Friday, April 1, 2011

Research

 For the last week I have been in El Paso Texas visiting my husbands family. Now if you were to ask me my true feeling of El Paso . . .  well of Texas, in general, you would not get a pleasant reply. For all those lovers of Texas I will leave my explanation at that. My first encounter with Texas was El Paso. For those of you who don't know El Paso is a border city. As you drive in on I-10 you see brown hills and then shacks.

Some of the houses are so run down then look like ruins and yet people live in them. This is Ciudad Juarez.

When I first started visiting El Paso my husband (Boyfriend at the time) and I would go across the border and hang out in the Mercado or just walk the streets. It was a Blast. Now the City is the most dangerous city in the world.

We drove along the Border Highway so I could get a picture of the land for my book that I'm working on. I was in awe. As we drove along there was a huge twenty foot fence part of the way and then in other places there was nothing, but a dilapidated chained link fence with rusted barb wire on top. They had planned on continuing the huge fence, but the construction workers were getting shot at from the Mexico side of the river.


The thing that amazed me the most was here I was maybe three hundred feet from the most dangerous city in the world and the people who live there acted as if life was normal. They didn't seemed phased by the truck  driving by, filled with men holding machine guns. Or by the smell of burning that permeated the air. (Someone was burning something that really stunk.) Life went on. It made me wonder would I be able to do that? I take so much for granted. It was definantly an eye opening experience.

I was going to post the picture of the gang member flashing his sign at me, but I don't have his permission so you get to imagine it.

4 comments:

Canda said...

It's so sad to hear the dangers in Mexico and the way it is changing the way people live or visit there. But I guess, as far as fiction goes, unfortunately it sounds like a good setting for conflict.

ali cross said...

Wow. My hubby and I are writing a book together set in that area. But the stuff's just in our imagination. It blows my mind that what we imagine really isn't that different from what IS.

Unknown said...

It's great being able to mix research with family or other things you need to do. It's the killing two birds thing. They say you should write what you know. I guess that goes for settings too. Good luck on your editing.

Wendy Swore said...

Wow. I wonder how many died for that fence? I'm glad you got out of there safe. HUGS!