Weslaco’s city leadership in recent years has honed in on a consistent message amid the community’s growth across several key economic sectors. The days of local residents having to go to McAllen to shop and dine are over, they say. “We don’t have to leave Weslaco anymore,” said Steven Valdez, the executive director of the Weslaco Economic Development Corporation. “We can stay home.” A business and commerce identity independent of…
Alisa Gonzalez and her husband Benjamin took their recent high school graduate to get settled at Texas A&M University last fall and made a poignant observation. College Station has fan stores a many featuring all sorts of A&M Aggies gear, be it t-shirts, caps, sweatshirts or bumper stickers. The Edinburg couple thought of their university back home. They knew it had nothing comparable to promote the Vaqueros of the University…
Rey Esquibel has worked his way up to the top leadership post at the Rich’s frozen foods manufacturing plant in Brownsville. Esquibel says his “fingerprints are all over” the 130,000-square-foot facility on east 14th Street. His work ethic matches that of the 400 employees who work at the facility. Rich’s Brownsville plant is located just blocks away from what is known in the city as the four corners intersection where…
Jackie Valdez‘s photographs feature the faces of the Rio Grande Valley. There are teenage girls wearing cowboy hats enjoying the sights and sounds of the Rio Grande Livestock Show in Mercedes. High school bands marching down streets in parades and across football fields make up another colorful portion of her South Texas portfolio. Freshly graduated students in portraits look hopeful and happy in Valdez’s portrait work as they look off…
Rene Rodriguez’s students are huddled around representatives of Rio Grande LNG, a bit wide-eyed and asking plenty of questions. Rodriguez is an instructor with the building construction technology program at Texas State Technical College in Harlingen. Rio Grande LNG representatives had just concluded a presentation on campus regarding their facility, which is currently under construction at the Port of Brownsville. The first phase of the $18 billion-plus liquefied natural gas…
Pam Le has a story to tell of a mother who came to the United States at age 17, knowing no one and speaking only her native Vietnamese. Hoa Le is the daughter of a U.S. serviceman she never met and a Vietnamese mother who died when Hoa was only eight years old. Coming to Houston through a sponsorship program, Hoa Le went about building an American life that would…
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley opened under its new name on Aug. 30, 2015 to mark a fresh start toward becoming a comprehensive regional university. On Aug. 30, 2025, UTRGV kicks off another new chapter in its nearly 100-year history when the university’s Vaqueros football team plays a Division I football game in Edinburg. “It will be 10 years to the date we opened the university,” said Guy…
Daniel Silva spent 19 years at the Mission Economic Development Corporation, starting as a fresh college graduate and ascending to being the organization’s chief executive officer. The climb to the top job was fulfilling, but eventually there was an aspiration for another challenge. In 2022, when the opportunity to serve more than one Rio Grande Valley community came along, Silva took it in seeking to have a bigger footprint. In…
Esmeralda Estrella’s students in a Texas State Technical College classroom are huddled around incubator equipment used to support newborns in neonatal intensive care units. The students on the Harlingen campus are enrolled in TSTC’s biomedical equipment technology program. Students jot down notes and confer in teams as if they were in real-world hospital settings. Maintenance and repair of this sort of equipment is critical to sustaining and saving lives. “The…
The Rio Grande Valley’s well-deserved renown for being a national birding hotspot overshadows another element of wildlife that attracts eco-tourists to the region. The Valley has a stunning array of butterflies. Almost 40 percent of the over 700 species of butterflies in the United States live in the region. The National Butterfly Center south of Mission is at the forefront of this brand of eco-tourism. The center’s 100-acre site features…