We Built the Wall by Eileen Truax

Author:Eileen Truax
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

José Luis is a charming man. With dark hair and a dark complexion and soulful eyes with bags under them, he tends to wield his winsome smile as a tool of persuasion. He speaks Spanish with a light accent which could be Chicano but isn’t quite; it’s the classic “not from here nor there/ni de aquí ni de allá” that comes from both sides of the border.

José Luis came to CSUN by way of Texas, where he earned his master’s and doctorate degrees. Originally from Mexico City, he was critical of the vacuous nature of the U.S. university system, the lack of cultural diversity in academic life, and the ignorance often found among journalists. After accepting the position of director of the Spanish journalism program from Kent, he developed a solid curriculum mainly for immigrants and the children of immigrants from Latin American countries. He hoped to work with audiences from those countries, in Spanish- or English-language media, and to focus on issues affecting the Spanish-speaking community in the United States. In 2007, José Luis founded the Spanish-language student newspaper El Nuevo Sol, a multimedia publication covering issues of particular interest to the Latino community, including immigration and border issues.

José Luis and Kent’s meeting could not have been more fortuitous. In spite of very different backgrounds and a fifteen-year age difference, the two clicked right away. Their ideologies and visions for the future aligned perfectly, and immediately they set to work on several projects together. When Kent stepped down from his post at the Department of Journalism, José Luis took his place.

Writer and journalist Charles Bowden, who would pass away in August 2014, after our trip to Casa Amiga, spent more than a decade writing about issues and events surrounding the border. At the time of our visit, he had recently turned his attention to the violence in Juárez from the alleged war on narcotrafficking initiated by the government. Of particular interest was the economic and political relationship between the two countries: the corruption, impunity, and indifference on both sides of the border. His book Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields (Nation Books, 2011) was published to great acclaim. José Luis discovered Charles’s work and mentioned it to several colleagues, including Kent. The two made arrangements for Charles to come to CSUN in November 2011 and give a talk to the journalism students.

Charles traveled to Los Angeles with his partner, Molly Molloy—the American academic-activist who would later come with us to Juárez—from their home in Las Cruces, New Mexico, a town forty minutes away from the El Paso–Juárez border. José Luis and Kent visited him there months later, coming face-to-face with the stark realities of life for those exiled by violence. They spent five days around the border and, after returning to Los Angeles, could talk about nothing but Juárez.

“We realized there is an enormous need to preserve the memory,” José Luis explains to Irma and the rest of the group sitting around a table at Casa Amiga.

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