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ONE OF THE great joys of the movies is their ability to convince us that we know the people on screen. Even the varied performances of the most versatile stars are often not strong enough to prevail against the overarching image we’ve formed of them. When Joan Didion met John Wayne on the set of the 1965 The Sons of Katie Elder, she wrote of having the sense that his face was more familiar to her than her husband’s. And yet Wayne, whose centenary occurred this past spring, remains in some ways the most undefined of iconic movie stars. When...

McALLEN - Increasing numbers of Mexican nationals are purchasing homes in Greater McAllen since Mexican soldiers were deployed to northern Tamaulipas in January, local real estate agents said. "They don't come right out and say it but you can tell that's the reason," said Michael Check, a sales agent with Keller Williams Realty in McAllen. "They say, ‘I consider this a safer environment for my kids.'" While no publicly available records track the nationalities of home buyers, numerous real estate professionals reported a heightened interest from northern Mexican buyers in homes in this area ranging from $120,000 to nearly $1...

Border Patrol agents arrested a member of the Mexican Mafia on Tuesday and charged him with smuggling illegal immigrants, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection news release.Agents from the Laredo South station arrested the gang member after receiving reports of suspicious activity near Rio Bravo, as the Rio Grande is called in Mexico. The release states that the vehicle driven by the Mexican Mafia member matched the description of a car seen near the location of the suspicious activity. When agents stopped the vehicle, occupied by a driver and four passengers, they performed an immigration inspection. The agents...

REYNOSA - Mexican military have surrounded the Reynosa Municipal Police Station, searching officers, vehicles and weapons. Witnesses say the military surrounded the police station building around 7 a.m. today. More than 300 police officers across the city are being brought in to be searched, along with personal cars and police-issued weapons. Officers at the city's precincts across the city are also being searched. The military is undertaking similar operations today in Nuevo Laredo, Rio Bravo and Matamoros, according to press reports from Monterrey and Mexico City. Military vehicles and personnel are blocking access to the station. The raids come after...

RIO BRAVO - A Pharr resident was in a Mexican prison Tuesday, accused of involvement in a deadly shootout Monday on the streets of downtown Rio Bravo, a family member said. The family member said Esteban Valdez de los Santos, 30, was visiting his mother’s house near the site of the shootout between the Mexican military and suspected drug cartel members. The firefight left three suspected cartel members dead and five Mexican federal officers and five soldiers injured. Curious what was happening, Valdez was watching the violence unfold when police dragged him into the street, threw him to the ground...

McALLEN, Texas — Three Americans were among 10 suspects arrested in a shootout with Mexican federal troops Monday that left three gunmen dead in the Mexican border city of Rio Bravo.

McALLEN, Texas — Three Americans were among 10 suspects arrested in a shootout with Mexican federal troops Monday that left three gunmen dead in the Mexican border city of Rio Bravo. A gunfight broke out in front of the Rio Bravo police station between Mexican soldiers, federal police and suspected drug cartel members, officials said. The Americans arrested Monday were Esteban Valdez de los Santos of Texas and Ricardo Zamora Lopez and Jose Raul Gonzalez Sanchez, both of Detroit, The McAllen Monitor reported. It wasn't immediately known where in Texas Valdez was from. The Monitor reported that at least two...

McALLEN — At least two people were killed when gunfire erupted downtown in the Mexican border city of Rio Bravo on Monday. Gunfire rang out four separate times between civilians and Mexican troops, witnesses and municipal police said. Two bodies were seen being taken from the scene of three shot-up vehicles Monday afternoon, The Monitor in McAllen reported in its online editions. Witnesses said two Mexican soldiers and one Federal Police officer were also injured from grenades and gunfire earlier Monday. One soldier was transported to a hospital in Reynosa for treatment, witnesses said. Rio Bravo sits across the border...

MEXICO CITY - A shootout between Mexican authorities and suspected criminals just across the border from Texas left three people dead and eight injured on Monday, officials said. Gunfire broke out around noon when Mexican federal agents encountered a group of people carrying assault weapons in a car in the town of Rio Bravo, across the border from Donna, Texas, according to a joint statement from Mexico's federal Attorney General's office, Defense Department and Public Safety Department. Three suspected criminals died and five soldiers and three federal police officers were injured in the shootout, which took place in Tamaulipas state,...

Shooting outside downtown restaurant left 6 dead, 3 wounded RIO BRAVO — The Mexican army cordoned off Rio Bravo early Friday, one day after a shooting outside a downtown restaurant left three hospitalized and six dead, including prominent political figure Juan Antonio Guajardo Anzalduá. Soldiers searched vehicles leaving and entering the city, which sits in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas across the Rio Grande from Donna(Texas). Some residents of the city said the incident has frightened them, and the residents fear violence in the city could escalate. “We are afraid. We are very scared,” one Rio Bravo woman said in...

RIO BRAVO — Assailants wielding automatic weapons on Thursday shot and killed the former mayor of a Mexican border city and five companions outside a restaurant, local media reported. Juan Guajardo, a career politician and the former mayor of the Rio Bravo, a city across the Texas border from Mercedes, was arriving at a restaurant in downtown Rio Bravo when the gunmen opened fire, killing him, his brother, two bodyguards, his driver and an unidentified man, the government news agency Notimex reported. Officials at the attorney general's office in Tamaulipas state, where Rio Bravo is located, did not return calls....

Residents of Rio Bravo and El Cenizo are concerned about the escalating grass fires in Nuevo Laredo, which fire officials there say have been intentionally set.Warnings have been issued to residents with respiratory problems, urging them to stay indoors because of the heavy smoke drifting across the Rio Grande. Fears that flying sparks might start fires in the two Webb County cities, which have many structures made of wood, may have been realized late Thursday when a small home went up in flames. No major injuries were reported. "We have alerted the people about this emergency to help avoid health...

The trial of three men accused of a gang-related shooting in Rio Bravo are set for trial today in 49th District Court.According to investigators with the Webb County Sheriff's Department, gunfire broke out when rival gang members showed up at a birthday party for an infant in Rio Bravo, leaving two dead: 14-year-old Oscar "Seco" Martinez and 18-year-old Roberto "KK" Villarreal. They died April 16, 2005. Among several suspects arrested in connection with the shooting were Martin Jesus Carrizales, Amado Vasquez Jr. and Noel Vasquez. They are each charged with two counts of murder and have entered pleas of not...

RIO BRAVO — Hours after presenting 10 police vehicles recently donated to the city, the mayor and chief of police traveled to Austin on Thursday to lobby for funds to create a police force.City officials expect that in less than three months, the police cars donated by order of Gov. Rick Perry will patrol the streets in this small city of about 8,000 residents. Mayor Juan Gonzalez, along with Chief of Police Rene Cervantes and city commissioners Manuel Arnero and Carlos Velasquez, presented the vehicles to the public on Thursday. Soon after the press conference, Gonzalez and Cervantes traveled to...

RIO BRAVO — Empty cocaine packages littered the tall grass like candy wrappers along the bank of the Rio Grande in El Cenizo, a small but growing city 15 miles southeast of Laredo. On closer inspection, each of the 30 or so packages revealed layers — foil, plastic kitchen wrap and brown packing tape. Two large flour sacks were discarded nearby, each with a car seatbelt ingeniously tied diagonally across it for no-hassle transporting. The drugs were long gone, their wrappings not just evidence of a successful crime but another artifact in an outdoor museum of discarded clothes, inner tubes...