In Quest of El Dorado

by Stephen Graham

But opposite El Paso, on the southern side of the Rio Grande, is El Paso's opposite, la Ciudad de Juarez. There is only a bridge between, a mere thirty or forty yards of wood and iron—Mexico one side, America the other; Mexican squalor on one hand, American civilization in full blast on the other. The three-minutes' transition as you walk across the muddy Rio is surely one of the most surprising in the New World. The road is level, but you step down as into an abyss.

In the United States city is every sign of wealth and self-respect, of militant commerce and the rewards and aims of trade. Schools, theaters, churches vie with one another to raise the population and magnify the name of the city and the fame of America. The newspapers cry the news of the day and the El Paso Times seems no whit less vigorous or informed than the Tribune of Chicago itself. The hotels of El Paso, the luxurious Paso del Norte, the commodious Sheldon, are grandiose in charge and style. No drummer from another city needs to walk along a corridor for his bath. And as for restaurants there seems to be a sort of special El Paso chic. They infallibly bring you finger bowls, and no El Pasoan drinks from one by mistake. But without a jest, one fares better and is treated with more dignity in an El Paso café than in New York.

The air of El Paso is pure, the roads are clean, there are no hobos sitting in the little park where its alligators live under the fountain, the business men wear ironed clothes, their gait is dignified and steady except, perhaps, when coming from the direction of the Juarez bridge. What more can one say? El Paso is real genuine United States. And the fort above it with its barracks and soldiers worships the Stars and Stripes no more than does the business world below.

But walk across that little bridge and the vision is gone. You have more effectually left Uncle Sam than if you had spent a week on the Atlantic doing so. You are in Europe. You have left the banner of Kansas behind and are with the publicans and sinners once again.

Loungers, beggars, drunken men, saloons, gambling houses, dust and stink, moldering mud houses and poor wooden cabins give the first impression of Mexico in the North. Directly you cross the bridge the beggars, as in Spain itself, are whining and extending arms. Of course as one goes further there is a Cathedral and a bull ring, and there are some large American shops. An American trolley car comes out of El Paso, crosses that bridge, circles through Juarez like a figure-skater, and goes out again into America by another bridge, and the steel lines hypnotize one to follow back to the comfortable States.

The city of Juarez has, however, a bad name which is somewhat exaggerated. Vice by repute is generally magnified. Juarez and the other gate-city of old Laredo are both called the Monte Carlo of Mexico. There are columns in the press devoted to tales of their wickedness. There is said to be a large sale of cocaine and opium and that many young people are under the influence of these drugs. As for alcoholic drink there is no question but that in Juarez excessive quantities are taken. There has been much bootlegging on a large and petty scale. So many night excursions by aëroplane have been made by Americans that the Mexican Government has equipped an aërial fleet to police the frontier. Government prohibition agents of the United States have recommended that Mexico be asked to consent to the establishment of a "Dry Zone" all along the Border. President Obregon, when asked about this, said Mexico would welcome the establishment of such a zone, as he felt it humiliating that Americans, unable to satisfy their vicious cravings in America, should come to Mexico to do so. This, however, Obregon probably did not mean to be taken seriously. Like many other Mexican politicians he loves making witty remarks at the expense of America.

In connection with the American idea of control of the Border may be mentioned the resolution adopted by the House of Representatives of the legislature of Arizona requesting the President of the United States to start negotiations for the "purchase, lease, or joint control" of two hundred miles of the said border. But that is not so much to further "Prohibition" as to further trade, the people of Arizona seeking an outlet, a sort of Salonika on the Gulf of California. They would like the frontier of Arizona to run due west from the town of Nogales to the sea.

Nogales is going to be an important point in the approach to Mexico from the North. There is a railway which was wrecked during the revolutionary period. It ran between the Sierra Madre and the ocean, and was the only railroad development of the Gulf of California and the Pacific Coast for a thousand miles. It was not finished—but now I believe the Southern Pacific Company which possesses the franchise have been enabled to repair the damage and will soon run a service of trains from Arizona and California to Guadalajara. It should be said that Californians have naturally a much deeper interest in the American development of Mexico than most States. Financial groups have lately taken over large tracts of land near Tehuantepec and also in the State of Vera Cruz. California has as vigorous an attitude toward Mexico on the western side as Texas has on the east. California's destiny seems to hold the commercial domination of the Pacific Coast.

There is another grand railroad project on foot, the "Gran Ferrocarril Panamericano," which is to join New York with the Canal Zone of Panama by a permanent way through Mexico, Guatemala, etc. The establishment of this pan-American railway depends, however, more upon the Central American republics than on Mexico. A thousand miles of this road remains to be built over land much subject to earthquakes and revolutions. But the through carriages now running from Chicago to Mexico City via Laredo are a symptom of closer railroad connections.

I did not, however, enter by Laredo or Nogales but by El Paso. The distance to Mexico City is nearly two thousand kilometers, mostly of sand and piñon trees. The Santa Fe country seems to extend endlessly southward. Desert dust enters the train and almost stifles you. From the window of the railway carriage you see the yucca's withered stem, and the dead cactus extends to you a dusty hand, welcoming you to No Man's Land. The contours of the mountains are, as in New Mexico, wind-worked, wind-shaped, and there are great rounded hats of rock, gray and sun-wasted. Occasionally one comes to wretched, mud-built villages whose whole population turns out in rags to sell coffee and chili sandwiches to passengers at the halting places.