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Ivan Thompson works hard to make romance bloom. But the modern world isn't helping.
For 17 years, Thompson, known as Cowboy Cupid or Cowboy del Amor, has prided himself in a keen ability to pair lonely American men with Mexican women. His sees his job as bridging countries, languages and cultures. Now, the man who calls himself America's premier matchmaker is fighting a nemesis that, just like love, knows no borders: the Internet.
Thompson, 65, says matchmaking isn't what it used to be. Online dating is cutting him out as a middleman.
"The Internet is weeding me out," Thompson said with a Texas twang so thick he sounds as if he just walked off a Western movie set. "I once soared with the eagles. Now I'm down with the turkeys."
Despite the difficulties faced by matchmakers like Thompson, cross-border romance is a growing phenomenon, said Dr. Howard Campbell of the University of Texas at El Paso's department of sociology and anthropology.
The combination of forlorn American men and vulnerable Mexican women on the border helps "sustain a large semi-underground sex and marriage economy," said Campbell, author of a study called "Cultural Seduction: American Men, Mexican Women, Cross-Border Attraction."
"The pitfalls of the Internet - of cutting out the middleman - are that people really don't know what they are getting or arranging until the last minute, unlike when they deal with the Cowboy Cupid, who meets the interested parties and gets to know them in advance," Campbell said in an interview. "In a sense, he test-drives the men and women he works with first to find out if they are likely to make a good match."
For matchmakers working south of the 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border, the Internet is gradually transforming a country with the famous culture of manana, where the siesta was sacrosanct, into a U.S.-style workaholic nation where careers often come before families.
"When I started this business 17 years ago, I was the first one with any kind of expertise in the area of international love, and then came maybe a handful or dozen or so competitors," said Thompson. "Now, with the Internet, there are maybe 15,000."
Thompson, too, has built a Web site and uses e-mail, but says he rarely checks it.
To his admirers, Thompson is a colorful, folksy character, trim, with a weathered, boyish face. He wears his trademark round aviator glasses and, since the age of 11, a cowboy hat.
To his detractors, he's sexist and even anti-American, judging from the hate mail he receives. A letter from a woman in Waxahachie, Texas, tears into him for populating the U.S. with Mexican women and their children.
But for couples such as David, 53, and Hilda Irene Block, 38, Thompson is simply the bridge-builder. A native of Colorado, Block met Irene, a native of Delicias, Chihuahua, at one of Thompson's fiestas in Ciudad Juarez. Both were divorced and eager to build a relationship.
They've been married for 13 years and have an 11-year-old daughter, Joselyn, plus Stephanie, 19, from Block's previous marriage. The family lives in El Paso.
"I saw him from far away and immediately felt drawn to him," Block said in Spanish. "He just seemed like a kind-hearted person."
The language barrier isn't an issue, Block said.
"I was twice married before, and they spoke English and I still didn't understand them," he said. "Irene and I understand each other even without saying a word."
He added, "I don't think we would have met over the Internet."
"There's nothing like meeting someone face to face," Block said, "and that's where Ivan comes in."
Thompson got into the matchmaking business through a personal experience. In the late 1980s, he said, he fell into a deep depression after a divorce from his American wife of 17 years. He placed an ad in a Juarez newspaper, "Gringo seeks Mexican wife," and received 80 responses.
"I knew immediately I was onto something big," he recalled, and soon started charging up to $3,000 to match men like him who had grown tired of what he refers to as "Americanized women" - who he says put careers before family - and a society obsessed with age and status.
His matchmaking business boomed. Over the years, he matched more than 400 couples, he said. He wrote an autobiography, "Cowboy Cupid," and became a media favorite, a walking reality show. A documentary made in 2005 by filmmaker Michele Ohayon, "Cowboy del Amor," won several awards, including one at the South by Southwest festival in Austin.
But in matters of the heart, Thompson hasn't been so lucky. He married a Mexican woman, the same woman, twice. "Fell in love pretty deep," he said. But his wife wanted to learn English and "started becoming too Americanized for me," he said. "It just didn't work."
Drawn by the slower pace of life south of the border, the New Mexico native moved to Mexico, where he bought a home for $6,000 and pays monthly utilities of about $8.
"In the U.S., they look at age as though it's a bad disease," said Thompson, who is dating a 34-year-old woman. "Here they look at age with respect and not as a bad thing."
Despite the Internet, Thompson is determined to continue matching couples. In the last five years, he said, he's matched about 20 couples.
"It's not about the money," he insisted. "I know about loneliness."
Thompson said that he left home at age 11, escaping an unhappy childhood. He hitchhiked through New Mexico and Texas, often spending time on the Mexican border.
"The border has a magnetic pull on people's brains. Once Americans arrive here they usually do stupid things," he said. His job is to help them make good decisions.
"Love is my expertise."
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