Word: laredos
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After the battle royale over Texas redistricting, it all comes down to a brawl on the streets of Laredo. It is there, in the rough and tumble of South Texas politics, that Democrats may have a chance to gain a congressional seat following Wednesday's U.S. Supreme Court decision that, for the most part, upheld the controversial redistricting orchestrated three years ago by former Congressman Tom DeLay. But the fight over the seat currently held by Republican Henry Bonilla also could reopen old wounds between the Democratic Hispanic base and liberal Anglo leadership...
From the moment you set foot in the boomtowns of the Rio Grande Valley, you sense you are watching a gold rush, headlong and free spirited and corrupt and ingenious. Stand on a corner some morning in Laredo, Texas, and watch the first of 8,000 trucks a day hauling the global economy north and south, 18-wheelers full of bulldozer claws and baby cribs, all passing through a town that once didn't bother to pave the streets. Now it can't pour concrete fast enough. The banks are open 7 to 7, seven days a week; the pager...
...often said the border is its own country, "Amexica," neither Mexican nor American. "The border is not where the U.S. stops and Mexico begins," says Laredo mayor Betty Flores. "It's where the U.S. blends into Mexico." Both sides regard their sovereign governments as distant and dysfunctional. They are proud of their ability to take care of themselves, solve their problems faster and cheaper than any faraway bureaucrat. The Brownsville, Texas, fire trucks answer sirens on the other side; in Tijuana, Mexico, health clinics send shuttle buses every morning to meet people coming over for everything from dentistry to dialysis...
...DeLay, a Baptist born in the border city of Laredo, said he "spent a lot of time" praying about his decision and that his personal relationship with Jesus drives his day-to-day actions. "My faith is who I am," he said. When DeLay was booked on the Texas charges, he wore his Congressional I.D. pin and flashed a broad smile designed to thwart Democrats who had hoped to make wide use of an image of a glowering DeLay. "I said a little prayer before I actually did the fingerprint thing, and the picture," he said. "My prayer was basically...
...month-long, bi-national celebration of George Washington's birthday recently began in Laredo, the Texas border town where debutantes and politicians gather to attend balls and watch the Mexican Army join the parade-the only place in the U.S., in fact, where a foreign army is allowed to march down the street. Parade organizers say the 108-year tradition is evidence of the close ties between Mexico and Texas, but those ties seem lately to be fraying as the 1,250-mile border becomes increasingly dangerous. To the east of Laredo, renegade Mexican Army commandos are part...