Ernesto Cortes, the Southwest regional director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, has been supervising the I AF's organizing in the colonias for the past three decades: "Valley Interfaith started working with residents in Las Milpas [outside of Pharr]. We saw that the real leader there was a lady named Carmen Anaya. One day she pointed out to a political figure that kids couldn't go to school because of a lack of drainage in the area. [The politician] would not walk in the area where the children had to walk every day to go to school because he didn't want to get his boots muddy. Carmen was furious. She came to a new realization: 'I used to work for candidates until I understood that they had to work for us.' She saw the power that was created because of the organizing Valley Interfaith was doing."