Every year along the Texas border, high school teams battle it out in one of the nation’s most intense championship rivalries. But they’re not playing football.

The New York Times, November 2022

They're not disengaged—they’re waiting to be heard, and fully understood.

Texas Monthly, November 2020

The messy, lonely, and visionary life of the first Texas writer - and the first Latino - to win the vaunted PEN/Faulkner award.

Texas Monthly, August 2013

The gruesome legacy of Mexico's antidrug campaign.

Harper’s Magazine, January 2012

For the women of Juárez, the terror of kidnapping - and worse - has never ended. Will it ever?

Texas Monthly, September 2011

Each year, some 55,000 talented high school musicians try out for 1,500 chairs at the Super Bowl of band geekery: the Texas Music Educators Association Clinic/Convention in San Antonio. Once upon a time, I made the cut.

Texas Monthly, June 2007

Guarding the southern flank of the American dream.

Harper’sMagazine, October 2006

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

Ten years. More than three hundred women murdered. What is going on in Juárez? And why aren’t the Mexican authorities doing something about it?

Texas Monthly, June 2003

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

Widowed at 38, a Mexican citizen with no money and a sixth-grade education, she raised three proud American daughters and embraced life on her own terms.

Texas Monthly, February 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

Julián and Joaquin Castro’s résumés look as similar as they do: degrees from Stanford and Harvard, billable hours logged at a tony law firm, and now, promising careers in San Antonio politics. Nothing could please their mother more.

Texas Monthly, October 2002

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

In March 1836, 342 men fighting for Texas independence surrendered to Mexican general José de Urrea. A week later they were shot on orders of Santa Anna. Was it a massacre, as generations of schoolchildren have been taught, or an execution? The question has divided a historic Texas town.

Texas Monthly, May 2001

For years my relatives have claimed that they were robbed of oil and gas royalties on Padre Island. Last May a Brownsville jury agreed, vindicating - for now - the family’s proud heritage and proving that, sometimes, the little guy does win.

Texas Monthly, January 2001

As the country becomes increasingly divided, Brownsville comes together.

The New York Times Magazine, June 2024

The border between the United States and Mexico is in the news every day. But what is it like to visit destinations along the border?

The New York Times, February 2018

How a civic-minded, cowboy-themed party came to represent an identity that’s not so easily split.

Texas Monthly, May 2017

Why Mexican Americans love the Dallas Cowboys.

Texas Monthly, January 2017

Why the pope’s visit to Juárez resonated so deeply.

Texas Monthly,February 2016

Is Austin the state’s most segregated city?

Texas Monthly, February 2013

The Castro brother’s are Rosie’s boys, but they have a different story of America.

Zócalo Public Square, September 2012

A $2 million bronze monument honoring Tejanos was unveiled at the Capitol last week. Here’s why it’s historically significant to all Texans.

Texas Monthly, March 2012

Inside the vicious cartel war in northern Mexico - and one family’s struggle to survive.

Texas Monthly, February 2011

The neglected ’Third Space’ of the U.S.-Mexico border, an exotic fault line not easily accessible to mainstream understanding.

Zócalo Public Square, November 2010

What it used to be like to cross the border.

Texas Monthly, January 2008

Did Mexican authorities find the man who killed a crusading Nuevo Laredo editor? Or have they taken the easy way out (again)?

Texas Monthly, July 2004