Author Archives: Ricardo D. Cavazos, VBR content editor

Ricardo D. Cavazos is a Rio Grande Valley native and journalist who has worked as a reporter, editor and publisher at Texas newspapers. Cavazos formerly worked as a reporter and editorial writer at The Brownsville Herald, Dallas Times Herald, Corpus Christi Caller-Times and San Antonio Light. He served as editor of The Monitor in McAllen from 1991-1998 and from there served for 15 years as publisher at The Herald in Brownsville. Cavazos has been providing content for the Valley Business Report since 2018.

Veteran Finds Solitude & Freedom Via Fishing

The handmade rods at Battle Born Rodz feature individual designs suited to what customers want.

Ruben Sanchez’s man cave doesn’t feature the usual bank of big screen televisions and pool tables, with a stuffed deer head or two mounted on the walls.  For Sanchez, it’s “my sanctuary,” a place to retreat within himself to take away “a lot of my demons.” He is a Purple Heart recipient and former airborne paratrooper who uses his getaway to assemble handmade fishing rods in a converted garage of…

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SPI Expects Spring Breaker Resurgence

Island officials report that college students of today are more environmentally conscious and interested in birding centers and wildlife areas.

The South Padre Island spring breaks of most recent years were quite different from those that came before them. There were lower numbers but some good came out of the leaner seasons of 2020 and 2021. The imagery of rollicking college-aged students was replaced by the more mature demographic family groups. There were fewer crowds to get through with the temporary decline of college youth on semester breaks. The pandemic…

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Bakery Finds Sweet Niche Across RGV

Japanese cheesecakes, freshly made and in boxes, for delivery to various Rio Grande Valley locations. (Courtesy)

Manuel Alvarez describes himself as a persistent sort, who once putting his mind to something is not easily deterred.  Those personal attributes were put to the test when Alvarez took on the challenge of being a baker of detail-heavy Japanese cotton cheesecakes. With the help of his wife Nadia Escalante, Alvarez would “start a business out of nowhere.” Rio Grande Valley communities are dotted with pan dulce shops and long-standing…

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Mission Entrepreneur Drives To Success

Dos Chicas celebrated its one-year store anniversary in March to go with online sales that still make up the majority of the customers of the Mission business.

Cassy Rodriguez had what she called “the best job ever” as a driver for pre-production Ford trucks displayed at car shows and big entertainment venues featuring stars and celebrities. The job paid well, too, but the Mission native was spending weeks at a time away from home. It was a huge sacrifice for the mother of three young children. The tours to promote a new F-150 model or a Ranger…

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Mansion Finds New Mission In McAllen

The 10,000-square-foot Quinta Mazatlan is an iconic home in McAllen. It attracts 80,000 visitors yearly to its grounds.

A walk into Quinta Mazatlan takes patrons into a visual and architectural history of McAllen. It was on this 80-acre site over eight decades ago that adventurer and writer Jason Chilton Matthews built one of the larger adobe homes in Texas. The 10,000-square-foot home stands tall today with a regal dignity overlooking an estate of lush green habitat. Quinta Mazatlan is one part an architectural wonder in how the Spanish…

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Edinburg’s Growth Brings Excitement, Challenges

The H-E-B Park in Edinburg is a soccer-specific stadium that serves as the home for the Rio Grande Valley FC Toros.

Ramiro Garza’s calling cards in his successful mayoral run were advocating for a code of ethics and pledging to rid City Hall of conflicts of interest. Once in office in late 2021, Garza faced another challenge as freshly released U.S. Census figures showed Edinburg grew faster than any other city in the Rio Grande Valley. The city’s population in 2020 showed a 39 percent growth over the 2010 count. At…

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Firefighters Find New Life On Elizabeth Street

Roger, McArdle, Esteban Atkinson and Dorian Hopperstad are Brownsville firefighters and business owners of Southernmost Wildlife Products.

There likely has never been a store quite like Southernmost Wildlife Products in the long retailing history of Elizabeth Street in downtown Brownsville. Photographs of yesteryear on Brownsville’s historic main street show the classic department stores of Sears and JCPenney. Down Elizabeth from those mainstays are blocks of locally-owned men’s and women’s clothing stores, with the five-and-dime stores nearby. Those days on Elizabeth have vanished. The downtown of today does…

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Center Seeks To Inspire & Inform RGV Entrepreneurs

The CIC in Weslaco hosts events that put students and entrepreneurs from the community before panels of business owners and professionals in testing their ideas and plans. (Courtesy)

Md Salman Rahman’s big idea involves artificial intelligence and systems which allow patients to upload their medical reports.  Rahman envisions his product, HealthAl, training people how to use algorithms to read the reports in helping to detect diseases. It’s a brilliant concept with soaring ambitions but Rahman, a UTRGV graduate student, lacked the entrepreneurial and business experience to take such a technological-heavy product to the marketplace. Rahman’s product development got…

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Landmark Offers Something New On Tap

Roy Landa was looking for a new business challenge in establishing The Landmark in his hometown.

It’s a February afternoon that’s warm and sunny with a crispness in the air from preceding days where overnight lows hovered around freezing.  Roy Landa is walking around the grounds of The Landmark on Tower. Traffic goes over the railroad tracks by the combination food truck park/restaurant on Tower Road in Alamo. Thick-trunked oak trees loom over green turf and stylish picnic tables. Under the old oaks, customers go through…

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Livestock Show Revives Hopes

Rodeo grounds at the RGVLS will be busy and bustling during the 2022 show in mid-March.

Conrad Gonzales and his crew were constructing the last of the pens that will house the hundreds of cows, pigs, sheep and a variety of other animals on exhibit at the upcoming Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show. It will be the 83rd edition of the annual spring affair in Mercedes. On a recent sun-splashed and crisp February morning, Gonzales was motoring around on a golf cart, checking on projects and…

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