Written by El Paso social justice activists including an attorney, two emeritus professors, and a former county employee, Who Rules El Paso? is the most oblique thing you’ll ever read about native son Beto O’Rourke. The book gives him barely a mention. Still, its data, and the roadmaps it gives readers to pursue their own research, help to illuminate Beto’s political origins. They are troubling, and they are related to the book’s disturbing content.
El Paso, population almost 700,000, is the biggest Texas city on the U.S.-Mexico border. (Its sister city, Juárez, has over a million people). More than 80 percent of El Paso is Latinx. The city is one of America’s poorest. Predictably, it goes blue in presidential elections—as in 2016, when two-thirds of voters favored Hillary Clinton. Candidates elected to Congress also trend Democrat, including Beto.
Local leaders have touted the slogan “El Paso Strong” since a white supremacist fatally shot 22 people, both Mexicans and U.S. citizens, at an El Paso Walmart in August. It was the largest massacre of Latinx people in U.S. history. Locals have since celebrated the fortitude and binationalism of this fronterizo metropolis.
