Sunday Editorial:...A Bordertown With A Southern Problem...

By ELIOT ELCOMEDOR
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - We don't know Tito Aguirre, but this is what he thinks about his community: "As, minorities we need to wake up and realize that a majority of our population is behind the eight-ball. We, as a group, lack family structure, education, money and political power at any level."

Well, no, Tito.

No!

What you and the lot of Hispanics calling Harlingen home these days need is to stop thinking of yourselves as "minority" anything. Minority? Minority! That is racial terminology, a way for them to separate you; them being the so-called Anglos, who really are Europeans from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Watch out for the German-Americans; they are the worst. They can be, well, stupid on things such as who is and isn't a true American.

These are strange and wicked times in Good 'Ol Harlingen. Things are changing and some in the sun-parched town do not like it. Segregationist minds live here, fester here, die here, die hard. Lately, a certain wind blows across town, one that has local Hispanics thinking bigger, thinking - some knowing - that the time to leave the subservient lane is now. At a recent meeting of the City Commission, much was made about the hiring of a Hispanic as the new city manager. Not that Carlos Yerena got the job; there have been other Hispanics in that thankless post before him. What was interesting was the notation by an attendee of that meeting who said he sensed one of the commissioners had seemed put-off by Mssr. Yerena's heavy Hispanic accent.

That commissioner? No surprise there, went the line in the streets. It was Kori Marra.

In soft unfoldings more suited to the spreading of a range bedroll, locals here have begun to take sides. The battle between the past and the present fuels letters-to-the-editor of the daily newspaper. But it rages in the community's blogs. The aforementioned Tito Aguirre's take on things appeared on MyHarlingenNews.com, an unapologetic rock-thrower against everything to do with the city's past. Its editor - Tony Chapa - has taken a beating on MyLeaderNews.com, a blog more aligned with the past than it is with anything other than minor-league baseball. Its grizzled editor, the ever-tricky Jerry Deal, waves-off the biting anti-Chapa comments, but he nonetheless approves them for posting, perhaps even gleefully.

One wonders what any self-respecting Hispanic is doing on MyLeaderNews.com. It claims to have addressed city problems whole-hog in its past, but lately it defends elected officials such as the aforementioned Marra and never says a word about the city's do-nothing mayor, Chris Boswell. If change is coming to this Mid-Valley community of 74,000 souls, it is going to have to come quickly. The status quo, as Chapa likes to note at every opportunity, is exactly what the Old Guard wants. The indomitable Chapa fires his pointed salvos daily, sometimes hourly. Jerry Deal, of MyLeaderNews.com, appears to have little interest in stoking the coals of change.

We forever gripe about neighboring Brownsville's cheap and unimaginative politics, but, there, at least the majority Hispanic population rules. Anachronistic residents of Harlingen, a city that desperately wants to be Peoria, Illinois, still drive that wedge between local Hispanics. That strategy will always work to dilute the Hispanic contribution, and, of course, they know it. What Harlingen needs -aside from a new name - is to see its Hispanic community take charge of their town. They must work as one, as does the Anglo, and they must rally behind their own, as does the Anglo, and they must vote for their own, as does the Anglo. It's wildly simplistic when you look at it as basic mathematics.

It's about playing the game, yes.

But it, too, is about flexing your political muscles. There is no credit card or hard cash needed to drop your vote in the ballot box. There is no reason to fear - or hate - someone like Tony Chapa. He's recognized the fight, and it's not about personalities or grudges or hurt feelings. He sees the Big Picture, the same one that is visible to every other Hispanic in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, the ones who look toward Harlingen and wonder how it still can be 1958 anywhere in the burgeoning region.

To Mr. Aguirre, we say: Hispanics are a minority only if they grant permission to the Anglo to label them as such.

Tony Chapa of MyHarlingenNews.com apparently doesn't.

Critics, such as the bloviating private investigator Joe Rubio who ceaselessly attacks Tony Chapa, are only doing the Anglo's yardwork...

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