Current Time in Laredo, United States

Laredo lies in southern Texas on the north bank of the Rio Grande, directly across the river from the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo. The surrounding country is dry brushland of mesquite and cactus, hot for most of the year, and the two cities together form a single border community of well over half a million people whose daily life flows back and forth across a handful of international bridges.

Around two hundred and sixty thousand people live on the American side. Laredo is the busiest inland port of entry in the United States, and by the value of goods crossing it, the largest land port in the country. Lorries loaded with vehicles, electronics, machinery and agricultural produce cross the World Trade Bridge in a continuous stream, and warehousing, customs brokerage, freight forwarding and retail dominate an economy shaped almost entirely by trade with Mexico. Ranching, oil and gas from the nearby Eagle Ford shale, and health care provide further employment.

The town was founded in 1755 by Tomas Sanchez as a settlement of the Spanish province of Nuevo Santander, making it one of the oldest crossing points on the river. Its history is unusually complicated: it has been governed under the flags of Spain, France in name, Mexico, the Republic of the Rio Grande, the Republic of Texas, the United States and the Confederacy, a sequence celebrated locally as the seven flags of Laredo. In 1840 it briefly served as capital of the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande, and after the war between Mexico and the United States the border was fixed at the river, dividing the community and giving rise to Nuevo Laredo on the southern bank.

The historic centre keeps its Spanish plan around San Agustin Plaza, shaded by trees and framed by the cathedral of San Agustin and by nineteenth-century sandstone buildings. The Republic of the Rio Grande Museum occupies an adobe house from the 1830s, and the Villa Antigua Border Heritage Museum and the Laredo Center for the Arts display regional history and contemporary work. Lake Casa Blanca State Park offers boating and fishing, the riverbank trails are used for birdwatching, and outlet malls draw large numbers of Mexican shoppers.

The most famous local tradition is the month-long Washington Birthday Celebration each February, an elaborate mixture of parades, a colonial pageant, a jalapeno eating contest and a ceremonial handshake on the international bridge, held since 1898 and among the largest festivals of its kind in the country. Spanish is the first language of the great majority of residents, and the city is often described as one of the most thoroughly bicultural places in the United States. Texas A and M International University and Laredo College provide higher education, while an international airport, interstate highway 35 and major rail crossings carry the traffic of the border.

Laredo is important as the principal gateway for trade between the United States and Mexico and as a city where two national cultures meet and mix every day.