Oil: El Loophole

Brownsville, Texas (pop. 48,040) is a hot, sleepy Mexican border city with almost no hinterland. As near to Panama ity as to New York, it is visited each day by but one train, two planes, and practically no tourists. But thanks to a 17-mile ship channel to the Gulf of Mexico and the imagination of a profane, one-time U-boat commander named Friederich Wilhelm ("Fritz") Hofmokel, Brownsville today is a flourishing seaport that last year handled 4,685,000 tons of cargo. More than half that tonnage consisted of low-grade Mexican oil imported under a unique arrangement that Brownsville's predominantly Mexican-American inhabitants...

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