colonia

colonia
 n.— «The counties of South Texas are among the nation’s poorest, and their jumbled subdivisions, known as colonias, home to 400,000 Hispanic-Americans, can certainly look the part. Since the 1950s, developers have carved small lots from mesquite woodlands and floodplains, selling them to workers with the promises that utilities, sewers and paved roads would follow. They rarely did, and for decades the colonias were seen as hopeless slums.» —“Inside a Jumble of Poverty, Texans Build a Future” by Erik Eckholm in Rio Grande, Texas New York Times Aug. 27, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Join the discussion

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Further reading

“Don’t Mess with Texas” Helped Cut Highway Litter

The admonition Don’t Mess with Texas may sound like a tough guy’s warning, but it started out as an anti-littering slogan more than 40 years ago. In the 1980s, the Texas Department of Transportation launched the campaign to cut roadside litter that...