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 was a freelancer for Texas Monthly from 1977 to 1981 and a staff writer from 1981 to 1990. He has written about undocumented immigrants, guerrillas, convicts, Mexican coal miners, a Mexican banker, security guards, and the Bandidos Motorcycle Club (which he also rode with) for publications as diverse as Soldier of Fortune and the Wall Street Journal. While working for Texas Monthly, he took jobs as a guard at a mental hospital, a security guard at six different companies, and a carnival worker so he could write about his experiences. In 1987, he drove every highway mile on the official map of Texas to write about the state for TM.
Reavis has written six books, including The Ashes of Waco, an investigation into the 1993 Waco siege, and has translated two books from Spanish. An anthology of his work, Texas Reporter, Texas Radical, was published in June 2022. Before retiring in 2014, he was a professor in the English department at North Carolina State University. He lives in Dallas.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador has always leaned left, but he shows a pragmatic centrist streak that leaves some supporters uneasy.
There are parallels between today’s protests against guns and the sixties protests against the Vietnam War—among them the criticism by adults.
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.
Dick J. Reavis was a crazy white boy at Texas Tech.
When San Antonio restaurateur Mario Cantú died last November, he left behind a legacy of political activism along with fine Mexican fare.
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?
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.
Can you name any of the fourteen Branch Davidian defence lawyers? They hope so.
In an affluent suburb of Monterrey, young Mexican professionals hunger for prestige and try to live like Americans.
For an adventurer in the Yucatán, suspicious bureaucrats and relentless pests stand in the way of tracking down a forgotten Mayan ruin.
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.
Among the harsh mountains of Chihuahua, Mennonite immigrants and Tarahumara Indians maintain their ancient ways.
On the eve of the Mexican elections, the country’s dwindling middle class prefers fatalism to Fabianism.
The assignment was the chance of a lifetime to see the whole state, once and for all. At times pure pleasure and at times a feat of will, it was always and foremost a writer’s dream come true.
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.
When a rural Texas says, “It looks like rain,” he’s really meditating on the nature of the universe.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Out of the Valley and into the Borderlands, where the architecture is erratic, the radio is heavenly, and the peso has lost its power.
The Rio Grande Valley never had a valley—except in the minds of developers who invented its name.
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.
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.
I’ve long dreamed of driving every highway in Texas. This year I’m doing it—all 32,000 miles worth.
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.
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.
Houston is famous for medical cures. But when British rock star Ronnie Lane came to town with a crippling disease and $1 million for research, all he got was crippling legal problems.
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.
Hank Milam was a businessman with $20,000 in equipment and a firm faith in the rules of the game.He took on the union that had ruled the Houston docks for fifty years and beat it on its own turf.
What’s wrong with Mexico is exactly what’s right with it.
The villains behind the seat belt law; the shoeshine boys behind the border bird trade; the pastor behind Austin’s chicest church.
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.
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.
He left his parents’ house in search of a world where things were black and white, where there were heroes and villains. What he found in the slums of Port Arthur was a world that would tolerate people like him-and take advantage of them.
A book on Mexico by New York Times correspondent Alan Riding is a little more than a rehash of recent history.
Three Texas Trivia games separate Lone Star zealots from ordinary believers.
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.
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.
W. A. Criswell has spent forty years convincing his huge flock at Dallas’ First Baptist Church that the end of the world is near. He hopes you’ll believe it too.
Masons in trouble; Wally in wonderland; vice in Amarillo; vitamins in Mount Pleasant; Czechs in print.
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.
Across the Panhandle stretches a thin red line that divides doughty plains dwellers from Texas’ lesser changed.
Today’s desperadoes are in the bays of the Texas coast, roping redfish and cursing the Parks and Wildlife Department.
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.