LA TIERRA

Through a stretching and a breaking of the land in Colorado and New Mexico, the cracked ground lay open, waiting to be filled and allowing water to flow and expand the land into what is now called the Rio Grande. Around two million years ago, our ancestor, the Rio Grande flowed into South Texas and into the Gulf of Mexico. The rapid giving of the river into the still ocean created an ancient symbol of past present and future: a triangle of sediment. To be a delta is to be a mixture, a combination of water and sediment, of rapidness and slowness, a new being. The sediments that had traveled miles within the Rio Grande, would finally find a place to settle, a place to call home. These deposited soils formed the landmass now known as our precious Rio Grande Valley. 

To be a delta is also to be a mouth for the river and for the ocean, and mouths need to be nourished. The delta is nourished by the rich nutrients the sediments were composed of, which were well worn from their time traveling within the Rio Grande, and as they lay into the land, became a clay land where an abundance of life was possible and an abundance of history has rested. Thorny trees, cacti, shrubs, and grasses began growing from these lands, creating the vast Taumaulipan Thornscrub forest, Texas sandy grasslands, and riparian forests. By the Gulf of Mexico lay sand dunes, tidal flats, different soils, and with changing sea levels, formed the largest barrier island in the world, hyper-saline lagoons, and other bodies of water. The Rio Grande also flowed deeper into the land, with tributaries braiding into the trees and grasses, wetlands forming, and resacas filling, with runoff from heavy rains creating our sacred salt lake, La Sal Del Rey, sustaining many beings. All these occurred at different times and under different conditions, creating a place brimming with biodiversity, a place many beings call home.

An important ecosystem to many, the Rio Grande Valley is home to many animals, native, migratory, and endemic to the area. More than 1,000 different plants, 500 birds, 300 butterflies, and 45 at-risk species. Some of our native animals include Chachalacas, Caracaras, Green Jays, Indigo Snakes, Jaguarundi, Ocelot, and Bobcats among many other animals. El Valle is notorious for its migrating birds, who seek refuge in the Tamaulipan Thornscrub and our Gulf Prarie and Marsh. Since it is a boundary area where four different climate zones intermix, with the Chihuahuan Desert to the West and the Gulf of Mexico to the East, it creates a natural migratory path for many birds seeking rest and refuge. The river itself is a migration path for animals from Mexico and the United States to move between these lands, which are one and the same, united by the delta.

It is important to highlight the natural migration pathways that are present in the Rio Grande Valley, with many animals coming in from many different places and directions. The Rio Grande Valley has always been a place for migration, for changes, for species of all kinds to pass through, to rest, and to exist. It is important to uphold this natural way of moving, migrating, and mixing that occurs in our lands.

Within these same soils, the footprints of ancestral people lay, leading into the river on both sides. Migration is an important part of the history of our beloved Rio Grande Valley, with animals, elements, and humans alike flowing through the waters into sacred lands. Their stories a constant movement of water and soil imprinted on the back of our old relative, the delta.