Francisco was very proud of the kind of human network that was growing. In many rural areas the ties between people who left small towns and those who stayed behind were very tenuous; sometimes only the links that existed were with family and a few high school friends. Here there was a growing number of people who saw the area as a place return to, to stay in contact with, and to help even as they established their lives in cities and states far from the Rio Grande valley. The activities of Vamos were a reminder to young people that adults were there to help them, even if they were far away in school, but that it implied a reponsibility to reciprocate, and when students returned to Llano Grande to help out, that was evidence the web of ties was strengthening. One group of students was investigating the possiblity of starting a Spanish language institute and promoting it on the Internet. I met Monica Marroquin, a student who had finished Harvard and was in Baylor University Medical School. She had returned to help with a public health survey, and Mrs. Delgado,a woman working on the project project heard that day that they had been awarded a sizable grant to continue the work.

In addition to providing a range of activities for the young people, Francisco helped provide a historical context. Getting the kids involved in oral histories was one way. I viewed an iMovie of young oral historians discussing their plans for interviews. Jose Cruz was advocating less intervention and questioning in order to let the subject follow his or her own oral path in telling a story or account of a historic event. Many of the people interviewed were poor, and had been invisible in some ways, but all had stories to tell. The interest taken by young people in the stories by the old is less common than it had been in some cultures where old age implied high status, wisdom, and experience. In the United States, many old people are ignored and their stories are lost. Llano Grande members did not want that to happen in their town. There were also historic documents available to supplement the material gathered during the project. On one wall was a reproduction of an old advertisement by the railroad selling lots, and it showed the tiny lot size in the segregated Mexican area of the new town, distant from the large parcels available to whites.