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The term "colonia" in Spanish means a community or
neighborhood. These residential areas are found with 50 miles of
U.S.-Mexico border and they commonly lack some of the most basic living
necessities, such as potable water and sewer systems, electricity, paved
roads, and safe and sanitary housing; unemployment rates are commonly
several times the state averages.
Colonias can be found in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and
California, but Texas has both the largest number of colonias
and the largest colonia population. Approximately 400,000 Texans
live in colonias. Overall, the colonia population is
predominately Hispanic, essentially Mexican; 65 percent of all
colonia residents and 85 percent of those residents under 18
were born in the United States. There are more than 2,294 Texas
colonias, located primarily along the state's 1,248 mile border
with Mexico.
State |
# Counties |
# Colonias |
Colonias/County |
California |
1 |
11 |
11.0 |
Arizona |
10 |
56 |
5.6 |
New Mexico |
11 |
141 |
13.3 |
Texas |
30 |
2,294 |
76.4 |
Source:
http://www.hud.gov/local/az/groups/coloniasaz.cfm -- change
the state abbreviation to get information for each state
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Border
Colonia Geography Online provides lots in information about colonias
in Texas. Get
maps of colonias for each border county in Texas. The maps below for
El Paso County come from this source. Hispanics represent 72
percent of the El Paso's population of 607,000. Across the
international border, Ciudad Juarez,
one of Mexico’s largest cities, has with over 1.2 million people. |

Percent of Hispanics in El Paso County, TX, by block group. |

The absolute number of Hispanics in El Paso County, TX, by block group,
clearly shows the concentration of colonias in the large rural areas. |

Hispanics of Mexican descendent are concentrated on the dry uplands
beyond the Rio Grande River valley, east of Interstate 10, and along
Highway 62. |
Colonias of El Paso, Texas
More than 400,000 people live in colonias on the Texas side of the
US-Mexico, about half of which live without water and sewage lines. In
El Paso County alone, 80,000 people now live in over 200 known colonias
built on land that was never zoned for residential uses. And in 1994,
when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) exported
their jobs across the border to Mexico, thousands of people were forced
to seek affordable housing in these colonias, further and further from
established infrastructure. While some older colonias now have these
basic services, thanks to state and federal government grants, other
colonias lack basic public services, which county governments fail to
provide.
Read a complete
article on this topic. |

The colonias are concentrated in the south and east. The area in the
red box is shown on the map to the
right.
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The southern colonias, shown here, were visited and photographed,
particularly Dairyland (C on
the map below) and its colonia neighbors (A
and B), some of which are not even
identified on this "official" map.
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Colonias Dairyland
is adjacent to large dairy farms, where huge piles of manure
are concentrated in feedlots (see photo to the right). The smell and
flies during the summer, in particular, adds to "environmental racism"
of these places.
In addition, a large municipal garage dump is located on the
road to these colonias, Darrington Road (see below.
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A large
municipal garage dump is located on the road to the colonia on Darrington Road. Source for air photos:
http://maps.google.com. |
 A
new county-created cemetery is located on High Campus Road which
connects with Temperence Street, to the north of Dairyland.
The small number of graves are in the back section, where the brush
has been cleared. The grey lines are gravel roads.
To see more, click on the cemetery photo. |

All the road names in this colonia contain the word, "Colonia."
Several features are distinctive from the air photo (to the right):
1) large lots, half-acre lots are common, 2) many empty lots, 3) absence
of trees, lack of irrigation, and 4) elongated structures, which are
trailers -- Colonia Tierra Drive has 11 "visible" trailers alone; other
trailers are "hidden" from view because structures have been built
around and over them.
View
photos of the houses along Colonia Tierra Drive. All the houses have
access to electricity; some houses are substantial while others are very
simple. Collecting and re-using materials for house construction and
fences are common. Do-it-yourself house construction is the norm where
incomes are low and unemployment is high. |
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