Where the Bodies Are Buried
In 1910, East Texas saw one of America’s deadliest post-Reconstruction racial purges. One survivor’s descendants have waged an uphill battle for generations to unearth that violent past.
Great articles, every Saturday.
In 1910, East Texas saw one of America’s deadliest post-Reconstruction racial purges. One survivor’s descendants have waged an uphill battle for generations to unearth that violent past.
Michael Barajas Texas Observer Jul 2019 20min Permalink
On the suicide crisis in rural East Texas.
Christopher Collins Texas Observer May 2019 25min Permalink
Unregulated dams across Texas are increasingly failing—putting people and property in jeopardy.
Naveena Sadasivam Texas Observer Apr 2019 20min Permalink
Inside the Rio Grande Valley’s amputation crisis.
Sophie Novack Texas Observer Mar 2019 15min Permalink
How Texas’s decade-long border security operation has turned South Texas into one of the most heavily policed and surveilled places in the nation.
Melissa Del Bosque Texas Observer May 2018 30min Permalink
An investigation into the mass graves in Texas that contain the remains of migrants.
John Carlos Frey Texas Observer Jul 2015 25min Permalink
A dispatch from Eloise Woods, a natural burial ground where bodies are consigned directly to the earth.
Sarah Wambold Texas Observer Jun 2015 15min Permalink
The informal network of volunteers that keep abortion access open in Texas.
Alexa Garcia-Ditta Texas Observer May 2015 10min Permalink
Turning down the huge amounts of money a fracking contract can offer is always the beginning of a fight.
Priscila Mosqueda Texas Observer Feb 2015 20min Permalink
The mysterious death of Alfred Wright in the shadow of a town’s history of racial violence.
Patrick Michels Texas Observer Mar 2014 25min Permalink
Jeffrey Holliman was deep in debt and out of options. So he took to the woods outside his small East Texas town. Then he started taking from his neighbors.
Patrick Michels Texas Observer Feb 2014 25min Permalink
An essay on those who don’t get caught by health care’s so-called safety net.
Rachel Pearson Texas Observer Nov 2013 10min Permalink
How the heir to a horse racing empire became an informant on the Zetas cartel as they pushed their money laundering operations into the lucrative quarter horse trade.
Melissa Del Bosque, Jazmine Ulloa Texas Observer Aug 2013 20min Permalink
A look back at the 2008 raid on Warren Jeffs’ polygamous Mormon sect.
Janet Heimlich Texas Observer Aug 2012 35min Permalink
Murder in the Juarez Valley:
A few weeks after Saul Reyes and his family fled Mexico, I drove to an immigrant shelter in downtown El Paso to see him. As the former city secretary of Guadalupe, Saul had once been in charge of recording the births and deaths of everyone in his hometown. He’d taken it upon himself now to collect every single name of those who had died or disappeared in Guadalupe since the killing began in 2008. Through media reports and meetings with the many valley exiles now living in Texas, Saul had compiled a list of the town’s dead and disappeared. Showing me the book, he turned page after page of names. So far he had counted 180 dead, 26 disappeared, and eight unknown bodies dumped in his small town of 3,000 people. “There are a lot more, but these are the ones I’ve been able to collect,” he said. In his careful, spidery script, he had written on one page the names of his six family members.
Melissa Del Bosque Texas Observer Feb 2012 35min Permalink
The low-key swingers of sleepy Amarillo, Texas find themselves relentlessly harassed by a militant Christian group.
Forrest Wilder Texas Observer Feb 2010 10min Permalink