Comunidad

Comunidad y Política

El barrio es de los que viven en él.

Paso del Sur works for the rights of residents and workers of El Paso's barrios against displacement, demolition, and erasure of history. First organized in 2006 in response to the City of El Paso's plan to demolish El Segundo Barrio, one of the city's oldest Mexican immigrant neighborhoods, I am proud to be on of its founding members along with a number of other historians, including Dr. David Dorado Romo, Dr. Selfa Chew, Dr. Antonio Lopez, and Cynthia T. Renteria.

Paso del Sur has continued to work side by side in barrios with residents to protect their neighborhoods and to demand the dignity and respect they deserve as human beings.

Our current struggle is in Barrio Duranguito/ Barrio Union Plaza, a historic neighborhood facing demolition and displacement through the use of eminent domain by the City of El Paso.

For more information, please see: www.facebook.com/PasoDelSurEP or email us at [email protected]

For information on neighborhoods all over the United States and other countries fighting for their dignity, please visit www.facebook.com/ElBarrioSeDefiende

PASO DEL SUR- Union Plaza 2016-17

Stand for Duranguito Solidarity March. Photo by Luis Hernandez.

Stand for Duranguito Solidarity March, June 3, 2017.

PASO DEL SUR- El Segundo Barrio 2006-07

My father used to tell me about sneaking into this theater to watch movies as a kid in the 1910s. It showed Spanish language films. In the 1940s, it was transformed into a "whites only" theater but that didn't last long. By the 1950s, it was headquarters to the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Union, a radical labor organization. Before it closed, it housed the Mine and Mill Bar.

This message is painted on the east side of the old Mission movie theater.

The bell tower of Guardian Angel Catholic Church, built in the 1910s to serve the growing Mexican immigrant community in what was then the "east side" of El Paso.