Monica Ortiz Uribe

Benjamin Alire Saenz won this year's PEN/Faulkner award for his latest collection of short stories, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club. The real-life Kentucky Club is just south of the U.S.-Mexico border, and Saenz joined a reporter there to talk about life in two countries.

At a new school for midwives, students learn old arts, like massaging bellies, while also studying gynecology, obstetrics and nursing. Officials hope a new generation of professional midwives will help reduce the pressures on Mexican hospitals overwhelmed by births that, in the past, would have taken place at home.

Narcotraffickers battling over turf in northern Mexico's border town of Nuevo Laredo have left a trail of bodies and a populace afraid to speak. Last week, nine corpses were dumped near the outskirts of the city. Making matters worse, 131 inmates escaped from a prison in about two hours outside Nuevo Laredo.

From member station KJZZ, Monica Ortiz Uribe reports on the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, where residents fear the presidential election will not bring an end to the violence.

Josefina Vazquez Mota is the first woman from a major political party to run for president. She has pledged to crack down on corruption but is having trouble distancing herself from President Felipe Calderon. He's from the same party, and his drug war has failed to halt cartel violence.

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez is the ultimate immigrant success story and, with an overall approval rating of about two-thirds of residents in her state, she's arguably the most popular Republican governor in the country. But that popularity doesn't always extend to Hispanics.

Mexican and U.S. leaders have vowed to track down the gunmen who killed three people, including two U.S. citizens, with ties to the U.S. Consulate in the border town of Juarez. Mexican authorities say they believe the killings are linked to the country's raging drug war.