The Rio Grande lay safely bedded in concrete and bound with a chainlink fence called the “Tortilla Curtain.” Mexicans know the Rio Grande as the Rio Bravo, the “wild river,” but it didn’t look either bravo or grande, sorry thing that it is now. The river has been “rectified” because it used to flood—and thereby nourish—the lowlands; that’s how you farm one patch three hundred years and still get a crop. But, worse than flooding, the Rio Grande, like a wandering burro, would change course without warning, cutting off a slice of Texas and giving it to the Mexicans or handing over a chunk of
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