Growing up in Texas here is what I learned about El Paso.
My mother was born there in 1911. She describes the man called Pancho Villa who, she said, regularly rode into El Paso to "shoot up the town" (her words). She told me "we hid under the bed because bullets were flying through the windows." She never described why Villa did this. I assumed it was to terrorize the population (white) for some reason. And that's about all I could figure out based on her description (except something about a streetcar that went over the border and back).
We never visited El Paso even tho we visited relatives in other parts of Texas (I loved Brownwood where daddy's sister lived). So I guess I assumed El Paso was violent and we couldn't visit there for safety reasons.
I learned a lot about El Paso today and I wonder what my mother would say about Beto O'Rourke, who I now hold in greater esteem and respect that I did earlier (due to ignorance on my part about El Paso today).
This is not an endorsement of a candidate but an impression that I, as a white native born Texas now in her late 70s and a strong Democrat, have of a city that was important to my own family.
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