Poor neighborhoods in many cities are experiencing urban renewal. As a result, many long-time residents of those neighborhoods can no longer afford to live in the homes they have known for generations.
Yolanda Ch谩vez Leyva, an associate professor of history at the University of Texas at El Paso, specializes in the history of the border and said residents of managed to in 2006. That鈥檚 when the .
鈥淰ery shortly after the plan was announced, one of my colleagues, Dr. David Romo, acquired a map and it said 鈥榥ot for public distribution,鈥� 鈥� Leyva said. 鈥淎nd this map showed the real plan for what they were calling development and it showed El Segundo Barrio as half of it being demolished.鈥� Leyva said El Segundo was going to be replaced with high-end retail stores and boutiques.
鈥淚 鈥� like so many other people 鈥� have my familiar roots in El Segundo,鈥� she said, 鈥渟o it really hit me hard (and) not just as a historian who understands the importance of preserving neighborhoods that are so historic.鈥�
With plans in place that would displace thousands of residents, Leyva and her colleagues founded the group , which was deliberately named to oppose the development plan by the Paso del Norte group.
Leyva said what saved El Segundo was its history. More specifically, its .
鈥淪o, for example, you have what are now called the Pablo Baray Apartments,鈥� Leyva said. 鈥淚t used to be the building that housed a newspaper called El Paso del Norte, and it is the place where the first great novel of the revolution was written, 鈥� ,鈥� or 鈥楾he Underdogs,鈥� written by Mariano Azuela during the revolution.鈥滾eyva said revolutionary spies sought refuge in the neighborhood. It was also where Mexican nuns and priests fled after the of the 1920s, which was a peasant uprising against what was believed to be the anticlerical policies of the Mexican government.
Leyva said everywhere you walk in El Segundo is tied to the Mexican Revolution. 鈥淵ou know there鈥檚 building in El Paso where people paid a quarter to stand on the roof to watch the battles, including ,鈥� Leyva said. 鈥淪o we have this rich history of the whole 20th century embodied in El Segundo and in the building of El Segundo.鈥�
Norma Martinez can be reached at norma@tpr.org and on Twitter and Lauren Terrazas can be reached at lauren@tpr.org and on Twitter .
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