Life in Starr County

Beneath an unyielding sky, Starr County is a place of quiet endurance knitted to Mexico through 68 miles of border and a shared culture. Neighbors chat on porches as the sun sets. Sunday is reserved for church and cookouts; holidays are punctuated by community celebrations. Close-knit families care for their own.

Floats sent foam snow fluttering down like ethereal confetti during a Christmas Parade in Rio Grande City.

Citrus Fiesta Beauty Queens walk through the second annual Starr County Alzheimer’s Awareness event in Rio Grande City.

Araceli Martinez Barrientos “Cheli” prays at Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto in Rio Grande City. More than 83 percent of Starr County’s residents identify as religious, compared with 47 percent nationwide.*

At the annual Feast of Sharing, hundreds of people from around Starr County gather to eat food provided by HEB supermarket and listen to live music.

At the same time, Alzheimer’s casts a long shadow over the county.

In Starr County, around 25% of people over the age of 65 are reported to have Alzheimer’s or related dementias—more than 3 times the national average. 1

True figures are certainly much higher. An estimated 7.4 million Alzheimer’s cases across the U.S. go undiagnosed. Globally, 75 percent of the 55 million Alzheimer’s cases go undiagnosed.2 Rio Grande City’s only nutritionist says at least 50 percent of her patients age 65 and up demonstrate cognitive impairment, “and that’s conservative.”

96.1 percent of Starr County residents identify as Hispanic. Latinos are about 50 percent more likely to develop Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias than white Americans. But they account for only 2 percent of participants in ARD trials.3

“Everybody keeps asking me, but why? Was it the chemicals in the crops he helped harvest as a boy? Genetics? The Diet Coke he loved? It’s hard to say why our community is so affected.”

– Jessica Cantu, site director for the county’s first Alzheimer’s research center. El Faro Health & Therapeutics opened in November 2021, seven months after Cantu’s father died of the disease.

Jessica visits her dad’s grave in Roma.

—Dr. Gladys Maestre, a top Alzheimer’s researcher in the Rio Grande Valley

“I suspect the population in Starr County has been under chronic stress. The border is militarized. There are many food deserts, a lot of diabetes and obesity and hypertension, and few sidewalks to encourage walking. Those things don’t occur in isolation. And now the Lancet study says 40 percent of the disease could be prevented or delayed by modifying 12 factors, so let’s talk about that. Let’s study that.”4

People are not living paycheck to paycheck; they live advance-on-paycheck to advance-on-paycheck.

—Local Journalist Dina Garcia-Pena

More than a dozen loan shops are clustered along Main Street in Rio Grande City.

With a population of about 65,000, Starr County rests solidly within the bottom 1.5% of all U.S. counties for the lowest median household income.5

RESIDENTS OF STARR COUNTY

33.9%

live below the poverty line6

27.4%

have no health insurance7

9.8%

unemployment compared to 6.5% national average8

Life at the border

Borders are man-made, engraved on the earth by fences, glued to rivers, or sometimes imperceptible. Depending on who approaches, borders hold dreams, or desires, or danger.

Border Patrol agents at dawn in Roma, Texas.

Few opportunities exist for exercise in Starr County, so the opening of Fordyce Nature Trails was a cause for celebration.

But the drug smugglers, human traffickers, and migrants who initially carved these paths continue to use them, so many avoid the site at dawn and dusk—the coolest times to walk or jog.

An unfinished segment of the border wall rests on federal land south of Garciaville, Texas.

In Starr County alone, roughly $43 million has been spent on the new barrier. If even a portion of this money had been used on other infrastructure projects, such as sidewalks and parks, public health in this community could be significantly improved.

In much of Starr County, 33.9 percent of the population lacks access to a large grocery store, compared with 21.7 percent across the U.S. In addition, 23.7 percent of Starr County residents experience food insecurity, compared with 12.8 percent nationwide, affecting everything from chronic health conditions to educational attainment.9

Nutrition & Food Access

STARR COUNTY10

ALL UNITED STATES10

Rio Grande City Mayor Joel Villarreal’s father died of a massive heart attack when Villarreal was only 11 years old. Part of what his community needs, he says, is better nutritional education. “When I drink a soda, I notice I experience a fog,” he says. “But when water costs two dollars for just a little 16-ounce bottle, well, I’d much rather get something other than water for my buck.”

Land & Heart

Links between families echo through generations. Sorrows are shared, and kindnesses recalled in stories passed on to grandchildren. Starr County is not simply a location, but a connection etched into the land and heart.

Candles burn in front of Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto in Rio Grande City. Some Starr County residents say the nearly century-old grotto is the site of miracles.

A young boy runs after his mom as a setting sun casts streaks of light across the central plaza during a community holiday celebration.

A family fishes along the Rio Grande River in Salineño, Texas.