"El Paso and its sister city across the Rio Grande - Juárez, Mexico - form the world's largest border town, a valley of sinister warrens and glittering high-rises between two mountain ranges divided by a puny culvert called the Rio Grande.  The Great River.  From the slopes of Mt. Franklin or Mt. Cristo Rey, it doesn't look so great - it looks as though a child could hop it.  As an international boundary, the river is an absurd symbol, though a natural one:  it is the reason for this place, and what happened here.  You can wade it, and for that reason the 1.3 million who live in this poverty-stricken micro citystate have never identified with a common heritage or a negotiated one.  They make it up as they go.  They appear to go in slow motion, a mile a minute, night and day, creating a smoky delirium in which life is at the same time a bit more precious and a bit less.  Some blame a natural tranquilizing agent in the water supply, but others believe it is the attitude of isolation and neglect.  There is an almost comic book somnambulism in the people's indifference to the laws of two nations, and in their attitude to time and place.  But there is a chilling reality to this culture's fidelity to its own code."

-Gary Cartwright, Cinco Puntos Press