By Michaela Esparza and David Ibarra
Nestled between the foothills of the picturesque Franklin Mountains and the Rio Grande River sits the I-10 corridor and the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Many who commute down I-10 daily, especially newer transplants from other states or younger generations, might not be aware that they are driving by a superfund site and leaving a town long forgotten to time in their rear-view mirror. All that is left is a cemetery haunted by the dead citizens of the town founded in the early 1800s. Having lived in El Paso our entire lives, we frequently pass by this cemetery. we can never unsee it. We see the crosses so clearly at the top of the hill as we drive up Executive, turning onto the I-10. Though they no longer exist, we see the ASARCO smokestacks. We see them so vividly, as if they have been branded into our minds, emblazoned with the infamous lettering of ASARCO that stood since the early 20th century. When we envision old El Paso, the song about the city by Marty Robbins plays in the background as the ASARCO smokestacks come into view. Slowly, the view pans down and closes in on Smeltertown, the old community that begs for remembrance and justice.
The smokestacks of the ASARCO copper smelter rose in the early 20th century over the desert landscape as industrialization took hold in the West. This era of conflict and societal change was brewing everywhere, with World War I raging in Europe and the Mexican Revolution taking place right at the doorstep of the United States. Long before the smokestacks became an ominous symbol of pollution and corporate carelessness, according to Martin Donell Kohout, an author for the Texas State Historical Association, the company made itself a staple in El Paso, as it gave jobs to the people in the city as well as the people in Mexico. The smelter was founded by Robert Towne Smith, who had traveled to Mexico to test the quality of ore being extracted from Mexican mines, which would eventually help with the growth of the smelter. When Smith returned to El Paso after visiting the mines in Chihuahua, Mexico, he had a plan to change the city forever. However, first he needed money to process the Mexican ore, so Smith secured funds in 1887 from KSARCO, a Kansas-based smelter and refining company, to purchase 1,156 acres along the Rio Grande to build the El Paso Smelter initially with a 100 ft smokestack.
Image caption: (Courtesy of bbourgeois, Digie)
Then in 1899, a merger of several corporations created ASARCO, which Daniel Guggenheim facilitated, "... an American industrialist, with his firm Guggenheim Brothers which he later served as president of the newly formed corporation and chairman of the board from 1901 to 1919", according to the New World Encyclopedia. After a fire severely damaged equipment, Kohout states, "ASARCO rebuilt with seven lead furnaces and expanded processing, which required hiring at least 900 workers locally." Rail lines were created to connect the mines in Mexico to the major railways leading North to funnel thousands of tons of copper and lead ore into El Paso to be processed by the smelter, turning El Paso into the most crucial ore processing center in the region by 1914, according to Monica Perales in her book Copper Stain.
Overlooked by Mount Cristo Rey, Smeltertown was located on the banks of the Rio Grande River, which is now closed off by a high fence that hides the remains of the town. The Mexican employees of ASARCO began building houses just to the West of where the company settled their factory, and many of these migrant workers had previously worked in the mines in Mexico but decided to migrate north due to the ongoing unrest in the country. Perales states that these Mexican contract laborers "...would help unload the ore trains into the smelter to begin extracting the copper and lead, and afterward help get rid of the slag and load the molded metal bars to railcars."
The townspeople eventually built a church in 1891 named San Rosalia Church (a Chihuahuan town from which most of its first followers migrated.) San Rosalia went through another name change before eventually burning down and being replaced by San Jose de Cristo Rey sometime after 1946. Perales elaborates that the smelter, apart from having the workers near the plant, also wanted to provide amenities such as housing, stores, and schools to their workers and their families while having control over their workforce, as the era was known for labor strikes, one example provided by Phillipe Mellinger in the book Race and Labor in Western Copper is the 1913 El Paso smelter strike which occurred with the help of unions such as the IWW to bolster the workers message for more benefits and pay. A few years after San Rosalia Church was established, the town needed a school for the worker's children.
According to the El Paso Museum of History, "For many years, students of Smeltertown attended Courchesne Elementary, about a mile from Smeltertown. If they could afford to, they continued their education beyond seventh grade by attending El Paso High School. In the 1930s, E. B. Jones Elementary School, named after an administrator with ASARCO, was opened." The remains of the school and the church are still in Smeltertown, left as faded, forgotten markings on El Paso's past.
Smeltertown housed more than 2,500 people by 1938. The community was diverse in terms of class but also divided. El Alto was a higher part of the town where Anglo managers lived, and in a lower section named El Bajo, Mexican workers and their families lived. Many people held jobs, from post to office workers, bakers to teachers, and many men were workers at ASARCO. The devastating fact is that many of Smeltertown's residents died unknown and forgotten. Unmarked graves litter the Smeltertown cemetery, slowly eroding back into the Earth. Then again, others keep the town's memory alive. People who were staples and integral to El Paso we know and love today.
Image caption: (Courtesy of barbara 2, Digie)
One of these people was Padre (Father) Lourdes F. Costa. Elaborating on the Father's work, The El Paso Museum of History writes:
“Father Lourdes F. Costa arrived in El Paso, Texas, in 1912. He was a local parish priest of the Smeltertown Church of San Jose for twenty years when the Pope summoned parishes in all parts of the world to build sacrosanct or material monuments. Father Costa envisioned a statue on top of the Sierra de Cristo Rey ( formerly the Cerro de Los Muleros, Mule Drivers Mountain) in Sunland Park, New Mexico. He turned in the direction of the conical peak outside of his window every morning. He always thought that such a location was a perfect setting for a monument to Christ the King, the Prince of Peace. First, a twelve-foot-high wooden cross was erected in 1933, and a couple of months later, it was replaced by an iron cross. In 1939, a 29 ft. tall limestone statue of Christ by sculptor Urbici Soler was erected on top of Mount Cristo Rey. It can be seen in all three states and serves as a shrine to thousands of faithful in the El Paso and Southern New Mexico area. Consequently, Father Costa realized his dream to inspire the people who live at the crossroads of three states with a lasting symbol of hope and peace.”
Padre Costa serves as a reminder of the beauty contributed to our city by those in the past who were passionate about what they created for the community. Today, in 2023, the memory is mainly kept alive by the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the Smeltertown men and women who have been lost to time. In an article written by Lauren Villagran called, “Before Flint, Before East Chicago, There Was Smeltertown”, "...every year, they get together, … to reweave the social fabric of Smeltertown by sharing memories and retelling stories they all know by heart. They celebrate their old hometown despite the dangers it posed to their families." A loving community whose past will be kept alive and retold throughout each generation here in El Paso.
Being with a family here for generations, I, Michaela Esparza, have loose connections with Smeltertown. My uncle, who goes by the name Richie, has a monopoly on personal stories from Smeltertown in my family. We sat down together one afternoon, and I asked him to recount his memories of the company ASARCO and the town. He handed me an old photo from the 1930s and explained how the community had built itself around ASARCO. The photo was an aerial view of Smeltertown and the ASARCO smelting factory. I assumed he cut it from a newspaper; the ends faded, and the ink was off.
Nonetheless, it is a photo I knew he held in high regard. My uncle picked up the frame and explained how the town built itself; "Smeltertown was the little pueblo, and when you start making money, you get to buy a property and start building." He pointed out the church and explained that it was the center of the town. A highly faith-based community, just trying to build themselves up from the nothing they left behind in Mexico, they saw the church as their safe house. A place of love and community. He also pointed out the ASARCO factory in the background and told me how they would put tons of rocks on a belt, and forty-foot pistons would smash the rocks from the rubble, collecting valuable metals such as copper, silver, and gold. Smeltertown, to me, is one of those historic places in El Paso that I never saw but read about in old newspaper clippings. To my uncle, on the other hand, it was a community he loved, a place of comradery in which he had met the most wonderful of friends, and it was created by the company that provided his family jobs for many years.
A man of many words that do not mean much, my uncle Richie is a big jokester. However, when he speaks of old El Paso, the words hold insight I cannot find anywhere else. He set the photo down, and I asked, "When you think about Smeltertown and the fact that it has been practically erased from our city, is the thought also linked to ASARCO and the tragedy the company had brought about?" My uncle looked at me as if I had just asked him the dumbest question. His tone then became soft yet serious:
"The thing about it was that the town was built around ASARCO, the community that was the true heart and love in that part of the borderland. ASARCO was just a company in the area. It is true, Mija, that a lot of the people died from the smoke that came from those smokestacks. But that doesn't erase the history and the good times shared by those in Smeltertown and the surrounding areas."
His wise words rang in my ears. I admit that my fascination with Smeltertown has always carried a morbid curiosity to it. Like true crime cases and morbid documentaries, I was drawn to the tragedy. Though, his words swirled in my mind. It no longer seemed like some morbid history deep in the depths of ASARCO's ruins. I understood that these people were real, and back before El Paso was as big as it is today, they shared decades of memories and love. It made my heart break. Seeing his life back in the day with old friends, now lost to the old West's dusty winds, made me rethink my entire view of the town. It is much less a morbid curiosity but, instead, a true and deeper understanding of the hold Smeltertown and its people have on not only my family but many of the families in El Paso.
The ASARCO Smelter and the community it had fostered in its proximity did not foresee their demise; it had not become apparent that their lives would be transformed by serious health consequences as well as the environmental impact from the smokestack's emissions since the industry was booming and contributing to the local economy. Kohout elaborates that the smelter continued to operate up until 1970 without much oversight regarding the environmental impact and health of the people, and the only measure taken to mitigate the emissions was upgrading the smokestacks to 612 feet in 1951 and then to 828 feet 16 years after to reduce sulfur dioxide at ground level.
Image caption: Smelter Workers (Courtesy of El Paso Museum of History)
As both El Paso and Juarez grew, the smelter, which was once on the outskirts, was being encircled, placing more of the metroplex's 1 million residents in danger beyond just the workers and their families living in Smeltertown. Both the local city government and residents became increasingly worried about the ASARCO smelter's emissions. In 1970, the city of El Paso and the state of Texas sued ASARCO for violating the 1967 Air Safety Code, according to Perales. Elaine Hampton states in the book Smeltertown that considering that the plant had been running 24 hours a day, seven days a week for more than half a century to avoid shutting down the furnaces and taking days to restart them, it became known that sulfur dioxide emissions were not the only thing poisoning the city.
When it comes to remedying the situation, Marianne Sullivan writes that although ASARCO tried to counteract the worries of the city by joining forces with a lead industry-backed organization to do research downplaying the concerns of the health effects of lead, according to Hampton, the company eventually tried to make a sincere effort to reduce the amount of pollution that was being generated, but it was too late.
In 1971, Smeltertown had some unwanted visitors. Villagran states in her article that, "In March 1971, a team of Epidemic Intelligence Service officers from the CDC arrived to investigate lead exposure connected to the Asarco smelter." At the time, the El Paso City-County health commissioner, Dr. Bernard Rosenblum, discovered that ASARCO had been discharging copious quantities of lead and other metallic wastes into the air. After learning this information, Rosenblum's main concern was the effects of the metallic waste on the children in the surrounding area. The CDC launched an investigation to see how much lead toxicity children were experiencing. The team was led by a 29-year-old pediatrician named Philip Landrigan.
The focus on children was not expected. According to Dr. Landrigan, the only reason to be concerned about lead poisoning in those days was if children were getting sick from it.
The notion that lead could be toxic at lower levels was new. Up until 1970 and continuing for years, people believed you did not have to worry about lead unless it was so high that it made a child seriously sick. The idea that lead in the body could be a silent poison was a new concept.
Raquel Ordóñez found in a study carried out in the 70s that all those years of continuous operation released more than just the 1116 tons of lead, as the smelting of the metals released other toxic byproducts such as 560 tons of zinc, cadmium at 12 metric tons, and arsenic at 1.2 tons, into the surrounding area in just the couple of years leading up to 1970. Perales elaborates that around half of the population living within 1.6 kilometers of the smelter have dangerous levels of these compounds in their bloodstream, which Sullivan states the significance of this crisis since it made the site in El Paso one of the first recognized lead poisoning disasters in the United States and provoking a strong response not only in El Paso but across the border in Juarez as well.
Children's homes were tested in Juarez. Ordóñez sampling the dust found that "children less than four years old showed the highest levels of lead in the blood, 53 percent of children tested had upwards of 40 nanograms of lead per 100 ml (about 3.38 oz), and even 9% of children living almost 5 miles away from the smelter showed elevated levels of lead". Similarly, in a study conducted in Smeltertown proper by Dr. Landrigan, "more than half of those aged between one and 19 years old showed elevated levels of lead, with 55 percent of children aged 1-4 presenting even higher levels in the blood, ranging from 40 to 59 nanograms of lead per 100 ml (about 3.38 oz) within a mile of the smelter". A second study quickly followed in 1972 that found precisely what the effects of lead toxicity were doing to the Smeltertown kids. IQ and finger-tapping tests for physical reflexes were done on children with elevated blood levels. They had a control group of children with blood lead levels below 40 micrograms, and the study found that children with elevated blood levels tested seven points lower than the control group and showed lower reaction time in their reflexes. Seventy-two Smeltertown residents, thirty-five of whom were children, had to be hospitalized due to lead poisoning. El Paso filed a one-million-dollar lawsuit against ASARCO, and the city had to try to evacuate Smeltertown from its homes.
We also spoke with Arturo Moreno, who decided to participate in the activism against ASARCO because he understood the severity of the studies made public in both countries due to his knowledge of chemistry and direct concern for his children and students. "Some days, I would stand on the balcony of my house, which was on top of a hill overlooking the river valley, seeing the exhaust from the smokestacks disperse through the area, and I knew I had to do something to stop the damage, just lead alone has been shown to cause cognitive, behavioral, and nervous system damage." Arturo states, "My house I had inherited from my mother, which was located 2 miles from the smelter, and I had brought my five young kids from Durango where I was teaching previously if I had known just how severe the pollutions had become, I would have thought twice before uprooting and settling in the border. It scares me to think that many generations of students will be held back by the damage the pollution caused."
Image caption: Smelter Workers (Courtesy of UTEP Library Special Collections)
The studies carried out in the 70s laid bare the disaster unfolding within the desert communities near the smelter, making it clear to both the city government and local citizens that the only way to end the harm to the children and the environment they reside in was to stop the smelter from operating once in for all. Firstly, those most affected by the smelter needed to be relocated, leading to the end of Smeltertown on top of the suffering they were experiencing from the toxic compounds they were exposed to for so many decades.
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Many residents resisted the evacuation. Residents of Smeltertown were highly reluctant to give up their homes, homes that had been in their families for generations. Although some families received settlements from ASARCO after the city of El Paso filed the suit to help pay for their medical expenses, residents were highly distrustful of the El Paso government. They had been ignored for eighty-five years about their concerns about the smoke and the pollution. The residents had tried to organize to get their town paved in the 1950s but were unsuccessful. Even with consistent complaints about the dust and the smoke and reports of their children getting sicker and sicker, the city had turned the other way. So obviously, they highly doubted the sincerity of politicians' concerns after the CDC had stepped in. Their efforts to stay on the land had been exhausted, and finally, the city forced residents to move. Their homes were razed, and Perales states that the rest of Smeltertown was demolished by 1973. The families relocated to housing projects in El Paso, leaving only the church and the school to remind the city of its failure to protect El Paso's first major industrial community
Hampton elaborates on the changes in the smelting industry after the 70s, as the copper refining industry began to experience a decline between the 1980s and the 1990s due to oversaturation in the market from mines; she writes that ASARCO decided to venture out into the industry of waste disposal, but their way of reckless operation carried over to this new venture. In 1996, the state of Texas issued an order regarding these violations; it was documented that "ASARCO El Paso was burning the illegal waste. The document lists scores of sloppy practices, such as the use of toxic wastewater as a spray to contain dust, piles of contaminated waste left exposed", and even more egregious they would operate at night when the wind was blowing towards Ciudad Juarez to avoid raising alarm in El Paso, with some of the illegal waste coming from weapon arsenals and even some which showed radioactivity, according to Hampton.
The beginning of the end of ASARCO in El Paso happened in 1999 when copper prices dived, forcing them to halt processing and only leaving behind a small crew of workers and the contaminated acres of the plant with a century's worth of slag, according to Perales. Arturo wants the public to be conscious of how much is left to be done to clean up the toxic Earth left in the wake of ASARCO. He states, "The slag is still visible as you drive past on Paisano Rd or Doniphan Drive in West El Paso where the plant used to stand, and with the extreme desert weather, I am concerned that dust will be displaced from the high winds or a torrential storm like the ones we had back in the summer of 2021, and will dislodge more harmful compounds through Juarez and El Paso."
According to Hampton, the US Justice Department fined ASARCO in 2002, requiring the corporation to set aside a million dollars annually to clean up the smelter site and other contaminated areas in El Paso. A decade after ceasing operations, the fear of continued contamination came back into the mind of El Pasoans, as copper prices rose again in 2005 and ASARCO showed signs of trying to restart the smelter. Arturo stated in his interview, "I was livid when I heard the news that the plant wanted to restart operations and that the government of Texas was considering granting them a permit; no job or industry is worth risking the lives of our citizens, but now that I was living El Paso, the opportunity came to act when I became aware of ACORN."
Hampton states, "ACORN is a collection of community-based organizations advocating for equal rights for low- and moderate-income families." This organization was recruiting El Pasoans to their ranks to push the EPA to do a better job in removing contaminated soil from homes and fighting against the plant with protests. In 2007, ACORN chapters from El Paso were joined by those in other Texan cities to converge upon the state capital of Austin to petition the governor not to renew the ASARCO permit.
Arturo took place in this march along with his wife Celia, "We took the long bus ride down to Austin, even though at that point I was we were in our 60's and I was dealing with a heart condition, but the future of my grandkids and the students in both cities was worth fighting for, it was empowering to have hundreds of others with me working towards ending the horrific contamination. However, it failed, and the permit was granted after all; I could not believe it." Although the permit was granted by the TCEQ in 2008, infuriating the community of El Pasoans who were not concerned about money or jobs but instead their health, ASARCO was mired by legal battles in many separate places across the country that a year later, the plan to reopen was abandoned for good, according to Hampton.
A small dirt road right off Paisano takes you all the way up to the Smeltertown Cemetery. My mother and I, Michaela Esparza, went to visit the cemetery one Sunday afternoon. We hiked up the dirt road, and as the hot sun beat down on us, the sign for the graveyard met us at the top of a long dirt road. Walking through the cemetery, I could feel the weight of what had happened to these people and the sorrow of the families—so many unmarked graves scattered as far as I could see. My father has told me many times about what exactly happened to the people of Smeltertown. How much he hated those old red-and-white smokestacks was very apparent to me.
Image caption: Smeltertown Cemetery (Courtesy of Rito Delgado, Digie)
"ASARCO produced a lot of smoke that was contaminated with heavy amounts of lead. Smeltertown was so close that the wind blew all that right into the people. A lot of El Pasoans died from the lead inhalation. Even now, the land where that stupid factory was is contaminated with lead, and nobody wants to clean it up. UTEP was going to buy the land and build a park for the community, but they tested the soil and saw how full of lead it was. They saw how much it would cost and abandoned the idea." I could see anger and sadness wash over my father's face. That sadness for the people of old El Paso is passed on to me. Looking at all the unmarked graves, the old ones with barely visible inscriptions, the ones with crosses made from old metal or plumbing, I felt them and saw what they had to show me. I stood momentarily among the shallow graves covered by cement and rock and looked west over the graveyard. Behind it, I saw a small smokestack belonging to GCC, a cement and construction manufacturing company. The irony was thick. It felt like I was looking at a horrific metaphor about how history repeats itself or how things never change.
The memory of Smeltertown will always be with me and my family. I cannot help but hope those people have found peace in their afterlives and know that many families around the area will never forget. On April 13, 2013, the city demolished the plant. According to the Associated Press, the 800-foot-tall smokestacks were demolished with 300 pounds of dynamite at the start of the cleanup process, comforting El Pasoans that the smelter would never operate again near their homes. Eighty million dollars have been used so far to comple
te the cleanup, and the city is looking to use the land for the good of its citizens. Aja Hood with CBS 4 states that the 400-acre property is up for sale, which the nearby University of Texas at El Paso might acquire to expand its campus.
I remember when they blew up the smokestacks very vividly. I remember how happy my father was. He felt some victory for the city and for those who lost their lives all those years ago. I cannot lie; I did, too. An essential part of El Paso's history touched me in a way I never felt before. My only hope now is that the land gets thoroughly cleaned up so the people of Smeltertown and their families have true justice and something new and wonderful can be brought to the amazing city of El Paso. Thanks to the lawsuit by the city of El Paso against ASARCO in the 1970s, the hard-working researchers on both sides of the border, and the activists who marched on Austin, a healthier future was secured for the Borderland.
Image caption: (Courtesy of bbourgeois, Digie)
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