LIFE IN THE GRACELESS AGE: Election Winner Ernie Hernandez Not Out Of the Woods Yet...Where Is Montoya?...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - The woman serving my coffee here this morning had plenty to say. She was both coy and flush with her comments. Politics swelled like bad pancakes inside the small, downtown cafe. I was here to wonder about the voter fraud alleged in connection with former City Commissioner Ernie Hernandez's closeasthis victory over opponent Ruben Pena in last week's run-off vote for the Cameron County Pct. 2 position. Yeah, how is this town taking it?

She said: "Ernie has never been - and never will be - a good loser. To expect anyting positive from him is to expect a miracle."

That sentiment, expressed without solicitation, fit right in there on my list of many questions to do with this particular election. Hernandez, shown at right in photo above, won the contest by 49 votes. His mail-in ballot countings far outdistanced those received by Pena. "Therein lies the rub," a good friend had said a day earlier. "That's what the court is looking into now. That's where the evidence of voter fraud is, or isn't."

And we have been rather surprised to see nothing from Hernandez, other than hear him say he is the winner on a mid-week TV news report. His media backer - ElRrunRrun.com - has stopped mentioning its advertiser (Hernandez) and has not bothered with the charges of fraud lodged by Pena or the decision by a state district judge to impound the mail-in balloting.

Both non-reactions, from Hernandez and the Blogger Juan Montoya, are graceless.

The investigation should render a result soon. It's not that many ballots that have to be scrutinized. And it will be interesting to see how Hernandez reacts.

We all know ElRrunRRun will blare the news if it's positive for Hernandez and go hide if it isn't. As of this morning, Montoya had removed Hernandez's Ad from the Blog. Yes, the contest is over and Hernandez perhaps has gotten what he bought from Montoya.

But taken in combination it all smacks of bad huevos rancheros. The cheap ploy is not good for the community. It is yet another example of a politician buying "Blind Obedience" support. Hernandez purchased Ads in other media venues, but we know others did not give him the deal Montoya offered.

Still, we shall wait and see. There is a good, deeper story in all this. It will be told sooner or later. But, Goddammit, we do wish Juan Montoya would tell it. That would go a long, long way toward us accepting him as a journalist. At present, he comes across as what the Mexican barrios call a "velador," someone out to point his flashlight here and there, choosing his points of illumination, ambling up and down the darkened street as if someone serving the public, whistling his pedestrian tunes to himself...

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THE DUMMY: Texas Gov. Rick Perry Wants To Be President. Huh?...What?...No!...

By RON MEXICO
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - Even after threatening to secede from the union, as he told a gathering of rabid Teabaggers in Austin last year, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has this idea that he can run for the presidency in 2012. He calls it part of his rugged Texas independence, something his fellow Far-Right GOPers embrace. It's a tough bit of posturing. Perry governs a state that is now - after Hawaii, New Mexico, and California - a  "majority minority."

Its population counts less than 50 percent whites.

And it seems that this does not sit well with whites, which accounts, they say, for the ranting & raving seen of late in the forever-elderly Tea Party. A few have called this new brand of rioting a desire to return to the days of cowboying and Texas oil.

These conservatives do not want change. As one writer put it, "The ground is moving underneath them, and they don't want to recognize that and don't know what to do about it. So they join a tea-party group and strap on a six-gun and strut around." 

In today's Texas, Hispanics comprise about 37 percent of the state's population, but only 22 percent of Texas's registered voters. Worse yet for the, the percentage who turn out to vote is lower. In time, the demographics will translate into real muscle for Hispanics at the ballot box. Some pundits say it will be a few more elections before that happens.

For Perry, the Texas Myth has meant three victories,a  record in governor contests. He, however, isn't as favored by Latinos as was his predecessor, George W. Bush, who won about half the Hispanic vote as governor. Estimates have it that Perry garnered only 13 percent of the Hispanic ballots in his 2002 race and 24 percent in 2006.

He nonetheless is careful not to alienate the Hispanic community. Perry appointed the first Latina to the state Supreme Court, signed a law allowing undocumented college students to qualify for in-state tuition, and has overtly ignored crazy rhetoric about illegal immigration. In fact, many Teabaggers say they are not happy with Perry's position on immigration.

They insist he has not done anything to secure the border. Yet, he is a politician who recognizes his good fortune.

Perry was a Democrat until 1989. According to Texas Monthly, he was encouraged to make the switch by former senator Phil Gramm, who reportedly told him, "It's the last copter out of Nam, and you'd better get on it." A year ago, at a "Tax Day Tea Party" in front of Austin's City Hall, Perry suggested that Texas could legally leave the union. As some of the tea partiers shouted "Secede!" Perry said he didn't want that to happen, but "if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people…who knows what might come out of that?" Perry told the crowd that he didn't regard them as extremists, "but if you are, I'm with you." Still, he soon embraced right-wing talk-show hosts Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh (whom Perry made an honorary Texan).

The state's generally good economy has so far helped his politics. As he often says, more Fortune 500 companies are headquartered here than in any other state. But Perry's politics forced him to reject about $16 billion in federal stimulus money voted by Congress last year. He'll never admit it, but the federal cash helped Texas stay in the black for 2009-10. Now, experts say they see a shortfall of at least $15 billion in the coming year. Perry is against big government, but when it serves his ambition, he looks for it.

This is a guy who left Texas A&M, after cheerleading for the Aggies football team, with a lowly 2.1 Grade Point Average - the minimum needed to graduate. President in 2012? This cannot be forgotten - We've already had a Texas Moron in that job. Remember that Bozo?...

- 30 -

For Rio Grande Valley Hispanics, The Crazed Tea Party Is Bad Brew...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, TX - Angst-strapped members of the bizarre Tea Party movement postponed today's rally here, saying recent rains have left the ground at their favored pasture on S. 10th Street too soggy, too muddy in places. So, the City of Palms has been spared an afternoon of mindless whooping and hollering, racial epithets and other social venom being the music of this racist gang. The rally, they told the local newspaper, will now take place later this month.

Why, is the question here. Why here?

For pretty much all Hispanics, the dominant population within a 300-mile radius, the rally is offensive, yet another strange and silly public outburst by losers of the last presidential election. That's what they are - angry losers unable to stomach the nation's new leadership, the Year 2010. Most of them are older Americans, gray-haired men and women who grew up in another America, an America used to seeing - and having - Blacks and Hispanics playing the subservient citizen.

But today's Black and Hispanic citizen doesn't care one whit about this pseudo-fear playing like killer bees on the faces of America's Racist Anglos. Hispanics here, for one, should not care how often, or how dramatically, these people exhibit their ignorance, their fear of suddenly not having that ethnic difference. Redneck demagogues have no audience in the Rio Grande Valley. Or, they shouldn't.

Hispanics should avoid these rallies and they should write to media outlets with sentiments that say, well, who cares what these Teabaggers say, need, or want? Screw them; it's their turn to feel the abandonment many, many Blacks and Hispanics felt for decades.

Teabaggers don't care about anyone other than those who think like they think: segregationist bullshit that would, if they could control it, continue to separate the ethnic groups in this country. Their signs and posters are racist; their words are full of warring fire, their posturing the posture of Selma, Alabama of the 1960s, when Blacks were whipped, and Corpus Christi, Texas, where Hispanics were not allowed in the municipal swimming pool or city barber shops at about the same time.

No, this Tea Party crap is not for the Rio Grande Valley.

It goes against the long struggle for fairness, equality and respect. We say any Hispanic seen at a Tea Party rally is endorsing every bit of pain, abuse, and laughter suffered by his or her parents and grandparents who lived here in another, more racist era - and even that wasn't all that long ago.

Then think about the region's military veterans who fought in defense of freedom. Yes, Teabaggers can say whatever they want, thanks to our Vets. But what they are saying goes beyond the pale of decency. They are, again, throwing the stratification of ethnicity at your face, telling you they will not give-in to seeing themselves as the equal of, say, a Black or an Hispanic. Who would go to war for that?

Tea Party?

Pardon my French, but Fuck That...

- 30 -

UNDER THE TABLE: When Indifferent Moneychangers Skirt Tax Laws...

By JOSHUA COFFMAN
Special to The Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, TX - It is the National Sport of Brownsville: Americans abusing the federal and state tax laws at will. A guy walks up to an auto mechanic shop and asks about a wheel alignment. "Hundred bucks," he is told initially. The customer takes a short walk outfront, ponders things and returns. "Hey, man, can you do this, ah, on your on, ah, time?" he asks, winking.

The deal is consummated with a handshake and the customer unfolds his wallet to hand-over two twenties and a ten: $50. No invoice, no sales taxes. Nothing for the state or federal government. It is known around here as an "under-the-table" transaction, and it is against the law. It happens daily, on things from purchases to services. It can happen pretty much everywhere, but suddenly it is a problem for those using the Internet to conduct business.

The Internet is one of thjose peculiarly American money outlets where everything happens and everything is availed. The online fleamarket Ebay is huge. You don't pay state sales tax for Ebay, but you have to report whatever income you make when selling anything, be it a lawnmower or a motorcycle or an early Beatles album or a pair of huaraches.

This, too, applies to advertising. Should you be in the business of availing space on a website - Blogs included - you must adhere to tax laws. Taking money for Ads and not reporting the income is a violation of federal law. For the person advertising on any website, it is important that Tax ID numbers be obtained so that proof can be tendered if questions arise when filing, say, political campaign expense reports.

That is the law of the land, and as much as some wish to "Go Mexico" on certain occasions when the laws hit home, well, there is a price to pay. For the website operator, that crunch time comes April 16, when income must be reported to the federal government - all income. To not do it is called tax evasion. For advertisers wishing to deduct the expense of doing business (politicians, too), well, they must present a corresponding Tax ID number provided to them by the business or website owner.

It is not a difficult path to follow. You call the corresponding state agency and request the Tax ID number, provide certain information, and you're off and running. It does mean, however, that you agree to pay the quarterly taxes and that you comply with federal income tax law.

No biggie there. 

Yet, it happens. And for a small town like Brownsville, where every dollar generated from taxes is needed, the loss of even the smallest amount is criminal. This generous capitalistic country avails you a playing field. Business-minded people should want to water the green grass every now and then. Yet, in the Rio Grande Valley, the "under-the-table" practice is as hallowed as employing undocumented maids and gardeners.

To blame it on the culture or the border or Mexico doesn't make it right.

Think about it next time you buy a dog from some side-of-the road vendor...

- 30 -

OBSCENITY: Visit By Mexican President Calderon To White House Not A Good Idea...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - Mexican President Felipe Calderon is scheduled to visit The White House next month, where he is expected to discuss his country's runaway crime with President Barack Obama. It is a needed trip, but it should not take place in Washington, D.C. Calderon is too bloodied politically from the drug-war mess that currently moves across Mexico.

The body count grows by the day, but estimates indicate as many as 6,000 of his country's citizens have been killed by warring cartels in towns from Tijuana to Matamoros along the border. Most of the victims have been innocent people caught in gunfire that splays into its second decade. And still it goes on, unabated and seemingly without internal solution.

What Calderon will ask of the United Sttaes this time around is obvious: More time, more time to resolve the deterioration of life in his country, where employment now rests in the hands of the drug-pushing cartels. He will ask for more foreign aid, more weapons and more support. Calderon will want to appear as a man who sincerely wishes to end the violence that has Mexico's citizenry on its knees. It is not the first time, but it is the latest.

This week's visit to Mexico by First lady Michelle Obama was a precursor. Perhaps Mexico requested the visit. It got positive press and the photos published in the American press showed the First Lady having a  grand time with smiling schoolchildren in Mexico City. Too bad Calderon has largely ceded his country's young to the illegal drug industry. Daily, here along the border, it is young Mexicans doing the fighting, being captured by the Mexican military and being killed, left on the dusty streets to rot, to be collected like dead dogs by weeping family members. 

No, too much awfulness is playing across Mexico for America to welcome President Calderon as if a worthy guest. He isn't. Not now. And not with rumors swirling that his administration has facilitated certain "advances" by some cartels at the expense of others. Perhaps President Obama should invite the common people of Mexico for a chit-chat. 

For that conversation, yes, the White House absolutely should be availed.

The image of Calderon and is wife dining with the Obamas, however, is grossly obscene...

 - 30 -

THE LAST, GREAT FLEAMARKET: Election Night Brings Out Something, Well, Familiar...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, TX - The portly man in the weathered boots and straw hat put it in these terms: "We voted, and that's all that's expected of us. It's too late to worry about it." Mingling about him was a small crowd of vote-watchers, all craning their necks every few minutes to see the numbers being posted on a screen. Some groaned; others exulted. It was another Tuesday Election Night in town.

The record will show that two contests stood above a few others: the race between former Brownsville City Commissioner Ernie Hernandez and lawyer Ruben Pena. In the tabulation, Hernandez had 2,159 votes to Pena's 2,110, the sort-of-close victory propelling the Democrat Hernandez toward a November general election against himself, or, perhaps,a write-in candidate. There is no Republican seeking the Cameron County Precinct 2 seat Hernandez may now claim.

In the second fray, County Commissioner John Wood walloped opponent Eddie Trevino, a former mayor of Brownsville, with Wood winning 4,958 to 4,536, according to late-night numbers. If either of the two races could be called an upset, then it was Wood's win over Trevino that would fit that characterization. He now gears-up to face incumbent County Judge Carlos Cascos, a Republican.

What should upset the county's populace is the low voter turn-out. The final count would indicate that a miniscule number of county residents thought the contests were of any import. Brownsville, the county seat, alone counts more than 100,000 residents. 

If there is a dialogue for this B-movie's script, it came best from candidate Trevino. He told reporter Emma Perez-Trevino of The Brownsville Herald: "I am disappointed because our supporters committed so much to me and my campaign. I’m sorry I let them down. We gave it our best shot, but in this business, there is only one winner and one loser."

No, the loser was every resident of star-crossed Cameron County. Staying home and not voting carries a heavy price. Say "Hell-o" one more time to Mssr. Hernandez...

- 30 -

On Yet Another Election Day, Politiqueras Again Gladly & Cruelly Fool Everyone...

By RON MEXICO
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - Today's run-off election looms as another of those cruel jokes locals forever endure, this one lapped on the community by a few dozen women who roust the vote in the name of Democracy while pocketing a little cash. Politiqueras, a busy-skirt army of physically-eccentric women said to deliver an oft-questioned vote, will likely decide today's contest between Ruben Pena and Ernie Hernandez in the battle for Cameron County Precinct 2 commissioner.

It is this town's day for "Going All-Mexico" - characterized here as a day when politics takes on a distinctly Mexican flavor. As described in newspapering and border lore, it will be one van moving up and down some the city's poorest streets after another, where politiqueras will entice the dispossessed to join them in a ride to weird Democracy. We pick you up and bring you back home, goes the line. From the harshest critics comes word that some of these voters even get a little cash for their troubles.

It is an accepted practice here, with women working the service as if on an Avon neighborhood run and pols full-knowing they need the politiqueras if they wish to win election. With voter participation lower during run-offs, hired vote-getters play a larger role in the decision.

For Cameron County, the resignation comes with noisy Mexican music, fajita burn-outs and the false impression that the community is voting. The ruse seems to be okay with most residents, the larger portion of them ignoring the contest. It would be easy to say the candidates are less-than-desirable. They are, yet the ballots will be availed and the votes will be counted. 

For the winner, it'll be a clear-cut victory no matter the numbers.

Once more, Cameron County will fool itself...

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For Brownsville Blogger Juan Montoya, A Booming Symphony Of Biting Criticism...

By ELIOT ELCOMEDOR
Media Critic of The Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, TX - Since he ventured into the world of news Blogging, former newspaperman Juan Montoya has seemingly found nothing but heartache. Steadily over the past few months, he has been hacked like free meat for what critics say is a "posturing" not often seen from serious Journalists. Montoya, operator of http://www.elrrunrrun.blogspot.com/, has come out firing this political season in support of local political muffin Ernie Hernandez, a candidate whose record of public service is seen in some quarters as being, well, lacking.

In his reporting, Montoya has used his Blog to royally assail Hernandez's opponent, the lawyer Ruben Pena, in a manner that would make his readers believe Hernandez is head-over-heels better than Pena. He may or may not be that, but the postings seen on Montoya's Blog take the appearance of serious Journalism. It is not. Being overly-generous, we would call it "advocacy" Journalism, which is in some places respected, although it readily acknowledges taking sides. Montoya never admits he is vigorously supporting Hernandez because of his politics, leaving readers the clear impression that he is doing it solely for the advertising dollar he gets in exchange for the rushing stream of glowing, fawning write-ups.

The criticism lobbed at him is not kind.

Writes fellow city resident Bobby Wightman-Cervantes in his Blog, http://www.brownsvillevoice.blogspot.com/, "As to Montoya's pathetic response to the complaints he is a hired hand of Hernandez - I defy Montoya to post any specific findings (not accusations) against Peña. This is the standard he used as to why he is not publishing anything against Hernandez. As to Hernandez, I know what I know - he looked me in the face and said he would not hire politiqueras to work the mail ballots and then he did - he lied to my face."

Montoya, a former reporter for The Brownsville Herald and a few other obscure newspapers, presses onward like the prideful bandolon player in a less-than-stellar Mariachi, breathlessly filling space on his Blog with an occasional "neighborhood" piece, presumably to buttress his pro-Hernandez postings. It has apparently failed him.

Adds Wightman-Cervantes in a note critical of Montoya on another front, the case of a political candidate seeking a run while battling the remnants of a felony conviction abroad: "Montoya's journalism skills are seriously in doubt - he claims Rubio's mandamus remains pending before the Texas Supreme Court. Anyone with minimum skills can go to the Texas Supreme Court web page and see it was denied on April 1, 2010."

For Montoya, the criticism is biting.

Journalists live and die on their reputation. Montoya has fended-off charges that he has taken "shrimp plates" in exchange for writings on behalf of other would-be candidates by challenging his accusers to pony-up their evidence. Indeed, he seems to grow indignant with every demand for transparency. His replies near the angst-before-fury stage, approximating in tone the hollow words of one Richard M. Nixon during his days, when he wished all to do with Watergate would merely dissipate. 

Montoya should address the accusations one-by-one, admit his Journalism transgressions and move on with his work, some of which we admire...

 - 30 -   

SUNDAY SPECIAL: On A Lark, A Man Goes After A Brisket Sandwich...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
Food Writer of The Tribune

McALLEN, TX - On this gray, rainy Sunday morning, chances are you and yours will be feasting on the local culinary staple known as Barbacoa to the Mexicans and as cow head meat to everybody else, except the good people of India.

I'm not big on smoked meats that come from holes dug in the ground. For obvious reasons. My parentage includes people who roasted, toasted and gassed enough Jews during WW II to bring me the sort of shame, say, a Mexican-American dad might live with when he knows he's failed his old lady and kids. Life is funny that way, but there it is.

In any case, I'm nothing if not a food roustabout, one of those guys who will take that longshot drive to check out a joint someone has told someone stands above the mobbed taquerias and hamburger joints. Which reminds me, does anyone get this: I stopped in at a Whataburger and stood in line at the counter one day last week. I get up to the front of the line and look at the pudgy clerk before saying, "Hey, what's good here?" People in line behind me let out some sarcastic guffaws. What's that all about?

Well, I finally made it to Ramos BBQ in the City of Palms. This woman I met at a bar down by the river west of here had said it was, well, special. There, on N. 10th Street about a mile south of State Highway 107, which takes you to Edinburg, was the neat frame building with the Ramos BBQ signboard out front. At best the size of a small Silverstream at its core, Ramos BBQ offers a nice screened patio with large window fans hanging from the ceiling and a sprinkling of signs on the walls. The floor is cool, as in concrete cool, and the tables are new-looking and well-polished.

I asked for the brisket sandwich, with my usual overfilling of onions and pickles. The woman behind the counter posed this: "Beans?" I said no, no thanks, but gimme a pie of somekind. "No pies," she shot back. "Chips we have." No chips, I said. "Potato salad?" she asked next. No, I told her, hate that stuff.

"Name?" she posed.

"Ricardo..."

"Oh, that's my last boyfriend's name!" Genuine shriek, like one you'd get from a woman after walking out of prison. I made a face and walked back to sit down and await my sandwich. "Ricardo!" I heard after a few minutes. There, at the counter and behind a plastic window between the patron and the hefty woman taking orders, was my sandwich, in a bag, as I had requested it. "Enjoy," she said in a voice that told me she said it a thousand times a week.

I sat there and scarfed it down while watching cars and trucks and pickups and buses and mobile homes and tractors and dump trucks and bicycles and motorcycles roar up and down N. 10th Street. As a sandwich, the BBQ brisket special was no big deal. It wasn't bad, no. Perhaps, as with everything, I expected something fantastic. It's a BBQ joint, For Chrissakes! It's always tough leaving a BBQ joint, but...

"Goodbye," I said to the counter clerk who'd come out to clean an adjoining table.

"Come back, Ricardo," she said, staring at me.

I was sure her last boyfriend had likely heard her say that a jillion times...

 - 30 -

THE ROAD TO MILANESA: Where The Poor, The Abandoned Have No Name...

By ELIOT ELCOMEDOR
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - The other day, at a grocery store here, a woman spent her morning complaining about prices for items on the shelves. Her gripe centered on an assessment that the price of bread, cereal, tortillas, flour and canned beans was now beyond her means. "And they have sliced my food stamps in half, the bastards!" she was  bemoaning to a six-deep line of patrons whose interest was another.

There are poor people in Brownsville. That is not news, but it is a measure of what observers call the stagnant lifestyle endured by some 120,000 souls who call this bordertown home. The price of a dozen tortillas zooming from 48 cents to 89 cents is enough to derail a grocery budget, or so this woman was saying loudly, as if to let anyone around her know, as if to shoot it to the clouds and beyond, where, presumably, God could hear his flock suffering the world economy.

Elsewhere, there are larger problems. America is in the grip of a silent revolution no one wishes to acknowledge. White people are rioting in a manner not felt from coast to coast since the Civil Rights fights of the 1960s, when it was the Blacks bitching about everything. The president of Poland was killed yesterday in a weird plane crash. U.S. law enforcement officials took time out to declare the Sinaloa Cartel as the victor in the disgraceful Cd. Juarez turf war. It is one hard-luck story after another.

Yet, even as the Big Picture is painted in blood-red, the poor cannot help but wonder how it is that some people don't give a damn about grocery prices and some do. "Being poor in the US is cruel," said Fela "La Cama De Piedra" Montalvo, a local washerwoman found hanging clothes along a sagging outdoor clothesline. "I come from Mexico, and I can understand being poor over there. But not here. I don't know what it is, but that's how I feel."

On a downtown street, an elderly man wearing a dusty, ragged poplin coat, stretches his arms, palms up, asking for a few dollars, so that he can eat. "What plate would you like today?" we ask him in French.

"Milanesa, hermano," he says, rotten teeth flashed as if a sodium light on a dark night in December.

I hand him $20. He laughs, perhaps shocked into doing it, that unexpected guttural reflex.

Brownsville is home to too many poor people.

The town, however, shines the light on other things....

- 30 -

EGADS!: The Palinization of Ernie Hernandez, The Curse of Ruben Pena...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, TX - Sarah Palin arrived at a gathering of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference gathering in New Orleans this morning wanting to offer yet another sarcastic speech aimed at President Barack Obama's administration. As expected, she quickly chided him for a comment he'd made yesterday referring to her lack of expertise in commenting on the recent USA-Russia anti-nuclear agreement.

So there was Sarah throating her stupidities when the president strolled out of the White House to address the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stevens and the mine tragedy in West Virginia. Before you could spell Wasilla, all network and cable TV stations had abandoned Palin and turned their cameras on the president. Who knows what other inanity Palin delivered to her All-White group of segregationists. Even Fox News pulled way when Obama began to speak.

It was, in one fell swoop, a beautiful comeuppance on a woman whose brain cannot help but know it is inside an astonishingly hollow broad. It is, of course. Palin lives in a parallel world, one where the ridiculous is central to breathing. Her ability to baffle is uncanny. Palin belongs on Comedy Central, yet she will do at present for a Republican Party so lost in the forest that even The Three Bears can only shake their heads in wonderment.

Which brings us to this: The Cameron County race for Precinct 2 Commissioner pitting the college-challenged Ernie Hernandez against the lawyer Ruben Pena deserves closer scrutiny, and not because we wish to know more about them, but because someone surely should be asking the question: Is this the best we can do? Hernandez is living way-over-his head. His best contribution to Brownsville would best come from a prompt, very public decision to withdraw and live out his life as, say, a trustworthy school-crossing guard.

Pena's drawback comes from his being an attorney. Lord knows, enough lawyers have postured themselves as saviors of this God-abandoned county. Say no to lawyers, and say it for the next three generations. They have done zero for the city, or for the county. Indeed, public service has been good to them.

We reach when we say Hernandez has the brains of Sarah Palin, but a case could be made for that. Lawyer Pena would likely say he could take that to a jury and win a conviction...

 - 30 - 

A TRADITION LIKE NO OTHER: County Voters Used To Kissing Ass...

By JUAN MO-TIME

Staff Writer 

PORT ISABEL, TX - The bar is alive with the sounds of enough yapping to drown a freakin' airplane crash. It's a mellow Tuesday night and people are out for a fight. Everybody's up for something or another, Life included. The night is young. The moon is out. The place is buzzing. I lean back on my highchair and take it all in. There's gotta be a Beat-Me-Woman cowboy song playing somewhere. 

Can that guy half-hanging over the bar be right when he says all Rio Grande Valley politicians just want voters to kiss their ass? Or that woman sipping a juicy drink, the one who just said something about how voting around here is no different than doing nothing. She's got the face for anger, a rough-hewn lower jaw that surely cracked a few walnuts in her younger days. The woman is wearing a red dress, ready for war. 

Is that fair? Do area voters merely pucker-up and kiss State Rep. Rene Oliveira's ass when he postures for re-election? For State Sen. Eddie Lucio (Lucchio to Obama)? 

Does Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos spread'em when he comes knocking for support? Same for Cameron County Commission candidates Ruben Pena and Ernie Hernandez? Do they do the Naked Limbo? Brownsville, old sport, how low can you go? In town, the politician's ass is the current attraction. Residents of this poverty-stricken county like to say they're lovers and not fighters, but will Commission candidate John Woods' ass do in a pinch. 

Appears the boys and girls inside this hot & humid joint are onto something.

You think? I ask for a shot of whiskey...and get a double. 

- 30 - 

IN SEARCH OF TARA RIOS YBARRA: I Prep With A Bottle Of Expensive Scotch...

By RON MEXICO
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - Most days, I end things with a hard drink at some hole-in-the-wall joint, some place without ambiance, without anything to tell me I'm someplace special, without the charm of a high-fallutin establishment, where, you think, the conversation would be smart and sail onward, as if to tell me something I don't know. Last night, I found such a place, and I won't name it 'cause I don't want the local legion of insipid Louts to ruin it. My drink was Scotch.

We were bullshitting mostly, about Tiger, about the Final Four, about President Obama, about the mining disaster in West Virginia, about the drug-fueled stupidity along the northern Mexican border, about a truckload of things on the minds of my fellow boozers. Yeah, my marriage of a year is on the rocks. Pray for me. I love this woman, but perhaps what dooms our love is this thing I can't shake; the one that says I married the world. It would take a 20,000-word story to tell that tale.

In any case, I arrive here this morning a little buzzed, a little ragged, a little like a chewed piruli that's been spit-out onto the floor. Still, my editor wants a story to do with some woman named Tara Rios Ybarra. Never heard of her, I said to Patrick Alcatraz. He said something about shaking the mental cobwebs, about doing some research on her.

Well, she used to be a state representative around here, and, apparently, she fell from grace with the voters. So, my boss asked, what is she doing now?

I have no idea. Rios Ybarra has reportedly fallen into that heartless ravine known as Political Siberia, a horribly lonely outpost known to offer no solace. I walked into town, hoping to find out a few things about this Tara.

"You got me," said a cab driver who threw a camel-face look when asked. "I think I drove her to the airport once, only it may not have been her. This woman yapped away the whole way, talking about Austin and the Legislature. Hey, tell me, what is Legislature?"

At the corner of 12th and Washington streets, a man selling tire-sole huaraches from a shopping cart said this: "She was retired, son. Voted outta office. Something about her fooling around with a  married man while married. Who knows where she is? Come back and tell me when you find out, okay? I hate mysteries, man. That question will be on my mind all damned day now."

Rios Ybarra is a dentist by profession. I looked in the phone directory, but that shit bored me. Names are freakin' small. Someone will turn me on to some good dope on her. I walk into the ancient, rowdy bus station. It is a depressing place. Brownsville needs a new one. Even the buses look like crap, and the faces of every rider may as well have been the faces of pain and defeat. "Last call for McAllen," I hear from the loudspeaker. No excitement in the voice, offered matter-of-factly, like someone saying the tortillas are on Aisle 12, over by fruits and veggies.

Tara Rios Ybarra has to be somewhere right now, I tell myself as I walk toward Lucio's Cafe, where I will charm my waitress while waiting on some huevos con papas. I call my editor and tell him there will be some sort of Tara story. "You find her?" Patrick Alcatraz asks.

"No," I tell him.

"Well, that's the story," he shoots back, his words as right-on as any Marvin Gaye song...

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HAPPY EASTER: One Man's Tireless Search For Truth And Noah's Ark...

By RON MEXICO
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - I never did make it to Mt. Ararat, even after I saved enough cash for the trip. Someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew me said it was the place to start a writing career. That mountain, in Turkey, they said, had special meaning to all who believed in the creator. Noah was supposed to have beached his ark somewhere on Ararat after the world flood. I remember throwing a Bible into my battered suitcase and thinking, "Part of this journey must be made via train..."

Today is Easter Sunday, a meaningful day for my Catholic mates. You know the inspirational story. You know what makes it special (Jesus was resurrected). You know you forget most of the writings to be found in the Bible. I asked a friend the other day if she knew the name of Adam's wife and, as expected, she said, quickly and confidently, "That would be Eve."

No, I informed her. Eve was not the one.

Adam's first wife was a very independent woman named Lilith, and how she and Adam came to split is a story the Book of Genesis does not cover. Lilith, a striking, striking redhead, noted she had been created as an equal to Man. One story has it that she was displeased with Adam's love-making, that she wanted him to explore sexual positions other than the standard, to the times, Missionary lay-down favored by Adam. And so Lilith split. She flew off to Hell, to join the Devil and become something of a serpent herself.

Enter Eve. God created Eve from a sliver of one of Adam's ribs, and so she full-well knew she would be subservient to his wishes, his commands, his whims - as has been the Biblical bane of women ever since. Eve never was the "equal" of Adam. When bored, goes the tale, she fell for the serpent's request that she eat the apple forbidden by God, so that, said the serpent, she could enjoy the essence of Life. The only thing is that apples never have been fruit from that part of the world. Figs were. As were pomegranates. Most believe it was a fig she ate, mainly because it was fig leaf loin cloths they both wore.

The Garden of Eden is said to have existed for a very short period of time in a green valley at the northern end of the Persian Gulf, at a spot where the Tigres and Euphrates rivers met. Yes, those rivers. The Garden of Eden sat in a botanical oasis where dusty southern Iraq now sits, where wars have flared for centuries.

Of course, who really knows? Scientists agree that oceans that existed back then no longer exist, that land mass that existed back then no longer exist. And that, then, is why I always thought a journey to Ararat would be helpful. I'd look long and hard for Noah's Ark, with the eternal hope of finding evidence of what exactly went down in, say, The Garden of Eden.

Hundreds have searched, but no one ever has found the ark...

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INSURGENT MEXICO: How I Dearly Loved and Hated My Ancestral Lands...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ

Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, TX - Roughly 100 years ago, when Mexico tortured itself with its revolution, killings along the northern regions were as commonplace as they are today. Pancho Villa's Division Del Norte held sway against the government troops, its fight for the people now enshrined in music and lore. It is a story worthy of Humanity's demand that Life be more than steady doses of oppression, corruption and poverty. Villa made his noise, things changed for a time, but little beneficial resulted in the long run. The Aztec Nation, cursed to be a beautiful country, is forever being soiled by leaders uninterested in honest, honorable progress.

These days, Mexico is a disgrace. Never in its storied history has it danced with the criminals as it now dances, its legs wide-apart, its skirt pulled above the navel, the focus of its desire painfully obvious. If a country could ever be sexed, well, Mexico has postured itself for a sexing of astral proportions. There is no other way to see it, or to say it.

And here, locally, perhaps the time has come to rise against the tragedy and not merely stay on the chorizo taco trail while looking the other way. Mexico is right there! You can hear the daily gunfire, the guttural familial crying, the deafening funeral dirges...and still nothing from the Rio Grande Valley - a land comprised of thousands of Mexicans.

A few days ago, Valleyites marched in honor of tireless farmworker advocate Cesar Chavez. Maybe it's time area Mexicans lined-up to do the same while demanding that Mexico clean up its act. Is there no decency left in the RGV? Does the region merely sit back, drink its horchata and scarf down its fajitas while hearing that yet another 15 to 20 Mexicans living there across the Rio Grande have fallen, fallen with gaping wounds usually associated with wanton killings in Da Nang, Fallujah, Baghdad. Surely, the RGV cannot ignore this forever, although the mindset here seems to adhere to the philosophy that, yeah, so long as I can get my fat ass over to Tacos El Campeon...then everything's alright.

Parents and grandparents of every single descendant of every single Mexican sentiently pushes love for the homeland. But there are times when Love is Hell. Yes, there is shame floating all across the Mexican Empire.

That Empire, by way of ancestry, also includes the Rio Grande Valley. Like it or not, it does...

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In The Rough-And-Tumble Rio Grande Valley, Shades Of The Gaza Strip Surface...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - All it takes is a quick jaunt upstate or maybe one to the country's coasts, that's all one would need to see before deciding that, by way of comparison, the Rio Grande Valley of Texas has become a volatile Gaza Strip - harsh land caught in the vice of vicious crime, historical corruption, ever-present culture clashes and national abandonment.

Welcome to The Land that Time and God Forgot.

It would be easy to say this part of the USA is in transition. It would be easier yet to say that the myriad of problems it faces is the result of its close connection to neighboring Mexico, a burgeoning narco-state unable or unwilling to defeat defeatism. Already, segregation can be seen in the varied social strata that comprises local life. The rich are walling themselves in alongside the rich, and the poor are being disenfranchised by the hour. You can find paradise here, but it's going to cost you. Million-dollar homes can be had, as can repo mobile homes better suited for military gunnery ranges.

You can post-up for superb dining in a handful of 5-Star restaurants, or you can tummy-up at a humble taqueria, where the fare comes in singularly maize items and not a five-course international meal. You want some duck? It's available, but not everywhere...and not for everybody. The lines of distinction are becoming more and more visible. That new BMW? It's headed for the rich side of town. That battered pickup loaded down with lawnmowing gear? It's being parked in the poor side of town. The songs are familiar, yet Sarah Brightman sings for me and Los Tigres Del Norte sing for you.

Where are we? Is this America, or what?

It's the growing realization, says a professor of sociology at the area university. "Our poor side of town is looking like those cheap, overnight settlements the Israelis love so much when imposing their will on the Palestinians," is how she put it. Her words are telling on many levels, but does it matter to a local population long used to being pushed along by outside forces? Perhaps not.

They say education is the key. The key to what, is what locals have asked seemingly forever. They have grown accustomed to creating and playing their own low-flying game, and that has been the measure of progress. So long as I have my pan and my circo, I will survive, is what you hear from one bar to the next.

The price being paid, however, is only the down-payment...

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New Week, New Opportunity For Smashing Success At Hand For Mayor...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX. - Sometime this morning, the mayor of this scandal-weary bordertown will roll out of bed and begin his new week, days after being cleared of charges he stole a $26,000 check. It's a new start, is what the much-whipped residents would like to tell him.

Mayor Pat Ahumada's time in office has been marked by his staunch opposition to federal erection of the so-called Border Wall, a tireless fight for protection of stray dogs, and a penchant for dressing down his fellow public servants on the Brownsville City Commission. Today, the indomitable mayor starts anew.

In cafes and laundromats and bars and social clubs, the words being aimed at the mayor centered on a desire that  he buckle down and get things done, as in things for the community.

"He has a reputation for being in the news for the wrong thing," said Juanita Dolores Buitron, a resident of the La Ultima Cumbia Nursing Home here. "I would like to see the mayor do something positive for everybody in town. It's been years since I felt good about being from here."

At the bus station, a new arrival from La Feria said he knew "something" about Brownsville, but that he would give himself a few weeks before forming opinions. "I am against the wall, so I have that in common with the mayor," said Steve "El Pelon" Guajardo, as he threw a backpack over his shoulder and sauntered out of the busy bus terminal. His walk was the walk of a person happy to be in town, glad to become yet another resident.

But at La Movida Bar, a despondent woman tired of being hounded by sex-starved men and aggressive cops, said she hoped the mayor would construct a free motel for the poor. "I would love to have a clean bathroom," she said. "One that would flush without backing-up on my toes. I hate it when that happens. If the mayor can have a big heart for loose dogs, he can have a bigger heart heart for....yeah, that."

In general, the mood of the city was a strange cross between crippling boredom and wild expectation - as it has been for the past 300 years.

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POLL: Cameron Co. Judge Cascos Expected To Slide Into Office...

By JUAN MO-TIME
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - A recent poll undertaken by this news outlet has incumbent Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos comfortably ahead of any would-be challenger. He faces voter approval in November, although his opponent in that race will not be decided until mid-April, when Democrats Eddie Trevino and John Wood resolve their run-off differences.

"Cascos is so far ahead of those other two that it appears contest is the wrong word for this fight," said one resident. "This is more like a ballgame that ends in the first inning. It is a game where Cascos is pitching a no-hitter and both Trevino and Wood have fanned miserably every at-bat."

Trevino was on the stump in San Benito yesterday, telling anyone within earshot that his campaign is flowing happy, like the passive waters of the nearby Rio Grande. Indeed, Trevino got a few rounds of applause at the gathering, held at Vickie's Restaurant, an eatery roughly 1,500 miles southwest of New York City.

In our poll, Cascos had a 2-1 margin of victory over Trevino, the former mayor of Brownsville. In a fight against Wood, Cascos had him almost 9-to-1, a complete and utter ass-kicking rivaled only by the whipping Muhammad Ali delivered on one Oscar "Ringo" Bonavena. Wood is presumably campaigning, but he has not taken to the Chicken Leg Circuit favored by Trevino.

For the Lost Mexican Republican Cascos, the election may be one of those enjoyed only by politicians actually liked by voters. A sublime man with the looks more of a sympathetic Food Stamps office bureaucrat than a county's leader, Cascos has said little lately...

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Friday Night Lights: A Long, Hard Evening At A Cowboy Bar Chased With Two Tacos...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, TX - There's something to be said for a noisy taco joint at 3:00 A.M. - like what the !8$#@! is going on here? Over by the order counter, women in expensive evening dresses line up behind chumps in dirty blue jeans and couples looking as if, well, honey, this is your night out, baby. Order whatever you want, off the main menu, sure. In the dining area, a strolling mariachi tears through a Vicente Fernandez song about jealousy, a thoroughly see-you-later tune if there ever was one. Outside, N. 10th Street has become the funnel for a hundred cars angling into the parking lot.

Welcome to the night side of Taco Palenque, a brightly-painted 24-hour Tex-Mex joint halfway between Monterrey, Mexico and Corpus Christi. After a night of partying over at Hillbilly's a few blocks to the north, it's Taco Palenque Time! Hey! Whoa! Howdy! Roll Camera One! Haste a un lado, bro! Action! Yes, dos panchos de fajita, she says, finally, and the roly-poly, little fresh-faced clerk rings it up, verbalizing the order to a guy doing the cooking over to her side. Pan the kitchen! Action! Make that face, make that face! Okay, wrap it! Good job, all.

The night is gone. It is Saturday morning, three hours before dawn, here at the epicenter of the rowdy, scarfing Taco Nation. I'm bombed but having the time of my life. Hey, where we sitting? Who knows, man, walk anywhere. The crowd is as if in a world-class mingle, lovely women playing with their shoulder straps as they settle their asses down on chairs, others working their thigh-high mini-skirts down just enough to annoy me. Hey, Jack, I'm accustomed to a smooth ride. Who said this town is dead after the bars close? Not me. I'm grabbing salsas and waiting on my two tacos. What the Hell? Can there be another taco joint in the whole Rio Grande Valley as energized, as meth-fueled as this one? Naaaaaaaaaah. We find our place on a table where another couple is sitting and I say, "Hi, how do you do?" The woman laughs and the guy in a fancy-looking felt cowboy hat looks at me as if to say, "Who the Hell says 'How do you do' in the Valley?" My friend giggles and throws an elbow at my side. I pat her on her soft, I'm-still-here leg. It's early on a nice Saturday, minutes from something even better.

If this is what cowboy bars bring, well, I'll be Mr. Friday Night at Hillbilly's from here on out. Whatever. I'll be Wes, the villain in Urban Cowboy. It's a movie and we're always up for playing someone else. Fajita tacos, the portly food-deliverer says as he sneaks up on us, moving in from the middle of a starving floating mob as if coming out of some London fog.

Fajita tacos at almost 4 Ayem? Why in the wide-wide-world sports not?

As the alcoholed crowd inside Hillbilly's would say, grammar being the last thing on anyone's mind: It don't get no better'n this, nope...

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For Mayor Pat Ahumada, Week's End Brought Resurgence...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ

Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, TX - They say the bells of every aging church in Matamoros chimed as if in unison, soft-clanging musical notes that spoke of big news, of a humbling event that both shocked and warmed. Reactions to high-publicity court trials rarely unnerve a town, unless it's the acquittal of a cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer or a murderer Charles Manson or a terrorist Carlos Ilitch Ramirez, the so-called Jackal. No, these bells were dancing the news of Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada unchaining himself from a trial fraught with both emotion and disdain.

"We are blessed to live in a country where trial-by-jury is part of the trip," said one stand-up priest. "The mayor's plight was tragic, but the trial itself riveted the entire community. That trial re-affirmed everybody's belief in God. Of that, we are sure this morning."

Ahumada stood accused of rifling a $26,000 check issued by the City of Brownsville for a vendor. As if part of a comical Elmore Leonard "Get Shorty" novel, the check then found itself in the mayor's bank account, with the script at that point seeming to thrust this line out in the open: "I stole that check?" Uttered in a thoroughly questioning tone, as if repeating an investigator's last sentence. The mayor begged-off on the theft charge early-on, noting that he, indeed, had deposited the check, but adding that it had been a royal mistake. Like brave weeds rising to battle a lawnmower, a blood-thirsty segment of the local citizenry quickly convicted and executed the mayor. Too soon, the sentient facts hit the moon.

The check had not been stolen, someone at City Hall threw-in. It had been handed to the mayor amongst a stack of other documents, mail, materials. So went the line. Left for the prosecution was the task of proving the mayor's guilt. It failed miserably, the verdict to acquit coming in less time than it takes to wine and dine a frisky woman. The trial will go down as one of the city's most bizarre digestions. It still begs for explanation from the District Attorney's office. Why go to trial if the facts are so convoluted and the evidence is so weak that you risk a loss in court. The D.A.'s office should never lose a case it seeks to prosecute. It has the time and resources to get shit done right. In this case, it was handed its well-whipped ass on a crispy taco platter. The jury believed the mayor.

Ahumada left the court riding a state of grace. Today, the aromatic chicken joints, traditional darlings of the snack crowd, opened as they do on most fine, fine mornings...

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