Word: laredo
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...LAREDO, TEXAS--This city of 65,000 which languishes on the banks of the Grande is, by federal statistics, the nation's poorest metropolitan area. Unemployment hovers around ten per cent, the median annual family income is less than $3,000 and, in some neighborhoods, is below $1,500. About a fifth of the city has new sewer service and more than half of the streets are unpaved. As many as 8,000 of Laredo's people migrate annually to do farm work. Illiteracy plagues one-sixth of the populace...
...Laredo is considered a key challenge for the poverty war, where the fight must be won if the nation's effort to eliminate economic deprivation is to be considered effective. Of 115 federal programs designed to fight poverty, Ladero is eligible for 112. Several million federal dollars have been funnelled in the city and surrounding Webb County...
...basic question, whose answer is vital to the poverty war's success, is very much at play in Laredo: how much of a role shall the estabilshed order have in running the program? Laredo is about 90 per cent Mexican-American. It is controlled, as are many South Texas cities, by a coalition of Anglos and Latinos; the latter are often regarded as Tios Tomases (Uncle Toms) by the more dissatisfied Latins. Those who rule Laredo have watched the poverty fight here closely and with some misgivings, fearing political and economic change that could threaten their power...
...Laredo poverty war leaders are keenly sensitive to this concern on the part of the local civic and political leaders; indeed, many of the antipoverty officials are themselves powers in the community...
There has been criticism by some local leaders that the poverty program is top-heavy with bureaucrats and functioning with wasteful inefficiency. Lately a new problem has arisen, exacerbating the crucial question of how independent the poverty war will be of Laredo's power structure...