Asarco ref

Asarco ref. http://origin.elpasotimes.com/opinion/ci_6847684 article has been taken off line

Asarco historical part of El Paso

Article Launched: 09/10/2007 12:00:00 AM MDT

I have ambivalent feelings regarding the West Side smelter, specifically, the company and the plant that practically all of us refer to as Asarco.

I've lived a good many years in El Paso, mostly in the Northeast, and somehow that smell once seemed to permeate everything. I remember smelling it at Biggs Field when I was an airman back in 1948-1952.

I also remember Asarco closing for a few months not too many years ago, then reopening relatively smell-free. At least for a few months.

But I'm writing not as a smelter supporter or opponent, but as a historian of sorts. And like it or not, Asarco is a part of who and what El Paso is. Its history runs deep in the background of El Paso. Asarco was once El Paso's largest employer, and perhaps could be, and ought to be, again.

In fact, for decades Asarco was the greatest resource El Paso had. It employed the most people. It paid the best wages. It was the only employer in town to have its own cemetery -- one perhaps larger than Concordia. And there are names in that cemetery that will historically knock your socks off.

Without Asarco, the town might be dramatically different, in size as well as in appearances. Without Asarco, there would never have been a Texas Western College. And without a Texas Western College, there would perhaps not be a present-day University of Texas at El Paso.

For who donated the land where the university now exists?

Asarco!

The college opened as an engineering school primarily because

Asarco needed engineers.

Nevertheless, have I ever been irked at the smelter? Yup! And it isn't the smell.

As a shirt-tail historian, I've always felt that the smelter should have capitalized on some of its history inside and outside of the plant. Asarco has done a lot for El Paso, perhaps more than any party except Fort Bliss and Biggs Field.

Back in 1911, the plant lay directly across the Rio Grande from the headquarters of the Mexican Revolutionary army ... which during that same year knocked Juárez to its knees and rid Mexico of perhaps the greatest president it ever had.

And back on Jan. 19, 1913 -- according to the El Paso Morning Times -- Pancho Villa went to work as a laborer for Asarco. Two months later, on March 7, Villa and six laborers working at Asarco -- Juan Dozal, Carlos Jauregui, Felix Rivero, Manuel Choa, Pascual Teztado, and Dario Silva -- on horseback forded the Rio Grande and headed south.

According to the Times, each toted a sack of flour, two small packages of coffee, some salt and small arms, but little ammunition.

Within weeks, Villa struck a mining camp at Boquilla, Chihuahua, where he obtained a forced loan of $10,000. His revitalized revolution was now off and flourishing.

So my biggest gripe regarding Asarco is not its odor, which is seldom a problem anymore.

I'd like to see, or get a copy of, Asarco's records relating to Francisco "Pancho" Villa and these other six men. I don't expect to learn much, perhaps nothing more than a name and a date or two.

But talking to Asarco supervisors is like talking to a body in the company cemetery. They all promise to look at the record ... and get back to me.

Well, maybe their phones aren't working.

Leon Metz, an El Paso historian, writes often for the El Paso Times. E-mail: cmetz48888@aol.com