Duranguito’s History: What is fact and what is fiction?

For more than a year, the Duranguito area downtown has been the focus of a contentious battle between the City of El Paso and historians. A grassroots historian claims those fighting to save it are wrong.

In November, Fred Morales presented a 38-page report to city council, arguing many claims about Duranguito’s significance were false. He said even the term Duranguito was being misused and that it wasn’t used until the arena dispute began.

“Duranguito was in actually the name of a pandilla or gang that Father Rahm and Modesto Gomez and Salvador Ramirez used to work with at the boys club,” Morales said.

Morales says he mistakenly coined the term after an El Paso Times article in 1979 quoting civil rights advocate Modesto Gomez.

“He made a mistake that that was the name of the neighborhood. And it was through him that I got that idea and later I found out he was wrong,” Morales said.

Historian David Romo wouldn’t go on camera for this story by deadline, but he argues otherwise. He points to an oral interview done in 1975 , where civic leader Charles Porras, who lived in the neighborhood states: “That was the name of the district-Durango; right by the old Santa Fe depot which is about two blocks from the union depot today.”

Either way, there is no official designation for the neighborhood in city documents.

Finding multiple interpretations of the available facts is something the Texas Historical Commission sees all too often.

“I do think there’s room for disagreement, there’s room for different experts to have different views about a historical account or something that happened,” Chris Florance, Director of Public Information and Education said.

The debate over the area where the city wants to build its downtown arena has pitted grassroots historian Morales against academics like Dr. Max Grossman.

Grossman maintains this is El Paso’s oldest neighborhood, established by rancher Juan Maria Ponce de Leon–he’s not the Spanish explorer of the same name.

Grossman points to testimony by a man during the Chamizal dispute of the 1890’s.

“He’s telling us here that Ponce would go from one side of the river to the other and he became the owner property over here and El Paso and lived in both places,” Grossman said.

Morales, however, says Ponce de Leon ranch was in what’s now Ciudad Juarez. He says the rancher only built a small adobe building for his farm workers in El Paso and questions the significance of the settlement.

“The river destroyed it in 1830 and left no remains and during that time,” Morales said.

Grosssman points out previous archaeological excavations led by Edward Staski and the reports that detail what was uncovered.

“From the 1994 excavation reports by Ed Staski you can see the various levels of cultural strata that were excavated with an incredible array of artifacts going back to 1827–and there were many different floods. The floods never destroyed everything, we find a foundation of walls, we find human remains, we find acequia artifacts from the Chinese.”

“Whiskey bottles, implements, farm implements, metal objects, horse bridle, all this kinds of stuff. There are shelves of boxes in the centennial museum filled with artifacts from one excavation alone and we’re learning more all the time,” Grossman said.

Romo says the excavations offer a good idea about what kind of historical objects lie beneath the ground in the neighborhood and within the footprint.

“These previous studies have recovered thousands of artifacts that provide important insights about our city’s past, including physical evidence of the first acequias constructed by Ponce de León in 1827, indigenous pottery, human burial remains, and artifacts related to migrations from different parts of the world,” Romo said.

The Texas Historical Commission says when conflicting reports happen in the field, consistency sets history apart.

“You really look for consistent accounts of things that you don’t have one individual individual saying something vastly different from what all the other recorded history of the event might reveal,” Florance said.

“That’s why I wrote this report, so we can finally settle this,” Morales said.

“The scholarly community is united in lockstep over this issue. What are we talking about? The El Paso County Historical Commission voted almost unanimously to oppose this project. The El Paso County History Society came out with a statement opposing this project. The city’s own Historical Landmark Commission, this is the city’s own Historical Landmark Commission appointed by city council. They voted 6-0 to oppose this plan. The city planning commission voted 4-1 to oppose this plan. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the most prestigious preservation organization in America,” Grossman said. “You talk to scholars, archaeologists, architectural historians, planners, I have not met a single one who doesn’t think that this plan is insane. That the cultural loss would be intolerable. Then there’s Mr. Morales. I don’t know what he’s doing or why, I think it’s unfortunate,” Grossman said.