(This story was featured in Vol. II • No. 3 - July 2025)
Photojournalist Ricardo (Cuate) Santos has recorded for posterity a 40-year window of some of the defining events that have shaped Laredo’s history – among them the implementation of NAFTA and the ensuing unprecedented growth and prosperity in international trade, the City’s rise to the largest inland port in the nation, and the establishment and continued growth of Texas A&M International University.
As well, he has presented us with the horrific tragedies of lives lost to highway carnage and crime, and the stories of immigrants who had traveled thousands of miles to reach this country only to meet sudden death in the currents of the Río Grande or a fateful mis-step to catch a ride on a northbound boxcar.
Santos was there, too, for perp walks, FBI raids, and the downfall of political players who chose malfeasance over honorable public service.
He captured the hardships of impoverished colonia residents who were sold tracts of dirt without the amenities of potable water delivery or sewage infrastructure, and his images accompanied stories of the impunity of greedy landowners and developers who used Contract for Deed instruments to sell lots, a financing method by which a missed payment could mean the loss of the property.
Many of Santos’ photographs through those decades will be remembered as love letters to humanity, to the generous good deeds of some who rose to address dire poverty and the housing, food, health, and educational needs of the City’s economically disenfranchised.
The canon of his work includes, too, meaningful archival salutes to the rich shared culture and history of two cities and two nations not separated, but bound, by the storied Río Grande.
His photo documentation of the remaining incredibly beautiful old architecture of downtown Laredo is more than a nod to the past. His photos of those buildings, even those in the shameful, shabby neglect of their owners, are an artful edification, an historic portal to understanding who we were.
For many of Santos’ generation, downtown was the center of commerce, the heart of the City, a clean, safe place that filled the needs of our daily lives.
The son of Renato and Vicenta Santos, he grew up in a family of eight siblings. He frequently walked downtown from his home in the Colonia Guadalupe to run errands for his mother, taking the time, too, to wander into Richter’s Department Store, which sold Boy Scout uniforms, or Siros Hardware, which sold tennis shoes and athletic equipment, or into one or all of the five-and-dime stores with their epic inventories of toys, clothing, soap, oil cloth, tools, household goods, and aquarium tanks and live fish. His forays downtown often included lunch with his sister Manuela at the Deliganis Cafeteria east of Jarvis Plaza.
Cuate Santos began his career in photojournalism in 1977 as a work study student at Laredo Junior College. “For the most part, I was self-taught, shooting photos for the student newspaper, The Macintosh Express, and the Communications Department. I used a Petri 35 mm with a 50 mm lens. My co-workers included Dee Dee Fuentes, Steve Harmon, the Sciaraffa brothers – Sol and Victor, Lupe Castillo, and Kitty Welsh,” he recalled.
In 1979 he began a two-year stint as a photographer for the newly minted bi-weekly Laredo News.
He joined The Laredo Times, in December 1981, embarking on a 40-year career that chronicled many of the stories referenced in this profile.
He recalled in particular the 1985 release and return of two Laredoans — Vicente Garza and his son-in-law Robert Trautmann Jr. – taken hostage by Shite Hezbollah militiamen who on June 14, 1985 commandeered Trans World Airlines Flight 847 as it departed from Athens to Rome. Passenger exchanges for food and fuel reduced the number of hostages to the group of 39 that would be held in Beirut, Lebanon in return for the release of 700 Shite prisoners in Israel.
The hostage situation was resolved by June 30, its victims driven first to Syria and then flown to an air base in Germany. Garza and Trautmann were welcomed home at Laredo International Airport by a crowd estimated to be about 600 well-wishers who were undeterred by a heavy rainfall.
The rain, Santos recalled, was an impediment for members of the out-of-town press in Laredo to photograph the arrival of Garza and Trautmann. The Associated Press was there as well as photographers from newspapers in Brownsville, San Antonio, Dallas, and other Texas cities.
“After the arrival of Mr. Garza and Mr. Trautmann, several of the photographers came to The Times where we developed 16 rolls of their film to see what they had photographed. Inside the airport terminal I had snapped a picture of Mr. Trautmann holding one of his daughters and of Mr. Garza with his family. Those were the photos the Associated Press ran,” he said.
“I enjoyed my years as a photojournalist. I concentrated on the meaning and quality of my work and steered clear of politics,” Santos said. “I worked alongside some of the best writers and photographers, including Carmina Danini, Richard Geissler, Lauro Barrera, Gilberto Zardenetta, Armando López, Odie Arambula, Michael Short, and Magdalena Zavala.”
When Santos retired at the end of 2020, he found more time to photograph native and migratory birds, the landscape along this edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, and historic structures.
In 2021 he began to explore astrophotography and the “constant beauty,” he said, of the vastness of the star-pricked indigo vault of the night sky.
“My classes at Martin High in mechanical drawing and architecture taught me composition, perspective, and scale. I have long considered myself a frustrated artist, but I believe I have now entered the artistic part of my life,” he said modestly.
