Staff Writer
BROWNSVILLE, Texas - A casual drive across this town never has been one for the eyes. The dominant Catholic Church in town likes to say Brownsville residents suffer the harsh local geography in payment for the sins of their fathers and because to not suffer would be to not deserve Heaven. Who knows about that. The boys in the bars say everything looks awful because politicians have no other mental image of what a community can be, can offer.
There are colonias in the area, horrible places for living, for raising children, but there they are. And there are neighborhoods where the word "poor" does not do justice to the pain and poverty being endured. Shoeless kids play in the unkempt streets. Mangy dogs amble about as if on Cocaine or as if on their last legs. The elderly wonder about where yesterday went. The young ask for divine intervention that never comes.
Welcome to Hard Times. The book depicting life in this God-abandoned town would be written in no less than 600 long chapters. Wheelbarrows would be needed to wheel one out of the library.
We ask: When will it end? When will residents of this love-starved bordertown of 120,000 souls see progress? Colonias symbolize the worst, but there is still more bad than good in a town that could never define - or paint - good.
There is no vision for tomorrow, no dreaming the impossible dream.
We could throw out suggestions about resolving the colonia and shack housing you see from one end of the Rio Grande Valley to the other. Not that politicians would buy them. No, one has to look far and wide for ideas - the Big Cities are trying even the wildest solutions to housing problems.
In New York, the State Assembly recently adopted a new loft law that affects thousands of people unable to pay the expensive apartment leases in Manhattan. The new law protects loft tenants from unfair rent hikes and eviction. This includes those people who move into abandoned warehouses, in Brooklyn especially, and fix up the place to create individual housing.
This means that thousands of people living in factories and warehouses from Brooklyn to the Bronx could now become rent-stabilized. “It's a huge win for keeping the middle class in the city,” said Jean Grillo, a TriBeCa playwright and loft tenant. “Thank God - it’s been a long time coming.”
So, we again ask: Why cannot some bold Rio Grande Valley elected official (Hell-o, Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos) dare to dream? Why not help the poor living in despicable and shameful housing in the outlying areas of Brownsville? Why not find houses in disrepair or abandoned by owners and hand them over to the poor. They would certainly take the help and, soon, these houses would be fixed-up, thus allowing the new owners to become members of civilization and not of a world where they are more animals than Human Beings.
Such an effort by elected officials would be novel, and it too would be a grand example of doing something positive for the constituency. That's a rarity, we know...
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2 comments:
Ron Mexico, if you run for county judge, I will vote for you. Truth is, that people who run for public offices, do so for the purpose of self-aggrandizement.
After awhile they become desintized and forget the masses. I don't understand why Valley Interfaith doesn't works on a solutions.
I have no faith in local politicians, they are minor league players.(Just like the whitewings) An Example Commissioner Sophia Benavides won without a platform.
Then let us not only blame the politicians, for some unforgiving reason they keep getting re-elected, go figure.
Rosario:...I regret to inform you that our writer Ron Mexico is married to the Panamanian circus acrobat Elaine Benitez. At present, they reside in Port Isabel. We will post a notice should his status change... - Editor
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