Gladys Porter and The Pips: What's Next For Defenseless Brownsville?...It's Anybody's Guess...Film At Eleven...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Parvis Sheikh Rezaei brought in a cool $3.9 million to this bordertown's lagging economy. It was a burglar's tool he used, but, Brutha, this is the hole where money talks. You've heard about that cockamamie idea that had this town being hit-up for funding needed by a start-up airline wanting to fly into - egads! - bloody, disgusting Mexico. That's Parvis in the photo atop this story.

The 55-year-old Iranian somehow found his way from the ill sands of Tehran to South Texas. He had some ideas on how to make a living, make some easy money, which is the national sport of Brownsville. Parvis looked around, saw easy pickings, and opened a pair of grocery stores in poverty-strapped Cameron Park, perhaps the worst subdivision in America.

Food Stamps flowed that way like confetti dropping from skyscrapers during one of those excitable New York City parades. They were being traded all over the place, for food, yes, but also for auto repair, yardwork, carwashings, used clothing, baby-sitting and danged near anything they could be bartered for within the cash-strapped subdivision population. It was the thrill of the day, say the stunned feds.

Parvis is in jail, along with two sad-faced, stupid Mexicans he employed at his so-called "dollar" stores. Gone to the Big House after four long and happy years of bilking the federal program.

But, boys and girls, money dreams are big here.

That airline, the one with the horrible name of Fly Frontera, ain't gonna happen. That movida was being orchestrated by the controversial mayor - Pat Ahumada - we've heard for all these years and mouthy City Commissioner Charlie Atkinson, two of the Pips who can always be counted on to spurt forth with ideas and plans that forever sound like schemes. Ahumada may be feeling a bit antsy; his DWI case hits the courts next month. Atkinson, well, he's the Pillsbury Doughboy and Curly of The Three Stooges and Henny Youngman all rolled into one character. A-ha-ha-ha, he goes one day. Yuckeety-yuck-yuck, the next. And, "Here, take my brain, please," the one after that. Some say they'd pay to watch this happy-feet guy walk up the sidewalk, cause they're sure the damned thing would roll-up on his ass. He's that kind of local celebrity, laugh-a-minute sort who plays not to the camera, but to the whole frickin' sky. Why, is the question, but he'd never get it.

So, sad-shy Brownsville waddles along, again victimized by its own people. Parvis Sheikh Rezaei may not be Hispanic, but he played one in Cameron Park. Played one to a T. Took something and paid less for it. Broke the law and kept doing it. Handed poor people cash when they needed milk and bread and tortillas. Did it in the style employed by the best around here.

Three-point-nine million dollars.

Dammit, Parvis, you set one shitty example for the young people and politicians of this falling town. But, you know, I haven't heard one of these so-called city leaders condemn your Iranian ass...

- 30 -

Weekend In The Valley: It's A Time For Whatever...Yeah, Set Me Up A Fria, Three Tacos And Bill Me Later...Much Later...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - The snowbirds are gone and the boys at the cafe no longer whisper their guy lingo. That waitress over there: Ay mama! And look at that clown walking in with that Big Haired broad. She comes with a different dude every day, always walking in at an angle, always starving and never interested in paying. Put a bird on it, doll. And she does, on her purse. Man, it's almost Summer and things are changing around here.

Huge dreams are around. That hunting and fishing retail store being built looms as either our crown jewel or the portrait of a bad, bad move. We'll see. And that ballteam playing its games at the city field is almost back in the saddle. It's a worn-out saddle, but they'll ride it aboard that aging cayuse that gets more boos than cheers. Life as a plate of pancakes endures here. The neighborhood Avon lady has gone back to Mexico. No replacement yet.

Something happens to a town when the hot scorch of another Texas summer dawns. Sales of T-shirts skyrocket. Flips replace the battered cowboy boots. And women stash those tight jeans for colorful sundresses and shorts. Short shorts make the world go round and round. Frank Sinatra said that and, no, he won't be playing for the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings this year.

Another page has turned in the Book of Harlingen as many here prep for the season of border renewal. Some will head for the local shuffleboard courts, others to that outlet mall west of town, while still others will take their chances with the jellyfish on the island to the east. It's a time for doing, not sitting around at home, on that Republican cloth couch, a beer in one hand and the missus in the other. Love in the Valley: daily battles between beer and the wife. It'll all work itself out. Shake-out between sundown and nightfall. Love must be made, soft and easy and hard and quick. The town's next population on the assembly line.

It's been a humdinger so far.

News has travelled slow, but this town's a Par-3 golf course. Steamy, local politics began like some raging range fire, only now it is a little more than a dying charcoal there at the bottom of the dusty, backyard grill. No one is claiming ownership of any Goddamned dreams. The mayor is bunkered somewhere in town, commissioners attending their day jobs and hoping whatever controversy is coming down the road waits on a cooler day.

Nothing has been heard from Commissioner Robert Leftwich for weeks. Same for Gus Ruiz, Joey Trevino, Jerry Prepejchal, Kori Marra. It has been the Spring of Contentment for these public servants, well, except for Miss. Marra who still has legal issues to resolve. That'll take care of itself. It's the RGV. Deals are put on the table and things sort of evaporate. It's a life. The Texas-Mexico border kills you and grants you a second act. It is both a tragedy and a joke. Some newspeople can't even spell the word "suspect," so you know that, for some, trouble with the law may be no trouble at all. Spin the bottle, Baby. You're off the hook. Yeah, send me a Christmas card and thank your uncle, my compadre with the police department.

The weekend is almost here. Things to do right and left. Friends and viejas to see. Get the truck washed, watch TV. Let it sort of all hang-out. Yeah, we're near halftime of the year.Hand me the phone. Gonna order me a plate of barbacoa tacos to scarf-on while I watch the San Antonio Spurs get their ass kicked. Phone call: "Yeah, vato, get me one. How much? What! Ten bolas to see the WhiteWings! You freakin' crazy, dude?! Chale, no. Better if we spend it on a lap dance over at our favorite joint. Simon, come pick me up. I'll tell the wife we're driving over to see the construction of the new Bass Pro Shop. Ha ha ha."

Overhead, the big, red, soul-killing sunball moves in...

- 30 -

In The Valley, Semi-Pro Sports Are A Hard Sell...Conjuntos, Cantinas Draw More Fans...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - This is dancing country here. Those palm trees you see on the side of the highways sway to conjunto music. Every night, in the bars and in the homes. Baseball? That's for the kids out back. Get them a glove at the flea market and an old ball and let them at it. Semi-pro baseball? Fuhgeddaboutit!

A poll conducted by The McAllen Monitor asking readers to name their favorite minor league club yielded this:

Which local teams do you follow on a regular basis?

Vipers: 11%
Magic: 3%
Roadrunners: 6%
Killer Bees: 14%
More than one of the above: 4%
None: 63%

Any questions? The newfangled McAllen Thunder of the North American Baseball League is set to begin play next month at a field best known as the home of the Edinburg Roadrunners. Perhaps good for them, The Monitor did not include The Thunder in its fan survey. They might have come in at zero, but who knows.

It is, nonetheless, a telling sign that the business of fielding less-than-spectacular squads is not selling in the Rio Grande Valley. Crowds at the respective venues have been underwhelming, most of any size coming on promotion nights when kids get in free or beer goes at half-prize or somesuch cheap hook. The Thunder's fans? That may be what is keeping club officials up all night these days. You call yourself the McAllen Anything and play in rival town Edinburg and you've already got problems.

It'll be something to watch unfold.

But, sadly, it will not be baseball worth paying for, not by any stretch of the imagination. And not while there is still major league baseball on TV. You can sign - and bring - disgraced player Jose Canseco as much as you want, only that sideshow will have nothing to do with baseball.

Baseball is America's game. There are standards that must adhere to the reverence. Merely fielding nine guys who will scruff-up during a nine-inning fray, exhibit some hustle and wave at the fans won't display this game at its best. It's not offered as major league-calibre, but the North American Baseball League's standing lies somewhere between the neighborhood guys who call a game on the weekends and the worst of A ball in the established minor leagues.

Not one of these local teams could play with the Pawtucket Red Sox, the Frisco Roughriders or the Round Rock Express. And that, ball fans, is the barest of measures.

Someone drop a quarter in the jukebox. Yeah, anything by Cornelio Reyna...

- 30 -

In Jolly Olde England, Another Royal Wedding...The Prince And The Commoner...Britain's Funny Family...Live From The U.K....

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - We hear there's something going on across the Atlantic this Friday. A wedding, of sorts. Ah, those Brits. Laugh-a-minute people, always a source for pretty good comedy. Prince William, elder son of Princess Diana and her adulterous hubby, Charles, is marrying a commoner, Miss. Catherine Elizabeth Middleton. The world waits with bated breath. It's been awhile since we've seen one of these ridiculously expensive, anachronistic public ballets featuring a royalty more attune to scandal than benevolence.

It was July 29, 1981, in fact. That's the day a young Diana married the cad Charles on World TV.

That royal marriage lasted 15 years, most fraught with affairs by both Di and Charles, most marred by horrible press that, yeah, took the lustre off the darn romantic, fairy tale thing. They divorced in August of 1996 and Diane was dead almost to the day a year later, in Paris, in the company of what, by then, was the 10th or 12th man she'd consorted with, this one the wealthy Arab playboy Dodi Al-Fayed, who also died in that crash that took her life. Al-Fayed's father would later blame operatives of British Intelligence for killing the two lovebirds. You can't have a tale set in a castle without wanton sex, espionage and a bloody ending.

William and Kate come a few years down the road. She's 29; he's 28. Neither of the two has had what anyone would consider a real job. William frolics across the world for photos showing him being kindly to poor Africans and the like. Kate has had one job since finishing school, but, says the British press, it lasted only a few, short months, or until she found her hand at the end of William's...

The spectacle will be exactly that. Celebrities and political leaders will abound, some of them even dictators quick to abuse their people back home. The usual cast of stars will also arrive: Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney, etc., etc. The English press is making hay of the fact that former Prime Minister Tony Blair was not invited, with pundits there saying Prince Charles, another royal who has never worked, took a dislike to members of Blair's Labor Party - the same party that at times talks about slicing the royal family's hefty taxpayer allowance. Gordon Brown, the P.M. who preceded Blair, also was not in the invitation list. That's funny, but for a variety of other reasons. For your information, President Obama was not invited, either. Same for the First Lady.

Humor always has marked English life, even in the face of the worst of times. London and other British cities absorbed a terrible beating from Nazi bombers during Germany's disastrous World War II adventure. But the stoic English took it all in stride, enduring in the company of perhaps Mankind's greatest optimist - Sir Winston Churchill.

So, who knows if this particular Royal marriage will work. Lord knows the English crown has a mess of secrets that only begins with its connections to Russian royalties of the past and intriguing, yet stupid relationships with foreign leaders not exactly kind to democracy, Hitler being one prior to his assault on London. And then there was the case of Prince Edward who gave up the throne for divorced American Wallis Simpson. Love is funny that way.

Western television will go all-out to broadcast the wedding. Already, America's biggest news personalities are flocking across the ocean to set up cameras and interviews. They never chase other royal weddings with such vigor, Spain's or those of the Netherlands, but maybe it's the common language that serves as bond. Plus, the Brits gladly go along with being displayed like monkeys. Part of the national humor, I suppose.

I'll watch. Not all of it, but maybe the re-cap on the evening news.

There's the camera shots of Camilla Parker Bowles, Prince Charles infatuation during his marriage to Diana. Those will be interesting. Camilla, shown in photo below holding flowers, was married at the time, but what the Hell? She later divorced her old man to marry Charles, completing the joke.

Watch a bit of it. History will be made. And you'll have some background for that day in the future when this royal marriage, too, goes down the tubes...

- 30 -

At Washington's Hallowed National Mall, No Room For Hispanic Museum...Fight For Inclusion...Again...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - It would be easy to say the spot is deserved if for no other reason than that enough Hispanics have bled and died while fighting for this country. The record shows that forty-three men of Hispanic heritage have won the Medal of Honor while serving this nation's military in wars from Germany to Afghanistan, 25 of those medals presented posthumously.

Yet in a country born from immigrants and built by more than 230 years of immigrant sweat, today's Hispanics have no memorial honoring their contributions anywhere along the revered National Mall in the nation's capital. Big monuments to big men can be seen for miles: Abraham Lincoln's and George Washington's bookending the mall; Thomas Jefferson's nearby - all flanked by venerations for veterans of America's wars, from World War II, to Korea, to Vietnam.

Also in the mix is the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum paying its respects to the many Jews killed during the Nazi atrocities in early-1940s Germany. The National Museum of the American Indian sits off Independence Avenue in the shadows of the Capitol, where Congress does its work. Back a bit toward the center of the mall lies the future site of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Nowhere is there a similar memorial to U.S. Hispanics.

Federal money, or really a lack of it, stands in the way. Where the federal government chipped in half of the $500 million needed for the African-American museum, the Hispanic version has failed to generate interest from a Congress using the current budgetary crisis as a shield against any sort of imminent commitment. In the case of the museum for Native Americans, the federal government paid two-thirds of the cost.

According to a story published last Thursday in the inside pages of The New York Times, efforts to link construction of the museum to the Smithsonian Institution complex have been stalled by a variety of roadblocks that go beyond the federal budget crunch. The Native American museum, also sponsored by the Smithsonian, opened seven years ago. The African American one is scheduled for completion within the next four years.

Unlike the other ethnic museums, the Hispanic project has drawn opposition that never surfaced before. U.S. Rep. Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, was quoted in The Times as saying this: "I don't want a situation where whites go to the original museum, African-Americans go to the African-American museums, Indians go to the Indian museum, Hispanics go to the Latino American museum. That's not America."

The point seems a bit odd, especially when Hispanics clearly see the government-backed efforts for the other ethnic groups. Strong opposition also has come from something called the National Coalition To Save Our Mall, whose president, Judy Feldman, said this about the Hispanic museum project: "What's happening is we just keep jamming things into the limited space." Still, backers say the country's burgeoning Hispanic population, now exceeding 50 million, and its often-overlooked tremendous contributions to all sectors of American society demands includion. And even as all of this plays out, the federal commission assigned overview has been conducting a variety of surveys asking Hispanics what they would want in their museum: the tireless toils of Cesar Chavez in defense of mistreated farmworkers, the allegiance and service to the military, the athletic field, the socio-political world, the economy. It's a veritable mountain of mostly-positive material. The commission is scheduled to report its findings to Congress next month.

In the Times article, Lisa Navarrete, a spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza, said the mall's lack of Hispanic-related memorials is unfortunate because Latino children also travel to Washington, D.C., where, as things stand, they cannot see "their community and history and legacy reflected."

Backers of the museum say their drive, which began in 2003 in a Bill submitted in Congress by California Democrat Xavier Becerra, is an uphill political battle at this point. They acknowledge that federal money is just not there, not as readily as it was for the African-American museum or for the Native American one. Left as the only viable option is the idea of private donations. Support in Congress has come mainly from representatives who say they endorse the idea, but not if it means spending federal dollars.

The commission preparing the report has released some data about the project, saying it has looked at plans for a 310,000-square-foot building, which would be about as big as the African-American museum. Four sites have been offered as possibilities for placement, all of them along the desired National Mall, shown in photo directly above.

It's a museum whose aim is noble and, without question, due. But, back in 2009, when supporters first began making inroads on the project, they envisioned a 10-year fight to get it built. Now, that timetable is said to be more a dream than a possibility.

It's something to think about...

- 30 -

110 In The Shade: Brownsville's Angry Blogger Jerry McHale Endures...One Hard-Luck Story After Another...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - In Jerry McHale's newsroom, there's always a half-stoned, dressed-to-kill doll at his feet near the computer, the comely sweetheart doing her best to stay quiet while he works another story about corruption, hideous residents doing nothing or yet another upcoming election featuring candidates better suited for a movie about the Mexican tamale industry or that country's 1910 Revolution. He has the best of characters and the worst of characters. And, absolutely, there's a dame in the picture.

She's in his mind, supple and naked and ready, as he types away, running the mental thesaurus on full-blast and grabbing at the best words as his brain speeds through his colossal vocabulary vault. McHale, shown in photo at right, is writing, but he may as well be fucking. That is how he writes, as if making love. The passion is discernible. His journalistic ejaculation will match what he delivers later that same night to his sensual wife. Every story carries the chemicals for life, or destruction of life. His fans, this entire community of 140,000 do-nothings, have come to expect vicious whippings from the man who stands as this bordertown's best writer. Hands down. When he gets a Journalism Hard-On, there is only one reporter in town, regardless of the compliments he pays others from time to time. McHale is like Muhammad Ali in his prime. Even Nixon was told to go to hell by the champ. Such is McHale's clout in this falling town.

Another time and he would have been Ghengis Khan's brother, Don. Or he would have been the man who shot Liberty Valance. Or, as the Italians might say, he coulda been a contendah. Or he may have been the fucka who chased down Lee Harvey Oswald that fateful day in Dallas. Or he perhaps could have been a sparring partner for Argentine heavyweight bruiser Oscar "Ringo" Bonavena. McHale is the sort of personality who can smell a scrap a block away. He's the bystander who urges two brawling broads to, not stop, but keep kicking. He's pro-wino, but not as it relates to his own bottle of whisky. A few decades ago, when a dusty bordello known as El Zumbido, drew men like flies to Matamoros, McHale was there to do more than take the midnight pulse of the dog-tired whores. You can still go to a piece of harsh geography on the road to the Matamoros beach where El Zumbido stood, stand there atop the rutted ground and say his name. From somewhere below, along some lonely fire ant trail burrowing to the center of the earth, would come the voice of his beloved prostitute Gloria, who would cough as he liked her to cough when fully-engorged in her mouth and then say, "Eres tu, Maclovio?"

Today's local reporters, and we include a mess of bloggers whose work pales against the editor of http://www.brownsvilleliteraryreview.blogspot.com/, cannot hold a candle to McHale. They try, of course, but they are traipsing down a path he created long-ago, chasing his place in local news, itching to be seen as he is seen, suffocating in his indomitable legend. Everything of note that has happened in this dusty burg has been studied and analyzed by McHale, often expectorated in Blog stories that come armed with the most graphic of porno and the cutting lingo of the bars, streets and darkened, active motel rooms.

That uppity mayor back in '80? He went to his grave wishing to wrap his hands around McHale's California neck. The southern newspaper editor who came to Brownsville from Alabama? She still hates his ass for that article he wrote in The Brownsville Times describing her as having a head too-small for the rest of her body. That county judge who got too big for his britches? He is said to fire his pistol at the ever-arriving big, fat, yellow moon he associates with McHale.

It's a life, is what he will say.

A little booze, some poon and a truckload of laughs.

What the Hell? Let the blogging pretenders type away. They're just rewriting his past, cruising story angles he carved a long time ago, breathing the fumes of newspapering he breathes even when ill. There is the legend of the porno-laden El Rocinante, his former blog - the longest-running artillery assault that came to be felt by anybody who wanted to be anybody in this poverty-stricken hellhole.

Not that he hasn't worked both sides of the fence. McHale is skillful at protecting his friends. Not a word came from him when his blogging ally Juan Montoya went blotto and was arrested on reckless driving and DWI charges late last year. McHale said nothing of consequence, alluding to Juan's stay in jail as Montoya's visit to the lovely retreat-sounding "county farm."

He covers for friends like local notables Ben Neece, a municipal judge, and Tony Zavaleta, a local expert on all-things-border and a current candidate for the city commission. The list goes on, and it stands as black marks outlined against every other bit of societal criticism he has lodged against his adopted community - the one that gave him, we understand, a zoo of loose women, several wives and a passel of kids. As a story, McHale's life could be seen as the life of a smalltown Norman Mailer. Where Mailer ran for mayor of New York, McHale sought the same job in Brownsville. Both lost, but what the Hell?

Studs Terkel would have seen a bit of himself in the now-balding McHale. Like Studs, McHale loves to color his stories with the daily struggle of the local citizenry, religious and otherwise. Too bad if the characterization, he might say, is a bit cartoonish. I see what I see, and I know what I know. You're an adulterer and dirtbag, and, yeah, I'm writing it?

So when a novice pol such as mayoral candidate Evaristo "Viro" Cardenas comes along, we are sure McHale's first impulse is to see if the youngun can take a punch. Same for political neophyte Roman Perez, who we think would shrink like a child on the spot at being asked to tip a few cold ones and juggle Gay jokes with McHale and his pals at La Palma Lounge downtown. Writers who have written a tapeworm of stories eventually get captured by the idea that they've seen and heard it all. It's partially true.

McHale, however, like the viejas at the cantinas on 14th Street, likes to hear the same one-note songs over and over and over. It is his favored, trusted soundtrack - that noisy and mindless accordioned Tejano tune able to send bar patrons to the outs of naked, back-ripping romance and the biggest of goddamned dreams. Hechale, vampiro!

McHale is getting old. His best journalism likely is behind him.

What he ought to do is get the Hell away from the local nobodies and write for posterity...

- 30 -

Along The Texas-Mexico Border, A Wickedly Strange Axis...God and Satan...Voodoo, Too...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - The story is told of the young teen-age girl who went against her mother's wishes and danced the night away at a local bar, sailing across the dance floor with a charming man who seemed the answer to her dreams. It wasn't until midnight that she looked down at his feet and saw that he had none, only two hooves that now hopped heavy on the bar's concrete floor.

It is also said that the girl's mother wasted little time the next morning in taking her to a "Curandero," a largely uneducated shaman who went about performing some sort of exorcism to supposedly rid her of any lingering satanic effect. In the story, the mother gives the Curandero her last dollars and a lengthy, respectful bow, eventually coming up to clasp his hands in gratitude, as if holding hands with the Pope.

They tell that story in every Hispanic household from Brownsville to Rio Grande City in the Rio Grande Valley, not only as a lesson for young girls, but as a clear example of how witchcraft, known around here as "brujeria," works, solves a mother's headaches.

Much of it is derived from the practice of Voodoo, a faith and belief loose science that centers on handing over your brain to the Devil. Buy a jar of weird weeds bottled in some yellowy-white liquid and be told that it will keep your enemies at bay. Throw a crucifix in it and be told placement under your matrimonial bed will rid your husband or wife of that desire to cheat. Get a packet of ground mesquite seeds and use it for good luck in romance, not for drink but for carrying around in your purse. Place a pig's foot at the entrance to your doghouse and curb a dog's barking at night. Throw a bit of tamarindo in your spouse's dinner drink and see his or her constipation go down the, well, toilet.

It's all there at your local Yerberia, out-of-the-way storefronts where you'll find remedies and counterpunches to a myriad of problems - from the aforementioned woes to do with marriage to baldness and body odor. Botany has an answer to most of Mankind's mental problems, goes the industry line. Lack of confidence and hexes, included.

In essence, what curanderismo says is that modern medicine does not have a monopoly on treatment of all ailments. Curanderos know their customers as "Skin & Seven Holes;" that is, biology that, when it treats the orifice, can always be made a bit more comfortable, if only, they note, because it's all in your head. Think you're too short, exhibiting dwarfism, well, curanderos will tell you to drink a mixture of pulque and kelite, and, in a few months, voila! - you've gained an inch or two in height. Can't write or spell? Try soaking your head in goat urine before bedtime. Goat or sheep will do, cat in a pinch.

Life is a big mystery to most laymen. Doctors know it all. Curanderos will only bullshit you and take your money. But it's true: The power of "Miracle Workers" is unquestioned in the Hispanic culture. Parents will drive their sickly kids for hours into the mountains of Mexico in search of a mystical curandero who will cure the boy of everything from shyness to bed-wetting. Others will promise the Heavens they will crawl on their knees into the farthest Catholic church if only their son or daughter can be cured of thievery, of lying, of taking drugs, of bad manners and of anti-social language.

What to make of it in the Year 2011, is the question.

Not much, would be the quick answer. Curanderismo is centuries-old and now a big part of the border culture. Prospective mothers seek a curandero in the same way that other mothers seek an Obstetrician - not for the birthing, but for the "read" into what awaits the newborn. Fathers who are told their baby will be born with serious abnormalities run to the Curandero before they head for Big City hospitals. The practice is not only accepted, but in many cases is expected. Word filters down from Grandpa that his parents bought the aid of Curanderos for all medical problems and diagnosis. "Welita dice que tenemos que llevar al bebe con Don Panchito Jaramillo in Falfurrias."

And so it goes.

Belief is a huge part of this particular exercise in blind faith. Faith means you put your trust in the person you trust. End of story. Dr. Smith may be best for those babies, but El Curandero knows much more about mine.

No one knows how many residents of the border have availed themselves of the ancient remedies, but the lore is heavy with testimonials from all sectors of the Hispanic community. Some will swear by bizarre treatments that, for some reason, work. Others will insist that a formal education in modern medicine is not needed in their world. Why pay $300 for a routine doctor's visit when you can spend a third of that buying herbs and plants and weeds and other rare fauna that do the job.

A story that comes to mind concerns a woman who was told by her doctor that she had a tennis ball-sized tumor growing in her stomach. Immediately, she was against any sort of surgery, so she went to a curandero. He treated her for several weeks with a variety of egg rubbings, warm porridge-like mixtures applied to her belly and monotone lullabyes he explained were so awful they scared the demons away. Convinced and seemingly feeling better, she went back for an X-ray and discovered the tumor was gone.

Some say it's all about giving your brain a chance to believe in something different. Fix the brain, say the curanderos, and the rest of the body will cure itself.

It's something to think about when you find yourself at the end of your rope on pretty much everything to do with being an Hispanic.

I know that when I had those killer kidney problems a few years back, my ex-mother-in-law called some distant relative in deep Mexico and then next thing I knew she was fixing me some warm tea that tasted sort of bitter and left a taste that was hard to get rid of for days. But the damned thing - called junco - worked like a champ.

My pee moved freely and painlessly again, and has ever since...

- 30 -

Land Of Tough Vatos And Soft Women: In The Rio Grande Valley, No Way Out Of Bad Love...Marrying El Diablo...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - The cold-blooded killing of schoolteacher Sonia Perez in nearby Rio Hondo a few weeks ago startled many in this town and in the surrounding communities where families like to think they cling hard to the Mexican culture, the culture that says women are revered, that says wives and mothers and grandmothers can do no wrong. Times and customs are changing.

Women who are born to deep South Texas have come to learn that a punch to the face comes sooner or later after the wedding vows, after the pain of giving birth, after giving children to men more animals than human, after the realization that love here always segues into cheating and beatings.

Any sort of psycho-analysis would likely lead back to the part of the Hispanic culture often referred to as the "Macho" gene, that soul-killing ingredient in the makeup of such a man that says "total control" is part of the deal. I go where I wanna go; you can't. I do what I wanna do; you can't. What! You're talking back to me! STF!!!

And so it begins.

Cheating comes and so do the insults. The once-lovely wife is now too-fat for lovemaking, too gone for showing-off at the nightclubs, too saddled with duties at home. And change that boy's effin diapers now!!!

It is a story of utter endurance for Valley women. They must run the marital obstacle course as if scared deer, as if to not do it brings on a quick, bloody whipping. What is life down here? Women, perhaps even a woman such as teacher Sonia Perez, know it as the result of a bad decision on a man they thought they had in the cup of their hands, back when the kissy-kissy led to lovey-lovey and all seemed as in the neatest movies. "Mi amor, pasame una chela..." And then it all went south. Something happens and it's over way before it should be over. Things come up at work and you stay longer, or so you tell the poor wife. Stuff pops up on a guy's shirt and it's not good. Money isn't as plentiful when the movida wants her due. The beaten wife endures.

Mother always warned her against Jose. He had an eye for the ladies, for the good times. And he drank like a sonofabitch. That temper? It would become a huge problem later, she told her daughter, even as the girl flashed bright gleamings off her romantic eyes. She'd change him, is what her mother would hear often. Jose would be a good man, no matter that his father had been in jail for beating his wife silly, for being drunk, for thinking he was Mr. Big Stuff. It was a distinct pattern anyone could see, only it was a pattern forever ignored. Jose had his good moments and she would remember only those. So he slapped her a bit and said strange stuff about the wife and other men, like that some guy at her job looked like he'd want to do her. Or the neighbor who kept saying the Old Lady was a "looker," his eyes working themselves up and down her tight jeans and flowing blouse, eyeballs there on her ass, his own wife looking completely humiliated and embarrassed.

It's a life, but it's a horrible life.

Sonia Perez never had a chance with that Vato...

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The Image Problem: Brownsville Wallows Because It Knows How To Wallow...Mayoral Candidates Do Not Impress...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - In another time, this drowsy town at the end of the submissive Rio Grande may have been another Constantinople, a flourishing metropolis fattened by bountiful trade, its art rivaling that of Paris, its economy as healthy as any the world has known, its people proud to honor and defend it.

If only.

Today's Brownsville is the picture of poverty and dreams melting at residents' ankles. There is no more of a give-up town in Texas than this one. Faces come up at you from the cracked sidewalks as if headed for the morgue, bodies moving as if on low batteries, words thrown out as if without regard for the brain. God never has been kind to this piddling bordertown of some 140,000 love-starved souls.

Last night, at a debate featuring the five stiffs seeking the mayorship, including current Mayor Pat Ahumada, the citizens arriving to hear their thoughts received what could be said was merely the latest mininum installment mailed-in to pay for that familiar used car that passes here for city government. Rarely in the history of the planet has one community sought solace from a fivesome such as this one. It's not that they are not human; it's just that they cannot spring forth with new & novel ideas on how to get this under-achieving Rio Grande Valley town moving. If fog is the favored color here, then a super-sized tamale is the meal of the laggard. Brownsville has run out of food.

Said candidate Antonio "Tony" Martinez at the debate: "I want you to believe in Brownsville because when you believe in Brownsville, we can achieve for Brownsville."

His words, thoughtful as they sounded, sailed out like crooked darts aimed at a damaged dartboard inside a Vato bar on 14th Street. What does it mean? That may have been the response from any of a hundred locals in attendance at the local college's venue where the alleged debate was held to no laughter.

Another candidate opined that the city's failure to attract business - to pump-up its sluggish economy - has to do with Brownsville's "image." Good point, good read, good catch; now what? It's true. No truer words were ever spoken in town, not even those thrown-out by any of the dozens of Mr. Amigos who have wandered into Brownsville for that annual veneration of the Charro. Blogger Jerry McHale, himself once a candidate for mayor, often notes that the problem with this community is that it believes it is always at the crossroads. Only he never elaborates. At the crossroads of what - doom and damnation?

When City Commissioner (and candidate) Edward Camarillo spoke about his goals for Brownsville, another challenger quickly chided him on having been lost for the past six years. The issues are well-known. There are no jobs in town, other than, everyone says, that of drug mule or blogger. No Big Time companies are asking about possibilities in Brownsville. No major retailers want anything to do with this town. No sports outfit or entertainment conglomerate has inhaled and said, "Sure, we'll give it a shot."

It's always the ridiculous, cockamamie ideas, such as a Bridge to Nowhere, or a commuter airline that will risk it all flying into drug war ack-ack in Mexico, or a French Quarter in the city's stenchy, decaying downtown. Detritus has no rival aside from this town.

Perhaps someday, a baggage-less leader will waltz into town and show the community a better way. The roll call at last night's mayoral debate read like a calling of some mediocre Tejano band merely out to find a quick opportunity for self-serving posturing. Mayor Ahumada singing lead, Tony Martinez on bass, Camarillo on drums, etc., etc.

There's a sun over Brownsville again today.

Maybe residents should be thankful no local politician is in charge of that...

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A Time To Think: The News From Ghent To Aix...How Much Do You Know?...Does It Matter?...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - The news business is very much like the business of life: one however-horrible event always leads to another, and not every day is a good day, and not every person you meet is willing to see things as you do, and what's obvious to some may not be to others. That, essentially, is what makes the Newsroom go round and round. The morning paper may have a color photograph of your uncle being arrested for drinking and driving; the afternoon news on TV may have a story on your uncle's mistress being busted for pushing drugs.

In a way, or really in many ways, news is the first draft of literature.

Someday, someone will write the A-to-Z story telling of the fall of Cameron County District Judge Abel Limas, as they will the tale of the murders of assistant D.A. Arturo Jose Iniguez and Rio Hondo schoolteacher Sonia Perez.

All seem to have the elements needed for a good book on crime.

But news also veers in every direction imaginable. There are sports, Big Time about the NY Yankees and small time about the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings, bright, lifestyle stories to do with fashions of the Spring Breakers and curse of the illegal aliens, culinary inventions such as quesadillas and the arrival of a new fuller, boozier beer from abroad.

Politics takes its place at the same table, offering a motherlode of good news and bad news. National politicians fly higher, but local politicians bring the emotions one would like to see in neighbors, not residents of the same monster cities. To see real estate mogul Donald Trump flapping his lips silly about a race for the White House against sitting President Barack Obama fits the news cycle both as straight news and comedy, depending on your own politics.

The fall of Judge Limas could be written in a straightforward corruption manner, or it could take on the elements of pathos and tragedy. I am sure both of those emotions travel his home's hallways at present. So, what to write on any given day? Sometimes, the stories just burst forth beautifully like some undiscovered Andean waterfall; other days they are as elusive as a girl may be on a second date. Life - and news - is funny that way. As members of the Human Tribe, all we can do at times is merely go along, with or without the flow. Do you need a passel of bawling brats ignored by their parents to feel community at a cafe, or do you seek the out-of-way eateries where families rarely arrive? The flow is there; you just decide which of the two you want.

An editor somewhere back in my Journalism past once told me that news is "Literature-in-a-hurry." I agree one-hundred percent, although my questions about why I should write a story that had been written a hundred times before meant more to me. His answer sailed in nicely and slapped me upside the head: "Because it's all in how you write it."

True.

We find ourselves at a strange moment-in-time when it comes to news. Never before in the history of the God-abandoned planet have so many seemingly lost people had so much available to them from so many sources. The news cycle, once the ownership of the morning newspaper and the evening news on TV, has evaporated into excitable 24-hour cable news services and radio punditry as to make noise the Earth's Number 1 export. Good luck with how it's being received out there in the far reaches of the universe.

So, today, on this sun-splashed, mid-April day, give an ear to news at some point and ask yourself whether it interests you and whether you needed it.

Studies show that most Americans get a dose of both print and broadcast news, the Internet being part of the latter. Has it helped things? Is the planet better off because it now has news at every moment, within the reach of all ears and eyes and fingers?

You can intellectualize it til the cows come home.

But in the small picture, in the one frame that applies to you as an individual, these too are days for finding the best source and ignoring the overall noise. Man needs a certain amount of drama, and when we write Man, we mean Woman, as well. He'll need his serious news as much as the light, feature stuff. A story about the tragedy of Judge Limas is gauged against a story about the creation of a website featuring the silliness of so-called Walmart people and/or Donald Trump's crazy hair.

Enjoy it all.

A day without news hasn't happened on Earth in a long, long, long time...

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Echoes Of The Dead: A Month Later, No News On Why The Young Assistant District Attorney Died...Found Inside His Vehicle In Matamoros, Mexico...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - In the aging, fat files of police departments across the country, they are listed as unsolved crimes. On television, they are referred to as cold cases. Always, they are rife with titillating tidbits of info that lead those poring over the material to craft a worthy conspiracy theory. A bullet hole in the low back of the neck indicating upward flight of the projectile and it's a dwarf doing the shooting. A butchering from behind with a hunting knife and it's the business partner. A dead-on pistol shot in the face and it's the wife unable to come to terms with her man's sexual infidelity.

The case of Arturo Jose Iniguez here has birthed a litany of theories.

The young assistant district attorney for Cameron County was barely 26 when his limp body was found at 10:30 p.m. last March 19th inside his gray, 2008 Jeep Patriot sport utility vehicle in the neighboring Mexican bordertown of Matamoros, along a quiet-looking street where malnourished, scraggly little boys often play stickball with makeshift baseballs made out of rolled-up socks and duct tape. How Iniguez found that particular street is anybody's guess. No one is talking. Not the investigating cops, and not his boss - District Attorney Armando Villalobos, shown in green-striped tie above.

They say Iniguez was despondent, but that has been thrown out as if describing the color of his vehicle or his casual, day-off shirt on the day he died, without proof or elaboration.

Some pointed to a comment Iniguez left before his mysterious death.

"We're the middle children of history, man," he wrote in his last days while adding a post to his Facebook page, quoting froma character in the movie, The Fight Club. "No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives."

One could make a shallow case for that being characterized as someone being depressed. But who knows? Facebook is famous for lies and posturing that makes its participants post both inanities in equal amounts as facts. What if it was just Iniguez wishing to use a favorite quote and nothing more?

But what's become especially grating is D.A. Villalobos and his decision to say little about Iniguez, the death, or the investigation. An autopsy of the young lawyer's body in Mexico revealed traces of an animal sedative in examined tissue. Villalobos accepted the possibility of suicide at first, but then sought a second autopsy to be conducted in this country. Nothing has been said about whether it was undertaken, or about its results.

The death remains that, just another weird death in Mexico with the barest of information, so weird that Iniguez's mother insists he died in a car accident.

Much has been made of family privacy, which is laudable, but this was a public servant who died while under the employ of a public entity. Iniguez was not just another ambulance chaser or bribe-provider in town; he was a defender of the public's side of things in court. His having a young wife and 2-year-old child seem at odds with suicide. Villalobos hasn't budged. He has quietly disdained disclosing his findings, odd as that sounds for a prosecutor. Assuaging the public he serves appears not to be his favored path on this particular case. Perhaps he wants the death to simply go away or be added to the slush pile of unsolved crimes. Rumors however, abound, too many of them to let that be Iniguez's legacy.

Villalobos, forever the coy, selective-prosecution D.A. with higher political ambition, owes the public a thorough investigation and complete disclosure of the findings - good or bad for his office or his image.

That some people in town openly theorize that Iniguez was killed by members of the drug cartels, that he chose suicide because of perceived office shenanigans, that he couldn't cope with a sizeable college debt. Most of that is absurd, but, as with plots on TV crime shows, it's become the juicy part of the story.

His is not an unsolved case - or a cold case - at this point.

This is now a sad case, and someone should be held accountable for the shoddy treatment afforded this young man. You'd think a speedy resolution of the manner and reason for his curious death would be uppermost on the minds of those who employed him and knew him...

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