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This book also deals with the viewpoint of the

binational community of El Paso and Juárez. These

two cities probably did more to spark the Mexican

Revolution than any other city in either Mexico or the

United States. Yet their stories are still untold. They

have been considered marginal and unimportant by

the cultural centers in both Mexico and the United

States. This book is about a historical perspective that

has been driven underground, buried underneath

racist mythologies found in those ubiquitous books

about the so-called Wild West. Incredibly enough,

even in this day and age, you won’t find much other

than books about the Old West in the local history

section at most El Paso bookstores. In those best-sell-

ing versions of history, Anglo gunslingers and Texas

Rangers get all the good lines (just like in the movies)

while border Mexicans just play the cameo roles—

mostly innocent bystanders that get shot in the stom-

ach during the gunfights.¹ Although there are always

two sides to every history, it’s usually only one side

that gets told in these accounts.

IN THE REST of the United States, the historical

narratives that reach the mainstream have become

more inclusive. But you get a sense that the really

good stories are still being told in black and white, in

other words, about White America and Black

America. Take many of the history documentaries

shown on public television these days. Whether

they’re about jazz, or the Civil War, or Jack Johnson—

the stories they tell are about African Americans and

European Americans and they are inextricably inter-

twined. They go to the very heart of the mainstream

American narrative.

It’s understandable why filmmakers and histori-

ans choose a dichromatic approach to the past. The

stark contrast between Black and White makes both

for great photography and fascinating history.

But it’s not the whole picture.

Most educated Americans have heard of the

Harlem Renaissance. But how many of them are

aware of the cultural renaissance El Paso experienced

during the Mexican Revolution?

The story of Rosa Parks refusing to move to the

colored section of the bus has become a central

drama of the American experience, and rightly so. But

the story of 17-year-old Carmelita Torres, who in 1917

refused to get off the El Paso-Juárez trolley to be

deloused, bathed in kerosene and have her head

shaved by U.S. immigration authorities, has never

been told. Why is her experience also not part of the

American consciousness?

Maybe because the history of the border has

never been considered a truly American history.

Some might even need to be reminded that El Paso

is, in fact, a city in the United States. I’m willing to bet

that you didn’t find this book in the “American

History” section of the library or bookstore, although

most of this book is about an American city.

Fronterizos, people who live on the border, are

unclassifiable hybrids. They are not exactly immi-

grants. Immigrants don’t cross back and forth as

much. Border crossers are a people on the margin.

Not real Americans. Nor real Mexicans for that matter.

But I think the trend is changing. At least I hope

so. Their story, or should I say, our story is increas-

ingly becoming a part of the mainstream. Little by lit-

tle American history begins to take on hues of bronze

and brown—sepia tones—as well.

RINGSIDE SEAT TO A REVOLUTION deals

not so much with history as it does with microhisto-

ry.² A surprisingly large number of the events related

to the Mexican Revolution took place within a five-

square-mile area between downtown El Paso and the

Juárez customhouse.

Microhistory at its best is more about small ges-

tures and unexpected details than grand explanations.

During the course of my research at the archive cen-

ter of the Smithsonian Museum of American History,

I looked through a box full of the personal papers of

Victor L. Ochoa—the first El Paso Mexican American

to launch a rebellion from the city against the govern-

ment of Porfirio Díaz in 1893. (This collection was

donated to the Smithsonian by his family members a

few years ago.) Ochoa was the editor of El Hispano-

Americano in 1892. Later, he was also the director of

an El Paso intelligence agency for one of the rebel

factions that was against Pancho Villa. I expected to

find mostly political articles he’d written or other

newspaper clippings that would help me understand

the motivation for Ochoa’s revolutionary activities.

To my surprise, I found instead that the box was

mostly filled with patents in various languages for

several of his inventions—a magnetic brake for street

cars, a fountain pen, a holder for fountain pens, a

1

“He [John Wesley Hardin] punctured two Mexicans in 1871,” wrote C. L. Sonnichsen in Pass of the North: Four Centuries on the

Rio Grande, Vol. I (Texas Western Press: University of Texas at El Paso, 1968), p. 324. It is the only reference to Mexicans

involved in a gun fight included in his classic 467-page history of El Paso.

2

See Invitación a la Microhistoria by Luis González y González.