Borderzine

On a sunny spring morning, Air Force cadets gathered in a dimly lit auditorium at the University of Texas at El Paso to hear a 20-year Army officer with 11 combat tours talk about suicides in the military. Retired Lt. Col. J.C. Glick began his discussion, via Zoom, with a...

In early June, nine journalism professors gathered in El Paso to learn new multimedia storytelling skills while exploring life on the U.S., Mexico border. They came from Hispanic-serving Institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities to participate in the 2022 Dow Jones News Fund Multimedia Training Academy hosted at the University of Texas at El Paso from June 4 to June 9.

Inside two nondescript buildings nestled in the neighborhoods of south-central and south El Paso, the future of the city’s economy is being manufactured. From looking at the outside of these unmarked buildings – one near the University Medical Center and the other in the industrial area of Cotton Street – a casual observer would never know that inside engineers, technicians and student research assistants are busy imagining and making new ways of working in space and solving problems on Earth.

El Paso’s historic Mission Trail may be quiet on a Monday, but as the weekend approaches, traffic and visitors begin to stream into the small communities of San Elizario, Socorro and Ysleta. The trail is a 9-mile stretch of the Camino Real, the Spanish Royal Road built in 1598. Shops, museums and businesses once again teem with visitors along this section of the oldest European trade route in North America, which is once again seeing a resurgence in economic development.

In El Paso’s Lower Valley along the Rio Grande just north of the Mexico border, water is in short supply. While current drought levels are not as bad as they have been in previous years, area water officials, conservationists and residents remain nervous about water shortages that can affect crops and wildlife habitat.

Father Rafael Garcia, S.J., walks with measured steps to the altar to begin communion on Monday. The parishioners are a sparse but spirited group. Many committed congregants can’t make it these days because bus transportation has been limited since the pandemic. “When the pandemic hit, the city decided to...

This story was originally co-published by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune. Brian Kolfage arrived in Texas three years ago pledging to help fulfill President Donald Trump’s promise of a “big, beautiful” wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. After pleading guilty to federal fraud charges last month, Kolfage leaves behind two small stretches of fencing that are mired in legal, environmental and permitting fights.

Walking into her intro to computer science theory class as a freshman at the University of Texas at El Paso, Montserrat Molina felt out of place. The room was full of men, except for three other women besides herself. “I felt very scared. I was very intimidated,” said Molina, who...

Borderzine is now accepting applications from journalism instructors at Hispanic Serving Institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities for full scholarships to attend its annual Dow Jones News Fund Multimedia Training Academy on the UT El Paso campus in El Paso, Texas, June 3-9. The Dow Jones News Fund provides...

Some of the state’s literary giants will be in El Paso this week to attend the Texas Institute of Letters four-day conference, held annually in a different Texas city. Among the writers scheduled to attend are Carmen Tafolla, who has written more than 30 books and was named the Poet Laureate of Texas in 2015; Skip Hollandsworth, an executive editor and writer for Texas Monthly; and El Paso authors Benjamin Alire Sáenz and Sergio Troncoso.

El Paso’s public libraries go beyond feeding the mind with books and videos. The libraries also offer an inventory of free seeds to residents to encourage them to grow their own edible gardens. The seed libraries include non-genetically modified fruits, vegetables and herb seeds to give El Pasoans easy...

Editors note: This article was originally published on September 14, 2014 in the special Centennial Issue of The Prospector. Annette Rainville, who was a reporter and editor at The Prospector, graduated from UTEP with a bachelor’s degree in print media in spring 2004. During her long process of going to school and working to raise her twin boys, Anthony and Ryan, and daughter Audrey, Rainville was also fighting her initial battle with leukemia.

Roger De Moor has presented his students with an emergency scenario many of them know well: Your 3-year-old has locked themselves in the bathroom. They’re panicking. In a room that looks like a high school shop class, nine women walked up to a makeshift door and slid a small pick into the doorknob, searching for the groove that would open the lock.

Growing up on the East Side of El Paso, I always felt that my neighborhood was a bit bland. I saw the same high school, middle school, and elementary school everyday. I ate at the same fast food restaurants during my lunch breaks in high school. Grocery shopped at the same Walmart.

For eight years the Desert Spoon Food Hub has been focused on making it easier to bring locally sourced organic food to family tables El Paso and Las Cruces. The nonprofit organization delivers weekly farm boxes with 100% organic produce that is grown by local farmers. “Our main purpose why...

A local group called El Paso Rocks! has more than 3,000 members on Facebook. Their mission: To take over El Paso with a city-wide scavenger hunt for painted rocks. The rocks are hand-painted by local artists who participate in the scavenger hunt. The group asks whoever finds the rocks to...

EL PASO – Avocados are not cheap in the United States. Holidays and celebrations increase the demand for this versatile fruit, especially in the Borderland. Super Bowl Sunday in the U.S. is one of the highest days for avocado consumption, and in the border many holidays and celebrations consist of avocado in many forms.

El Paso – KVIA-TV announced this week that Brenda De Anda-Swann will take the helm as general manager when longtime GM Kevin Lovell retires at the end of May. In a press release on Wednesday, Lovell announced De Anda-Swann’s promotion and his impending retirement at the end of May from the station which is owned by News-Press & Gazette, a family-owned company based in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Four years ago my family in Mexico supported my dream to come to El Paso for my college education in the United States. Little did we know that we would struggle with the burden of being separated by the pandemic when the U.S. and Mexico restricted travel across land border crossings to essential reasons. Visiting family was not among the essential reasons for crossing back and forth.

CIUDAD JUÁREZ — U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar signed an agreement with mayors of six cities in Chihuahua, with the goal of preventing violent crime, building citizen trust in Mexican police forces and reducing corruption. “This can be a historic moment because it can mark a new...