Gustavo Reveles
When reporters from throughout the country find out I work for a newspaper along the U.S.-Mexico border, they immediately get an image of me running around the small streets of Ciudad Juárez where I dodge bullets in order to get a story. People have a strange misconception of what covering the border is like.
Yes, many of my colleagues cross the border on a daily basis to cover the terrible drug-related violence that has plagued Juárez and many other cities in northern Mexico. But most of journalists living on this wonderful place many of us call home are border reporters not because we cover Mexican violence, but rather because we cover the day-to-day life of millions of people.
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So when people ask me if I cover the border for the El Paso Times, I always say yes even though my beat is growth and transportation. I answered yes, too, when I covered city government as well as when my beat was K-12 schools. See, here on the border — where two or more cultures mesh to create a unique lifestyle — everything we do should be considered a border beat.
Take my beat, for instance. I am supposed to cover how El Paso moves and grows. In any other city I would be dealing solely with roads, commerce and mass transit. But because I’m in El Paso, a city that relies heavily on commerce from south of the Rio Grande, international bridges are a big part of what I write about. And because our growth has been impacted tremendously by Mexican nationals moving north of the border to escape the violence, that, too is part of my beat.
The same rule applied when I covered education. My stories many times were affected by our proximity to Mexico. Whether it was bilingual education or the influx of students from Juárez attending public schools in El Paso, the issues affecting the beat were in many ways unique to the border region.
I’m lucky to work in a newsroom filled with dozens of border reporters. They cover issues like border cops, border courts, border high-school sports, border health and border entertainment. And yes, we also have some that cover Juárez for the paper.
Gustavo Reveles Acosta is the growth and transportation reporter for the El Paso Times and the vice president of print for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
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