The Border Heritage Center is a department of the Main Branch of the El Paso Public Library. The department specializes in the preservation and dissemination of El Paso and Southwestern history.
Carlos Callejo was born 1951 in El Paso, TX at the San José Clinic in
El Segundo (now the
Annunciation House) and raised in
Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua
from about age four to nine and now resides in California. He is a
public artist who began producing posters and murals in the early 1970s and
has since painted murals all over the world.
A vibrant and engaging storyteller, Carlos describes his early artistic
experiences, relationships between art, identity, and self-expression, and
shares his perspective on political poster-making, art, and significant
events from the era. He attended CSULA and during the Chicano Mural Movement he helped design posters and flyers that called upon the community to
fight as a united front. Callejo was active in the Chicano
Movement in Southern California during the 1970s. He uses his life
experiences to create a Chicano-style art that is both expressive and
educational.
This interview is part of a video series in which poster artists share
stories about art and activism. The interviews accompany Decade of
Dissent: Democracy in Action 1965-1975, a traveling political poster art
exhibition that premiered at the West Hollywood Library, February-April
2012. Both the exhibition and interviews were produced by the Center
for the Study of Political Graphics.
Carlos Callejo was commissioned to paint the Eastside Wall Mural for the
El Paso County courthouse
in 1994. The videos highlight the process of painting the mural on the wall
inside the courthouse. Using time lapse video the wall is transformed into a
wall that speaks about the history of the El Paso - Juarez border
city. The
El Paso County Economic Development Department
and
Augment El Paso
recently unveiled a high-tech digital upgrade bringing new life to the "Our
History" courthouse mural with an
augmented reality experience.
In honor of this special event Armijo Branch Manager, Deborah Valdez, organized
to have the Armijo Mural Room officially renamed the Carlos Callejo Mural
Room. The free event included a meet and greet with Callejo,
refreshments, and live music from members of local band
Radio La Chusma. The event also unveiled a plaque that will be placed in the
multipurpose room in honor of Callejo, pictured below.
Eddie Guerrero the "Latino Heat" (Eduardo Gory Guerrero Llanes) was born October 9, 1967
in El Paso, TX. He was a Mexican-American professional wrestler and had a
distinguished career working for Extreme Championship Wresting (ECW), World Championship Wrestling (WCW), and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). He was a recipient of the 2008 Men's Wrestling Award from the
Cauliflower Alley Club as the Guerrero Family. Eddie achieved the most success of his
career using a in-ring character who was a crafty, resourceful wrestler who
would do anything to win a match. His famous mantras became "Cheat to Win" and
"Lie, Cheat, Steal". Lying, cheating, stealing – it was all fair play in the ring for the
unpredictable WWE Hall of Famer.Eddie posthumously
received the Star of the Mountain Award in recognition of the pride he brought
to his hometown. His wife Vickie and their three daughters also all received
keys to the city of El Paso, the same city in which they grew up.
He is a member of the Guerrero-Llanes Dynasty being the youngest son of Gory
Guerrero. Eddie discovered his unbridled passion for
sports-entertainment as a child through his father, longtime wrestling
promoter Gory Guerrero who once wrestled at the
El Paso County Coliseum. As Gory plied his trade in El Paso, TX, Eddie was busy scrapping with
his nephew, Chavo Guerrero Jr., during the show intermissions. Eddie
Guerrero, a graduate of
Jefferson High School, was a member of the wrestling team, but shortly after graduating high
school he decided to give pro-wrestling a try.
Guerrero Family
With the help
of his father, and his three older brothers, Guerrero worked his way to the
very top of the wrestling world. Eddie would later move on to wrestle
collegiately at New Mexico Highlands University before returning to El Paso to
learn how to become a future WWE Superstar. He was
born to wrestle.
Several sources say his debut was in 1987 at Auditorio Municipal de
Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua in a tag team match with El Matemático aganist Flama Roja and El Vikingo. However, his in ring career should be since at least 1986. Javier
Llanes stated that Eddie debuted at Arena Internacional, in Colonia
Chaveña in Ciudad Juárez where all Guerreros and Llanes debuted. According
to
Revista KO #1718
published on June 29, 1986, it states his debut was in June 15, 1986 in El
Paso Civic Center. His debut in Arena Mexico was on September 5, 1986. He went in a tag team match with Mogur against Ari Romero and Guerrero Negro. So, it is safe to say that Eddie Guerrero’s debut occurred somewhere in
1986. In the early days he went as Gory Guerrero Jr.
Guerrero began wrestling as the original Mascara Magica in
Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) until his departure in 1992. He left the company to pursue a
career with AAA. Although the Mascara Magica gimmick was popular, CMLL owned the
rights to the character. Guerrero then appeared on a televised AAA show as
Mascara Magica, only to then unmask himself along with the aide of his tag team
partner that night, Octagón. He was the first luchador to voluntarily unmask and
was also immediately physically attacked by the opposing tag team for doing so.
The moment when Mascara Magica "Eddie Guerrero" left CMLL and went over to
AAA
In Mexico, he wrestled mainly for
Asistencia Asesoría y Administración (AAA), teaming with El Hijo del Santo as the new version of
La Pareja Atómica
(The Atomic Pair), the original tag team of Gory Guerrero and El
Santo. After Guerrero turned on Santo and allied with Art Barr as La
Pareja del Terror (The Pain of Terror), the duo became arguably the most hated
tag team in lucha libre history. Along with Barr, Konnan, Chicano Power, and
Madonna’s Boyfriend (Louie Spicolli), Guerrero formed
Los Gringos Locos
(The Crazy Americans), a villainous stable. Guerrero later said that no matter
how many people joined Los Gringos Locos, the stable was all about Barr. Locos
feuded mostly with
El Hijo del Santo
and his partner
Octagón, eventually ending in a Hair vs. Mask match at the first lucha
pay-per-view in America, When Worlds Collide, which they lost.
In 2005, Guerrero died unexpectedly from acute heart failure. He was
just 38 years old. In 2006, Guerrero was inducted into the WWE Hall of
Fame. Even though his career was cut tragically short, Guerrero left
an
indeniable mark on the sports-entertainment landscape. His battle cry was "Viva La Raza," but
the WWE Universe to this day shouts "Viva Eddie Guerrero" in remembrance of a
legend.
The pioneering ancestor of Mexican wrestling is said to be
Enrique Ugartechea, who was known as "Mexico's Strongest Man" and is credited with developing
lucha libre from Greco-Roman wrestling in 1863, a year after the Battle of
Puebla, Cinco de Mayo. The seeds of the modern form of
lucha libre go back far in the El Paso-Juárez Borderland history.
In 1929, Salvador Lutteroth González, who fought in the Mexican Revolution against Pancho Villa, moved to Juárez to work for Mexico’s Tax Department. Soon after, he attended wrestling matches in El Paso’s Liberty Hall. The fighting was a type of freestyle wrestling with few rules, which sometimes descended into pure violence. González was captivated and felt certain his home country would also love the spectacle. In 1933, he founded Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (now CMLL) to expand the sport’s popularity from El Paso to Mexico, earning González recognition as the “Father of Lucha Libre.”
Pablo Martinez Coronado talks about the El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez,
Mexico transnational roots of Lucha Libre--the Mexican wrestling tradition
which has become an international phenomena--in the late 1920s and
afterward. Length 9:10
On Saturday, October 19, 2024, from 10 am- 4 pm, in Las Cruces, NM, join us for a free, fun, and educational event that showcases unique and historic archival
materials from the border region. The El Paso Public Library Border Heritage Center, along with other libraries, archives, and museums of southern
New Mexico, West Texas, and the borderlands, will be there to showcase unique
and historic archival materials from the border region. Organized by the Border Regional Archives Group (BRAG), the Bazaar
features rare documents, photographs, maps, publications, and more, that
highlight the uniquehistory and cultural
heritage of our region. This year’s theme
is Celebrating Borderland Communities.
The Border Archives
Bazaar also includes two 90-minute panel presentations, one at 11:00 a.m. and
one at 1:30 p.m., with scholars and researchers who are utilizing regional archives
to document and preserve borderland community histories, including Crypto-Jews
of the Southwest; Black students at NMSU; El Paso’s Black Wall Street; Mexican
settlements in Mesilla, New Mexico, and Ascensión, Chihuahua. Archivists, librarians, and museum curators will also be on hand to discuss and answer questions about archives, regional history, and preservation of original documents.
For more information, visit our News & Events webpage or contact the Border Heritage Center at 915-212-3218.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz (born August 16, 1954) is an
award-winning
American poet, novelist, writer of children's books and
artist. He lives and works in El Paso, Texas.
He was born at
Old Picacho, New Mexico, the fourth of seven children, and was raised on a small farm near
Mesilla, New Mexico. He graduated from Las Cruces High School in 1972. That
fall, he entered St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colorado where he received a
B.A. degree in Humanities and Philosophy in 1977. He studied Theology at the
University of Louvain in Leuven, Belgium from 1977 to 1981. He was a priest
for a few years in El Paso, Texas before leaving the order.
In 1985, he returned to school, and studied English and Creative Writing at
the University of Texas at El Paso where he earned an M.A. degree in
Creative Writing. He then spent a year at the University of Iowa as a PhD
student in American Literature. A year later, he was awarded a Wallace E.
Stegner fellowship. While at Stanford University under the guidance of
Denise Levertov, he completed his first book of poems, Calendar of Dust,
which won an American Book Award in 1992. He entered the Ph.D. program at
Stanford and continued his studies for two more years. Before completing his
Ph.D., he moved back to the border and began teaching at the University of
Texas at El Paso in the bilingual MFA program which he
retired from in 2022. It was announced that
Wittliff Collections acquired
his complete archive.
In 2005, he
curated a show
of photographs by Julian Cardona.
In The Book of What Remains (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), his fifth book
of poems, he writes to the core truth of life's ever-shifting memories. Set
along the Mexican border, the contrast between the desert's austere beauty and
the brutality of border politics mirrors
humanity's capacity for both generosity and cruelty.
In 2010, he and Daniel Chacón began hosting a local literary radio
show, Words on a Wire, out of El Paso, Texas that quickly became one of the most important radio
programs and podcasts about writers and books in North America. You
can hear these and other shows on KTEP.
In 2022 Sáenz had an interview at Townsend Harris High School Library
for a
LGBTQ+ author talk
hosted by the NYC Department of Education. He delved into how the need
to label oneself, such as with gender and sexuality, can be limiting and
detrimental. He chooses to not label himself as “queer” because for him that
word still contains all of the negative meaning it had in his youth.
However, if others are comfortable with that label for themselves, that is
also completely acceptable, he said. He went on to say that while one may
feel tempted to draw lines to help understand who one is, beyond that, they
are nothing but limiting and that, “Young people need books that tell them
there is still love in the world.”
Sáenz believes in the power of telling LGBTQ+ stories and sharing them with
youth. Writing should be about what’s possible, including queer tragedy and
queer joy. In that setting, the stories Sáenz writes are a sort of hopeful
realism.
The El Paso Public Library proudly invites you to celebrate with us its 130th anniversary!!! The staff at the Border Heritage Center is excited to announce the Open House events that will take place at various library branches, beginning with the Westside Library tomorrow Wednesday, September 25, 2024, at 11:00 am. Celebrations will continue through Wednesday, December 11, 2024 (see schedule below). Stop by for giveaways and refreshments! See you there!!!
Sergio Troncoso (born 1961) often writes about the
United States-Mexico border, working-class immigrants, families and fatherhood, crossing cultural,
psychological, and philosophical borders, and the border beyond the border.
Troncoso teaches at the
Yale Writers’ Workshop
in New Haven, Connecticut. A past president of the Texas Institute of Letters,
he has also served as a judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the
New Letters Literary Awards in the Essay category. His work has appeared in
Pleiades, Texas Highways, CNN Opinion, Houston Chronicle, Other Voices, New Letters,
Yale Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Texas Monthly.
The son of Mexican immigrants, Troncoso was born and grew up on the east
side of El Paso, Texas in rural
Ysleta.
During their first years in Texas, his family lived with kerosene lamps and
stoves and an outhouse in the backyard. He attended Ysleta High School and
became
editor of the school newspaper. (His paternal grandfather was
Santiago Troncoso, editor and publisher of
El Día, the first daily newspaper in Juárez, Mexico.)
In Ysleta, Texas, Pati visits La Tapatia, a restaurant serving
border-influenced tortilla, tamales and tacos since 1950. She sits down with
acclaimed author, Sergio Troncoso – known for his many books and essays on
border life – to discuss what it’s like to live in the middle of two
cultures. Length 4:05 Sergio Troncoso on Border Life
A Fulbright scholar, Troncoso was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship
Fund’s Alumni Hall of Fame,
Texas Institute of Letters, and Texas Literary Hall of Fame. He is also a member of PEN America, a writers’ organization protecting
free expression and celebrating literature, and the
Authors Guild, the nation’s oldest and largest professional organization of writers. He
was named a Fellow of the Texas Institute of Letters, the first Mexican
American writer to receive this distinction.
Among the numerous literary awards Troncoso has won are the Kay Cattarulla
Award for Best Short Story, Premio Aztlan Literary Prize, Gold Medal for
Best Novel-Adventure or Drama from International Latino Book Awards, Bronze
Award for Anthologies from Independent Publisher Book Awards, Gold Medal for
Best Collection of Short Stories from International Latino Book Awards,
Southwest Book Award, Bronze Award for Essays from ForeWord Reviews, and the Silver Award for
Multicultural Adult Fiction from ForeWord Reviews.
The El Paso City Council voted unanimously to rename the public library branch
in Ysleta as the
Sergio Troncoso Branch Library. Later the author established the annual
Troncoso Reading Prizes
for middle school and high school students in Ysleta.
Rosa Ramirez Guerrero (born November 14, 1934) was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. She
is an artist, educator, dance historian, and humanitarian. Her efforts
have enhanced her commitment in promoting cultural awareness around the
United States. She has also taught for EPISD, The El Paso Community
College and at The University of Texas at El Paso. Mrs. Guerrero was the
first of seven children in her family to graduate and earn her BA and MA
from Texas Western College, now the University of Texas at El Paso.
Mrs. Guerrero founded and became the artistic director of the
International Folklorico Dance Group. Her film
“Tapestry,”
based upon creating cultural harmony and understanding, was honored with a
national award for documentary filmmaking. She was awarded a
lifetime membership with the Texas PTA and was the first Hispanic woman in
El Paso to have a school,
Rosa Guerrero Elementary, named in her honor.
She has been honored with many local, national, and international honors for
her efforts as a humanitarian, which includes being a Distinguished Alumni
of The University of Texas at El Paso, Inductee into the
Texas Women’s Hall of Fame, the Valley Forge Freedoms Foundation Award, the LULAC Arts and Humanities
Award, the NEA Human Civil Rights George T. Sanchez Award, and the Mexican
Consulate OHTLI Award for her work with Mexican Americans and other
minorities.
Rosa Guerrero wanted to be a teacher since the third grade. Her own
teachers in the early 1940’s and 1950’s were not kind and did not understand
her cultural background. She, like thousands of others, was punished
for speaking Spanish in school. This was the reason she became an
educator and swore to never punish her students for their racial and
cultural differences.
Courtesy of the El Paso Public Library,Border Heritage Center, Citizen Vertical Files, Guerrero, Rosa
If you are interested in free dance classes, residents can learn to dance
bachata, cumbia and salsa with free lessons from the
Live Active El Paso Program.
Saturday, August 3rd, 2019, was a normal day for many, for some, a regular workday, for others, a shopping task, and for a handful, a day to go look around and relax. More than likely, none of them had any idea of the surreal events that were about to occur. Outside the Walmart-Cielo Vista area, as cars were browsing for a spot to park, one particular vehicle pulled up into the parking lot. One man stepped out of it, not to shop, neither to look, but to self-lead a rampage of deadly bullets targeting Mexicans. He aimed his rifle at shoppers, employees, and/or passersby.
Ruled as an "act of domestic terror", the gunman, Patrick Wood Crusius, first drove through town for about an hour, stopped at a pizzeria, then arrived at Walmart to end up shooting and killing 23 people and injuring 22 others. As a result, the "El Paso Strong" campaign was born in our city, merely to embrace a robust sense of unity, strength, and resilience. August 3, 2024, marks the five-year anniversary of the August 3rd tragedy, and to commemorate it, a new memorial,a set of seven angled pillars that silently "speak" the names of the 23 victims,was unveiled at the El Paso Eastside Walmart where the shooting happened.
Below are a few excerpts of images and articles from the El Paso Times' telling the story.
You are cordially invited to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Armijo Branch Library's mural room with the artist, Carlos Callejo.
Mr. Callejo will be in attendance to describe the process of the creation of this iconic El Paso mural. There will be live music and free refreshments as part of the program. Saturday, August 24th from 4 PM to 6:30 PM at the Armijo Branch Library, 620 E. 7th Street.
We have an online exhibit that shows the mural progression on our website for you all at the highlighted link below:
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