Meet the Travel Guide

Welcome to the Borderland! I'm a computer professional who lives and works in Las Cruces, New Mexico Monday through Friday and in Juarez, Mexico on weekends.  It would be pretty hard to imagine a better life than being able to enjoy Southern New Mexico during the week and the charms of Ciudad Juarez every weekend.

I would like to thank each and every one of you who visit my web sites, and I would like to thank the many people in Ciudad Juarez who have welcomed me into their businesses and places of interest and done all they could to give me quality content for this guide.  The web site began in January, 2003 and quickly became the number one source of information about Ciudad Juarez in the English speaking world, something which doesn't make me so proud as it does humble, because Juarez is a city of great people. I was the lucky one who got to tell the world about them.

I work for a small governmental agency in southern New Mexico, one of the most beautiful spots on earth in my humble opinion. The area is basically a barren desert, but the cooling waters of the Rio Grand River irrigate thousands of acres of farmland and provide the sustenance to make life possible here.  If you love Native American paintings which show faces and spirits in the cragged edges of the mountainsides, come to Southern New Mexico because you cannot look at these  mountains at sunset without seeing this kind of beauty in them yourself.

When you look across the vast expanses of desert as you drive along I-10 you realize this is the land where Billy The Kid made an infamous name for himself. The great renegade Apache warrior, Geronimo, with his huge force of 35 men, lured many an inexperienced Army troop into the passes of these mountains, and usually only Apaches came out. The final battle of the Mexican Revolution was fought in Ciudad Juarez. It is a land once part of Native America, then Spain, then Mexico, now part of the United States, and a place where history still reverberates  through many aspects of day to day life. It is the Borderland, one of the most fascinating and complex regions of the United States.

I was born in McAllen, Texas in 1950, grew up in Dallas, Texas, and have worked in the computer industry since 1980.  In many ways my career has been one of an idealist in search of a home for his skills but never able to find one until I moved here.  It seemed someone was always asking me to make the computers do things to serve selfish interests, such as write a program which flagged homeowners for cancellation of their insurance policies because their claims exceeded their premiums (for ostensibly other reasons, of course).  I once worked for a company that actually prayed to God at general meetings for hurricanes to hit the United States so they could send in their insurance adjusters to handle the property claims.  I learned firsthand how figures never lie, but liars always figure. I never approved of any of these things. I was always just a guy who needed to pay the rent, and there seemed no escape, such things just being the way of the world. Even when what I was asked to do was not questionable, it was always to serve the corporate bottom line, something I had learned was vastly more important than the humans beings working for an organization. To make my professional life even more anxiety ridden, the companies I worked for were not loyal to the employees but expected undying loyalty to the corporation. Job security was a total myth, anywhere.  In self-defense, I eventually became a blood thirsty contract programmer who would change jobs in a heartbeat for $5 more an hour.  I had decided the work world was just about money and nothing else.

Then along came a case of very curable skin cancer at the tail end of 1999.  What would all of the money I was making as a computer professional in one of the best local economies in the country mean if the doctors leaned over me next time and told me something more serious was wrong?  I had my operation and returned to work the next day with one eye swollen shut and both eyes bruised as though I had been beaten almost to the point of death.  No one told me to go home! The next morning I turned in my resignation, kissed my big salary and stock options goodbye, and began to plot my escape.  Time might be limited, and starvation was suddenly preferable to more of the same. (The skin cancer is not coming back, but when you first hear the "C" word, expect to go through some mental changes.)

So where now?  My father had grown up on the border and loved Mexico.  He would take me there when I was a little boy. He spoke great Spanish, and the people in Mexico accepted him like one of their own. I had always loved Mexico, too. When I looked at El Paso, Texas, on the map I would just shake my head affirmatively---a city big enough to support me with a large Mexican city right across the river. Perfect! (Being a silly single man, my head was also filled with visions of sipping margaritas at outdoor cafes with a lovely señorita for company.)

So I booked a flight for El Paso, Texas. I had three days to find a job, a place to live, and see if I liked Juarez. I did find a temporary job.  It paid 1/3 of what I had been making in Dallas, and I felt like the cat who had swallowed the canary. I found a basement apartment under a big house in the Central District and rented it.  Then I spent a great day and night in Juarez which I shall never forget.  I stayed at the fabulous 5-star Hotel Lucerna, had dinner at an exclusive restaurant I have never been able to find again, and even got to sip margaritas with a lovely señorita.  Things never fall into place so neatly, but they had this time.

Two weeks later I loaded a small U-Haul, put my three cats in the front seat, and drove to El Paso with one motto: "Second star to the right and straight on 'till morning!"  The animal people were not happy in their cages on the long drive and were not pacified by my singing to them. But I had promised them our home would have lots of new places to sleep and lots of high places to jump to, and they were thrilled to explore the new apartment in El Paso when we finally arrived.  The only furniture was a computer desk and a bed, and I had nothing in the way of financial security.  I had followed a trail of bread crumbs to El Paso, but, after hearing the word cancer, I had come to realize the trail of bread crumbs is sometimes the path the Creator has laid down for us to follow.  I was not even worried. I was happy and felt strangely secure in a way I had never known before. I guess it was the first time I had ever truly put my fate into the hands of a higher power.

The temporary job was a success and eventually led to the current job in southern New Mexico, where I am now an IT Director. It's a great job, and I'm lucky to have it.  I never mind going to work. No one prays for disasters to strike someone else to improve our bottom line.  Our organization brings the life-giving waters of the Rio Bravo to the sun-parched earth of this region at the lowest possible cost to the farmers we serve.  It's a simple mission, and, for the first time in my life, I can be proud of what the computers in my department are doing for people. They do all the boring things computers normally do like make bills, process transactions, and spit out reports, but when put to work to serve people computers are truly a blessing.  We have a mission, and it's all about public service, not us, and that makes all the difference to me.  I was wrong.  It's not always about money everywhere, and I'm not going anywhere now. 

Then on weekends I have my life in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 2 million people which never sleeps (even though I do a lot these days)---a place which proved to be not just as interesting as I thought it would be, but more so, by a thousand fold. The adventure has only started.

So when you see a trail of almost invisible bread crumbs kind of twinkling on the ground, somehow beckoning for you to follow, or hear some quiet voice in the whispering leaves urging you to make life more what you wish it to be, don't be afraid to make the leap. Follow, for the Great Mind Beyond the Stars does not leave these clues without purpose. I honestly believe, and everything which has happened here seems to prove, that the little trail of bread crumbs is the path of personal destiny and that the quiet voice in the leaves is the only voice that never lies.

I hope you enjoy my web site.  None of the work that went into it was any trouble at all. It was the work of an idealist who has finally found a home here in the Borderland, a place where my computer skills and world view have finally melded into one not perfect, but very, very happy reality. If you have any comments or suggestions, you are welcome to write me at webmaster@juarez-mexico.com.

-- Ron M.
   May 23, 2003