Tired of negotiating pot holes that dot the area in front of the Ruskin post office, I recently drove around back of the Thriftway Plaza to Seventh Avenue Northeast. My interest was captured by a store-front sign that read Alvarez Tortilla Factory. Unless you're a neighborhood regular, it's a little off the beaten path. ...more

September 17, 2008

Tired of negotiating pot holes that dot the area in front of the Ruskin post office, I recently drove around back of the Thriftway Plaza to Seventh Avenue Northeast. My interest was captured by a store-front sign that read Alvarez Tortilla Factory. Unless you're a neighborhood regular, it's a little off the beaten path. ...more

September 17, 2008

Despite efforts to add Border Patrol agents to areas where immigrant traffic is high and drug violence is flaring, officers assigned to the 2,000-mile boundary with Mexico are bunched up near the California coast. And some critics see politics at play. ...more

August 31, 2008

South Texans eager to salvage what they can from waterlogged homes struck by Hurricane Dolly have another problem: The floodwaters they're slogging through are laced with stinging fire ants, snakes and tarantulas. ...more

July 26, 2008

Residents across south Texas slogged through knee-deep muddy waters, tiptoed around downed power lines and dug through debris Thursday, but were thankful that Hurricane Dolly didn't pack the wallop they had feared. ...more

July 25, 2008

Hurricane Dolly rolled into south Texas and northern Mexico on Wednesday, deluging the Rio Grande Valley with rain, knocking out power to tens of thousands of people and ripping roofs off resorts on South Padre Island. ...more

July 24, 2008

Dolly spun into a hurricane Tuesday, heading toward the U.S.-Mexico border and the heavily populated Rio Grande Valley, where officials feared heavy rains could cause massive flooding and levee breaks. ...more

July 23, 2008

Here's a change that Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign really can believe in: There is no chance whatsoever that she will lose to Barack Obama this week. ...more

February 25, 2008

Founded 240 years ago, this sleepy Texas town along the Rio Grande has outlasted the Spanish, then the Mexicans and then the short-lived independent Republic of Texas. But it may not survive the U.S. government's effort to secure the Mexican border with a steel fence. ...more

November 11, 2007

SEBRING –– Santos Guadalupe De La Rosa likes to say that farm work is his college education. If that's so, then his education started when he was 7 years old and continues until today as a farm worker specialist for the Florida Non-Profit Housing in Sebring. De La Rosa's family members were all migrant workers. His parents, aunts, grandfather –– the whole clan –– traveled together like gypsies to wherever there was something ready to pick. At age 5, De La Rosa was babysat by his 9 - and 11-year-old sisters. By the time he was 7, he was working alongside his family in the field and traveling the crop circuit. The family was based in the Texas border town of Mercedes, in the Rio Grande Valley. ...more

October 1, 2007