One day I went to a meeting of the nonprofit group La Union del Pueblo Entero (the Union of All the People), which helps connect colonias residents with social services. Residents met with an attorney who helped with tax questions and a representative of Wells Fargo bank, who outlined a program that offers low-interest credit cards for those with a LUPE membership. "I grew up in a colonia without water," says Juanita Valdez-Cox, LUPE's director. "In a colonia, I see people that have a one-room house and they have, say, a dirt floor. But that same family is already thinking about how to have a house with a real floor. I remember my father saying, 'I want you to have a better life than the one we had.' It was poverty, but it wasn't the kind of poverty that completely engulfed you and made you give up and say, 'Okay, this is the way I'm going to be forever.' There's a lot the government can and should do. But all programs here depend on self-help."