EL PASO

Illuminating the history and identity of “the new Ellis Island.”

Ulloa, a national reporter for the New York Times, recounts the turbulent history of Mexico, Latin America, and U.S. border states by following five families: the Chews, Martinezes, Holguins, Rubios, and Mura’ls. The author, who covered murders in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and a mass shooting in a Walmart in El Paso in 2019 (the tragic retellings of the horrific crimes are in this book), makes the case that El Paso deserves the historical spotlight. She succeeds with flying colors. Readers may sometimes find the detail-loaded narrative of this crossroads, gateway city difficult to follow, as the author jumps back and forth across generations and continents, overlapping and weaving through the families’ trials, glories, historical figures, and tribulations. But the outpouring has a purpose: As much as we try to suppress, ignore, or compartmentalize history, it has a way of clawing its way back. We can’t escape the traumas of our past, and if we don’t face them head-on, as Ulloa does, they will return with an insidious force. In the ebbing and flowing narrative of immigration battles and families trying to find their place in the world, the author guides us, expertly, through history, politics, and personal stories, ending with her own family’s origin story. She deftly employs Spanish terms throughout the book, from los hornos (outdoor ovens) to obreros (workers) to vagos (wild ones), which infuse the work with an authentic sense of place. El Paso, she writes, is a “backdrop to an immigration fight that at its crux, scholars say, is truly about the preservation of American democracy.”

A passionate and urgent account that transforms the embers of a bypassed history into flames that consume the present.