Drug Violence Alters the Flow of Life in Mexico, by Marc Lacey, N.Y. Times, Aug. 30, 2008

“It’s impossible to know exactly who is who these days,” said Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso who wrote about women narcos in a recent article in Anthropological Quarterly. “That can be dangerous.”

Gone are the days when Mexico’s drug war was an abstraction for most people, something they lamented over the morning papers as if it were unfolding far away. Reminders are everywhere, like the radios blasting drug ballads that romanticize the criminals and the giant banners that drug cartels hang from overpasses to recruit killers and threaten rivals.

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DNA links El Paso man to '06 girlfriend's death, by John Asbury, Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise, Sept. 4, 2008

"It's been a tough road. We've always wondered who it was," Shirley Bodkin said. "She was a beautiful person. She didn't deserve to die the way she did, but she put up a big fight."

Police arrested Pietro Alberto Saintis, 48, in the death of Donna Jean Bodkin, 45, found strangled to death Nov. 8, 2006, inside a motor home parked at the Desert Hot Springs Spa Hotel on Palm Drive. Saintis had established a new life in El Paso as a draftsman before his arrest.

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Border abuzz as UTEP prepares to host Texas , by Chuck Tarleton, Dallas Morning News, Sept. 3, 2008

"It's going to be a zoo," said Steve Kaplowitz, a Texas grad who hosts an afternoon drive time sports talk show on KROD-AM 600 in El Paso. "It will be the biggest party that El Paso has ever seen in terms of a football game."

Because the school now known as UTEP has fielded a football team since 1914, no one is calling Saturday's game against Texas the most important in school history. As an event, though, the meeting at the Sun Bowl certainly has no equal for the Miners.

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Exploring the largest Texas border city: El Paso, by Ralph Jentsch, Wilson (Texas) County News, Sept 2, 2008

This is part of an occasional series outlining a journey the author made around the geographical border of Texas in 2004. This part of the journey is from Van Horn through three mission towns: San Elizaro, Socorro, and Ysleta, which is located within the city limits of El Paso.

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54b's Road Trip Travel Tips - El Paso, by BurntOrange Nation.com, Sept. 1, 2008

"In case you didn't know...El Paso is Spanish for, The Paso. That's tip #1 and there's a lot more where that came from."

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RJ Promotions launches home show in El Paso, by Expo Magazine, Overland Park, Ks., Aug. 29, 2008

St. Joseph, MO-based RJ Promotions Inc. is launching the El Paso Spring Home Show, to be held January 9-11, 2009 at the El Paso Convention Center. RJ Promotions has formed a partnership with the El Paso Association of Builders and the event will be the official home show for the association. It will also be the first show in Texas for RJ Promotions.

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El Paso United Methodists cross border to check on Juarez friends, by Jan Snider, Dallas Morning News, Aug. 26, 2008

"Most of the people living in this area are squatters," explains Carlos Chacon, the local pastor. "They've built houses out of wood pallets and cardboard."

Members of St. Mark's United Methodist Church, across the U.S. border in El Paso, Texas, venture to the outskirts of the impoverished community of Juarez to provide food and medical assistance. They also operate a "Saturday school" to teach basic reading and English to children and adults.

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Mexico drug war's costs, risks exported to U.S.Vanessa Monsisvais / El Paso Times
Casey Garcia's stroller was pinned between a truck and a wall after a shootout between drug factions in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The 1-year-old's father, Todd Turner, stands at her bedside at Thomason Hospital in El Paso.
, by Miguel Bustillo, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 17, 2008

"It seems we don't find out until they walk in the hospital door," El Paso Mayor John Cook said. "If I, as the mayor, cross the border, it takes me a lot longer than it's taking some of these wounded folks. Clearly, some deals have been made at a higher level of government, and we didn't know about them."

The only hospital within a 280-mile radius to offer state-of-the-art trauma care, Thomason has become an unwilling treatment center of choice for law enforcement officials and others in the vicinity wounded in Mexico's drug turf battles. The violence has killed more than 2,000 people this year, and more than double that number in the 20 months since President Felipe Calderon began deploying 40,000 troops across the country to crack down on narcotics trafficking.

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Hutchison, Perry keeping their names out there with gifts for Texas delegation, by Christy Hoppe, Dallas Morning News, Sept. 4, 2008

"I'm sure it has begun," said Malcolm McGregor of El Paso.

Texas GOP delegates were courted this week, through cheek pecks and thoughtful gifts, by two of the state's largest political figures – U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison here at the national convention and Gov. Rick Perry, kept in Texas by Hurricane Gustav. Could it be jockeying for position for the 2010 governor's race?

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Tom Russell: 'Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?', by NPR, Sept. 7, 2008

"The danger in the song was thinking I was taking a cheap shot at the government, which isn't where I'm at," Russell says. "I want to be honest about it — I don't have any politics one way or another."

Musician Tom Russell's song "Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?" will be featured on a new two-disc anthology entitled "Veterans Day: The Tom Russell Anthology" out Oct. 28.

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