A Mexican Ghost Town Emerges From the Banks of the Drying Rio Grande

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. Alberto Ceballos Sánchez was visibly emotional as he considered the abandoned guardhouse on the banks of the Rio Grande in Tamaulipas, Mexico. It had been more than two decades since he’d been back to the eighteenth-century outpost, and the tall, quiet maestro arquitecto had been anxious to see if his restoration work had survived the warring cartels and harsh weather of the intervening years. He fell silent, surveying the stone walls, murals, and wooden beams, taking in what remained and what had fallen into disrepair in his absence.“Tranquilo?” I asked him. “Tranquilo,” he said.We used that word a lot on the cool, humid April day that…

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