Juarez Was Fun Before It Wasn't

The following was a piece I wrote for the AC360 blog on CNN.com in March 2009

By Gabe Ramirez

If you drive into El Paso Texas on Interstate 10 from the west and look to your left, you will see a neat cluster of Tibetan inspired buildings that make up the University of Texas at El Paso. Look right and you will see a seemingly endless shantytown sitting on top of rugged desert hills, smoke plumes rising in the air. If you weren’t familiar with the area, you may not even know that you were driving between two countries and two cities. Two cities so far apart and so close together. El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States. Ciudad Juarez is now one of the most dangerous places on earth.

When I think of Juarez, I don’t think of an ultra violent city. I understand what it has become, that’s just not the way I remember it. I grew up in El Paso. My parents still live there. As a child, my father emigrated from a small town in the state of Chihuahua a few hours south of Juarez. My mother has relatives who live in the city. For generations, geography, economy and family have interlinked Juarez and El Paso.

As a young boy I had mixed emotions about Juarez. I remember our weekly treks over the border to visit relatives. Every Sunday the routine was church, breakfast at my parents’ favorite restaurant, visits to my great grandmother’s house and occasionally, a haircut at my father’s favorite barbershop. A place that smelled like hair tonic and aftershave, where they still used hot towels and straight razors to clean a man’s face. I enjoyed visiting my family’s glass factory, where they hand crafted beautiful vases and figurines. I loved watching the artisans pulling out molten glass from the ovens and shaping it. And I enjoyed the color and commotion of the main downtown market. But, at the time, I mostly thought of Juarez as a dirty, boring, backwater. A reminder of my family’s humble past. I felt like I had nothing in common with my cousins there. During most visits, all I wanted to do was escape. To return to my comfortable American existence a few miles away. It sounds crazy coming from a Mexican American, but I just couldn’t relate to the culture.

By the time I was 16, I developed a much greater appreciation for all that Juarez had to offer. Like many El Paso teenagers in the 1980s, I spent many a weekend night on “The Strip” in downtown Juarez. It was sooo easy. Five dollars to park, a quick walk across the Paso Del Norte Bridge and you were on teenage Pleasure Island. Pumping music, dancing, cheap booze, good food, girls! Every Friday and Saturday the clubs on Avenida De Juarez were packed with kids from El Paso area high schools. White kids, latino kids, black kids. rich kids, working class kids. Kids whose parents had no clue their innocent little babies were stumbling around drunk in a Juarez alley at 3am on a Saturday morning. We would rock out to The Cure and New Order at clubs like The Copa, Alive, The Sub, The Superior. Soldiers from Ft. Bliss would hang out at Spankys or Cosmos. My school, Eastwood High, practically had its own nightclub, The Tequila Derby. On some nights the Derby had a promotion called “Drink and Drown”. Five dollars cover charge, all you can drink. Seriously. I mean I was in high school. By the time I was a freshman in college I was spent.

My favorite hang out was a bar called The Kentucky Club, a classic western dive trapped in the 1930s. It is one of the many places that claim to have invented the margarita and once inside, it is like walking into a movie set. Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac and Marylyn Monroe drank there. My interest in the Kentucky was that my hero, Steve McQueen, used to hang out there. The bar was well kept with rich hard wood and polished brass. Old gentleman waiters wore proper white aprons and the tables had actual linen. The bar was so old that the plumbing was a trough that drained melted ice and God knows what else, under the foot rail and into the street. You could buy real Cuban cigars. It made me feel mature and sophisticated to have a drink there.

Of course even then, Juarez had an edge. Besides the underage drinking, that edginess was part of the attraction to a teenager. But, if you weren’t careful, you could get into terrible trouble. My friends and I always stuck together. Girlfriends never strayed away even if they were pissed at you. The police kept a ruthless watch over us. If you got out of line just a little, got into a fight or walked out of a club with a drink, you might end up in a paddywagon until your friends collected enough “bail” money to spring you. A friend once got beat up and had his shoes stolen in one of those portable drunk tanks. We almost never strayed off the avenue. One night, my senior year, I got into a Juarez taxi with my friends Eric and Scott. We wanted to go to an off avenue club we had heard about. Something got lost in translation and the driver took us to a brothel out in the desert!

These days it’s just too dangerous for American teenage kids to hang out in Juarez. Compared to now, Juarez in the 1980s was innocent fun. By the mid 1990s the drug cartel wars were in full swing. So were more disturbing and unexplained acts of violence. In 1994, I was working in local TV news in El Paso when the bodies of brutally murdered young women started appearing in the deserts outside of Juarez. First a few, then a dozen, then hundreds. Las muertas de Juarez (the dead women of Juarez) they are called. In the summer of 1995, I walked into a field of desert scrub where the decomposing bodies of several women lay. The smell was overpowering. There were no police lines in Juarez so I found myself accidentally walking all over a crime scene. It would be years, not until my time covering the war in Iraq, before I would see horror like that again. Those murders remain a mystery. And now murder is so common that its hard to tell if it’s just drug cartel violence. That would be the most comforting explanation.

The cities descent into chaos has be hard on my parents. They used to love spending a Saturday or Sunday afternoon in Juarez. Enjoying a flavor of life you just don’t get in the States. Terrific shopping and great restaurants with the service and feel of a by-gone era.

This holiday season past, a cousin died in a car accident in Juarez. She was a woman with whom my mother had been close as a child. Normally my parents would not have hesitated to attend the funeral, but now they weren’t sure. A few weeks earlier two Texas Tech Medical School instructors were killed when a hail of bullets hit their car while in a funeral procession. After some discussion, my parents decided they had to go. They attended the service but did not follow the funeral procession. I called my mom one Sunday soon after and she said, “We won’t go to Juarez anymore.”

I live in Los Angeles now and hadn’t been back to Juarez since that summer in 1995. Then a few years ago, while covering a story at Ft. Bliss for CNN, I had a free evening. So I decided to cross the bridge and get a drink at the old Kentucky Club. Years of violence had taken its toll. Avenida De Juarez was empty, no drunk teenagers, no GI’s. Most of the clubs from those high school days, including the Derby, were out of business. But the Kentucky was still there in all its shabby glory. The bar was empty save a few old vaqueros quietly sipping beer. I took a seat, ordered a couple of Bohemia’s and thought about all the history in that old speakeasy. There wasn’t much else for me to do, so I walked back across the empty bridge to El Paso.

Juarez is a city I both loved and hated. It was connected to El Paso as much as any two cities could be, with the free flow of commerce and people. Overtime the border became a more defined line. Eventually that line became walled. Those walls have made the business of trying to get through them very lucrative, and very dangerous. Now, more El Pasoans than ever won’t go to Juarez anymore.

I'm No Fanboi. Seriously

Written For CNN.com July 2008

By Gabe Ramirez

I am not a crazy tech fanboi or anything. I wasn't doing any Apple store camping for the honor of being the first to sport a new iPhone last year. I don’t even own a first gen iPhone. (Although I do own an iPodTouch). But I have to be honest here, when Apple’s all in one device was released in 2007, only one thing kept me form cueing up street side behind the masses of geeks, breathing CO2 emissions and slurping down Red Bulls in jittery anticipation of owning the sweet, sweet iPhone - my desire to stay married.

My wife is a no-nonsense Scotch Irish Texan. The idea of her husband standing in line in the wee hours of the morning to spend six bills on a sleek, shiny iPhone would be too much for her to wrap her head around. As it is, coming across one of my old iPods collecting dust in some random spot in the house is enough to push her to the other side of crazy (she thinks of them as perfectly fine, I think of them as intolerably obsolete). I decided that for the sake of marital bliss I would keep my iPhone fantasies, well, fantasies.

But that was sooo 2007.  It was with the secrecy of a Columbian hostage rescue team that I awoke Friday morning determined to bag this year’s new iPhone3G. I just couldn't wait until 2009 this time.

Friday July 11th

The big day. My plan? Drop my kids off at their respective summer day camps and sneak off to my neighborhood Apple store. But after dropping off my daughter at her camp, I was outflanked by my son. On the way to his camp he asks, “Dad? Since you have the day off, can I hang out with you instead?” Ouch. What I’m going to say? “No you can’t spend the day with your pops who spends a lot of time traveling for work, because he has to partake in the crazy ritual of standing in line for a super cool gadget that he will most likely toss in a recycle bin this time next year.”

I really do want to hang out with him so I let him ditch camp today. Now the question I grapple with, is it healthy to expose a seven year old to the gross consumer display that is Apples cult of personality?

We arrive at the Sherman Oaks Fashion Square mall around 9am. Almost immediately, it is obvious that we are already hours behind schedule. The line outside the Apple store is a quarter mile long. I actually anticipated long lines, so on the way to the mall; I did a little recon at two AT&T stores in the area. Those lines were shorter but the AT&T stores were already sold out. So the Apple store was going to be my only chance. As soon as we get in line, my son is already giving me “the look” he inherited from his mother. An aqua t-shirted Apple store employee is handing out electrolyte water to thirsty geeks up and down the line. I ask him about how long it will take. “All day, like at least six hours” he responds. Six hours? Mmm…that’s not too bad. I ask the boy what he thinks and he reacts with these words, “Dad, se-we-iously. Do you think standing in line six hou-wahs to buy a phone is we-asonable?” Grrrr. My seven-year-old son is making too much sense for my taste.

Saturday July 12th

 I have both kids today; my wife is at her monthly knitting club. Earlier in the morning, the voice in my head was telling me to forget it. There is no way my daughter is going to wait in any line. Her patience is tested just waiting for the channel to change from CNN to Nickelodeon in the morning. Besides, I promised I would take them to see WALL-E today. But hey, nothing wrong with swinging by the Apple store first! Back at the mall, my son gives me “the look” and shakes his head the second we turn the corner. I’m not sure, but I think the same people are still in line from the day before. My daughter, blissfully unaware, asks in her little voice, “Is this the way to WALL-E?” Today’s a wash. No iPhone, but I still figured out a way to give Steve Jobs money! WALL-E was another fantastic Pixar movie. It had some message about waste and mass consumerism or something… I forget.

Sunday, July 13th

I show up outside the Apple store in the afternoon. The line? Manageable, I decide. Alone and armed with my biography of Mao Zedong, I’m in for the long haul. The people around me are a mixed bag of gadget geeks; twenty-something hipsters and older parents waiting in line for their teenage kids (while said kids are at the food court, of course). I guess every generation knows how to make suckers out of their parents. While reading, I am interrupted by occasional cheering from the front of the line. It seems every time somebody gets inside, it’s a small victory for us all.

After three hours and some decent progress, a store manager comes out and announces to my part of the line that the store closes in an hour, at 6pm. “There is no reason to wait,” he says. “You won’t get in by closing.” Looks of stunned disbelief and frustration all around. Half a dozen people peel off. But, I decided it was nothing more than a loyalty test. Remember that scene in Fight Club when Brad Pitt and Ed Norton hurl insults at recruits of “Project Mayhem,” leaving them standing outside their house? In one scene Norton refuses to let a recruit in because, he yells, “You’re too… blonde!” But the recruit stands fast and eventually gets in. Loyalty, you see. Well that was me, Jared Leto! If I hang tough, they won’t keep me out!

But, as it turns out, they will. And they did…keep me out. I figure, it just wasn’t meant to be. I mean it’s only a dumb gadget, right.

Yeah, well…what time does the Apple store close today? I think I can make it, this time.

Ghosts Of Barker Ranch

Written for CNN.com May 2009

By Gabe Ramirez

After an hour and a half of driving down dirt roads and up narrow rocky trails in our four-wheel-drive truck I finally said it, “Wow, this place is in the middle of freaking nowhere”. It’s not hard to understand why Charles Manson and his “family” decided to make the Barker Ranch in Death Valley, California their hideout. Even today when it seems no part of Southern California is without a sub-division and a Starbucks, the infamous ranch exists in another dimension. Abandoned gold mines dot the steep canyon walls. Old mining equipment rusts half buried in the hot sand. As retired local prospector Emmett Harder likes to say, “These canyons are full of ghosts”.  This place sure feels that way.

Correspondent Ted Rowlands, producer Sara Weisfeldt and I are navigating these trails to find ghosts.  Almost forty years ago Manson and his clan were splitting time between the Barker Ranch and the more famous Spahn Ranch in Los Angeles, preparing for their “Helter Skelter”, the great race war that would tear apart society.  In the wake of the LaBianca/Tate murders, Manson and company fled to the Barker Ranch. It was the last place Manson would breath free air. In the end police found him hiding inside a bathroom cabinet.

Recently, a tenacious police investigator and his unique K-9 partner put the Barker Ranch back in the news. Mammoth Lakes Police investigator Paul Dostie always had an interest in the Manson story. Over the years he has come across reports that Manson family members, various wannabes and ill-fated passers by were murdered and buried at the ranch. The detective decided it was a good opportunity to work out his cadaver dog Buster, as part of their training regime. Buster has the rare ability to alert his partner to decomposing bones, which means he can find very old graves. It was during this session that Buster started to key in on several possible burial sites around the Barker cabin.  That’s when Dostie started to believe in ghosts.

Now here we are, hours from nowhere and with nobody around. The dead quiet of the canyon is broken only by the occasional Navy F-18 streaking overhead on its way to bombing practice at nearby China Lake. Ted and Sara are out walking the area trying to find Mansons old truck. It is nothing more than a bullet riddled heap with “Helter Skelter” written in faded spay paint on the back. 

I am in the cabin shooting video. Alone. The place is beyond creepy. The cabin is what real estate agents would call rustic, in other words it’s falling apart. The kitchen stove is still there along with various cabinets and a broken down refrigerator. The bathroom cabinet (where the diminutive Mason was found curled up in a ball) is long stolen. Being alone in there, the breeze gently banging the door against the frame, I almost felt old Charlie breathing down my neck. It’s very easy to believe reports that unfortunate young followers of Manson never left these grounds.

While continuing to shoot video I hear the whine of motorcycle engines approaching. A gang of British tourists dismounts their dirt bikes. One of them starts singing “Helter Skelter!”  With media reports of the new search, it seems the Barker Ranch going through a mini tourism boom.

Before the Manson family took residence, many a gold prospector met his doom on these jagged cliffs. Before them, Indians buried their dead in these parts. 

It’s getting late in the day and we still have a long rough ride back to civilization. Ted jokes that we should overnight in the cabin. Ah, no thanks. I don’t scare easily, but if ghosts do exist you can bet you will find them here. 

Black Hawk Express

CNN.com August 2006 

By Gabe Ramirez

I am tired, slightly stressed and it feels like its 300 degrees at Landing Zone Washington, International Zone, Baghdad. A group of soldiers and journalists sit around chatting quietly and waiting.  We are flying to Tikrit to cover Iraqi Army handover ceremony. I pace around the flight line waiting for a sign. I can never sit still at airports whether its LZ Washington or LAX. As often as I travel, I still get this crazy feeling that my flight will leave as soon as I go to Starbucks, so I’m on of those travelers who waits by the gate an hour before boarding.

Then, finally the sign I’ve been waiting for. The surprising quiet of the Baghdad air is broken by the sound of thumping rotor blades. The flight line coordinator – or gate agent if you will- announces the arrival of our aircraft, well she doesn’t announce so much as shouts. Twin army Black Hawks roar in and land. Journalists hurriedly gather gear while a group of soldiers and civilian contractors unload. As soon as they are clear the helicopters crew chief waves us in. We fight the rotor wash and get into the birds. The crew chiefs quickly make sure everyone is strapped in and we are in the air over Baghdad in minutes. It’s a turn around that would make a Southwest Airlines operations manager blush.

In Iraq, the war zone surrounds us. On the ground there are a multitude of ways to get dead, improvised explosive devices or IEDs, vehicle born IEDs, suicide vehicle borne IEDs. I have been riding in Humvees hit by IEDs and let me tell you, it’s enough to get John Madden off his bus and start flying. So as you can imagine, the risk to soldiers to convoy on the ground for a simple one-hour press event, just wouldn’t be worth it. In comes the Black Hawk Express.

To say the US Army’s UH-60 Black Hawk is a workhouse would be an understatement. Tandem Black Hawks flying over Iraqi streets are as common a sight now as news helicopters over an LA freeway chase. Whenever we cover the story of an army Black Hawk helicopter down in Iraq, I always wonder if I flew with that crew. Over the last three years, I have flown more of these missions (the military calls them missions, not flights) than I can remember. From Baghdad to Mosul. Tal Afar to Taji and on and on. These missions fly 24/7, 365 days a year. Black Hawk crews fly soldiers into combat or out on leave, evacuate the wounded, transport contractors and VIPs. Move journalists in and out of embeds. Naturally we are on the bottom of that list so when missions are grounded or delayed, we can get one heck of a lay over. I have been stranded for days in the middle of the desert in the freezing pitch dark and blazing sun, waiting to hear the sweet sound of those rotor blades. Once, just five days before I was to rotate home,

I had a five-day lay over in Baqubah. Then in the dead of night a 101st Airborne freedom bird showed up and the crew agreed to give me a ride to Baghdad. They got me back with just enough time for me to catch my charter plane home. So omnipresent is the sound of Black Hawks in the air, that even back home in Los Angeles, laying in bed half asleep I can hear that thumping sound in my dreams.

We finish the press event in Tikrit and start heading home, screaming over Baghdad rooftops, winds like a massive hair dryer blasting my face. We land safely at LZ Washington, jump off and before I walk 20 yards the birds are up and flying again. Just another mission for the Black Hawk express. 

Ramadi Christmas or Why I'm Smiling In This Ridiculous Photo

Christmas Day in Ramadi, Iraq 2004