The Thrum Of History:...Why Cameron County's Ditzy Elections Serve Only A Few...You Can Count Votes Forever, But Nothing Changes...

"Since Freud, the center of man is not where we thought it was; one has to go on from there..." - Jacques Lacan


By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The thought crossed my mind as I wondered about this elections mess that has the Cameron County Judge's position in limbo: Would things be better in this oft-whipped town if it banned all men. A City of Women; that may be the only solution for those wishing to rid dirt-poor Brownsville of its rotten politics, the same crooked politics that's always had this dusty bordertown on its knees. Such a banning of the Macho male would go a long way toward saving a chained population subjected to decades of mental beat-downs.

Yep, I always thought that the best Texas-Mexico border novel would not be about any person or personality, but about a bordertown itself. What a biography one could write about Brownsville! You would start with a scene at a motel where the wife of a local luminary is getting her kicks in the company of a mid-level bureaucrat half her age. And then you could segue into a scene where the ever-drunken mayor is being busted by city cops barely a block away. In the newsroom of the local newspaper, a young, naive reporter would get into it with the publisher about why the big stories were forever ignored. A fiery election would soon follow and the town's people would agonize over some alleged vote-count mischief, only that would pass quickly and nothing would ever come of it. Somewhere in there, a do-gooder Blogger would be arrested and jailed. Eyes would go to the ceiling; mouths would freeze in wonderment. Smalltown vignettes, someone would throw out, are juicy and sexy. The well-hipped woman shagging in the motel would next be seen waltzing into another motel room, this time with a high-ranking police official carrying a bag of sex toys, the handle of his weathered whip clearly visible even from the motel office.

Night would come, followed by rain. It would rain in every damned chapter - perhaps offered by the author as a metaphor for the citizen's desire to clean-up after fucking around all day and again look forward to the following just-as-stupid day.

It is in a ragged world such as this that any politician plying his trade in Brownsville acts out the required drama. You wish to run for office? Well, son, you better bring your A-game, i.e. dirty tricks. And check in with your party chairman. You a Democrat? That'll be Mssr. Gilberto Hinojosa. Drop-in on him. Tell him you have this freakin' hunger for public service. Tell him you want to serve the entire county. Tell him you're clean. Tell him you hate Republicans. Tell him all Republicans suck elephant cocks. Tell him you know your county political history. Tell him you're ready to throw punches. Tell him you've seen Eddie Lucio, the state senator, in action for more than a decade. Tell him you want to be just like the State Rep. Rene Oliveira, the career politician whose nickname of "The Plump Partridge" speaks to his goddamned comfortable standing in life thanks to the voters. Tell the party chairman whatever the Hell it is you have to tell him. It's the prize that matters, isn't it?

Damned county is falling apart. It could move itself south of the Rio Grande and fall in with Mexico in all facets of the game, food, music, culture, law and bullshit without skippinga  beat. Why any self-respecting Human Being able to think would want to spend any length of time in Cameron County is the mystery. It must be something to wake up in Brownsville and know exactly where you are, and know it isn't a nice place, and know that the city is the city dump. When people elsewhere talk about Brownsville, it's about its soiled lifestyle, its adultery, its inability to accomplish dreams that, well, are not dreams elsewhere in the country because they are quite attainable. The problem is not the factual aspects of the community. There is a geographic city, with city boundaries and distinguishable entities such as the police department and City Hall. And there are enough innocents to let the politicians play their shitty games. Genoveva at the tortilla factory won't get in the way, and neither will Julio at the finance company. It's politics, but it's not fair. The few brains in town have enslaved the remaining larger portion of the population. It's nothing new; it's the city's back pages - the mark of its under-achieving history.

So write the county's biography and focus on Brownsville for the major part of the book. You might start by hanging out at the Cameron County Courthouse here all day Monday. They'll be counting votes. To declare a winner in that county judge's race. You know the sordid story: residents voted on Nov. 2nd and then waited and waited and waited through a series of shitty moves related to the vote tabulation that initially gave the job to one guy and then took it from him, to give it to the other guy - the Democrat.

And, you are correct: no woman was involved in that conspiracy, or so it would seem. Storylines have a nasty habit of going where they want to go, so perhaps some woman will surface to take the fall, to do some Macho's bidding, to move the can down the unpaved road.

I know, I know. It's just a bunch of flawed, self-serving guys acting-out a tired stage play they've known for all years. Their practiced lines are known by everyone in town, their Homey faces pasted on the ravines and outer edges of everybody's brain, there alongside the mugs of more-famous oppressors, villains, dictators, abusers and fakers.

Bastards...

- 30 -