Rural Minorities Ponder The American Dream From The Bottom Rung Of The Economic Ladder

Rural Minorities Ponder The American Dream From The Bottom Rung Of The Economic Ladder: About 22 miles northeast of Laredo, Texas, in an otherwise desolate and unincorporated stretch of Webb County, a roughed-out grid of unnamed dirt roads cuts through a maze of half-built cinderblock homes and dilapidated trailers.

Israel Reyna, a local attorney and advocate for the poor, has been driving me through this and similar communities, and we've stopped amid a haphazard cluster of residences a few hundred yards off the main highway. As I linger at the side of the road, a yellow school bus inches past, taking care not to savage its struts on a path rutted by poor drainage and cycles of fierce, mud-churning rain and baking prairie sun.

Reyna calls from the side of a tidy trailer where he is chatting with its owners, Elia De La O and her husband, Rogelio. The couple invites us inside.