My Family and the Border
Part One
The war exploded one mile from my great-grandmother’s front door. Belen Gameros, a 35-year-old widow, lived in El Paso’s Chihuahuita neighborhood, which is nearly fused with Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. In the spring of 1911, the Mexican Revolution had begun to rage. Belen and her five children were shocked and frightened by the mass violence, but they did not flee. My great-grandfather, Manuel Real y Vasquez, had recently died at the age of 31, leaving her to forge ahead on her own.
Pancho Villa and Pascual Orozco led a rag-tag army of about 2,000 and took on a government contingent of better-armed and trained soldiers. The rebel objective was to take Juarez, a logistically important city. Francisco I. Madero was the nominal revolutionary leader and did not fight in the battle.
Combat began on April 7 and ended on May 10. The intense fighting was fierce, much of it at close quarters. The Battle of Juarez was pivotal in ousting dictator Porfirio Diaz. It also marked the rise of Francisco Pancho Villa, who embodied the Mexican Revolution for years.
Belen took in combatants wounded in the fight at some point. It was an extraordinarily humanitarian act. My great-grandmother lived into her 90s and would only confirm that she and other women tended to the injured the best they could. The hurt lay on the floor.
However, my mother knew some facts that she had shared with me. As we affectionately called her, Belita acted as head nurse in her home. Many battle details were unknown, such as the number of wounded and how they managed to get to my great-grandmother’s small home.
Many El Paso residents observed the battle up close. Some sat on rooftops. In a chat with me, my great-uncle Manuel, Belita’s oldest son, described a dramatic scene. He saw a combat running in the open, shouting Viva Villa. The man was shot down and almost certainly died.
The battle was a milestone in my family’s close relationship with the border that began in 1871 and continues today. Collectively, we have crisscrossed the border thousands of times. Often accompanied by my family, I traverse the boundary almost every month.
For us, the Mexico-United States border is not an abstraction and has no political overtones. It has been a concrete part of our lives. Much of my family regarded the border as an unavoidable nuisance worth accepting. Not crossing the international boundary would deny us access to Mexico, our ancestral homeland.
Even today, most of my relatives live no more than a day’s drive from the border. My wife, children, and I have our home just 80 miles north of Mexico. Tomorrow, I will drive to Mexico and return home a few hours later.
The border after the Mexican-American War was not a physical barrier. Once it had been demarcated in 1853, it was wide open for decades and not patrolled, so residents of either country could cross unimpeded. During those years, dozens of my ancestors traveled back and forth between the nations.
All my family, dating to the mid-1700s, lived in Chihuahua state, which borders Texas. Some conducted brisk business on both sides of the border. Chihuahenses looked to El Paso and other Texas cities to buy and sell merchandise and personal items. Mexico City is nearly 1,000 miles south.
In 1915, U.S. Mounted Inspectors began intermittently patrolling the international boundary. The law authorizing the inspectors granted them the power to arrest as they saw fit. However, patrols were irregular. Manuel and Belen moved from a small town, Aldama, Chihuahua, to El Paso and experience life in a big city. They married in El Paso’s Sacred Heart Church on June 8, 1895. My great-grandfather became a cigar maker. With his earnings, he and Belen bought a small house
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 