Blogs from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, North America

June 24, 2007 We arise early and are on our way. We realize that we will arrive at the border late in the afternoon. I do not want to cross at a Nuevo Leon in the middle of the day, so we head to the Laredo-Columbia Solidarity Bridge. I have mixed feelings about us crossing at Columbia. I know that it is about an hour to an hour and half out of the way. But I also know that you can wait in line even longer if you cross at Nuevo Laredo. Moreover, there are the obvious safety concerns. We take the cut-off and head northwest of Laredo. I arrive at the crossing point with almost 2000 pesos (about $200 usd) in my pocket. I see a gas station. I stop. We fill the tank, buy ... read more

In a culture as family-oriented as Mexico’s, it should probably come as no surprise that the most important day of the week for Mexican prisoners is the Sunday visiting day. Between Tuesdays and Saturdays, visitors are allowed to come into the prison between 9am and 5pm but must stay confined to the first floor of each cell-house. But on Sundays, the prison administration takes these visits to an entirely different level by organizing a grand event - almost like a carnival - complete with mariachi dancing, lucha libre fighting, and even moonwalks for children. Last weekend, we were able to experience this visiting day celebration for the first time. Being accustomed to the visitation policies in American prisons, I was blown away by the amount of freedom given to the inmates and visitors as well as ... read more

Although there is no one way to describe any prison, my experiences over the past two years have led me to believe that there are two very different types of incarceration in the United States. On one side of the spectrum are prisons like Stateville Correctional in Jessup, Illinois, which punishes inmates by placing them in Orwellian-style panopticon cellhouses with little-to-no focus on rehabilitation or their return to the free world. On the other side of the spectrum are prisons like the Youthful Offender System in Pueblo, Colorado, which houses potentially dangerous minors with the sole intention of rehabilitating them so that they never wind up in a real adult penitentiary. While there a number of differences between these two types of prisons, the most striking is the ultimate goal of incarceration: one is to punish ... read more

The university decides to stay at the Laredo - Texas side for insurance and security reason, but we are free to go to the Mexican side of the town - Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. All the vans are to stay at the hotel along Rio Grande, and we walked over the Friendship Bridge to Mexico. Just like that, we are in Mexico without even having our paperwork checked by the Mexican immigration and custom. The assignment is to observe different culture through landscape design projects in Mexico. Carrie, Sandy, Jason and I were paired up to walk around as a group, and we survived the day. We had our dinner at a small piazza tucked in somewhere and I guess it was bluntly obvious that we don’t look like Mexicans, as we hastily had to decline many ... read more