Word: paso
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...situation is even grimmer for merchants on the American side, where Mexican customers can no longer afford to shop with their devalued pesos. The stores of south El Paso, just across from Juárez, are almost deserted. "All our business came from Mexico," says Frank Roches, owner of Palace Jewelry. "They have no money now." Business is off 65% at the S.E.I. Fed Mart department store in the California border town of Calexico, and Owner Sergio Farias has laid off 180 of his 230 employees...
Blocking currency movements with regulations tends to be as fruitless as trying to control water with a rake. Trade has been severely stymied. "There is no practical way to handle transactions with Mexico," says Mark Miles of the El Paso Chamber of Commerce. "If we got a check from a Mexican, there is nothing we could do with it. And what do we do with pesos?" Says Doug Fuller, a Southern California Ford dealer: "It's kind of a catch-22. They can't get dollars and we can't take pesos...
...until after Dec. 1 at least, when Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado takes over as Mexico's new President. That is a short time in the life of nations, but an eternity for beleaguered shopkeepers on both sides of the Border. -By Walter Isaacson. Reported by Sam Allis/El Paso and Cheryl Crooks/Calexico
...breed of entrepreneurs has sprung up along the river to make the crossings easier. At El Paso, Manuel Banuelos Rubio carries people over the border on his back for a few pesos a ride. He has found that some people try three or four times before they eventually outwit agents. Mexicans who are arrested in the U.S. are given the choice of either returning home or facing trial. Almost all choose to go back and then simply cross again and again, until they finally make...
Droughts at this time of year have dried the Rio Grande to a trickle at many points and turned the riverbed into a soggy avenue of escape. Illegal aliens, who are disparagingly called wetbacks because they have to swim across the river, can now cross at El Paso by wading through knee-deep water. Once on the other side, they dash into town and quickly melt into the general population. In other places the immigrants must still swim, row boats or paddle across the river in rubber inner tubes. Their greatest worry is always the border agents patrolling in vans...