la quinta inn, colonias

We stayed in a hotel last night, under really random circumstances.  A friend of friends from DC was at the show.  She had recently moved to Las Creces to work as a union organizer doing community and university outreach in an attempt to improve wages and working conditions for workers at the state university in New Mexico.  The union had put her up in a local hotel and she shared it with us.  She was telling us a little about the work that she did and how she had encountered something called colonias, which are exploitative real estate sold largely to immigrants that are totally without hookups to electrical, water, and sewer grids.  The first thing I found was this FAQ by the Texas state government that describes more about Colonias.