A Village's Life Impulse: Where Dreams Grow...They're Not Dreams Elsewhere...Just Another Desperate Move Here...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Resident and aspiring politician Ezequiel "Zeke" Silva went for the jugular. "Let them lose their own money," he said, succinctly, without laughing. Others would have their own say during a Wednesday night Town Hall meeting called by Mayor Pat Ahumada on the eve of the city's decision to fund a commuter airline that would transport passengers to and from a few of Mexico's most dangerous cities.

Fly Frontera, the airline in question, has never attempted such a  flight. But it wants to. And it wants to use something like $1.5 million it hopes to get from the City of Brownsville, including $500,00 as "start-up" money, presumably to lease a local office, hire a receptionist and custodian and look into leasing aircraft and foreign landing fees. It's a dream, yes.

But what is it about dusty Brownsville and dreams?

It has a habit of acting out of desperation, of wanting to belong so badly that weird stuff is considered seriously at City Hall. This is what City Commssioner Charlie Atkinson, perhaps the biggest dreamer at City Hall, had to say about this would-be airline, suddenly the darling of local skies: "Fly Frontera could definitely be the Southwest Airlines of the latino world and Brownsville will be the hub. I hope cooler heads prevail and see the bigger picture."

Cooler heads are hard to find in hot, humid Brownsville, even during the Christmas Season. Politicians and local celebrities take to the streets after a few tall beers and the next thing you know some of their alcoholed faces are in the newspaper in write-ups that speak not of dreams for the community but of a clear and sure desire to drink the local boredom away. Mr. Atkinson has found himself in such a situation, if area cops are to be believed. So has the mayor. And so has a local blogger somewhat behind this particular airline deal.

This, too, clould be interpreted as another in a long line of stabs at wanting to belong to something better, to belong to a region that, wth the single exception of Harlingen up the road, appears to be progressing rather nicely. McAllen and Pharr to the west are doing gangbusters business on a variety of fronts. That international airport in McAllen is perhaps the best one south of San Antonio. By all rights, it ought to be the hub for flights into Mexico.

But there is a drug war going on in northern Mexico. The city of Monterrey is on its knees thanks to the drug cartels. Mayors are kidnapped and beheaded for business reasons in and around that city. An airline to serve Monterrey during all this? There must be a reason why no airline serving McAllen, which, truth be told, gets the lion's share of visitors from warring Mexico, has ventured into this Fly Frontera idea. Could it be that there just isn't the market for such flights. You'd think the majors - American Airlines, Continental and Delta - which serve it would have studied the possibility of such a route and jumped on it if it indeed offered the promise of quick profits.

Fly Frontera, reportedly based in Dallas with connections in Pennsylvania, brings a dream to Brownsville, and little Brownsville, shorn of any attention by the better retail brands of the land, hops aboard for what may be one of those endless, frustrating "milk runs" Texas International and People Airlines were famous for a few years back.

The particulars in this ascending idea aren't even the important aspects of this taxpayer deal. Fly Frontera's backers are largely unknown in the area, but it seems to include a gent with a questionable background. Something to do with a felony conviction. Yes, of course, the citizenry is quick to forgive and everybody deserves a second chance, even Army Lt. William Calley of My Lai massacre fame and Richard Nixon of the infamous "I am not a crook" assertion.

Still, it could be interesting.

Perhaps local passengers will see these flights as something of a wild, roller-coaster ride of the sort that one takes just for the hell of it or the cheap thrill. Fly Frontera? Sounds like the name of either an agile wrestler or a Hispanic rapper.

Brownsville will do its life impulse. It has to. There are too many dreamers and wannabes in that bordertown at the end of the Rio Grande. They, too, must be entertained.

Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail, as Commissioner Atkinson wishes, and the idea sent down the halls of City Hall for filing in the basement archives. A million-point-five is peanuts for an airline, what with jet fuel costs being what they are - a large, large part of any company's operating budget. Five-hundred-thousand just to "start up" the business is insane.

We have this image of actor Edward James Olmos walking into the next Town Hall meeting on this Fly Frontera idea and saying, "Hey, remember me? I wanted to make a film about your chess wizards over at the college and I only wanted 250 grand, and your people over there told me to go take a hike. You guys remember that one?"

Every struggling, hardscrabble community wants to fly its flag. There's nothing wrong with that; it should be part of the governance journey. An airline based in Brownsville would be a feather in the city's Charro hat, absolutely. Maybe hordes would fly in from the drug-ravaged northern Mexico communities seeking a few laughs, distance from the killing gunfire and beheadings. Then again maybe not. People caught in the middle of a cruel and bloody war tend to have other more-important priorities.

The odds here are staggering, steeped wildly against this venture succeeding beyond the city's "opt out" timetable of six months. And, beyond that, what business in America gives itself six months to make it or break it? Six months? Six months, they said.

What I want to know is this: Will Fly Frontera charge an extra fee for bags?...

- 30 -

The Gentleman From San Juan: Harsh Words On Sunday...He's Fightin' Bob Garza...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

SAN JUAN, Texas - The bastion of regional religion is located here, a cathedral to Catholicism that speaks of the area's eternal faith and hope. It is known far and wide simply as "La Basilica," a tranquil, palm-lined oasis in a part of the country often described as corrupt and bloody and stricken by the worst of historical poverty.

Bob Garza, the nattily-attired gentleman shown in the photo atop this story, lives here.

In fact, he is a city commissioner and is said to be a rising star in local politics. The part about him being a commissioner is fact; the other is beginning to be seen as suspect. Garza is in the middle of a hard-fought race for re-election. He does not want to lose. He cannot see himself losing to his opponent, a political novice whose other problem in the Macho culture here is that she is a woman. Garza is fighting for his post, and fighting hard - perhaps too hard.

Last Sunday, one of those quintessential Spring Sundays when the winds blow nicely around here and allows for a little barrio politicking in the tropical scorch of a 90-some-degree day, Garza lost it. Rousted into action upon seeing one of his colorful campaign signs removed by the opposition from its perch on a neighborhood fence, young Garza tore into two men at the scene, both supporters of a recent recall movement that sought the ouster of the entire city commission. They happened to be there performing one of those peculiarly Valley campaign sign exchanges; that is, they were taking down Garza's sign and installing one of their own. All of this, they later said was done with the permisison of the property owner.

Garza was altogether livid, fit to be tied - at least according to graphic video posted on The McAllen Monitor's website and in a story published by the same newspaper the next day. He denied instigating the incident the day after it happened, but the video's audio clearly has him using the "F" word and looking like he's in the middle of a meltdown rage.

We forwarded Mr. Garza a list of questions related to the incident and the campaign for re-election. He has not replied.

Hot heads and harsh lingo are not rare in often-scalding Rio Grande Valley politics. From time to time, those arguments have delivered a punch-out or two, and there are those who say nocturnal shenanigans are now a big part of campaign "dirty tricks" seen in races from Brownsville to the east and Rio Grande City on the western fringe of the valley. Often, these scraps involve the overnight destruction of political signs and posters. Where once supporters would simply take black crayons to a sign and effect comical changes to a candidate's face, these same tireless backers now brazenly rip signs off their public places.

San Juan is no different.

The at-times-fevered political landscape here goes against the local religion grain, and candidates fight for turf in the same manner as did the Crusaders centuries ago, taking no prisoners. Local City Commissioner Garza's perceived tirade came in the company of his father, who reportedly calmed his son down during the afternoon altercation. From those he strong-armed came this telling comment as the elder Garza led his son away from the spontaneous dust-up: "We got it on video!"

What the election may bring for young Garza is a toss-up. San Juan, like most Valley cities and towns, has its manner of politics. He may win on name alone. Or his neophyte opponent, who is relatively new to the city, may surprise everybody.

Still, for a town made famous by an airplane that crashed into the Shrine of La Virgen de San Juan del Valle in October of 1970, Mr. Garza's flirtation with burning, Chicago-style politics may just be a sign of the times, or it may be a sign of things to come...

- 30 -

Monday, Monday: A Day Of Love And Pain...Of Daughters And Boots...Of Friends And Enemies...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

KYLE, Texas - One of our favorite Tex-Mex cafes is open today. It wasn't yesterday. On Mondays, the good people at Garcia's Mexican Restaurant here take the day off. They deserve it. The place on Ranch Road 150 just east of Interstate 35 is busy most of the time, Sunday mornings especially, when the church crowd takes over the small dining room. It's expanding, we've been told by the happy-faced waitresses, and that deck patio is getting some attention for eventual use. Perhaps it'll all work out. All I know is that I always enjoy their warm breakfast plates and the dark-black coffee.

We'll be there this morning.

Monday, however, was a day for a bit of everything. We spent the morning in West Kyle, at the vet's office, where our house cat - Kid - was put to sleep. Margaret's had him for almost 18 years, and it was time his suffering was ended. Old cats, me included, get to that stage. It's a graceless exit for all us; death I mean.

So, we brought Kid home in a cardboard box and Margaret and I buried the beautiful gray cat in our backyard, me shoveling the ground while thinking about the moment when Margaret, a sensible daughter of Nebraska, would have to reach down for him and lift him into the grave. I generally am a cold SOB, but Kid was a member of the home. He whined a lot and often interrupted our morning coffee chats downstairs, but he was also an individualist of sorts, at time snarling at Lenny, the other house cat, or at Lazlo, the poodle, or at Doolie, the home's second dog. Lenny's real name is Sammy, but he looks like a Lenny to me, so I call him Lenny. Lazlo's real name is Nene, as in a small Hispanic boy, but he looks like a Lazlo to me. Doolie looks like a Doolie, so he is still Doolie. Don't ask me about Margaret's take on my re-naming of the other two.

Anyway, the morning shine grew sadder as the day went on. Kid was now outside, buried and gone from our daily noise in the house. We're off this morning to find a small headstone for him. I grew to like the dude, if only because he seemed to, like me, snarl at things he either disliked or was annoyed by. There's a few of us left, yes.

And throughout all this, I battled bullshit from my fellow bloggers, me thinking should I bother with that dogshit on a day when kid has passed? It was something to think about. It was something human, I suppose. Battles go on in life, even when you've won them all along the way, and even when other more-pressing things and events surface unexpectedly. I mean, Kid was with us this past weekend. He was with us when my two daughters visited us last month. And now he is gone. My oldest daughter is coming this weekend with her family. The kids, I know, will ask for Kid. They met him earlier and they played with him and they saw him bop about the house.

But he was getting old and the pains of age had crept up on him and wouldn't abate.

Kid was suffering and would suffer even more, is what the vet told us. So he was put to sleep, forever, to go where good cats go, to perhaps even join another family in the beyond. I hope so. Most who know me know that I'm not much of a pet guy. What hard-ass journalist ever loved a cat?

I don't know. I don't know.

And then there were my boots. My harness ones are aging, as well. And I'd been putting off buying a new pair. So Margaret and I went to Cavender's and she found a neat pair for her. Soft brown leather in a feminine shine. I picked up a pair of saddlebacks in a sort of distressed look (see photo at right), like they'd been walked around some abandoned barn before being placed on display. I liked them at first sight, but then thought about a second pair I'd seen online.

What to do?

I asked my daughter Gabrielle about it, and she said: "Does Margaret like them, Dad?"

My reply was, "Yes."

She said, "Don't return them, Dad."

I didn't...

- 30 -

For Mexico, Violence Is Nothing New...Part Of The Culture...Has Been for 100 Years...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - When I lived in Mexico City while writing for The Houston Post, one of my favorire early-morning stops was a corner table at the La Habana Cafe near the country's government complex. Breakfast came fast in the crowded joint. Waitresses moved like butter between the tables and the chatter seemed as if made noisier by the emotional strength of the conversations.

Talk of bad politics took centerstage. Everybody had their say, in harsh words and harsher gestures. Mexico was going down the tubes because of corruption at the rich national oil company, PEMEX. Tourism was sinking. Americans no longer traveled to the old, colonial towns like Taxco and San Miguel de Allende. Cops were taking bribes and travelers on Mexican highways were being robbed. Something was up.

The Mexican president at the time went on a public relations campaign that talked of hiring better-educated police officers, fighting the slumping economy so that Mexicans could have good jobs and then launching the Green Angels to aid anyone needing help on the country's roads, tourists especially.

That was years ago, the mid-1980s.

Much has and hasn't changed for the Aztec Nation.

Powerful drug cartels now run the entire country, allowing foreigners to label Mexico a narco-state. Blood runs like spoiled tamarindo in the streets and alleys of most Mexican communities. There is no law to speak of, Mexican President Felipe Calderon leaving the presidential palace only when he has to, and only in the company of a small, well-armed army of guards.

It is way past thinking about what happened to the once-tranquil land of tomorrow. Gone is the feeling that the criminals will be beaten. Too many heads have literally rolled and too many people have made too much money to ever turn back.

The discovery of a mass grave in the dusty Tamaulipas town of San Fernando didn't even faze those who heard about it this past weekend. It was just the latest creative and cruel barbaric act by the usual barbarians. Mexico cannot seem to solve its problems, and some say it just doesn't have the want-to. It is paralyzed by its own choosing; it is now a country at the mercy of its criminals.

Why should we care?

Perhaps it's time to say we don't. Let Mexicans talk and argue about their mess all they want. The cafes are always open and the coffee is somewhat okay...

- 30 -

Vietnam Blues: Veterans Still Pained By War Experience...It Was A Dark, Bloody Time For America...Good Soldiering, Bad Soldiering...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - It is the one war America cannot forget, even though it really wasn't a war and it really wasn't the worst ever fought by soldiers of this country. Officially, Vietnam was a "conflict," not a declared war, as was, say, World War II. Yet, in song and movie, the Vietnam adventure hangs over Americans like a bad case of regret that feels like the worst kind of gaping wounds.

They revered the brave men and women who served the military in the Southeast Asia country here yesterday. It was, by all accounts, a salving gathering. Tears flowed and hugs circled the crowd, according to a story in The McAllen Monitor. Everyone said the right things about serving their flag and being proud of it, and about how grateful the nation should've been. It wasn't, not then.

The 1960s and 1970s were a noisy, rebellious pair of decades that came with the Vietnam action and massive protests in this country that some say eventually led to the decision by the American government to leave Vietnam after tremendous loss of life and pride.

Vets in McAllen focused on the return, one they say never was adequate for the lives lost in combat and the horrible treatment some vets received upon returning. That happened.

But so did some other things no one mentioned in McAllen.

Those days were full of angst and anger. Protests spanned the country, from Boston to San Diego. Hardened vets would like to label them Hippies and draft dodgers, but not all were from those camps. Yes, the longhairs fought then-President Richard Nixon in the streets and in the hell-raising alternative newspapers (remember The Berkeley Barb?). Demonstrations outside the main gates at military bases and posts were common. Jane Fonda often spoke at these protests, as did psychedelic guru Timmy Leary and the infamous Abbie Hoffman. It was a great show of democracy, only the men in uniform rarely agreed with the protesters and their methods.

Still, there were two important incidents that also were part of the times.

In My Lai and My Khe, combat-weary Army soldiers massacred as many as 350 unarmed Vietnamese, mostly women and children, during raids on both villages in March of 1968. Only one soldier was tried and convicted, and that was Army Lt. William Calley, who was sentenced to life in prison, but was released after 3 years. Yes, that year was particularly awful for the war effort, but it happened, and that, too, is the legacy of Vietnam.

In this country, it would be May 4, 1970 that would stain the military.

Four students were killed that day and nine injured when members of the Ohio National Guard fired on students protesting the war at Kent State University. According to news reports of the times, the soldiers fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds. One student survived, but was paralyzed for life.

Absolutely, the men and women who served the military during that war should be remembered and honored, as happened here yesterday in what was labeled LZ: RGV (Landing Zone: Rio Grande Valley). We should take such sympathetic liberties with the people who march to the frontlines and battlefields. We should lap on them the praise they need and deserve. That's the mark of a civilized society, as weird as it sounds when talking about war veterans.

But history records everything, warts and all.

And, tough as it may be for gung-ho vets to stomach, Vietnam was not World War II. It was more closely associated with other undeclared entanglements, such as Korea, Granada, Panama, Desert Storm and the War in Iraq. No great welcome awaited the men who served and fought in those conflicts, either.

Vietnam veterans are correct in feeling slighted.

They're just not the only ones...

- 30 -      

Dance Of The Doomed: How I Saved Harlingen From Itself...No News At Eleven...Pan Camera 3...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - Nothing much happened here yesterday. Nothing, really. Some people waltzed into Las Cazuelas for their daily Huevos Rancheros drowned in a gallon of red salsa, others killed brave weeds in their backyards, while still others could only dream of being somewhere else, anydamnedwhere.

It was Friday in Harlingen.

Droopy plumpish faces hung low out in the streets. Heavyweight bodies were being thrown this way & that, the worker ants going where they hated to go and the unemployed do-nothings glad to have another fucking day off. Life is easy in this town of almost 70,000 love-starved souls. They say it openly, as if it justifies a unique sort of life, settles old scores with fatfuck authorities or throws some more bullshit out into the innocent morning air. No one died here yesterday, although lives were spent horribly, the pisspoor returns always equalling the effort. A few flies just in from Mexico pulled into the Whataburger on Ed Carey Drive, all ordering cokes, no ice. It's a weird pattern of living here: local animals get it, humans don't.

A battered Buick Oldsmobile moves slowly, heavily acoss an intersection. It carries the hopes and dreams of a nuclear family - a mom, a dad and six brats. They're all headed for Walmart, to shop for shoes, for bathing suits, for candy, for the hell-of-it. Life's little pleasures can be found at Walmart, shitty shirts over at Mervyn's, or that's what my friend, the plutonium-fueled blogger Jerry McHale, likes to say about that. He shops for his shitty shirts at Mervyn's, and, of course, he looks out of fashion with fashion, his rolling philosophy more akin to that of a goddamned cabbie in Bangkok than the ups & downs of his bordertown - that under-achieving, mind-fucking, low-blowing, Lambada-dancing, taco-scarfing and ever-adulterous Brownsville. He knows all the words to La Macarena and When A Man Loves A Woman by Percy Sledge...and can sing them in English and Spanish, drunk or sober, but kinda better when he's waiting for a table at an outdoor taqueria in the company of a character, or so say his best friends, the gadflies.

A helluva lot of a locals sail on the same aimless boat. It could be a killer show on TV overnight. Just aim the camera at Blogger Jerry Deal's face as he types another story for his news blog and applies the the time of his effort to the latest tale. He's on fire, that guy. Pan the town. Over there is Mayor Chris Boswell ambling into City Hall, looking nifty and shifty, on third gear as he moves his body into the pedestrian building, his eyes ablaze and his stomach screaming for a plate of scorched fajitas. The guy has big things on his mind. What to wear for that Bass Pro Shops "Grand Opening"  down the road, yeah. Perhaps a rented tuxedo from San Antonio, although, here, it really should be dirty overalls. You look at the dude and you easily picture him in overalls. Guard that City Hall, you Old Guarder, come the screams from the peanut gallery to the south of town.

Beer flows. It's the National Drink of Harlingen, sleep being the favored activity, after boozing, of course. And chasing women. Women in this town have no chance. They're dealing with unsophisticated men, uncouth shitbags who get turned-on by the cotton panty display at JC Penneys. Why worry about it, they say in a collective sigh the size of Russia. Women keep score, however. They throw magnets on their refrigerator doors that stand for the many times their men cheat on them, beat them, take their cash, flash the knife. It's easy to be a man in this part of the world; women won't fight back, although it's a coming doomsday. Wives have come to learn the way of the errant spouse, and they, too, are turning-on to the feeling of forbidden love - that sensational feeling of accepting new sperm down there, of feeling the new bloom. Watch out guys. All you may have in the end is a weekend series at Harlingen Field, long, boring baseball games featuring guys who look like Zetas in bad uniforms sliding into second base and coming up proud. The long drive to deep right field looks like it's going out! Naaaaaah. It falls at the feet of the fuck-up fielder, another shitty bobble in a long string of dogshit ball.

It's a life.

They'll all sleep it off...

- 30 -

Minor League Baseball: In The Valley, It's Three Up & Three Down...Warning Track Flyballs...

"No matter what, after it's all said and done, I'm the best field manager that ever put the WhiteWings uniform on..." - Manager Eddie Dennis

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - His record as manager of the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings is a losing record, but it's early in the year and the team is still undefeated. Who will quarrel with a man's ideas of success, his optimism in the face of, well, mediocre play and his belief in a ballclub about to launch yet another season of low-level, semi-pro baseball?

Not Eddie Dennis. He loves Harlingen.

"The reason I keep coming back to manage the WhiteWings is because I care for the city," he told blogger Jerry Deal in a brief interview. "I care for the WhiteWings and I care for the best fans in professional baseball."

Dennis, shown in photo atop this story, carries a 318-322 record as manager here. His squad finished second last year in the United League Baseball, losing in the championship series.

But he's hopeful, or as hopeful as anyone can be ahead of a new schedule.

The Winsgters begin play next month in a new 12-team league. Dennis has big plans for the team, and for himself: "Sadly, this will be my last year and I will come to the Valley again when I get inducted into the Rio Grande Valley Hall of Fame. I don’t know if you remember, I am a very unselfish person and coach and I have plenty of reasons to say that."

He has a little Tony Chapa in him, which does not bode well for facing reality.

"I don’t know if you remember that, after I won the championship in 2000, I left the club and the next year the ballclub became a DISASTER. Then I came back in in 2006 and we had a decent year, then in 2007 we made it into the finals...I retired after that, then 2008 became an even worse DISASTER, a record of 20-62 the worse record ever in WhiteWings history."

It is a baseball they play here that no major leaguer would find familiar.

The team is made up of dogged players who never got a shot at the majors and some who got it and didn't make it. Dennis himself must remember his own career. A native of the Dominican Republic, he signed his first professional contract as an 18-year-old second baseman with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1977. For the next eight years with the Blue Jays organization, he toiled in minor league stints that included stops in Dunedin, Fla., and Kinston, N.C. - places perhaps similar to Harlingen only in size.

"When I came back in 2009 and right away we were contenders," he went on in his chit-chat with Deal, a public relations man for the league last season. "We were eliminated on the last day of the season, and then in 2010, we went back into the playoffs."

In a way, we feel sort of bad at having to tell it like it is. We're baseball fans from way back and have seen the best America and the world can produce and field. It is truly something special to see the best fielders make the highlight plays and the best sluggers kill the ball. Sadly, this particular league that employs Dennis is a far cry from the real thing. It is baseball only in the sense that it has nine players on the field at any one time and the games go for nine innings. After that, it may as well be a collection of guys who simply love the game, play it on some sandlot for nothing and then go home to tell the wife about it.

We believe in supporting the hometeam.

But we also believe that some things have to be said. It's not free. Fans pay admission, buy concessions. The city avails Harlingen Field and provides utilities on the installment payment plan. It's entertainment, a couple of hours of razzing the umpires, gulping on cold beer, scarfing on hot dogs, licking on cheese nachos. Yeah, now pitching is Joe Whatever from wherever.

If Manager Dennis is honest, he would acknowledge that his efforts are likely ignored by baseball history and true-blue fans. The game is the attraction here. Fans will come and cheer and boo, and the dust will fly at the plate on every close play, the crack of the bat will tear the night sky and the action will be much like what you'd expect at any other baseball game being played in any of a thousand smalltown ballfields across the country.

It's baseball, only it's not Big Time baseball - no matter how many times disgraced former major leaguer Jose Canseco comes to town...

- 30 -

La Pistola y El Corazon: In The Valley, It's Open Season On Love & Marriage...Guns, No Roses...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

RIO HONDO, Texas - They killed a young mother here last week and the news fell like a lead balloon. There were a few eyebrows lifted to the ceiling, and the police issued cursory details that spoke of rage, of marital problems, of arguments, of bullets in the dead of night. It was all so routine, just another senseless act. Big deal. The woman's last name was Perez, but it could have been Lopez, or Gonzalez, or Chapa, or McHale, or Montoya, or Hernandez.

The victim's name only serves law enforcement paperwork and the newspapers.

Lost in the latest murder is the fact that it is just another of those all-too-often stories. Last week it was a wife, this week it is a husband gone from the planet - another faded love shot down on some desolate Texas road or in the home. A bloody goodbye courtesy of the spouse. Love in the Rio Grande Valley is not blue; it is red, bloody red. Who will answer the question of why this is such a big part of the border culture. A domestic murder hits the news here without much emotion anymore. It may as well be some drunk plowing into a house while on his way home. It may as well be another taqueria burned by local health reports. It may as well be another lamentful dirge rising from the dusty, weedy cemetery and moving through the craggy branches of a nearby mesquite on its way to the Heavens. Forgive us Father, for we have sinned.

In the local case, the husband reportedly paid someone $1,300 to off his wife. They shot her in the head and in the torso. She died at the scene. Thirteen hundred dollars. It seemed damned cold, yet it also seemed typically economic for this part of the world, one used to flea markets and bargains. You can't get a horse for $1,300. You can't get a good set of golf clubs for $1,300. You can't get a good dog for $1,300. But here, here in the land of second-hand stores, you can get your wife knocked-off for less than what it would cost to get a new roof for the house. Shocking, I know.

The woman in Mission, shown in the photo on the sidebar at top right, offered a bit more. Twenty grand was her dirty deal, and she found a taker. In the rot-gut Valley, she likely could have found a hundred unemployed stiffs who would have done it for much, much less.

Life is funny in the RGV. It's a lot of laughs and drinking and eating interrupted by a little gunfire.

But they all go on with their lives. It's just the latest sad story of yet another wife going down in the grave, just another husband who fell out of sexual favor with his old lady, just another spouse written off by the barrel of a gun. It's the border, and along the border, well, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night.

It never ends...

- 30 -

Politics & Catholics: Why Things Change, But Don't Change In Poor, Little Brownsville...Life As A Bad Sermon...Abre, Maria...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - It's almost May and another long round of elections looms for this haggard town on the banks of the Rio Grande. Hope springs eternal. This'll be the one to turn things around, goes the accordioned line in the bars. Say adios to poverty, to corruption, to politicians out only for themselves, to a horrible way of life.

It is the church's mantra - you suffer here, but you'll rejoice in Heaven.

Pay the collection man.

Some say you can tell a whole lot about a town by the candidates it postures for elected office. Faces, they say, faces tell it all. Are they honest faces, or can you see a selfish gleam in their eyes? Are they attractive people, or are they people with faces that seem to have been mauled grotesquely by way of bad forceps? Is the cheekbone high? Bad news. Is the face askew? Worse yet. Is the length of nose at odds with the angle of the chin? Forget it.

This year, collectively, candidates for the Brownsville City Commission offer some interesting faces. One would like to say that they are attractively Catholic, but, ah, no, they are not. These seem to be pretty run-of-the-mill faces, the sort you see almost everywhere, from the convenience store counter help, to the carwash attendant, to the grocery store bagging corps, to the perspiring yardmen. Is there not one soul in town with a proportionate face and head?

Doesn't look like it.

This election's crop looks as if it came out of some cancelled border bandido flick. It's not their fault, of course. Everybody is a victim of their parents, although some go a bit farther down the pier and say it's all about the partners their parents chose on that fateful coupling.

We do not wish to be pretentious or hold ourselves out to be better than anyone else; it's just that, well, some things are clear to a reporter, and a reporter has a hard time losing an angle to a story he knows is there. So indulge us with this one.

Can it be said that Brownsville, a blind-obedience Catholic town, suffers the pangs of all-out belief? The church goes about its business laying down the law: the congregation must acknowledge that it's okay to be poor, beaten, abused, harangued, whipped and everything else. You do the time on Earth and you'll be rewarded in God's Kingdom. Suffering includes suffering bad politics and bad politicians. Take a number, Maria. You, too, Juan. St. Peter will call it at the Pearly Gates upstairs. He'll know exactly where you came from and what you went through. The church also bleeds.

Nothing great will come out of next month's elections, this year or any year henceforth. It'll be business-as-usual here, with maybe a new face or two. There are no visionaries in this town; they all headed for the coast - the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. Symbols persist, however. The Holy Grail here is a cold mug at a 14th Street cantina; the Ark of the Covenant a battered Buick struggling to make it to the gas station. It is true: residents here live by Ecclesiastes. They agree that if you're not written into the Book of Life, you shall be cast into the Lake of Fire.

A few will say they have their favorite verses in the Big Book, and yet there they are on Friday night, drinking their asses silly while in the warm company of the neighbor's wife.

The election will come and go, so we won't give the names of some of the candidates whose photos you see with this story. They are not handsome people, unless handsome is defined in local, low-rent terms. They may have big hearts, but the hands and faces betray them. They may have one good idea for governance between them, but it is buried beneath layers of crippling cultural dogma.

It's a town with a myriad of problems, the least of which is its reason for being. Brownsville is here and not going anywhere. It will play its games and the people of the little village will do their Life Impulse. There is general acceptance of that, even up and down the fanciest pews. And they will stand on Sunday mornings, think about what's up there while forgetting what's brought them here. It has been proven time and time again that, here, in this tropical suburb of Hell, the day of reckoning is up ahead for everyone, up ahead and all that can ever mean is that they must get what they can while traversing the harsh geography under their feet and moving toward a place where it may eventually all work out. God is a concept by which we measure our pain, absolutely.

The face of the coming elections are the faces of the betrayed citizens. They know each other well. They accept and they make their allowances. They rise to applaud, and they sit back to listen, to take it one more time. It is in between their ears that they hold the secrets of this small, dusty bordertown.

Life lived by the Book of Genitals...

- 30 -

The Grand Plan: How The State Lottery Did & Didn't Save Texas Public Education...Big Money, Big Dream...Then Nothing...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - When giddy state officials first announced plans for a Texas lottery, they crowed not about the odds of winning or losing, but about how it would save public education in the Lone Star State. A huge percentage of the revenue was to be devoted to funneling money from sales receipts to the state's General Revenue Fund, and then, of course, onto the budgets of every school district from Brownsville to Dalhart, and from Texarkana to El Paso.

Well, no one is talking about any lottery money as the state sinks in its $27 billion budget deficit and public education is facing a staggering loss of $5 billion in operating funds for the coming schoolyear.

What happened?

The Lottery is still there, at your gas station, at the grocery store, at convenience stores and pretty much every other place where the gambler might stick his head. There's the Lotto and the Mega Millions twice-a-week games and the litany of rub-outs offering quick riches.

Has it helped the state? Has the lottery generated big dollars for schools?

We searched for info and this is what we got, from the Texas Lottery Commission: The Texas Lottery has generated well over $18 billion for the state of Texas since the first ticket was sold in 1992. Prior to 1997, the proceeds were allocated to the General Revenue Fund. Since 1997, all Texas Lottery proceeds have been transferred to the Foundation School Fund to support public education. The Texas Lottery has contributed more than $13 billion to the Foundation School Fund, and of that total, $1 billion was contributed in fiscal year 2010.

Well, at first glance that sounds like good news. But where does the money go? Schools get some, yes. Well, here is a chart showing the breakdown of Lottery earnings and how that is shared:

Sixty-two percent for prizes sounds reasonable. It's why people play, to win something. Twenty-seven percent for schools not so much. That's 27 cents out of every dollar going into the game. The percentage is better than that of your well-known charities, but still barely a bit more than a fourth of all lottery revenue.

Okay, so where did the dream go? What happened to the jillions public education was going to draw from Texas having a lottery? Eighteen billion for schools since 1992 is not even a billion a year, which, ironically is the annual budget of the Dallas Independent School District. That leaves a whole lot of other school districts wishing for a piece of the pie. It's true that those are figures for 2010, but is it any better so far this year?

We would bet not.

Playing the lottery is gambling and there is a sector of the state population that does not believe in gambling. Perhaps that is part of the problem. Maybe a better-promoted lottery would generate more cash. It's hard to know when the effort is no more excitable than it was when it began in almost 20 years ago. Yes, there were the scandal years of the 1990s, when reports surfaced that the bidding for the gaming company overseeing the lottery - GTECH - had been rigged, back when a woman named Harriet Miers served as director of the Texas Lottery Commission. Harriet Miers went on to serve in George W. Bush's White House, and he even nominated her for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The scandals died, but the Lotto never did come close to bringing in the sort of money its proponents envisioned.

That was yesteryear. Perhaps the entire operation should be looked at a bit deeper in these trying times.

Texas is deep in the hole. Legislators are said to be looking at everything in an effort to find more dollars, looking at things like raising fees at every state agency, from the driver's license office to admissions at the state parks.

The Lottery was once seen as a potential bonanza, a popular, addictive game that would bring in loads of cash every day. Truckloads. Armored cars pulling in all day. Big bucks for construction of new schools, for the hiring of more and more teachers, for better libraries, for better athletic programs, for newer, modern classrooms, for the best of everything.

It never happened that way...

- 30 -

The Quirky World of Athletics: Win Or Lose, Taxpayers Carry The Load...UT's Head Coaches Make $5.1 Million...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - Mack Brown, the head football coach for the Texas Longhorns, is paid $2.5 million per year. Rick Barnes, the University of Texas basketball coach, is paid $1.9 million. The women's basketball coach, Gail Goestenkors (shown in photo at bottom), is paid $930,000. Horns baseball coach Augie Garrido gets $760,000 annually. In there, at $1.5 million, is Texas Tech head football coach Tommy Tuberville and his $1.5 million paycheck.

These coaches are state employees, all in the Top 20 highest paid employees of the State of Texas - all, win or lose, paid with taxpayer funds.

Compare that with the salary of the state's highest paid public school superintendent, Carrol "Butch" Thomas of Beaumont, who gets $347,834.

Is it me, or are these salaries at weird play with the state's whopping $27 billion deficit? That deficit has state legislators cutting budgets for everything from public education to public safety. And not a word has surfaced about the salaries of any of these people. But that's Big Time college, and Big Time sports often generate big incomes in bowl games and post season play. Some say the U.T. athletic program pays for itself in game revenues. It does, when the teams win a national championship.

But it's not just college.

In Brownsville, Tom Chavez, the director of athletics for the school district shown in photo at left, is paid $98,000 per year. That's a lot of dough to oversee football, baseball and basketball programs that historically have gone nowhere in state competition. Soccer is the only sport BISD sort of excels in, but it's a low-publicity sport statewide, and the least expensive.

Does it take Big Money to make Big Splashes? No.

Consider two of the teams that made to the NCAA's Final Four games: Butler University of Indiana and Virginia Commonwealth U. Neither is said to be Big Time. Last year, Butler spent $10 million on its overall athletics program, with $1.7 million on basketball. VCU's budget was a bit more than $8 million, with $1.3 million going to basketball.

Big Timers Kentucky and UConn spent a whole lot more.

UK's athletics budget, you ask? Try $52.5 million, $6.3 million on basketball.

UConn (University of Connecticut)? $47.4 million, $5.5 million for basketball.

Kansas, a perennial powerhouse in men's basketball, budgeted $40.7 million for athletics, with $4.3 for basketball.

That's a lot of money for seasons that often end in defeat, except for the winner of tonight's championship game between Butler and UConn. Everybody else has gone home after being ousted from the season-ending tournament.

So, you ask yourself: Is the addiction to athletics such that taxpayers must pay huge salaries? Like U.T.'s Mack Brown in Texas, UConn's head coach, Jim Calhoun, is his state's highest-paid employee. He'll get that even if his team loses to upstart Butler.

Texas legislators are pulling their hair while wrestling with budget cuts that span the gamut of society, but there's been no talk here about salaries for head coaches. As a group, Longhorns foootball coach Mack Brown and the other UT coaches mentioned above will be paid $5.1 million.

It's something to think about when one hears Texas wants to cut drastically into the state's public schools fund. These coaches all get paid whether their teams win or lose. Teachers are at risk of losing their jobs when their students do not perform.

For the most part, these coaches do not face that risk. The Texas Longhorn football team had a won-loss record of 5-7 last season. For them, there's always next year...

- 30 -

In Brownsville, A Judge Admits Taking Bribes...He Follows A Long Line Of Lawbreakers In Office...Money For Nothing...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Really, why is anyone surprised? Abel C. Limas, the former 404th District Judge, admitted he took a bribe when arrested this week. Here, in this forever-corrupt town of some 120,000 citizens and non-citizens, he arrived as just the latest in a long string of officials who fell for the easy money.

Anyone remember Sheriff Conrado Cantu?

Yeah, he's still in prison for helping drugs move north from Mexico.

Goofy, funny business chases this town like a one-legged prostitute, the wench forever teasing, but always failing to deliver. These bad guys in robes and tarnished badges do get caught sooner or later. People will talk. Booze spills secrets. Brownsville is nothing if not a den of sin and corruption. The city collars owners and operators of unregistered massage parlors, but looks the other way when a bureaucrat goes wrong. It outaws plastic bags at local grocery stores, but it ignores scofflaws owing traffic tickets. DWI may as well be the equal of dissing a patrol boy at a school-crossing.

Reaching for the quick green is something locals are reportedly born with, that easy money being better than simply working for it. Games of chance float across the bars counters. Football pools make the neighborhood rounds. They're illegal, but what the hey - it's Brownsville, the lower colon of the Rio Grande Valley, a place where shame has no place in town, not even in church.

Perhaps that is why the mayor can deposit a $26,000 City of Brownsville check not meant for him and then hire a sharp lawyer to talk him out of the mess. In Brownsville, if you want something bad enough, you go for it. Cops coming to your door and court appearances are down the road.

There is no sympathy for Judge Limas. Not a gram of it, no.

He'll face the music in court, although he's already admitted he is guilty. And, who knows, the judge has no apparent record as a law breaker, so he'll likely get probation. Much depends on how vigorously the prosecution goes after him.

In Cameron County, that's a huge question, which points to another aspect of that magical word: corruption. It's not simply about money going from your hand to my mine; it, too, is about living life in a civilized, law-abiding manner in a world where everybody is equal - in and out of court.

Limas, shown in photo at right, will pass into the hilarious local history book as just another man who lost his way with honesty. And for what? Authorities say Limas got something like $257,000 for his bank account.

Gone are the seemingly honorable years of service to the bench, those years between 2001 and 2007. The immediate reaction followed the usual pattern here. That cackled laughter that included his name in cantina jokes moved across town last night. But, then, people in poor and dusty Brownsville like to laugh everything off...

- 30 -

In Texas Legislature Action, Cameron County Reps Are On The Sidelines...Oliveira, Lucio, Lucio III Not Doing Much...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - On Wednesday, State Rep. Eddie Lucio, III, shown in photo above, took time out from his day to issue a statement recognizing National Doctor's Day. Inside the State Capitol, in the House chamber, other elected officials agonized over funding a variety of state agencies while wrestling with the $27 billion deficit crippling Texas. Outside, a few hundred angry educators rallied against proposed hellacious cuts in public school funding. Lucio, III was nowhere to be seen at either event. The District 38 Democrat from Brownsville hasn't said much or done anything to capture the attention of the news media during the current legislative session.

But, then, neither has State Rep. Rene Oliveira (in photo at right).

Nor State Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr.

You'd have to have a killer microscope the size of Mt. Palomar's observatory to find these guys doing anything substantive inside the State Capitol chambers, where, these days, other legislators are taking the lead on matters to do with the state's budget, public education funding, public safety and a host of other issues-of-the-day that capture the attention of editors for the city's newspapers and television news departments.

Where is Oliveira, you ask? Well, he's been defending former State Rep. Tara Rios Ybarra in that high-publicity court case that had her facing Medicaid fraud charges. Oliveira's work there probably saved the day for Rios Ybarra. Charges against her were dismissed this week. And when asked for comment after the dismisal, Oliveira declined to speak about the case or the judge's surprise ruling.

He's not done much for his Valley constituents lately. But it's a Republican-dominated Legislature these days, so perhaps Oliveira decided his chances of passing bills of any kind were slim. Still, he could have tried. Among items he offered was recognizing Jan. 25, 2011 as Brownsville Day at the State Capital. He's been in office since 1981 and largely runs unopposed.

Eddie Lucio, Jr., the craggy-faced state senator for Dist. 27 since 1991 shown in photo at left, hasn't fared much better. He, too, is a Democrat in a Republican-heavy chamber. But even though Lucio, who is State Rep. Eddie Lucio, III's dad, is a member of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, well, we've heard nary a peep from him during the ongoing budget sessions. No proposal from him, and no ideas on how to solve the cash problem. Maybe the senior Lucio believes his contribution would be meaningless, and that could very well be the case. Republicans have ramrodded their issues right and left, beginning with insisting on measures they want included on budget action and killing amendments proposed by Democrats.

It's a fact of life in politics that the party in power gets its way. Democrats are not doing squat in Austin these days. A few get their photos taken in rallies outside the capitol building, with those irate educatrors, for example. But are they doing anything? The quick answer is, "No."

This legislative session will likely go down as one in which the Republicans had their way with everything, from framing the state budget to deciding on funding for public education.

Oliveira and the Lucios may as well have stayed home...

- 30 -