2014and at the end of the century it had started to feel lifeless. But the city dug itself out of a hole and got to work. Now, El Paso is fast becoming a destination. The Winter Festival fills downtown for the entire Christmas season. In the summer, the ballpark roars with Chihuahuas fans, a minor league baseball team that feeds the San Diego Padres. There are art galleries opening, and musicians no longer feel they can\u2019t make it in the industry without leaving their hometown. Great new restaurants are popping up in every part of the city, joining old standbys like the L&J, Carlos and Mickey\u2019s, Lucy\u2019s, and Caf\u00e9 Central. I like the breakfast buffet at the beautifully restored Plaza Hotel. The Plaza opened in 1930 and was one of the first luxury hotels ever built by Conrad Hilton, who lived there with Elizabeth Taylor when they married in 1950. The story goes that after Taylor got a quickie divorce, she walked into the Kentucky Club, in Ju\u00e1rez, and bought everyone a drink.<\/p>\n
Every day of my life I get a view of the Franklins. These desert mountains are at the southernmost tip of the Rocky Mountains. In their austere beauty, they are like monks kneeling, praying for rain. On a rare winter day, when the peaks are powdered in white, the monks become angels smiling down on the city. Rim Road, carved into the side of these mountains, reveals a view of downtown and Ju\u00e1rez. From that vantage point, the two cities merge into one. At night, you see millions of lights appear before the horizon.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
‘Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club,’ a collection of short stories by Benjamin Alire S\u00e1enz, was published in 2012 by Cinco Puntos Press. The book won him the PEN\/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2013.<\/p>\n
El Paso Inc. file photo<\/p>\n
I have always lived in the 79901 and 79902 ZIP codes. The former covers downtown and Segundo Barrio, which is like a town within a town formed by people who wanted to live in America but remain Mexican. The latter covers part of Central El Paso, and that\u2019s the neighborhood I live in now. It\u2019s an old house that looks a little tired\u2014like its current resident. El Paso\u2019s most famous neighborhood, Sunset Heights, also has a 79902 ZIP code. Originally the Jewish neighborhood, it became home for well-to-do Mexicans fleeing the revolution of 1910. I lived in that neighborhood while getting a master\u2019s degree at UTEP and returned to live there for many years.<\/p>\n
Segundo Barrio was the neighborhood that first greeted me each time I crossed back to El Paso on trips to Ju\u00e1rez. In Segundo Barrio, I would always find somewhere unpretentious to eat, the food as humble and sincere as the people who served me. Most of the residents of Segundo Barrio are part of the working-class poor. But the neighborhood doesn\u2019t feel like a sad place to live; it\u2019s pulsating with life. The streets bustle with people buying and selling, and music fills the air. Segundo Barrio is a real urban neighborhood, and it seems that no matter how many changes are made to improve it, what never changes is the character of the people who claim this piece of earth as their home. A neighborhood is about the people who inhabit and shape its surroundings. There is a real sense of belonging not just in Segundo Barrio but in all of El Paso.<\/p>\n
On South Stanton Street, there\u2019s a bakery owned by a Lebanese man who people refer to as El Arabe. He makes the best bolillos\u2014rolls that have a hard crust but are soft on the inside. El Arabe\u2019s rolls are more European than Mexican. South Stanton, one of my most beloved streets, feels like Ju\u00e1rez and El Paso have blended, creating a cultural ecotone. You can buy almost anything you need from the shops on that street: office supplies, baptismal outfits, fruits and vegetables, first communion dresses, art supplies, shirts, shoes, boots, belt buckles. Why would you want to shop in an unimaginative strip mall?<\/p>\n
On Sunday mornings, I would often set off on walks from my apartment on North Stanton. I loved my apartment there because it had an urbanity that made me feel alive, a part of something bigger. My apartment back then was walking distance to almost everything I needed and sat atop a hill where you could view downtown in the distance. I\u2019d walk toward downtown and past the Plaza Theatre and the El Paso Museum of Art. The theater, built in 1930, stands as a marvel of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. Entering that building felt like walking into a church. I would wind my way past the Chihuahuas\u2019 ballpark and end up on El Paso Street. I\u2019d sit and watch the people getting off or boarding the city buses. I smiled a lot. Occasionally, I\u2019d take the bus for a leisurely trip around the city.<\/p>\n
Usually, I ended up at the foot of the Santa Fe Bridge. There is a small park there where you can sit and rest. I\u2019ve been there many times and written stories in my head about the people who were crossing into Ju\u00e1rez. After resting\u2014it was really a cigarette break\u2014I would head toward San Antonio Church, run by the Jesuits. I often stopped and ate a hearty breakfast in the church cafeteria, which served Mexican food as good as my mother\u2019s. You don\u2019t have to spend much money to eat good Mexican food\u2014not if you live in El Paso. If there\u2019s a sign at the entrance of any restaurant announcing they have authentic Mexican food, move on.<\/p>\n
I often took photographs on my walking trips through downtown, Segundo Barrio, and Ju\u00e1rez. I always traveled alone, but I wasn\u2019t really alone. I was surrounded by my favorite people.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Benjamin Alire S\u00e1enz overlooking Ju\u00e1rez in 2010. He wrote, ‘Living here has taught me that I am a citizen of the world and that borders cannot keep us from belonging to each other.’<\/p>\n
El Paso Inc. file photo<\/p>\n
Time seems to speed up as I grow old. I now use a wheelchair, and though I am somewhat ambulatory, it\u2019s safe to say my walking days are over. I will most likely need an oxygen tank the rest of my life\u2014fortunately, oxygen no longer comes in those heavy steel tanks and is easier to maneuver. I don\u2019t consider my circumstance a tragedy. How could I consider my life a tragedy? I\u2019ve seen the world, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Tanzania, from Brazil to Berlin, Germany. I have a readership most writers would envy. I have nothing to be miserable about.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m 71 years old, and as I\u2019m sitting here, writing these words on my computer, I\u2019m thinking about how lovely my life has been. I don\u2019t mean easy; I mean lovely. El Paso has helped me keep it real and given me a humility I would have otherwise lacked. I\u2019ve had many conversations with nurses and staff who were grateful for the chance to serve people like me. I call that humility. I call that living gracefully. They bathed me, helped me brush my teeth, and cleaned me up after I had an accident. They taught me that accepting my situation with patience, gratitude, and a sense of humor turned what might have been a living hell into a place of healing and peace. I live in gratitude for having lived in a city that is, to me, a piece of paradise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Benjamin Alire S\u00e1enz in 2021. This essay originally appeared in the October 2026 issue of Texas Highways Magazine.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[137841,1477,138,140,139,156081,63747,18113,131176,156080],"class_list":["post-454545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-benjamin-alire-saenz","tag-border","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-latino-identity","tag-memoir","tag-san-jacinto-plaza","tag-sense-of-belonging","tag-texas-highways-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}