People from more than 20 nationalities call this tiny Texas town home. Here\u2019s what brought them together.<\/p>\n
CACTUS, Texas \u2014 When country artist Waylon Jennings wrote a song about Cactus, Texas, he described it as \u201cnothing more than a wide place in the road.\u201d<\/p>\n
That may have been true of the Texas Panhandle city once.<\/p>\n
Today, Cactus is one of the most culturally diverse communities in the region. The town of just over 3,000 people is home to residents representing more than 20 nationalities.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a Halal restaurant across the street from an Asian food store, and around the corner is an Islamic center. A Christian church isn’t far away.<\/p>\n
Refugees have made Cactus home, as have generations of workers drawn to the community by its massive beef processing plant, operated by JBS, one of the world’s largest meat companies.<\/p>\n
The diversity of Cactus is visible inside one of its local businesses.<\/p>\n
Above the counter at Cactus Cafe, currencies from around the world line a window – reminders of the many places its customers once called home.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandpa, my family, they all built it together,\u201d said Zinia Ortiz, whose family has operated the cafe for the past five years.<\/p>\n
Ortiz\u2019s grandparents came to Cactus from Mexico. They dreamed of owning their own business but spent decades working long shifts at the beef processing plant.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandpa would work night shift, my grandma would work mornings,\u201d Ortiz said.<\/p>\n
Years later, the cafe they built stands as a testament to what those years of hard work produced.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re hard workers,\u201d Ortiz said of her family. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to achieve everything they can. Coming from Mexico, I think they\u2019re doing as much as they can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their story is one of many in Cactus – a small Texas town shaped by people who arrived from around the world and built lives together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You could still call that just a “wide place in the road”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Or you could call it America.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This story is part of The Heart of America: Cactus, Texas<\/a>. You can watch the full episode on this station’s streaming app<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People from more than 20 nationalities call this tiny Texas town home. Here\u2019s what brought them together. CACTUS,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-463804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}