Shopping on the Mexican border

“McALLEN, Texas — Hidalgo County in the southernmost tip of Texas is the poorest county of 250,000 or more people in the United States, with nearly half its families living below the poverty line. Vendors hawk bootleg DVDs and homemade tacos out of the back of pickup trucks. Stray dogs roam the scrubland along highways.

Hidalgo is also home to one of America’s highest-grossing shopping malls, the sprawling La Plaza Mall of McAllen, Texas. Owned by Simon Property Group, the nation’s No. 1 mall developer, La Plaza features valet parking, trendy clothing chains like Abercrombie & Fitch and Banana Republic, and high-end jewelers Swarovski and Helzberg Diamonds. La Plaza generates monthly sales of well over $450 a square foot, compared with a national mall average of $392.”

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