Border homesteading – colonias in Texas – (interesting)

Texas had about 1,400 colonias as of 2002. Broadly speaking, they are neighborhoods and subdivisions — mostly plotted land, but not always — along the U.S.-Mexico border. The term is used mostly to mean the underdeveloped communities that represent a modern-day homesteading movement.

About 400,000 people from El Paso to Brownsville call a colonia home. Most of them are in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the poorest parts of the United States. These rural, unincorporated communities of 20 or more dwellings are physically isolated from urban areas and mostly don’t benefit much from tax-based improvements administered by towns and cities.

Colonias also face water-related problems, such as availability, affordability and even access to clean drinking water, drainage and sewage disposal. This multiplies the already serious, if not critical, lack of adequate health care, education, low-cost food and other necessities. These property owners haul their own trash.”*

*From: www.scrippsnews.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

Leave a Reply