Al Norte del Rio

Few borders in the world present more contrasts than that separating the United States and Mexico.  Beginning in Texas, the border follows the Rio Grande River – or, as they call it in Mexico, el Rio Bravo del Norte.  Al norte (to the north), the borderlands in Texas have long reflected the complex diversity of this unique region, a place where American cowboy culture intersects and freely blends with the rich colors, sounds, and culinary traditions of Latin America.

After the Rio Grande’s course completes the geographic curvature that gives the iconic Big Bend National Park its name, it flows steadily southeast to the Gulf of Mexico.  The eastern edges of the rugged Trans-Pecos blend with the tranquil beauty of the western fringes of the Texas Hill Country, and then give way to the harsh thorn scrub of the flat South Texas brushlands before reaching the last fragments of lush ebony and sabal palm forests in the rapidly developing lower Rio Grande Valley.

The photographs in this collection were all made within that slice of Texas bordered by the Rio Grande to the south; the Pecos River to the west; the Gulf to the east; and, somewhat roughly, the Nueces River to the north.  It’s an area that once led to war: Mexico claimed its border extended to the Nueces; Texas asserted it ended at the Rio Grande. Today, as migrants flow north from Latin America in search of a better life, it remains at the center of controversy. 

But this region is not only a crossroads of humanity; it is a land of immense and dynamic natural biodiversity, where tropical species at the very tip of their northern ranges, found nowhere else in the United States but here, and hanging on precariously as population growth, agricultural and urban development, and construction of a massive, looming border wall continue to encroach upon their native habitats, mix with western species that sometimes show up, but are more commonly found in the mountains and deserts of Arizona and New Mexico.

This is also the land of my childhood, where my love of nature was first nurtured, but from which I fled in adulthood.  Yet this place of marked contrasts and seeming contradictions continues to maintain a grasp on me, calling me back again and again, as I suspect it always will.