Alonzo cantu biography mcallen

How does that old Joni Mitchell song go? “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

From the song, “Big Yellow Taxi,” Mitchell’s lyrics became an environmentalist anthem of sorts in the early 1970s, decrying environmental destruction and excessive urban development.

Few areas of the country experienced urban development like the RGV, with its almost unparalleled rapidity and unprecedented expansion, thanks in large part to the passage of NAFTA in 1992 and the trade treaty’s implementation Jan.

1, 1994.

Pre-NAFTA, the Valley was this relatively peaceful pastoral setting largely forgotten by the state’s political class, even with a few bigger cities thrown into the mix, Brownsville and McAllen; but for the most part, this area of the state was still alive and ripe with ag fields galore, citrus orchards that turned the air sweet in the spring, palm trees more numerous than today, packing sheds that employed many, man