Those of us that contribute to elpasospeak.com encourage people to send material to us for publishing on the blog. As always we like to avoid name calling and getting personal. We also try to avoid profanity, although we sometimes allow it to get through in the comment process.
Today we have a piece from Mr. Jerry Kurtyka. El Paso Inc. published this as his biography:
Jerry Kurtyka, a former banker and technology strategy consultant, has held several positions with the City of El Paso. He was the first executive director of the Housing Finance Corporation from 2003 to 2006 and most recently led the library’s Virtual Village computer literacy project from 2011 to August of 2013. He is now semi-retired and involved with environmental advocacy.
Mr. Kurtyka’s article:
EL PASO – WHAT’S THE NAME OF THE GAME?
Remember the 1977 Abba song, “The Name of the Game”, that enjoyed a recent reprise in the hit musical, “Mama Mia”?
What’s the name of the game?
Does it mean anything to you?
What’s the name of the game?
– Abba, The Name of the Game
Great feel-good music. I think of it when I ask myself about El Paso because I am the kind of person who looks for a rationale in events, a story that ties the threads together. If El Paso, were a song or movie or book, what would be its title? What’s the name of the El Paso game, assuming there is one? Does it mean anything, i.e., does it explain what we are seeing?
Since I have been here (1996), I have observed several stories emerge that community leaders used to spin a narrative to support their policy actions, like the recent AAA stadium. These stories are important because the city and others have invested and continue to invest millions in them, consciously or not. But we are always captive to our past narratives, so when we invest in a new story, what happens to the old one? Unless consciously acknowledged, it will continue to live alongside the new stories we tell ourselves, even if it has to go underground to do so.
Well, Brutus and Cicero have asked me to put some of my thoughts together on the subject and have kindly offered a little space to do so. I admit at 68 that I have a kind of dystopian worldview. So here it goes for several pieces to describe what I think are the games or stories El Paso has played and still plays, plus a few positive ideas on how a new story might yet emerge here.
Game #1 – Don’t Put on Any Airs (Low Wages)
Just after I moved here in 1996, I attended a class at UTEP to learn about the local economy. The professor, whose name I can’t recall, explained that in the 1970s, business leaders here promoted El Paso around the country as a low wage resource for manufacturing, such as the piece-rate model of the garment industry. Apparently, they succeeded beyond their dreams, because 40 years later, El Paso is still a pretty low wage place if average household income is any guide. Back then, migrants from Mexico flooded in bringing few skills and education with them. It worked in the garment plants until NAFTA resulted in our manufacturing tax base migrating across the river and El Paso was left holding the bag.
The problem with positioning yourself on a low rung of the economic ladder is that there are places in the world where the ladder rungs go even lower, such as Asia or Central America, and the garment industry migrated to these places. Just look at the label on your shirt. By the end of the 90s, the garment business was abandoning even “low cost” El Paso for lower wage countries, leaving thousands of mostly unskilled, poorly-educated workers unemployed and with few prospects to replace what they had lost. There was nothing here for them to move up the ladder. I mean, who wants to go back to Mexico?
Lesson learned? Next time you send out invitations to your game, think about who might show up and what happens when the game ends, because nothing lasts forever.
When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez
And it’s Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs
– Bob Dylan, Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
Posted by Brutus 
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