2025 FRONTeras Magazine Vol. 1 No. 3 Issue The road to Las Rucias curves west through sun-seared mesquite and heat-drunk gravel, past the Rio Grande’s sluggish bend and into a stretch of land history has largely abandoned. The war, supposedly drawing to a close, stalled here in the thicket and left a final mark. In November 1863, Union General Nathaniel Banks seized Brownsville to sever the Confederacy’s access to Matamoros. The Rio Grande became a lifeline for rebel survival