Travel
Texas
By
Alan Wilkinson
If the rest of Texas gets to hear about Laredo we could have trouble. The Lone
Star State takes pride in being the biggest and best in everything from the
size of its steaks to the extent of its territory. It can boast six distinct
identities over the years, a fact they celebrate at the Six Flags theme park
near Dallas-Fort Worth.
Laredo,
the booming border town on the Rio Grande, can beat
that. Like the rest of the state it has been under
the jurisdiction of France, Spain, Mexico, the Texas
Republic, the Confederacy, and the United States. Then
it goes one better. In 1840 the settlement broke away
from Mexico and established itself as the Republic
of the Rio Grande, with Laredo as its capitol. It lasted
283 days.
Every
year, they reenact the swearing-in of Jesus Cardenas,
the first and only president. The former capitol, a
modest single story building with 2-foot thick walls,
now doubles as a museum.
Strolling around Laredo, you get a real sense of its history. Squat adobe buildings
snuggle up to elegant, colonnaded Victorian homes whose wooden balconies are
shaded by slender palms. Around the main square, old men play chess under the
shade of live oaks and magnolias, and the conversations slip from Spanish to
English and back without missing a beat.
I
had a splendid Mexican breakfast at a modest back-street
diner: eggs smothered in a green chile sauce that bit
back, fresh tortillas wrapped in a white napkin, the
cafe walls adorned with posters advertising bullfights.
For lunch, however, I stepped up a gear.
It's
said La Posada,
now a 208-room hotel and restaurant, was a Spanish-Colonial
convent. It takes some believing, with its French windows,
wrought-iron balustrades, and cool cloistered passageways,
its white linen, Mexican rug motifs, and tall potted
plants. The Tack Room offered a superb range of meals,
but I couldn't resist a plate of carne asada to set
me up for some more sightseeing.
Back
in town I visited the San Agustin Cathedral-La
Catedral-one of the oldest churches in the Southwest. There has been a church
on this site since 1778, but this one, constructed in 1872, and an adjoining
plaza, form the center of the city's religious, political, social, and economic
life today. Its elegant white spire sits on a tower five stories high. After
the stained glass and statuary of this Gothic Revival
pile, I fancied a change of scenery-and in Laredo,
of course, a very different world awaits you just a
five-minute drive away. There are currently four bridges
across the Rio Grande linking Laredo with Mexico, and
it wouldn't surprise me if they put a couple more up
before long. Just to keep a step ahead of the rest
of Texas.
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