Tex-Mex
Photographs by Bruce Dale and Joel Sartore
Comprehensive coverage against unknown danger. The cleansing power of a strong wind. An unburdened heart. By all accounts these are good things to have for surviving on the Rio Grande border. It is in many was a troubled region, shaped by forces well beyond local control. Drug traffickers pass through with tons of South American cocaine and marijuana, bringing violence and corruption. Illegal immigrants scramble across endlessly to grab a piece of the American dream laid out before them on television. Blue-chip companies set up shop just south of the border for the magical combination o f Third World labor costs and overnight delivery to U.S. markets. Anything anybody doesn’t want—toxic wastes, raw sewage, corpses—tends to end up in the river itself.
Yet away from the cities, the river winds through a landscape of stillness and beauty. Clouds spread out in loose, motionless rows, their underbellies pink with the reflected desert. Creosote bush and deep-rooted mesquite grow in sparse clumps with, here and there, a stalk of creamy yucca flowering voluptuously. In the far, empty places, it is easy to forget the ugliness of the cities and to enjoy the river drifting beneath the smooth limestone bluffs and to watch the kestrels soaring overhead.
NGM 1996/02