The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "Rio Grande" ...
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The Deadliest Place in Mexico
The Juarez Valley, a narrow corridor of green farmland carved from the Chihuahuan desert along the Rio Grande, was once known for its cotton, which rivaled Egypt’s. But that was before the Juarez cartel moved in to set up a lucrative drug smuggling trade. “The Deadliest Place in Mexico” explores untold aspects of Mexico’s drug war as it has played out in the small farming communities of this valley. The violence began in 2008, when the Sinaloa cartel moved in to take over the Juarez cartel’s turf. The Mexican government sent in the military to quell the violence — but instead the murder rate exploded. While the bloodshed in the nearby City of Juarez attracted widespread media attention, the violence spilling into the rural Juarez Valley received far less, eve as the killings began to escalate in brutal ways. Community advocates, elected officials, even police officers were shot down in the streets. Several residents were stabbed in the face with ice picks. By 2009, the valley, with a population of 20,000, had a murder rate six times higher than Juarez itself. Newspapers began to call the rural farming region the “Valley of Death.” This investigation uses extensive Freedom of Information Act requests, court documents, and difficult-to-obtain interviews in Spanish and English with current and former Juarez Valley residents, Mexican officials, narcotraffickers and U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials, to reveal that many of these shocking deaths were perpetrated with the participation of Mexican authorities. It shows scenes of devastation — households where six members of a single family were killed, without a single police investigation. It uncovers targeted killings by masked gunmen of community activists and innocent residents for speaking out against violence and repression facilitated by corrupt military and government officials. And it gathers multiple witnesses who describe soldiers themselves, working in league with the Sinaloa cartel, perpetrating violence against civilians. "The cemeteries are all full. There isn't anywhere left to bury the bodies," one former resident said. "You'll find nothing there but ghost towns and soldiers."
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Councilmen on Tourism Spree
Local councilmen in Brazil were collecting per diems paid out to enable politicians to attend qualification courses presented in other countries. Using a hidden camera, the reporter passed himself off as a politician as the others admitted they were only signing up for these courses to collect the money while skipping the classes and taking a vacation. As a result of the investigation, many city councils in the southern Brazil state of Rio Grande do Sul cut back the payments.
Tags: per diems; councilmen; Brazil; goverment; politicians
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Egregious
The Rio Grande Sun investigated New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson's use of state-owned airplanes. They found he used them for 25-mile trips, transporting major fund raisers to horse races and was in the habit of having his official SUV driven ahead of him to his destination so it would be waiting when his plane landed.
Tags: state government; misuse of public funds; campaign donors
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The Governor and His Judges
The Rio Grande Sun investigated the puzzling appointment of their new county judge: Arizona Gov. Bill Richardson appointed Thomas Rodella to the bench despite reports that Rodella had fixed tickets for people during his time as a state police officer in order to get votes and backing for his wife's bid for state office. After the Sun published their expose, the judge was forced to resign.
Tags: politics; state government; Arizona State Police; election campaigns; judicial appointments
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Boone Pickens wants to sell you his water
Texas Monthly looks at the risk of depleting the Ogallala Aquifer, "a vast underground reservoir that stretches from the High Plains of Texas all the way to the Dakotas" and the "largest single groundwater source in the United States." The story exposes the plan of Boone Pickens, a former "oil tycoon and a feared corporate raider," to pump up water from Ogallala and to sell it to "cities like San Antonio and El Paso that are running out of water." The reporter finds that the dangerous approach of treating water like a marketable commodity results from a Texas law, which allows a property owner to "pump as much as he wishes ... no matter if he dries up his own water and his neighbors' water along with it."
Tags: Roberts County; farming; irrigation; draught; Panhandle; population boom; groundwater; conservation; Rio Grande; rivers; springs
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High Noon
This article examines Rio Grande College, a small college in southwest Texas. Blair finds that "too many students enrolled in Rio Grande College's teacher program were flunking the battery of mandatory exit exams, state officials declared. The program was given 36 months to raise its scores or face being the first teacher-training program shut down under a high-stakes accountability law."
Tags: education; school; teacher-training program; Rio Grande College
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The Battle for the Border
A Texas Monthly investigation finds that "illegal immigration is exploding in Maverick County, which will soon become the busiest crossing point from Mexico into the U.S." The story describes how "ranches are being overrun by drug smugglers, houses robbed, cattle stolen," and "men have been shot and killed." The reporter focuses on the ranchers' dilemma - to flee "this modern-day war zone" or to "stay and fight." The story profiles Dob Cunningham, a rancher who has come across "an odd and sometimes tragic assortment of immigrants," and has also witnessed the shooting of a Mexican teenager.
Tags: Hispanic; U.S. Border Patrol; Rio Grande; Spanish; agents; police; drugs; crime
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Colonias: Rural Development on the Border
The Monitor reports how the "Colonias, maligned as border slums by the rest of Texas, have become an enduring part of the border landscape, defying solutions even as they beckon more families searching for a piece of land and a home of their own. In the Rio Grande Valley, an estimated 887 colonias dot the region, multiplying even as officials struggle to control their growth... these random collections of mostly rural subdivisions too often fall short of basic needs: Electricity. Safe drinking water. Indoor plumbing. Drainage. Paved roads."
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No title (id: 10161)
Houston Chronicle spends six months investigating life on the U.S. Mexico border; topics include pollution in the Rio Grande, NAFTA, dismal public health and crowded slums, October 1993.
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No title (id: 9050)
CNN Special Assignment investigates why more than 30 babies in the Brownsville, Texas, area have been born without brains in a two-and-a-half year period; anencephaly is six times the national average; Mexican factories use extremely toxic cleansers, which end up in the Rio Grande River, the source of the public water supply, May 18 - 19, 1992.
Tags: TAPE