Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley

This post was written by Rosa Flores, our event host.

I'm a television reporter in Houston, Texas; but my roots run deep into the lands of Mexico. My grandparents on my mother's side are half Spanish and half Mexican. My grandparents on my dad's side are from Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon, Mexico.

When I was born, my parents lived in Progreso, Texas; but I was born
in Rio Bravo, Mexico. Odd, hugh? My parents didn't have enough
money to pay a hospital in America; so my mother crossed the border and into Mexico to deliver her 4th of July baby.

Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley was an amazing cultural experience. I remember going to Nuevo Progreso, Mexico to buy "tortillas," avocados, soap, "pan dulce". you name it, and my family found it two miles away in Mexico.

This was before September 11th so crossing the border was easy. Sometimes immigration agents didn't even ask us for our documents, or if we were United States citizens.

The only thing agents asked was "¿Que llevan?" Or, 'What are you bringing back from Mexico?" So, for me and for the people who grow up on the border between the United States and Mexico, there isn't much of a border. Like any other neighborhood, I had family, friends and acquaintances a few miles from my home, it just happened to be in Mexico.
Summers were always fun! My father would drive us to my grandparent's ranch in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. It was a blast! To my cousins and me it was an amusement park. We had natural water holes to play, a river to fish, and a forest filled with Mexican Indian artifacts. Among the many things we found were arrowheads, stone axes, stone bowls and pieces of pottery.

You have probably figured out that I like digging into the past.
That's why I'm working on a book about the history of the town where I grew up. The book, titled Progreso, is due to publish next year. I found that Captain James Baker, from Houston law firm Baker Botts invested in my hometown in the 1920s. The rumor in town is that infamous gangster Al Capone traveled the area during the Prohibition.

Before speakeasies on the Mexican side attracted people to Progreso, Texas, a visionary by the name of Juan Jose Hinojosa requested a land grant from the Spanish crown in 1776 and was given rights to the land in 1790.

Through the years the border changed on my town many times; it has belonged to Mexican Indians, the Spanish Crown, Texas and the United
States at different points in time. Even though the border has moved
many times, I am proud to say that my roots have survived the turmoil.

Journalists from Oaxaca serve an audience in the U.S.

Victor Ruiz and his wife, Olga Rosario Avendaño, are the publishers of a website that offers news about the state of Oaxaca, Mexico.

Victor says that their website, called El Olor a Mi Tierra (The Scent of My Homeland), has a large audience in the U.S. and in the metropolitan area of Mexico City.

The site gets 3,000 visitors a day, most of them from outside of Oaxaca. Many residents in their home region of Oaxaca, a relatively poor state, leave home to find work and want to find out what´s happening back home.

El Olor a Mi Tierra publishes news about town festivals and local people as well as coverage of politics, the environment, human rights and immigration.

A community service

Victor and Olga started thinking about starting their own web page during the elections of 2000, when they saw how foreign reporters were sending their stories back home by email. They themselves were still relying on a fax machine to transmit their stories.

Using their own money they paid a web designer about $300 to set up their page, bought a web domain for $75 and got started.

Today they are generating about $1,000 to $1,200 a month in ad revenues from governmental and nonprofit organizations, enough to cover their modest expenses. Their office is in their home in San Sebastian Tutla. They´re breaking even.

Victor and Olga earn their living as correspondents for international news agencies such as Agence France Press and EFE of Spain as well as newspapers such as El Universal of Mexico City.

Often the big news organizations will use only a few paragraphs of the stories, so Victor and Olga publish the rest on their website. They generate much of the content but sometimes will pay a correspondent 100 pesos (about $7.50) for a story or a photograph.

Both Victor and Olga have participated in the courses offered by the Center of Digital Journalism at the University of Guadalajara so that can hone their skills.

Their news service is a good example of how digital journalism manages to link people across the border.

Todos Somos Americanos

How are we connected to Mexico? Travel, immigration, trade & NAFTA, diplomatic relations are some of the ways we are linked. We share are a border and both belong to the continent of North America. As one attorney in Mexico City put it "We are tied at the hip."

How do policy-makers see this relationship?
This overview from the Inter-American Dialogue outlines some of the big issues in US-Mexico relations.

Their Mexico press page sums up what some of the policy experts are saying about this relationship:

If everything was going right Mexico should be growing huge amounts, but that never happened. In the worst of times, Mexico really did get knocked off its perch," Peter Hakim in Reuters on August 4, 2009.

"La novedad más notable sea con México, que ha pasado rápidamente al frente de la agenda política en Washington. Hay mucha más atención a México que antes, y el reconocimiento de que la política antidrogas también ha fracasado fue también muy bien recibido en la región," Michael Shifter in AP on April 27, 2009.

“Obama has had a quick learning curve on Mexico. He understands that this is absolutely crucial,” Michael Shifter in The Houston Chronicle on April 16, 2009.

"Mexico is facing a grave challenge and a threatening level of violence, but we're not talking Afghanistan here. Mexico is a state that has built up its governmental capacities and effectiveness in recent years, but it's also a neighbor that is now under stress and needs reinforcement," Michael Shifter in The Christian Science Monitor on March 25, 2009.

Reading Mexico

How do we think of Mexico? To answer this, let’s think about where our information on Mexico comes from. At the World Affairs Council, we consult the Woodrow Wilson Institue's Mexico Portal, the World Bank's Mexico page, and Mexico's bicentennial page among others.

Through our Mexico speaker series we have learned about Mexican experts such as Shannon O'Neil at the Council on Foreign Relations, or Edward Schumacher-Matos at Harvard.

Here are some reading lists we think you may enjoy --
Shannon O’Neil’s reading list on Mexican Politics
National Geographic’s recommended reading on Mexico
The World Affairs of Houston recommended reading list

What is on your Mexico reading list?

About this blog

The purpose of this blog is to engage Houston students in a discussion on Mexico in preparation for the VivaMexico student forum on January 27th. We will examine our perceptions of the country, Mexican identity and culture, our sources of information on Mexico, young people, the internet and more. We hope to deepen students’ understanding of the country and to encourage further exploration and study.

We invite Mexican experts, journalists, artists, teachers, Mexican Peace Corps volunteers, and most importantly, students to contribute to this blog. It is a chance to ask questions, consider points of view, and leave with new questions.