The Rise of Mexico’s President-Elect
Andrés Manuel López Obrador has always leaned left, but he shows a pragmatic centrist streak that leaves some supporters uneasy.
Dick J. Reavis is a former staff writer at Texas Monthly. He has written about motorcycle gangs, undocumented immigrants, guerrillas, convicts, coal miners, security guards, and banks for publications as diverse as Soldier of Fortune and the Wall Street Journal. He is a professor in the English department at North Carolina State University.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador has always leaned left, but he shows a pragmatic centrist streak that leaves some supporters uneasy.
By Dick Reavis
There are parallels between today’s protests against guns and the sixties protests against the Vietnam War—among them the criticism by adults.
By Dick Reavis
Mexico in 2006 may not be Florida in 2000, but there are at least two similarities: The final results of its closest-ever presidential election are taking pretty long to determine. And however it comes out, a lot of people are going to be unhappy.
By Dick Reavis
Dick J. Reavis was a crazy white boy at Texas Tech.
By Dick Reavis
When San Antonio restaurateur Mario Cantú died last November, he left behind a legacy of political activism along with fine Mexican fare.
By Dick Reavis
His election was historic for many reasons, not least because he embodies the stifled hopes of generations of his countrymen. Still, the obstacles he faces when he assumes the presidency on December 1 are considerable. Will he be able to deliver?
By Dick Reavis
Just as congressional hearings are set to begin, an exclusive excerpt from a new book casts a different light on the government’s role in the fiery end to the siege at Mount Carmel.
By Dick Reavis
Can you name any of the fourteen Branch Davidian defence lawyers? They hope so.
By Dick Reavis
In an affluent suburb of Monterrey, young Mexican professionals hunger for prestige and try to live like Americans.
By Dick Reavis
For an adventurer in the Yucatán, suspicious bureaucrats and relentless pests stand in the way of tracking down a forgotten Mayan ruin.
By Dick Reavis
The parallels between Mikhail Gorbachev and Mexico’s Carlos Salinas just might end when it comes to their effectiveness at achieving reform in their nations.
By Dick Reavis
Among the harsh mountains of Chihuahua, Mennonite immigrants and Tarahumara Indians maintain their ancient ways.
By Dick Reavis
A glowing beacon near Haynesville; broomweed royalties in Foard County; Archer City’s decorated dump; curative waters and a grand hotel in Mineral Wells; faux Alamo in Farmersville.
By Dick Reavis
When a rural Texas says, “It looks like rain,” he’s really meditating on the nature of the universe.
By Dick Reavis
Out itinerant reporter visits with a Lubbock man determined to preserve the American Way of Life; the doughty clan that brought beer to Levelland; a windy lady fascinated with the weather and a rusticated professor gone to seed.
By Dick Reavis
In the Mesquite Kingdom, where the coyotes howl, the wind blows free at the MacArthur Academy of Freedom, an honest face gets you a phone and immigration throws mariachi parties.
By Dick Reavis
In search of elusive Central Texas: along the Cold Beer trail, inside Killeen’s soldier shops, through the hills of Toy Texas, deep within a nameless cave.
By Dick Reavis
Across pastoral northeast Texas, where Baptists debate the niceties of immersion, truckers and hookers turn the airwaves blue, and bass have their private lives laid bare by electronic snooping.
By Dick Reavis
Tales of the Piney Woods: the original kinds of the forest, the Bright way to get a chicken in every pot, the gamble of today’s Tenaha. Plus: an unusual graveyard, a haunting ruin, a chilling church name.
By Dick Reavis
Passing (slowly) through Kendleton. Then on to Houston, where student murals record the march of time and Vietnam vets gather; to a meal so good it’s kept under lock and key; and finally to the (formerly) Golden Triangle.
By Dick Reavis
Back from the Gulf and along its coastal bend, picture-book towns offer scenes that have nearly vanished from urban Texas, not to mention the most confusing sign, the best noontime stop, and the most Shakespearean site.
By Dick Reavis
From the harsh landscape of the Permian Basin, whose residents find their faith in free enterprise tested by hard times; to the subtropical city of San Antonio, whose Hispanic citizens have gone gaga over Goyo-Goyo; into deepest South Texas, where the old times of the Parr machine are not forgotten.
By Dick Reavis
Travels through the Trans-Pecos—splendor in the Big Bend, the greening of the Alpine grasslands, today’s version of profitable ranching, escape from the rat race in South Brewster County, innkeeping Indians in Van Horn—to El Paso, way out on the edge of Texas.
By Dick Reavis
Out of the Valley and into the Borderlands, where the architecture is erratic, the radio is heavenly, and the peso has lost its power.
By Dick Reavis
The Rio Grande Valley never had a valley—except in the minds of developers who invented its name.
By Dick Reavis
In his dream to create a dynastic empire along the Rio Grande, Chito Longoria went against the wishes of his family and the values of his native land.
By Dick Reavis
The view from the Great Freeway: I-35 is two things, the speediest drive from Dallas to the Valley and the clearest division of Texas into West and East.
By Dick Reavis
Screaming headlines and shameless photos make Laredo’s El Arma! the largest-selling Spanish weekly in the U.S.; Norbert Lyssy has mile to go before he sleeps (soundly); within our midst lies an alien and insurgent clan, the New England of Texas.
By Dick Reavis
Don Williams won’t do beer commercials, sign autographs, or sing in honk-tonks. If that means he isn’t a superstar, that’s fine with him.
By Dick Reavis
Pancho Barrio, an ex-accountant, a charismatic Catholic, and the mayor of Juarez, hopes to topple the ruling party in a July governor’s race.
By Dick Reavis
The villains behind the seat belt law; the shoeshine boys behind the border bird trade; the pastor behind Austin’s chicest church.
By Dick Reavis
Before Ruiz v. Estelle, prisons in Texas were the safest, most productive, and most economical in the nation. Now—after costs have quadrupled—our prisons are the most dangerous in the U.S.
By Dick Reavis
Battles at the border; weirdos at the Starck Club; monument at the end of the tracks; Mr. Migra goes after Zopilote; Baptists at each other's throats.
By Dick Reavis
A book on Mexico by New York Times correspondent Alan Riding is a little more than a rehash of recent history.
By Dick Reavis
Three Texas Trivia games separate Lone Star zealots from ordinary believers.
By Dick Reavis
Why did I trade in my trouble-free condo for an aging country home with decrepit plumbing? I’m trying to figure that out myself.
By Dick Reavis
These fourteen Texas sheriffs are everything you thought a sheriff ought to be. But look quick; the old-time county lawman is riding off into the sunset.
By Dick Reavis
Masons in trouble; Wally in wonderland; vice in Amarillo; vitamins in Mount Pleasant; Czechs in print.
By Dick Reavis
You too can be an author-if you’re willing to publish the book yourself. All you have to have is a stack of paper, a tale to tell, and a couple of thousand bucks.
By Dick Reavis
Across the Panhandle stretches a thin red line that divides doughty plains dwellers from Texas’ lesser changed.
By Dick Reavis
Today’s desperadoes are in the bays of the Texas coast, roping redfish and cursing the Parks and Wildlife Department.
By Dick Reavis
West Texas was a desert when this little irrigation device came along. Now it’s a desert that produces more cotton than anywhere else in the country.
By Dick Reavis
Charlie Brooks was the first man to die by lethal injection, but everyone wondered whether he or his partner was the real murderer. In his last days, Brooks answered that, and other questions.
By Dick Reavis
Every year communities scattered across Texas hold wet-dry elections. Each one pits the forces of fundamentalism against the forces of realism. This is the story of one such election.
By Dick Reavis
Anybody can get a job as a security guard. Anybody.
By Dick Reavis
On the surface, Mexico’s presidential election looks a lot like ours—rallies, placards, speeches—but the outcome there is never in doubt.
By Dick Reavis
People still think of cotton as a Dixieland crop, but the heart of the nation’s production is on the dry, flat, and windswept High Plains of Texas.
By Dick Reavis
Supplicants in the Valley worship at the shrine of faith healer Don Pedrito Jaramillo, more powerful in death than he was in life.
By Dick Reavis
A carny’s life is an endless ramble from one small town to the next—and that’s why he likes it.
By Dick Reavis
In her darkest, final hours, a young mother turns to a new kind of medical care for help.
By Dick Reavis