El Paso Times
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Heriberto Pérez Lara sat on the bed in his home in Juárez, meticulously lacing his brown dress shoes. His mother, Anayensi Lara Ruíz, smoothed an ironed white button-down shirt on its hanger.
She grabbed his graduation cap and tassel off the bedspread.
“Apart from these, what else do you need to take with you?” she asked. His black gown hung downstairs in the living room, draped with the orange stole of the University of Texas at El Paso.
“That’s everything,” he said, looking up at the mother who raised him on her own.