Introduction Listening often begins before interpretation. Walking through Avenida Juárez in Ciudad Juárez, México— a sister city to El Paso, Texas—a vendor’s voice rises above traffic and pedestrian movement, calling out, “¡Tacos, tacos, tacos, pásele!” Nearby, another voice offers, “Te traigo un manguito,” while elsewhere a migrant speaker reflects softly, “Cualquier bendición que le sale a tu corazón es buena.”These sonic encounters do more than fill public space. They organize movement, reveal cultural intimacy, and transmit lived experiences that rarely appear within dominant textual or visual archives. Border Soundscapes emerged from the recognition that listening can function as both a…
Author: José Manuel Flores
José Manuel Flores, Elizabeth Escobedo
I am a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from The University of Texas at El Paso and a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Texas Tech University. My work bridges digital rhetoric, design thinking, and sound studies to investigate border soundscapes as dynamic archives of Latinx identity, memory, and cultural experience.