AUTHOR: Michael Schaffer

AUTHOR: Michael Schaffer TITLE: American Dreamers SOURCE: U.S. News & World Report 133 no8 12-14, 16 Ag 26-S 2 2002 (C) U.S. News & World Report L.P. All rights reserved. For subscription information please contact (800) 338-8130. Web site: www.usnews.com

EL PASO--The colonias of Texas--impoverished settlements along the Mexican border that typically lack water, sewers, and paved roads--have been called America's Third World, a new Appalachia, a national disgrace. Which raises an interesting question: Why do so many people want to live here?

In the 13 years since Texas first tried to curb the growth of these rural slums, the population has at least doubled, from 250,000 to 500,000--and some state officials figure the number may top 700,000 across 1,800 outposts from El Paso to Brownsville. The colonias, it turns out, are a dusty foothold on the lowest rung of the American success ladder: Poor Hispanic Americans-- about 85 percent of these people are legal U.S. residents--desperately want to own land, and they'll move from cramped city apartments to unimproved patches of desert to do so. "We wanted to have something for ourselves," says Olga Ruiz, who moved 11 years ago from New Mexico to an arid stretch of west Texas that bears the unlikely name College Park. The long- promised water lines have yet to appear, but College Park has grown from a windblown outpost of four families to a community of over 50 households, and her own home has grown from a trailer to a sturdy two-room house built on a foundation the family laid itself.

A decade ago, colonias like Ruiz's were the stuff of horror stories. In Texas alone, some 250,000 people--mainly legal residents with a tiny pile of money to invest in a piece of their own property--lived without water and power along the 1,200-mile border. Residents, who had been promised by developers that basic services were coming, endured high rates of parasitic disease, tuberculosis, and hepatitis. Embarrassed Texas legislators allowed counties to ban new colonias and began sending money to improve existing ones.

Mostly, though, the residents are making things better themselves. True, the communities remain desperately poor: In June, census officials announced that the Rio Grande Valley colonia of Cameron Park was the nation's most impoverished place. But by creating independent water districts and tapping grant money, the people of the colonias have improved basic services. When the current round of infrastructure projects ends, officials estimate, three quarters of residents will have water and sewerage. Health services have improved, and a recent $175 million bond issue to fix unpaved colonia roads--something that kept school buses away on rainy days--passed overwhelmingly. "We're not just talking about a catastrophe anymore," says Joe Rubio, whose El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization has helped residents demand better living conditions. "Now we can actually push for things like economic and human development."

Anastacia Ledesma, 72, who has lived at a colonia called Sparks for more than 40 years, has witnessed the birth and rebirth of these border communities. In 1959, Ledesma, who was born in Mexico, and her late husband, a Texas native and World War II veteran, put down $200 for about a quarter of an acre in the desert east of town. "At first, before we built the house, it was like camping out," she says. It was not until seven years ago that her colonia became one of the first to get water; she and other activists won state and private grant money to establish an independent water authority to do what the El Paso authority would not. Today, the colonia-- whose newly paved streets bear the names Shakespeare, Keats, Trollope, Brandeis, and Bryn Mawr--is a model for less-established settlements. Its population has grown to nearly 3,000 residents, half of them arriving since the water began flowing in 1995. Population in all the colonias is expected to double by 2010.

They will come. The improvements have brought their own problems: Newcomers threaten to overwhelm services. "When we got the water, that's when so many of the people came in," says Ledesma. There are other reasons the communities are growing: Because the establishment of new colonias has been curbed, people are flocking to parcels of existing outposts. And folks who bought in years ago are having their own children. "We still have lots of those young families, and they still have to have a place to live," explains Kermit Black, who studies colonias at Texas A&M University. Although most of the residents are U.S. citizens, Black says Texas remains far from making their rambling settlements a part--albeit an impoverished part--of mainstream Texas life. "For a lot of people," he says, "the system's just not working very well."

Despite years of talk, Washington hasn't done much to help fix that system. The Environmental Protection Agency provided $320 million over 10 years to border states to improve wastewater treatment facilities, many of them in colonias. Last year, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez promised to pay more attention to impoverished communities outside the old-line big cities, establishing a task force to streamline assistance to colonias along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border. "We as a society have a responsibility to help these people," he said on a tour of west Texas colonias. But when HUD finally rolled out its Colonias Gateway Initiative, it asked for just $16 million--and that figure isn't a sure thing, since the administration must wring some of it from poor parts of wealthier counties. Says Rubio, noting that building the independent water district for colonias like Sparks cost $98 million, "When you're talking about infrastructure, little grants like that are a drop in the bucket."

On the dusty plains that stretch out from El Paso, residents aren't waiting for Washington. A visit to a colonia is like a visit to a hard-hat site, with every house in some state of construction, expansion, or fix-up. Some residents are still living in cars, trucks, or trailers parked on their new property. Others live in improbably big suburban homes that look like they've been dropped into a giant sandbox. Most are somewhere in between.

Last year, six years of badgering local officials and fighting for grant dollars finally brought a water hookup to the middle of Panorama Village, a fast-growing, 150-person settlement east of town. Neighbors took it from there, installing the last runs of copper pipe to hook their homes to the main. After the water flowed, Oscar Solis, a neighborhood leader, organized a party to mark the occasion. Neighbors roasted a pig, hired a mariachi band, and invited politicians and the media--with the idea, Solis says, of showing off "all the work we'd done to make a dream come true." But on the day of the party, it rained. Water rushed across the desert, turning Panorama Village's unpaved streets into muddy trenches. The TV trucks wouldn't turn off the main road to get to the hamlet. "We celebrated," Solis says. "But there's still much to do."

Source: Texas Department of Health