On a Wednesday evening last February, Tricia Cortez stood before a crowd gathered for an emergency meeting at a community center in the tiny South Texas border town of El Cenizo. “How many of you have heard about the border wall in general?” Cortez asked. Almost everyone raised their hand. “How many of you have heard that the Texas governor wants to build a wall here? No los federales, este es el gobernador de Tejas.” Only a few hands were raised.
That was understandable. Cortez herself had only recently learned the state awarded contracts to build several miles of 30-foot-tall steel fencing along the Rio Grande in Webb and Zapata counties, cutting through towns downriver of Laredo like El Cenizo and Rio Bravo. Shocked, Cortez did what she does best: get organized.
Cortez, 49, grew up in downtown San Antonio, raised by a single mother who was a Chicana activist. A high achiever, Cortez went on to study public policy at Princeton University and later took a job in journalism. In the early aughts, she moved to Laredo to report for the Laredo Morning Times and fell in love with the city, its binational culture, quirky politics, and complex policy issues.
