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Órale, the feature today is the term ‘moyote.’ It’s the Nahuatl or Aztec word for mosquito. While you’ll hear it used outside the Rio Grande region in…

Órale, the featured word today is ‘aguila.’ It’s the Spanish word for eagle. In Caló it’s used to mean alertness or beware. Somebody who’s watching out…

Órale, the Caló word of the day is ‘echarse.’ It’s the Spanish verb for toss, put, lay on, or oust. In Caló, echarse means to slump, give up, or got to…

Órale, the Caló word today is ‘trucha.' It means trout in Spanish, but in Caló trucha means en garde, check things out or look at everything closely.…

The Caló word today is cabulear. It’s a verb meaning to joke around or to be ironic or sarcastic. There’s nothing exactly comparable in Spanish, other…

Órale, the word for this episode is bule. In Caló it means a disreputable place or event. It also means to party with abandon, what in the American…

Órale, we’re continuing with words in Caló that come from the language spoken by the Kalé or Romaní from Spain, Portugal and France, who also call their language Kaló. The word for this episode is chompa. It means the top of your head in Caló. It comes from the word the Kalé use for the same, chola. There is another similarly-pronounced word in Caló, cholo, which means a gang member (chola for woman). This particular word isn’t related to chompa, however. It comes from the Nahuatl (Aztec) and means dog. We’ll cover that word in a future episode. In the Caló spoken on the Rio Grande, like all languages, references to the head can convey many entendre, depending on the context. A chompón, for example, is a lump on the heat and a head-plant in the proverbial immovable wall. And a chompazo is a hit to the head.

Today, Big Bend National Park is a place to escape from the modern world and into the wilderness. But this harsh and majestic place was also home to countless people, from archaic hunters to 20th-century farmers.

Agave, and the related succulents lechuguilla and sotol, are the ancient touchstones of human life in our region. The continent's oldest known “earth…

Painted pottery, stone tools, rock art on cave walls – these are what come to mind when we think of artifacts of our region's deep human past. But in the…