I have spent the better part of the last six months in and out of the hospital. At one point, my visit became a four-month staycation compliments of an insurance policy that was part of my retirement package from the university where I taught for 23 years. I came very close to knowing what comes after death. I knew I was in trouble when a few close friends came in from out of town along with my older brother and my nephew. A friend of mine who paid a visit said, softly, “I hate to see you in such suffering.” While it is true that I was very ill with a pneumonia so virulent it almost killed me, my suffering was a comfortable one. I was in the ICU in a nice bed, and I received all the medical attention I needed. The staff and the doctors were almost all Latino—my people—and they were, each of them, kind, professional, and compassionate. I resisted the prescription medicine that would have made me too drowsy to write, inspired by my caretakers to fill these pages. There is a sense among El Pasoans that we are all in this together.
The Border
I have been in a passionate love affair with the city of El Paso for over 50 years. When I applied for a tenure-track position at the University of Texas at El Paso, my mentors at Stanford University told me I was making a mistake and selling myself short. “You cannot make a living by writing about the border,” they said. All these years later, I can proudly say I have published several books about the border: short story collections, novels, young-adult novels, children’s books, and poetry. And I have two new books coming out this fall.
El Paso opened my eyes to the realities of my life and gave me a language and an identity I treasure. El Paso has been my finest mentor. I’ve learned to embrace drought and thirst and the miracle of rain. I’ve learned the desert is a place of encounter, a place you meet your demons and your God. I’ve traversed the streets and alleys and hiked the trails in this part of the American frontier to discover that I do not feel very Texan, nor do I feel very Mexican, nor do I feel very American. I feel as if living here has taught me that I am a citizen of the world and that borders cannot keep us from belonging to each other. A sense of belonging is a human trait and a human necessity. That we are hardwired to be connected to each other is a matter of science.
Situated at the western tip of Texas and sandwiched between two countries and three states—Chihuahua, Texas, and New Mexico—one could say El Paso is not just a border city but a city of borders. It seems odd to say, but crossing these boundaries is an ordinary, everyday activity. Borders are so familiar they have become almost easy to ignore. Almost.
San Jacinto Plaza
I fell in love with El Paso when my grandfather took me to see the alligators in San Jacinto Plaza, the heart of the city. Even today, the living alligators long gone and replaced by an alligator sculpture, there are some people who still refer to the plaza as Alligator Park. When I think of those reptiles, I think of how out of place they must have felt with people always throwing pennies at them. Animals have their own dignity—and we certainly robbed the alligators of theirs. They could never thrive in a city where they were nothing more than transplants in a place that only meant exile.
I felt like the alligators as I wandered through city after city, a young man out of his natural habitat, a nomad who dreamed of becoming a writer. Denver, Colorado; London, England; Leuven, Belgium; Lafayette, Louisiana; Alamogordo, New Mexico; Houston; Iowa City, Iowa; Menlo Park, California—those are the cities I lived in. But no city has lived in my heart like El Paso. The others seemed too tame, too overly constructed to interest me. I like a city with rough edges.
santa fe bridge
I don’t romanticize about the harsh realities of the people—Mexicans, New Mexicans, Texans—who live on all sides of El Paso’s border. This corner of the world may be geographically isolated from the rest of Texas, but you can hardly call a Borderplex with a population of over 2.5 million people “isolated.” We have finally woken up to the fact that we have enough human resources—homegrown artists, writers, dancers, musicians, filmmakers—to tell our own stories and become our own center of culture. I am currently witnessing an El Paso that is moving into an artistic renaissance.
Growing up in a city so intimate with poverty does not make it ugly, nor does it induce violence. Anybody who knows anything about this city knows it is anything but a war zone—El Paso has been ranked as one of the safest cities in the U.S. for the last 20 years. It is a profound irony that our neighbors across the Santa Fe Bridge, in Ciudad Juárez, are forced to live in a city where violence is a way of life. But that isn’t anything new. I think most of us who live here ignore what separates us from each other and instead embrace what brings us together. We are a live-and-let-live city, and we keep moving ahead as best we can. After the 2019 Walmart shooting, this community stood firm and tall—and “El Paso Strong” began. There were no riots, no unruly protests, no burning, no looting, no looking for revenge—that’s not our style. We focused on supporting the victims and their families.
This was a difficult time for me. I was still battling the trauma of losing my 13-year-old niece in 1990 to a shooting at a bowling alley in Las Cruces, New Mexico. A wound like that is an old god who never dies. One of the reasons I love El Paso is that it is peopled with survivors. We have learned to transcend our pain by welcoming the hungry people who arrive at our doors.
Ciudad juárez
The border isn’t just a metaphor—it’s like any other place where people live, work, and love, where the working poor are present almost everywhere you go. But whatever your career is, and no matter where you live in El Paso, you cannot help but notice people are happy here. That is this city’s greatest strength.
You can see the poverty across Interstate 10 in the houses built on the side of the Juárez mountains. But the people of Juárez belong to us just as we belong to them. We are neighbors. Both cities are far away from the cultural, artistic, and political centers of their respective countries. El Paso is 576 miles from Austin, and Juárez is over 1,000 miles from Mexico City. In the meeting of two cultures, we have had to create our own.
The two languages that fill the air belt out a lovely, lyrical song. Sometimes those two languages fight a battle inside of me. I am literate in Spanish as well as English, and though Spanish was my first language, my default language is English—probably because I received my education in the latter. There are times when I have to resort to Spanish when I’m speaking English and vice versa. Languages aren’t neutral, and speaking both languages I feel defeated when I can’t find the right word for what I want to say. I accept my defeat graciously—some words or phrases are untranslatable. The two languages give El Paso its identity, but that identity is always shifting. I cannot imagine what my life and experiences would be like if I only spoke one language in this city that demands we bend to its identity.
Juárez is a big part of the El Paso I love. My father would take his four boys to get a haircut there whenever he thought we were looking shaggy. We crossed the Santa Fe Bridge on foot, and there were boys my age, 6 or 7, who made cones out of newspapers to catch coins people would toss at them. After the first time crossing over, I always managed to make sure I had at least a dime in my pocket. I’d toss a coin to the boy who seemed to be left out. Looking back, I realize that being the fourth of seven children, I often felt left out.
El Paso is a place where history is alive in the present. We have Pancho Villa’s stash house. We have a historical marker in front of the building where the iconic novel of the Mexican Revolution, Los de Abajo (The Underdogs), was written by Mariano Azuela. Reporters and thousands of El Pasoans viewed the three battles of Juárez from their rooftops. I own a black-and-white photograph of Pancho Villa riding his horse toward the third battle of Juárez, where he and his troops were forced to surrender, signaling the end of the revolution.
One of my favorite things to do when I was younger was to walk across the Santa Fe Bridge into Juárez with a group of friends and have a drink at the Kentucky Club, or the Hawaiian, or the infamous Cave. We’d make a night of it, then we’d walk back over the bridge to El Paso. I always had a good time in Juárez. Avenida Juárez was full of people in those days and had a celebratory air. The feel of Juárez—the people, the smells—alive in ways El Paso wasn’t.
downtown
At the beginning of the 20th century, El Paso was growing and bursting with life—and at the end of the century it had started to feel lifeless. But the city dug itself out of a hole and got to work. Now, El Paso is fast becoming a destination. The Winter Festival fills downtown for the entire Christmas season. In the summer, the ballpark roars with Chihuahuas fans, a minor league baseball team that feeds the San Diego Padres. There are art galleries opening, and musicians no longer feel they can’t make it in the industry without leaving their hometown. Great new restaurants are popping up in every part of the city, joining old standbys like the L&J, Carlos and Mickey’s, Lucy’s, and Café Central. I like the breakfast buffet at the beautifully restored Plaza Hotel. The Plaza opened in 1930 and was one of the first luxury hotels ever built by Conrad Hilton, who lived there with Elizabeth Taylor when they married in 1950. The story goes that after Taylor got a quickie divorce, she walked into the Kentucky Club, in Juárez, and bought everyone a drink.
Franklin Mountains
Every day of my life I get a view of the Franklins. These desert mountains are at the southernmost tip of the Rocky Mountains. In their austere beauty, they are like monks kneeling, praying for rain. On a rare winter day, when the peaks are powdered in white, the monks become angels smiling down on the city. Rim Road, carved into the side of these mountains, reveals a view of downtown and Juárez. From that vantage point, the two cities merge into one. At night, you see millions of lights appear before the horizon.
79901 and 79902
I have always lived in the 79901 and 79902 zip codes. The former covers downtown and Segundo Barrio, which is like a town within a town formed by people who wanted to live in America but remain Mexican. The latter covers part of Central El Paso, and that’s the neighborhood I live in now. It’s an old house that looks a little tired—like its current resident. El Paso’s most famous neighborhood, Sunset Heights, also has a 79902 zip code. Originally the Jewish neighborhood, it became home for well-to-do Mexicans fleeing the revolution of 1910. I lived in that neighborhood while getting a master’s degree at UTEP and returned to live there for many years.
Segundo Barrio was the neighborhood that first greeted me each time I crossed back to El Paso on trips to Juárez. In Segundo Barrio, I would always find somewhere unpretentious to eat, the food as humble and sincere as the people who served me. Most of the residents of Segundo Barrio are part of the working-class poor. But the neighborhood doesn’t feel like a sad place to live; it’s pulsating with life. The streets bustle with people buying and selling, and music fills the air. Segundo Barrio is a real urban neighborhood, and it seems that no matter how many changes are made to improve it, what never changes is the character of the people who claim this piece of earth as their home. A neighborhood is about the people who inhabit and shape its surroundings. There is a real sense of belonging not just in Segundo Barrio but in all of El Paso.
On South Stanton Street, there’s a bakery owned by a Lebanese man who people refer to as El Arabe. He makes the best bolillos—rolls that have a hard crust but are soft on the inside. El Arabe’s rolls are more European than Mexican. South Stanton, one of my most beloved streets, feels like Juárez and El Paso have blended, creating a cultural ecotone. You can buy almost anything you need from the shops on that street: office supplies, baptismal outfits, fruits and vegetables, first communion dresses, art supplies, shirts, shoes, boots, belt buckles. Why would you want to shop in an unimaginative strip mall?
On Sunday mornings, I would often set off on walks from my apartment on North Stanton. I loved my apartment there because it had an urbanity that made me feel alive, a part of something bigger. My apartment back then was walking distance to almost everything I needed and sat atop a hill where you could view downtown in the distance. I’d walk toward downtown and past the Plaza Theatre and the El Paso Museum of Art. The theater, built in 1930, stands as a marvel of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. Entering that building felt like walking into a church. I would wind my way past the Chihuahuas’ ballpark and end up on El Paso Street. I’d sit and watch the people getting off or boarding the city buses. I smiled a lot. Occasionally, I’d take the bus for a leisurely trip around the city.
Usually, I ended up at the foot of the Santa Fe Bridge. There is a small park there where you can sit and rest. I’ve been there many times and written stories in my head about the people who were crossing into Juárez. After resting—it was really a cigarette break—I would head toward San Antonio Church, run by the Jesuits. I often stopped and ate a hearty breakfast in the church cafeteria, which served Mexican food as good as my mother’s. You don’t have to spend much money to eat good Mexican food—not if you live in El Paso. If there’s a sign at the entrance of any restaurant announcing they have authentic Mexican food, move on.
I often took photographs on my walking trips through downtown, Segundo Barrio, and Juárez. I always traveled alone, but I wasn’t really alone. I was surrounded by my favorite people.
Hospital
Time seems to speed up as I grow old. I now use a wheelchair, and though I am somewhat ambulatory, it’s safe to say my walking days are over. I will most likely need an oxygen tank the rest of my life—fortunately, oxygen no longer comes in those heavy steel tanks and is easier to maneuver. I don’t consider my circumstance a tragedy. How could I consider my life a tragedy? I’ve seen the world, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Tanzania, from Brazil to Berlin, Germany. I have a readership most writers would envy. I have nothing to be miserable about.
I’m 71 years old, and as I’m sitting here, writing these words on my computer, I’m thinking about how lovely my life has been. I don’t mean easy; I mean lovely. El Paso has helped me keep it real and given me a humility I would have otherwise lacked. I’ve had many conversations with nurses and staff who were grateful for the chance to serve people like me. I call that humility. I call that living gracefully. They bathed me, helped me brush my teeth, and cleaned me up after I had an accident. They taught me that accepting my situation with patience, gratitude, and a sense of humor turned what might have been a living hell into a place of healing and peace. I live in gratitude for having lived in a city that is, to me, a piece of paradise.
Editor’s Note: Benjamin Alire Sáenz died on July 28, 2026, during the editing of this essay. We have taken great care to preserve his vision.