El Paso

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the admission of New Mexico as a state. To avoid the tumult and hullaballoo I decided to leave New Mexico altogether and so headed down I-25 to El Paso, Texas, Thursday for a 22-hour visit. There I was given a most excellent tour by Annette, native of El Paso and long-time friend of this blog. (Her first comment here was almost eight years ago, in March 2004.) Click any of the photos for the gallery or larger versions.

The first European settlement in that area was El Paso del Norte, founded on the south side of the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte in Mexico) by the Spanish in 1659. (Even before that, a Thanksgiving mass was celebrated near the river in April 1598.) A smaller community was established on the north side of the river in 1680. This northern village, which was part of New Mexico until 1850, became El Paso. The older, much larger city in Chihuahua, Mexico, El Paso del Norte, was renamed Ciudad Juárez for five-time president of Mexico Benito Juárez in 1888. In 2010 El Paso had approximately 650,000 people with another 90,000 in the metropolitan area. Ciudad Juárez has twice that many residents.

The first item of business Thursday evening was dinner at Forti’s Mexican Restaurant, deep in an older part of town, though established just in 1976. The decor included every Mexican restaurant motif known; it was delightful. After dinner was a tour of downtown El Paso, including San Jacinto Plaza still lighted for the holidays, a surprising number of large buildings compared to Albuquerque, and many variations of the dollar store. The highlight was a spectacular view of the lights of both the American and Mexican cities from Rim Drive. I can’t remember a more spectacular view of city lights since on approach into LAX.

Friday was a superb January day, crystal clear with the temperature in the 60s by early afternoon. The first stop was Chamizal National Memorial.

The boundary between Mexico and the United States after the war between the two countries was first set in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848; 1,248 miles of the 1,900 mile boundary followed the Rio Grande/Río Bravo. Under international law, if a river changes its course gradually, the boundary moves with the channel. If, though, the river changes its course dramatically in a flood, the boundary remains in the old river bed, even if dry. The Rio Grande/Río Bravo did both; beginning in the 1850s it moved south, gradually and at times abruptly. Mexico complained over the loss of land. Ultimately, after more than 100 years of contention, the U.S. and Mexico agreed to the Chamizal Treaty. President Kennedy and Mexican President Adolfo Lopez Mateos initiated the settlement in 1963; it was furthered and completed by President Johnson. Land was exchanged and the river was fixed in a concrete channel. The National Memorial commemorates the settlement.

The morning’s second stop was the Lucky Cafe on Alameda where breakfast is served 24 by 7. I believe I was the only person there who didn’t speak Spanish.

Nearby was the grave of my grandfather, John Louis Beyett, who died in March 1944, before I was born. My mother was raised by an uncle and aunt, so her father is little more than a few stories and a few photographs to me. Nonetheless, I have been wanting to make a pilgrimage to his grave for many years. I knew it was unmarked, but not unrecorded and the cemetery staff was able to direct me. Beneath the dried winter grass of the inexplicably named Evergreen Cemetery, next to the stone for Mowad lies the source for one-fourth of my DNA.

Evergreen is also home to at least two notorious individuals. Albert B. Fall, a prominent lawyer and judge, was elected as one of New Mexico’s first two United States senators after statehood in 1912. He served until 1921, when he became Secretary of the Interior in the Harding Administration. The naval petroleum reserves were soon transferred to Interior management and, in 1922, Fall provided favorable leases for the Teapot Dome reserve (Wyoming) to his friend Henry Sinclair and for Elk Hills (California) to Edward Doheny. Fall was suddenly rich, though the records were strikingly vague how. Eventually a $100,000 loan to Fall from Doheny was uncovered. Fall was convicted of receiving bribes, fined $100,000 and served a year in prison. Doheny was acquitted. Sinclair was fined $100,000 and served a short sentence for contempt and jury tampering. Fall was the first cabinet member to go to prison for actions while in office. Like my grandfather, Fall died in El Paso in 1944.

José Victoriano Huerta Márquez was a Mexican military officer and president of Mexico. Huerta took power in a coup in February 1913; both the existing president and vice-president were shot. A harsh military dictatorship followed and the Wilson Administration opposed him. Venustiano Carranza’s led the plan for Huerta’s removal and the restoration of constitutional government; supporters included Emiliano Zapata, Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Álvaro Obregón. Obregón and Villa defeated Huerta’s federal army at the Battle of Zacatecas and Huerta resigned the presidency on July 15, 1914. He went into exile but was arrested in Newman, New Mexico, in 1915 aboard a train bound for El Paso, allegedly intent on regaining the Mexican presidency through another coup. He died of cirrhosis in 1916 while under house arrest in El Paso. In Mexico Huerta is known as El Chacal, the Jackal.

Last, I visited the Socorro Mission in the adjacent town of Socorro, Texas. Nuestra Señora de la Limpia Concepción de los Piros del Socorro (Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception of the Piros of Socorro) was founded in 1682 by the Franciscans to serve Indians (Piro, Tano and Jemez) and Spanish displaced from New Mexico during the Pueblo Revolt. (Socorro, New Mexico, was named by Oñate in 1598 after the Piros assisted his expedition as it emerged from the Jornada del Muerto. Socorro means aid or succor.) The present building was constructed by 1840 to replace a church flooded by the Rio Grande in 1829.