Searching for La Perdida |Oxford American magazine

This one was special. It was a story in which living it was as necessary as writing it. Searching for La Perdida appeared in the Oxford American’s Texas Music issue. The piece is about finding home by following the music born from our South Texas land. We travel slowly off the ranch and out of the […]

Children at the Border | Analysis

Over the summer I covered the Texas press for the Columbia Journalism Review’s U.S. Project. In early June the increasing number of unaccompanied children arriving on the border from Central America captured the nation’s attention and became one of the most important stories of the summer. Here is a recap. On June 5, the conservative news […]

Living Under the Law of Border Security

Border security or border enforcement often brings to mind images of green and white-painted Border Patrol SUVs roaming across that contentious line between the United States and Mexico. But across South Texas, which I am defining as everything below San Antonio, border security is a vast apparatus involving multiple agencies across a wide swath of […]

Backlash to a Rape published in The Texas Observer

This piece was published on the sites of  The Texas Observer and Women in Media and News. Download pdf of story here. A few days after my 16th birthday, a woman walking along a lonely highway in the neighboring town accepted a ride from an acquaintance. She climbed into a car carrying four men. Linda Gaitan […]