In announcing an ambitious renewable-energy push this week, the Biden administration highlighted a vessel under construction in Brownsville as proof of the economic opportunities of going green.
The tortillas de harina at this Brownsville restaurant are amazing, but just one is more than enough.
Situated on the frontlines of the immigration crisis, the Angry Tias y Abuelas group acts as the eyes and ears of the border.
A revitalized downtown and a new network of hiking, biking, and paddling trails add to the appeal of this border town by the beach.
At hearings in tent courtrooms this week, migrant families were confused and fearful about their prospects.
On the first day of “return to Mexico” hearings, attorneys and journalists were turned away from the tent courtrooms where the hearings are taking place.
Art and activism intersected at the Rio Grande Valley’s first Encuentro en la Frontera.
Falcon Lake hit a balmy 116 while the heat index in Brownsville was an eyeball-melting 128 degrees, nine degrees warmer than Death Valley.
Brownsville police officer Valerie Rivas was charged with smuggling her undocumented boyfriend. She’s been acquitted. He’s likely to be deported.
It took nine years for him to meat his match.
With roots in Mexico, barbacoa became a mainstay on South Texas ranches, where cowboys were hungry and cow heads were plentiful (Texans were expert at nose-to-tail eating long before it became trendy). Today, most commercial barbacoa is steamed or done in pressure cookers to comply with health codes. Vera’s time-honored…
How the merger of two South Texas universities has stirred some complicated feelings about a fuzzy bronco.
Elon Musk has some big plans.
With support from the Legislature, SpaceX may soon be launching rockets from Texas’ southernmost beach. That doesn’t mean a few nature lovers aren’t still ready to fight.
Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin have both bought up a lot of land along the border. Brownsville and Van Horn are not exactly where you'd expect to find the cutting-edge vanguard of private, high-tech space exploration. …
The Sunday barbacoa luncheon was one of my family’s few traditions. Had I known what was in those tacos, it might not have been.
It’s hard out there for a turtle. Especially one that’s endangered, y’all.
Since the closing of Mancha’s Meat Market in Eagle Pass, there is only one place in all of Texas—maybe the entire country—that still serves traditional barbacoa: whole beef heads cooked in an underground pit over wood coals. The sign out front of Vera’s in Brownsville says it all: “Barbacoa en…
McAllen and Brownsville occupy the no. 1 and 2 slots on a new list based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2011 American Community Survey.
Jaime Gonzalez Jr.'s parents don't understand why Brownsville officers shot their son three times, but a 911 reveals that police asked the eighth-grader to drop his gun several times.
The cocaine goes north. The money goes south. And Mexican kingpins like Juan García Abrego laugh all the way to the bank—a Texas bank, that is.
From the Great Storm washing ashore in Galveston to Charles Elmer Doolin cooking up the frito in San Antonio…
From the Great Storm washing ashore in Galveston to Charles Elmer Doolin cooking up the frito in San Antonio…
Why a lavish two-volume attack on the border fence, with photos by Maurice Sherif, misses the mark.
Where’s the best place to get a perfect plate of enchiladas? A chile relleno to die for? A salsa you’ll never forget? Come along on our tour of the fifty greatest Mexican restaurants in Texas, from Hugo’s, in Houston, to Tacos Santa Cecilia, in El Paso. This is not your…
Hector Perez loved his country enough to die for it. A year later, his family is still paying the price of patriotism.
Fernando Spada and Fernando Mendez are the Karpov and Kasparov of Brownsville: chess champions whose lifelong competition has produced a rivalry every bit as fierce as those of Ali and Frazier, McEnroe and Borg, or Nicklaus and Palmer. Did I mention that they’re in the fourth grade?…
And the story of how I started spelling it that way (with the accent) begins with a kidnapping.
The grand opening of a new H-E-B in McAllen drew crowds—including several who showed up to hear a native son read from his collection of locally set short stories.
How did a thirty-year-old Mexican man end up dead on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande in Matamoros?…
A brutal—and very funny—South Texas memoir by Domingo Martinez.
Will SpaceX build a launch site for its commercial spacecraft in Brownsville? …
I’m not here to tell you that I’m an authority on barbacoa. I know enough about it to be dangerous, and I’ve eaten enough of it to know that what I ate at Vera’s was something special. The funny part is that the best place to get barbacoa…
A jogging path along the Rio Grande was a treasured, secret place—until it became part of the front lines in a war I still don’t understand.
Little did I know when I wrote the following words nearly four years ago—“Please, patronize Wild Blue before it’s too late”—that my greatest fear would come true. One of the true stalwarts of Texas Barbecue–Wild Blue B.B.Q., located in the near-Brownsville city of Los Fresnos—will shut its doors…
The border fence cuts through a Valley farmer's property, upending his family's life.
Blackburn is the founder of the Magick Circle, in Brownsville, where he offers card readings, cleansings, and spiritual healing. I first learned about folk healing from an elderly woman in my neighborhood named Rita. None of our neighbors in Brownsville liked her much. They called her la bruja. The witch.
Brownsville’s first federal judge was a legendary figure in my house. So legendary that I never believed my father when he said he knew the man.
When people ask me if cartel violence will find its way into Texas, I tell them it already has—and it’s going to get worse.
They say you can’t go home again—especially when pretty much your entire family has moved away.
Happy Texas Independence Day! Read five stories about our state's history, including this piece about the battlegrounds of Texas, which tell an incredible story of struggle, sorrow, triumph, and terror.
The Brownsville native and longtime Austinite has spent most of his adult life contemplating the future: A progenitor of the scruffy cyberpunk fiction movement (he edited the short-story anthology Mirrorshades and co-authored The Difference Engine with William Gibson), he has penned ten sci-fi novels and several works of nonfiction, including…
Match 25 Texas towns with their slogans and you may win a prize.
Which Américo Paredes book was made into a movie starring Edward James Olmos?…
At the entrance to Las Pozas, the logical, the predictable, and the commonplace evaporate, giving way to one of the most enchanting places on earth.
Like sadistic teenagers who introduce fire ants into an otherwise docile ant farm, the producers of MTV’s voyeuristic soap opera The Real World make casting decisions based not on avoiding conflict but on encouraging it. This season’s stereotypes are a jock, a poet, a comely lesbian, a city girl, a…
