The Rio Grande meanders to the Gulf of Mexico through a vast alluvial plain where Mexico and the United States have rubbed off on each other for generations.
In the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, the flat river valley, known there as La Cuenca -- the basin -- is part irrigated farmland, part thorn scrub and part urban sprawl.
On the Texas side, where this southern region is called the Lower Rio Grande Valley, a checkerboard of cotton, sorghum, citrus, tomato and sugarcane fields is punctuated by an occasional water tower. Strip malls of Wal-Marts and Home Depots flank Interstate 83, and struggling shantytowns dot the back roads.
Many Texans draw an imaginary demarcation they call the Mexican-Dixon Line, from El Paso east to Houston, which essentially consigns heavily Latino south Texas to Mexico.
Valley residents feel the same pull to assimilate with American culture that people in most immigrant communities do. But Mexico is so close that it has helped shape a distinctive "Tejano" culture, in which Mexican and American traditions wash back and forth.
Read the rest at SF Gate (aka the San Francisco Chronicle) has an article on the Tejano Culture of the southern Rio Grande Valley.
They get some right, some wrong, but its worth the read. I might be wrong too since I was Northern Rio Grande Valley instead of the SRGV and the culture is different than the 'Tejano' one.
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