The barrios

The Barrios

The Barrios en El Paso where habituated by Mexican immigrants, that choose to be together instead for reason of affinity and culture. Chihuahuita was the name of thebiggest and older barrio, also called the central barrio. The location for the barrio was chosen for the proximity to work and to the Mexican border. There were other immigrants settlements likeSmelter, Stormville and Sunset hights.

When talking about The Barrios, Chihuahuita, smelter and Stormville were in the same situation, houses poor built made from adobe (mud), there were noservices, no sewers, and crowded (to many family member for each house). Mexican immigrants crossing the border to look for work cause this explosion of people living in these settlements. There wereschools build and churches to accommodate the need of the growing population of immigrants, but was not enough, especially schools seeing increases every year in the immigrant population pushing theAnglo community to move to the north and northeast of the city of El Paso.

The settlement called Sunset Heights in the north west of El Paso was been populated by Mexicans immigrants withmore money to pay for rent or even to buy the houses. The majority of these immigrants were crossing the border to get out of the reach of the Mexican revolution, Mexicans with more class and culturethan the regular Mexican, for these reason for many years

The Anglos in these neiberhoods tolerated the Mexicans but even them started to move to the north, with that we can think for the reasonsthey had for that decision.

There are census indicating the number of Mexican families living in those Barrios, were we can see the numbers increasing every year, what we cannot be sureis who stay and who left, some of them looking for better jobs up north or maybe just going back to Mexico, been the last option the reason why Mexican immigrants never took serious the idea of...