CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – More than a year after the U.S.-Mexico border was partially shut down, life remains upside down here because of the pandemic, which has exposed disparities and uncomfortable truths and made for strange winners and losers.
Consider Samantha Camacho, a U.S. citizen, University of Texas at El Paso student and now a pasadora -- a common term for people who charge a fee to bring goods or packages across the border for non-U.S. citizens.
After the shutdown, her friends, aware of her citizenship privilege, started asking her to pick up packages from P.O. boxes they rented in El Paso and carry them across the border to Juárez. She now charges a fee to “cover gas” she said, and leave a little extra for her.
Meanwhile, Alicia, known as Licha, hasn’t crossed the border in more than a year. She worked in El Paso as a maid and caregiver for nearly 20 years for the same family. Nowadays, she can’t find a job in Juárez, where at age 45, she’s considered “too old,” she said. Because her documents do not allow her or employers to work, Alicia spoke on condition of anonymity.
“That wasn’t just a job,” she said. “They were my family.”
In a region where the so-called First and Third World brush up against each other, the line that separates north and south is increasingly striking. Now in its second year since the border was closed to nonessential travel, people have adapted to new realities amid a growing debate about what looms ahead for a region whose codependence and uniformity is now in question.
“We’re sort of seeing it in the middle of events unfolding, but it feels like another moment when the two sides of the border have become more differentiated and separated,” said Josiah Heyman, director of the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso. “I think the border is going to be less personally integrated than it was coming out of this.”
Since last year, U.S. authorities have imposed a partial shutdown of the border to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, turning the region into an “example of privilege,” said Heyman.
“What crosses the border now are a relatively small number of privileged people, some of whom are privileged by accident and citizenship and birth. Some of them are privileged because of their role in the economic system of engineers and managers and so forth.”
Business traffic continues unabated. And along with trade, Americans with “essential” reasons are allowed to go back and forth uninterrupted for things like school and medicine. But the COVID-19 measure largely blocks all Mexican nationals with border crossing cards from seeing family and friends, attending social gatherings, going for medical appointments or shopping.
Those who do have the travel card can’t use it for work, even though generations of Mexicans have crossed daily over the last century, holding down informal jobs as maids, or providing child and elderly care, doing construction work and gardening. Those jobs have for generations served as springboards for people reaching middle class status.
Heyman and others draw comparisons to the pandemic of 1918, and more recently, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when the border rupture first emerged and began to expand. No timeframe exists for reopening the border because vaccination efforts differ widely between El Paso and Juárez. More than 40% of El Pasoans have received at least one vaccine and 24% are fully vaccinated. In Juárez, mass vaccinations began over the weekend, with the first 20,000 vaccinated on Monday.
Democratic congresswoman Veronica Escobar of El Paso has filed legislation and has asked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to work with her to develop a binational plan that includes vaccines for Juárez residents once Americans are fully vaccinated. She said reopening the border is necessary “because of how critical we are as an economic lifeline, not just between El Paso and Juarez, but to the economies of the United States and Mexico.”
Mayorkas visited the border last week.
Ironically, some like Alejandro, a landscaper who also does other odd jobs in El Paso who asked for anonymity because he is undocumented, hope the shutdown doesn’t end anytime soon. Without competition from other unauthorized workers south of the border, he said, “customers pay more for my work.”
Business leaders worry keeping Mexicans out of U.S. border towns may have deep economic implications for years to come.
“Shopping patterns matter,” said Tanny Berg, a businessman and founder of the Central Business Association, a downtown consortium dedicated to urban revitalization. “So, once Mexicans who have been shopping here historically learn that they can go to Costco and Sam’s, Soriana, S-mart on the Mexican side, what makes you think we’re gonna get them back once we open the border?”
Others, like Emma Schwartz, a binational businesswoman and president of the Medical Center of the Americas Foundation, point to the border’s location -- its isolation -- and the importance of family ties to emphasize that the border will remain one, united region.
“I think that something that’s unique about us here is that we are an island, so that does not worry me,” said Schwartz, pointing to the tri-state region and distance of at least three hours to get anywhere else, whether Albuquerque, Tucson, or Chihuahua City. “We don’t have anybody but each other. I always say that El Paso, Las Cruces and Juárez, we’re kind of the redheaded stepchildren … our states kind of forget that we exist. But we know that we exist. We are each other’s most valuable, important asset.”
The ties remain evident, especially in the retail and entertainment sectors. Event venues in Juárez, once busy with multiple weddings and quinceañeras every week, were deserted during the height of the pandemic. Although state authorities in Chihuahua now allow the businesses to operate at 50% capacity, some venue owners say they worry they won’t recover financially anytime soon.
“In only a year we had losses of more than $1 million,” said Luis Mercado, of Salón de Eventos Emporium in Juárez, which hosts parties primarily for El Pasoans who opted for celebrations in Juárez so that family and friends without visas can easily attend, or simply to save money. “It’s going to be very complicated to go back to normal.”
In El Paso, by the fall of 2020 more than 100,000 people had filed for unemployment. By early 2021, 30,000 El Pasoans remained unemployed.
While it’s hard to determine which dollars are spent by Mexicans or Americans, Leila Melendez, CEO of Workforce Solutions Borderplex, which helps place workers in jobs, said COVID-19 hit especially hard in the entertainment and hospitality industry, particularly restaurants and bars.
“Not having friends and families from Juárez hurt these businesses a lot,” she said.
For now, fronterizos -- people on the borderline -- are, as usual, finding ways to adapt. Aside from going to mailboxes, Camacho is also running trips to the stores to pick up makeup, clothes, medicines, and very frequently food. In fact, much of what Juárenses say they miss the most from El Paso, beyond friends and families, is food. Not only snacks, but U.S. restaurants and bars.
“I miss the fast food that you can’t find here, like Panda Express, Cane’s and Chipotle,” said Victor Huicochea, a UTEP student.
Some crave junk food. So many yearn for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos that Pamela Quevedo, 18, opened an online shop on Instagram and Facebook to satisfy this and other cravings Juárenses may have. Her shop, “Whim-is,” sells products from the U.S. in Juárez for those who cannot cross the border anymore. She has specific products stocked at all times and ready to be delivered to clients.
“Anything you can find in the U.S. I can bring it to Mexico,” said Quevedo, adding that Hot Cheetos remain her best-selling product.
Shopping for fun is also missed.
“We would shop at Cielo Vista Mall, The Fountains, Walmart and Sprouts,” said Alex Navarrete, who lives in Monterrey, Mexico, but used to cross regularly when he visited his family in Juárez. “So much that my family has even saved a good amount of money because we stopped going.”
Juárenses will not take their next shopping trip for granted. Catherine Suárez, a student in Chihuahua City, remembers crossing the border frequently to visit her parents. She recalls her mother taking too long to browse through different stores.
“I will never rush her again,” Suárez said.
Marisol Chavez, a freelance contributor to The Dallas Morning News and a reporter for Borderzine, a University of Texas at El Paso student publication, contributed to this report.
