By Jonathan Cavazos
24 | Edinburg, Texas
Third-place young adult contest winner, Climate and Environment category
With lines from “Toxic Water in South Texas Colonias Costs Residents Precious Health and Money” by Carolina Cuellar and Gaige Davila, a Pulitzer Center-supported story
“I don’t think you want to pay $200 a month for dirty water that is damaging your family.”
In Edinburg,
I learned early that water changes by neighborhood.
A few miles can decide
whether you drink from the tap
or from a plastic gallon sweating in the backseat,
whether your sink stains orange with rust
or your mother trusts the faucet enough
to fill a pot without hesitation.
At school, the fountains arc cold silver.
Students drink automatically,
heads tipped back without fear.
In nearby colonias,
families boil water twice
and still wonder what remains.
That is the thing about growing up in the Valley—
you learn infrastructure the way other children learn weather.
Which roads flood first.
Which neighborhoods lose power longest.
Which houses keep bottled water stacked beside canned beans
like another form of emergency preparation.
And which communities officials visit only during election years.
The article says arsenic accumulates slowly.
So does everything else.
Debt.
Heat.
Silence.
The exhaustion in my mother’s shoulders
after ten-hour shifts
followed by evenings translating paperwork
for relatives who trust her more than the system.
I carry textbooks through university hallways now,
crossing from McAllen into classrooms
my grandparents could not have imagined entering.
Sometimes professors call students like me resilient.
But resilience is a strange compliment
when you come from places
people survive despite.
I think about that
while reading contamination reports between assignments,
while hearing politicians describe the border
as if it is only crisis and security,
never children brushing their teeth before school,
never mothers comparing water filters at kitchen tables,
never families paying twice
for things that should already be safe.
At a public meeting, a woman says:
“You want to help the colonias and stuff like that, but not like that. Not killing them little by little.”
The room quiets afterward.
Not from shock.
From recognition.
Because everyone there understands
what it means to be harmed gradually.
Not dramatically enough for headlines.
Not suddenly enough for urgency.
Just slowly, consistently,
through postponements and approvals,
through budgets and waiting lists,
through the kind of neglect
that teaches people to lower expectations
before they even reach adulthood.
Still, every morning,
the sun rises over Hidalgo County
like it believes in us completely.
And despite everything,
we keep believing back.
One day,
I want water to mean only water.
Not contamination levels.
Not ZIP codes.
Not whether a neighborhood was considered worth repairing.
Just something clear enough
for a child to trust immediately.
And when that day comes,
I will remember how close injustice lived to home—
close enough to smell the rust,
close enough to hear the frustration in people’s voices,
close enough to understand
that dignity should never depend
on which side of town you grow up on.
Read more winning entries from the 2026 Fighting Words Poetry Contest