Editor’s note: What is this territory we call the U.S.-Mexico border? We read frequent alarming stories and see media images about la línea, the borderline, a 2000-mile stretch along the Rio Grande and beyond, separating the U.S. from Mexico. It’s often portrayed as a no-man’s land rife with drug smugglers, vicious criminals, gunrunners, anti-immigrant militias, and undocumented or impoverished immigrants, all portrayed with some degree of accuracy and ample amounts of hype in the FX TV series “The Bridge.”
Downtown El Paso as seen from the Paseo del Norte International Bridge. (Sergio Chapa/Borderzine.com)
But what’s the real storyline of the border region beyond the sensational headlines? Who are its citizens, a majority of them Mexican American? What is their piece of the American dream?
Borderzine invites you to follow Texas journalist Sergio Chapa and University of Texas at Brownsville Professor Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera on their nine-day road trip along the dusty byways and highways hugging the Texas-Mexico border. In the first posting today, they will begin to share what the saw and experienced in a series of visual blogs over the coming weeks. Welcome to the real border.
DAY TWO
El Condado de Hidalgo, Texas y Reynosa, Tamaulipas: Zonas de libre comercio, desarrollo industrial incompleto, corrupción, drogas, desigualdad y turismo de invierno Por Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera
South Texas’ Hidalgo County: Winter Texans, citrus, micheladas, corruption and a chance to buy an international border bridge By Sergio Chapa
DAY ONE
Camino al desarrollo en la zona fronteriza de Tamaulipas, México y el condado de Cameron, Texas: Infraestructura comercial, una plataforma de lanzamiento espacial y descubrimientos de petróleo en el Golfo Por Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera
INTRODUCTION
Viaje frontera Texas-México de un periodista y una académica
Por Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera
Conocí a Sergio Chapa en la frontera haciendo cada uno nuestro trabajo; él es periodista y yo soy profesora en la Universidad de Texas en Brownsville (UTB).
Coincidimos varias veces y siempre hablábamos de la frontera, de la vida aquí, de su gente, de la violencia, del narco, del petróleo, de la música, de las carreteras. Read more…
Our goal was to see every international border crossing along the Texas-Mexico
By Sergio Chapa
It was a trip that only lasted nine days but one that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life.
I was born in raised in Texas and have lived for many years along the border. But I’ve never seen the entire Texas side of the border until I took a trip with my friend Lupita. Read more…
