From the mouth of the Rio Grande to the Pacific, la frontera is 2,000 miles long, and it extends, by conventional estimates, perhaps 60 miles in either direction. It thus comprises parts of four American and six Mexican states and a population that has grown in a decade from less than 7 million to some 12 million, and could come close to doubling in the next decade. The region has a national sport, which consists of impressing girls by driving around in low-rider sedans that drag a trail of sparks on the pavement. The unofficial gateways to la frontera are Monterrey, Nuevo Leon and San Antonio, Texas. He encourages them to leave the malls occasionally for the colorful shopping streets of Laredo's cross-border twin city, Nuevo Laredo, where merchandise is organized on the principle that every store sells everything.
Religious items are ubiquitous in the stores, reflecting the role of religion in people's lives.
Shortly after taking office in 1993, Border Patrol sector chief Silvestre Reyes began stationing officers at intervals of a quarter mile or less along the Rio Grande, which can be easily forded at this point. Soon the number of successful crossing fell dramatically, but those who did make it across had an incentive to settle rather than return home and risk not getting back in. On a barren embankment west of the city, a group of four Mexicans were lounging in the afternoon sun one day last month. Of course, if they had regular jobs, or enough money to spend the day shopping instead of working, they could have obtained a border-crossing card and walked unchallenged across on of the bridges leading to downtown El Paso. Americans, for their part, can cross to Ciudad Juarez with barely a nod from Mexican immigration.