"This area is a grant writer's paradise," remarked a Teach For America employee to a MIRA participant from Edinburg, Texas. What he meant was that the demographics and statistical description of the problems of this border region are so striking that project money is available from many sources in the same way other broad geographic areas such as Indian reservations, Appalachia, and the Mississippi Delta attract outside assistance.

It is a region that is being shaped by several major forces. As an agricultural area it has long been known for its truck farms and citrus production. This was due to the soil, the mild climate, and the proximity to the Rio Grande for irrigation and Mexico which provided "cheap, docile farm labor" as one U.S. Secretary of Agriculture described the situation. There is still a large migrant population, and the high school where many of the MIRA projects originated has a special counselor for migrant students. The North American Free Trade Agreement has opened the borders, and there is a greater flow of people, truck traffic and illegal drugs.

The valley is attracting snowbirds-- visitors finding refuge from colder climates. Retirement areas in warm and coastal areas are growing, and the so-called Winter Texans spend over $300 million annually in the region. As in other areas of the United States, the family farm is in decline. Some of the farms around Edinburg and Elsa are being sold to developers or individuals planning to build on one-half or one acre parcels. In other areas gated communities are springing up, and a few miles from Elsa a naturalist resort had been established near a professor's home that was going to be a focal point for a spin-off MIRA project. Within eyesight of the main house, hundreds of yards of bright aluminum fencing provided a solid wall of privacy for the bare-skinned northerners. Inside the fence a large aluminum structure had been erected in the last month. The MIRA team joked that was where they stored their parkas, gloves, boots, long underwear and other winter clothes they had needed in Michigan and Minnesota.

This area is a major part of a transportation corridor for the movement of goods manufactured in Mexico at the maquiladoras to U.S. destinations. These factories were set up on the Mexico-United States border, are owned by Japanese and American companies, and have been a source of many low-paying jobs for the rural poor in Mexico. Though special deals that afforded Mexican union leaders a piece of the action, there is little or no union presence among the workers, many of whom are young women. Highly paid American engineers and administrators for the maquiladora plants live on the U.S. side and cross into Mexico. Even for the workers who had no work at all in small villages in Oaxaca and Jalisco, the pay in these factories is low, barely enough for essentials and the living conditions outside the factories (which are among the most modern in the world) are harsh. They have been the subjects of numerous exposés in the Mexican and American media. Most of the barrios have no paved streets, electricity, or running water. Many depend on the water from the river which is the dumping area for all the factories upriver, as well as agricultural chemical runoff. For many of the young women the dream is to make it across the river and find a job as a maid here in the United States before the long hours and difficult factory conditions cripple them. Across the river is where the Texas MIRA teams are located.