How the world’s richest man transformed the Lone Star State into “the modern incarnation of the company town.” BY ABBY VESOULIS; PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTOPHER LEE

Part Four of the JANUARY+FEBRUARY 2024 ISSUE “American Oligarchy”

…”One afternoon in mid-August, I grabbed lunch with Michelle Serrano at a Mexican restaurant in Brownsville called Emilia’s. The spot, which still has an all-Spanish menu, used to bring in mariachi bands to entertain the lunch crowd, but as we chatted, an old white guy was performing “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver.

The scene struck Serrano, a local activist who works for a pro-immigration and anti-gentrification advocacy group called Voces Unidas, as symbolic of Brownsville’s Musk makeover. The changes were visible not just downtown but outside the city limits as well, where locals had lost their previously unfettered access to Boca Chica Beach thanks to the measure authorizing SpaceX to intermittently close this stretch of coastline. …”

Rio Grande communities feel like the ‘sacrificial lamb’ in a political war as climate activists and environmentalists call foul

By Maanvi Singh

10/06/2023

Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. Money, regulations, and public beaches are no object.

by GUS BOVA

AUGUST 30, 2021, 2:00 PM, CDT

Some folks in Texas's poorest city see a new downtown mural funded by the billionaire's foundation as the writing on the wall.

By Dan Solomon

December 27, 2021