How Conrado Cantu, the sheriff of Cameron County, lived down to people’s expectations of South Texas law enforcement.

Texas Monthly, August 2006

How else to describe the murder and mayhem and fear that have gripped Nuevo Laredo for months - and are now spilling over into Texas?

Texas Monthly, August 2005

As U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza was supposed to be the right man in the right job at the right time, someone who would promote a new era of cooperation between the two countries. If only external events hadn’t intervened.

Texas Monthly, October 2004

Hector Perez loved his country enough to die for it. A year later, his family is still paying the price of patriotism.

Texas Monthly, July 2004

You may never have heard of Ramón Ayala, but to his four generations of fans in South Texas and Mexico, he’s music royalty. He revolutionized norteño, a genre that reigns along the border, and - after more than one hundred albums - is still going strong.

Texas Monthly, April 2004

The most promising young fiction in Texas is Oscar Casares, whose tales of life in Brownsville have put him and his hometown on the literary map.

Texas Monthly, March 2003

The U.S. Census Bureau says that Cameron Park, a Brownsville colonia, is the poorest community in America, and yet optimism thrives there. How do you explain to statisticians and demographers that poverty is a relative thing?

Texas Monthly, January 2003

When I moved to Houston two years ago, I was expecting little in the way of Hispanic culture. Who knew it was such a good city for Latinos - better, even, than San Antonio?

Texas Monthly, September 2002

To residents of Presidio and Ojinaga, the international border that separates them had always seemed irrelevant. They crossed it easily, spoke the same language, and considered themselves part of the same community. When Mexican authorities wrongly imprisoned a Texas grocer in April, that relationship changed dramatically - and it hasn’t been the same since.

Texas Monthly, October 2001