Jack of Harts

The El Paso-Juarez-Las Cruces Borderplex was a major center of industry, higher learning, research and development, military training, healthcare, and tourism with over three million citizens when the Second Great Depression began. Many corporations had offices on the American side and manufacturing plants on the Mexican side due to labor costs, but they were effectively one large economy with an international border running through it. Much like Texas in the days of the Spanish Empire and early America, they had far more in common with each other than with those distant capitals. They were neither Mexican nor American, but an amalgamation of the two forged by business and cultural ties. And even the best efforts of various politicians who wanted to divide them had never managed to change that. So when the American federal government fell, and the Mexican government quickly followed, the Borderplex leaders looked to each other for help before anybody else.