Laredo

It was a long time ago,1988,but was surprised how easy it was to enter the US here,they didn’t check my passport or stop any of the Mexican workers.As I needed a stamp on my passport I went to the customs post,a hut and had a strange conversation.Although I have a British passport the officer kept speaking to me in Spanish and I kept answering in English telling him I spoke English which he realised after about five minutes.He then noticed my visa was issued in Belfast which he asked me if it was near India.I thought that was pretty poor geography, really.
The people were friendly,most spoke Spanish which surprised me.

People here are stuck in a loop

First place I ever visited in the US.

I think Laredo is a nice place. It’s just that the media always gets the worst things that happen here and put them out. They repeat the story of the drug wars and stuff over and over again. It’s not so bad here.

it is what it is…own one property here….enjoy the little downtown area near the river…

If you know some Spanish, the city’s great. Being a Spanish geek, I loved that all the street signs are in Spanish, and having to translate everything for my parents was fun for me. I went to the mall there… I didn’t like it at the time, because it’s really open, more of an indoors market (?). It’s great if you’re too scared to go to Mexico but you still want a taste of Mexican culture.

I had trouble deciding on whether or not going here is worth it. My family (who still lives there) told me there’s been an upswing in violence across the river lately, so I’m going to put down “no” for now.

Still, the US/Mexico border is a really interesting place to visit if you can appreciate it for what it is. Culturally, it’s not truly of the US or of Mexico. Those two cultures the extreme points of a continuum, and where you fall on that continuum depends on your social class, where your parents are from, where you live and who your friends are.

Because of that hybridization and the huge percentage of natively bilingual people, it’s an excellent place for someone who’s interested in linguistics or sociology to live/study/visit.

The city of Laredo is actually a few hundred years old, but was rather small until the 90s, when NAFTA further opened trade between the US and Mexico. Since then, the city has been growing at a nearly-exponential rate.

Whether it’s worth visiting or not, to be honest. Whenever I think about Laredo, I always get a picture in my mind from that song “Streets of Laredo” of some kind of cowboy town and the real Laredo just doesn’t jive with that picture, so maybe I really can’t be fair about this. There’s part of me that wants to find a real cowboy town somewhere in the world.

But parts of the city are lovely.

So it might have changed. And I was just a lad, not being able to get around and see Laredo independently, as an able bodied adult.