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...

- 30 -

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...

 - 30 -     

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...

- 30 -

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...

- 30 -

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.

- 30 - 

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...

- 30 - 

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...

- 30 -

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...

- 30 -

For The Falstaffian Mayor, An Up & Down Day on The Witness Stand...

By RON MEXICO

Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - There was the stoic mayor on the witness stand, making his case and repeating his defense in a weird appearance born out of charges connected with the mayor's odd desposit of a $26,000 check belonging to someone else. There he was in court yesterday, telling jury members, "I didn’t take the check. I didn’t steal the check."

Mayor Pat Ahumada is charged with three felony offenses. He is expected to see the charges resolved in a jury rendering sometime today.

It was yet another high-profile Rio Grande Valley politician dressing up for trial. And there was Assistant District Attorney Michael Martinez prosecuting the popular mayor. Martinez wasted little time in painting Ahumada as a man with a perfect motive for cashing the City of Brownsville check belonging to a vendor: money woes. Prosecutors unfurled official documents indicating Ahumada awaited funds from a $70,000 home equity loan, a transaction delayed due to the mayor's delinquency on property taxes. Perhaps more comical, the prosecution noted Ahumada had spent about $6,000 of the $26,139 deposit.

But, as with all legal dramas, there were those rising for the defense.

Defense attorneys Ed Cyganiewicz and Star Jones listed a litany of financial arrangemnts the mayor had in effect with a variety of lenders. The mayor, they said, has lines of credit at several banks, overdraft protection, and family and friends with substantial financial resources. Ahumada served up an anecdote to substantiate his credibility, saying local attorney Ernesto Gamez had loaned him $40,000 on a “handshake.”

Cyganiewicz posed another scenario: “Somebody at City Hall made a mistake. The (bank) teller (who took the mayor’s deposit) made a mistake. The mayor made a mistake...but he’s the only one here.”

The annals of political weirdness are fat with stories where the facts seemingly point to unquestionable guilt. They are also fatter with stories where the real story never came out. A traditional police investigation will hit the usual buttons and obtain the usual information. This check story seems to be in the latter column. The mayor's claims of innocence sound plausible, and the prosecution's bent on using the barest of facts seems convenient, in essence a quick-easy courtroom victory, or hang him...and hang now.

This was no sinister plot. It is true that the mayor cannot claim he was not aware of fact No. 1: that the check was made to someone else. His financial problems are believable, but not damning. The matter about him spending $6,000 is an expected action. Most people will spend money they believe they have. So, did he steal the check (money)? Theft, it would seem, goes to him taking it willfully. Testimony indicates someone at City Hall gave him the check.

Prosecutors have made the case for Ahumada depositing the check. And they have presented witnesses to say that he did that. But theft? No. There is no evidence the mayor "stole" the check.

True justice: The money is forwarded to the city's vendor, if it hasn't been done already.

Political hay should not be part of this story. No one died, no one was hurt. A mistake was made and a mistake was rectified. Ahumada was never going to keep the money. City administrators would have been able to track payment of the check; that is, whose bank account it went into...

- 30 -

[EDITOR'S NOTE: A jury hearing this case has found Mayor Pat Ahumada not guilty of all charges...]

MORNING COFFEE: Awake In The Era Of Losers...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ

Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, TX - In this the Season of Insanity, we pause from the graceless rage to note a few things about our politics, namely the Republican Party's refusal to die and, in Cameron County, a sprinkling of laughable Democrats fully believing image - and nothing else - is king. On the latter point, we speak of Mssrs. Ernie Hernandez and Ruben Pena, perplexing candidates for the Cameron County Commission.

In an earlier post, we noted the significance of health care reform, and we said it was a good thing that the federal government again turned its attention to the citizenry, helping Americans battle rising - and lack of - medical care. Now, it seems that even though Congress appears to have done its job of approving the measure, Republicans are vowing to do the ridiculous to overturn the legislation. A handful of so-called red states (Republican) have sicced their lawyers on the federal government, howling plans to fight it in the Supreme Court by way of a misguided belief that the new law is unconstitutional. Nevermind that it is, in its concept and packaging, a carbon copy of legislation that led to Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.

Among the states doing this is Texas, its wheelchair-bound Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott, safely cocooned thanks to taxpayer-funded health insurance, leading the charge. It is a pathetic display of stupidity, but there it is. Republicans shown the path to Waterloo by President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress are rabid. In a way, it substantiates the belief that Republicans do not care about the whole. They could live with all non-Republicans leaving the country. Perhaps it's time to wave adios to this cabal of malignant cancer.

These red states will go nowhere with their lawsuit. Republicans will pull their hair from here to the November elections, threatening to target those who voted for Health Care Reform. They will unfold brainless Sarah Palin (she of the Canadian health care program) and Rush Limbaugh (he of the drug addiction) and John McCain (he of the lovely health insurance Congress avails him) and a few others. But it is for naught. It is as a popular GOP pollster put it yesterday: Health Care Reform is a stunning defeat for the party. And all that yelling , posturing, racism, tea partying? None of it could stop a law whose aim is benevolent, a mark of our desire to help ourselves for once in the last 50 years.

Now, about Mssr. Ernie Hernandez, the Demo candidate for Precinct 2 on the Cameron County Commission. This is a politician whose public service road has come to a dead end. The four-term city commissioner is floating spiffy flyers that make him appear to be a worthy candidate. His past, however, betrays him. Nothing can paint over his controversial years as a city commissioner. He has zero for the county populace. There is not just an empty promise here, but an empty suit. The Hollow Man is not one to support.

And, as much as we damn Mssr. Hernandez's candidacy, we must note that his opponent, Harlingen lawyer Ruben Pena, is just as woeful. He, too, seems to want to run from his professional history. These are strange times, yes, but not that strange that we cannot see through the stained drapings that front both of these campaigns. For the county citizenry, these two are the worst of times and, well, the worst of times.

Oh, how we wish that Mssrs. Hernandez and Pena rolled under the GOP banner. They'd fit in nicely...

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CANDID CAMERA: In One Frame, Telling Photo Defines Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos...

By JUAN MO-TIME
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - In one of Bob Dylan's more-attuned songs, he sings about someone having it in for him, someone "planting stories in the press." The song is Idiot Wind, and it works nicely as soundtrack for pretty much every political campaign known around here.

It's not hard to feel the blow as it leaves a campaign and makes its way across the land. The sloganeering is familiar, as are the roadside signs and the campaign literature. You bet, I will do so much for you, it all says. And when the score is tallied at the end of every politician's term, the red side of the ledger always wins. Little is noticeable from today's Brownsville when compared to the city of twenty years ago. That stretch of new businesses along the highway and past the mall is more a sign of population growth than political accomplishment.

You could take a camera to that part of town and compare it to one of, say, 1992 and not exactly be blown over. The Downtown District has not changed, and we speak of Elizabeth Street and its busy, yet decaying neighboring counterparts.

But the photo that stands as sweetheart legacy to Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos is the one shown atop this story. That's Cascos seated next two Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, shown in his despair-white hair on the left. If ever there was a shot symbolic of Republican doings in South Texas, it is that languid photo of Cascos in full-lounge with a senator who is no friend of the Mexican border or of Hispanics. In fact, he's said to be actually proud of it, which makes us wonder whether Cascos, a rare Mexican Republican, somehow looks up to this Tower of Babble.

Cascos awaits two Democrats doing battle early next month. The winner in a race featuring former Do-Nothing Mayor Eddie Trevino and lackluster County Commissioner John Wood will face Cascos in the November election. Looking at the contest solely from a political perspective, the difference between all three is as thin as surgical wire. Trevino is favored to beat the hardly-energized Wood in the party contest. Cascos is said to be biding his time, formulating some sort of high-road, non-offending campaign suiting his sublime personality.

At stake for the citizenry is leadership in county government, always a pretentious idea, but never a winning one. Too many caudillos have held that post for Cameron County citizens to feel as if they are voting for a special candidate with a new vision, or a different, better way of doing things. On the contrary, the historical rolls of recalcitrant county judges is full of forgettable names, forgettable from the standpoint of controversy, shenanigans and ultimate defeat - defeat either against other candidates or against the governing task at hand. Cascos rode into office after a few years of horrible administration by former County Judge Gilberto Hinojosa. Perhaps he can claim a certain serenity that followed Hinojosa's reign.

Too bad there is no photo of that...

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MADRE!: The Good Friends Of Ernie Hernandez...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ

Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE - A swirling ill wind moved in from the southeast, turning the day's afternoon into a dusty vista of the sort that said winter was fast-fading toward Nova Scotia. In the corner of the small cafe, there at an old wooden table adorned with salt and pepper shakers, a plastic flower rising from an ancient, dirty vase and along a wall plastered with economic art splashing scenes of the Mexican Revolution, sat the hopscotching politician Ernie Hernandez.

He was waiting for a newfound friend, someone who had climbed aboard his campaign wagon, someone who would rile the masses into voting him into yet another office - this one Precinct 2 commissioner for the county. The opponent was that dastardly Ruben Pena, the Harlingen attorney he thought was not fit for the job. Antsy, Hernandez fiddled with a copy of the day's newspaper. He would read a bit and then glance over the top of the page, to peek toward the door, to look for his friend's arrival. The campaign was unfolding like a new magazine, pages seemingly glossy and pretty, nice on the eyes. In his mind, Hernandez believed he was already way ahead of his opponent.

"Jesus, I can hardly wait for Election day," he told himself, as he read a story about people losing weight.

Across the dining room, an elderly Mexican couple sipped coffee and played with hefty plates of carne guisada. Occasionally, they would look his way. "They know me, of course," Hernandez said to no one. "I am that famous in town. Pretty sure they've seen my face and name in the newspaper, on TV." He nodded in their direction and again looked to the door. Outside, cars moved up and down the street, north and south, drivers off to do who knows what. A big truck rumbled by and Hernandez said that's it, that's my campaign right there - a powerhouse on the move.

For minutes that seemed to stretch to no end, he leafed the pages of the newspaper, waiting on his ally. Need that guy. He knows the ropes. He can get me where I want to go in politics. No one else cares. That fuckin' Jerry McHale is killing me, stomping me, sucking the shit outta me, on El Rocinante. Bastard! Wouldn't take an Ad from me. I'm paying big bucks. My guy is doing it. What eva. Hernandez lifted his coffee cup to his mouth just as he heard the screen door open. There, there was his only friend. The day would end nicely. I'll be able to sleep tonight. My pal will rag and drag my opponent into quitting the race. I have a firecracker in my backpocket with this guy. Ha ha ha.

And then Juan Montoya walked up and sat down...

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WORKING IT, BABY: Brownsville Female Cop Hustles 12 Men Out of Freedom...

By ANGELO MARGARITA
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - A sexy female Brownsville Police Department officer was forced to work four long, long hours as a prostitute in a downtown sting that netted a dozen sex-happy dudes. The hardly-covered undercover lady cop has not been identified, but a source inside the force tells this reporter she looked worn-out, haggard and beat feet straight for the department's jacuzzi.

In hooking the 12 sex-hungry Batos, the BPD assigned 10 officers to conduct the surveillance/arrest operation, dubbed by local wags as "Operation Puro Pedo."

Sanctioned by Chief Carlos Garcia, no relation to Barney Fife, the female cop donned her sleezy duds and took sexual positions along the 600 block of 13th Street, biding her time by doing what prostitutes do when not talking smack with prospective customers - ah, biting her nails, arranging her underclothing, waving, smiling, wishing she'd gone to law school.

According to cops, the 12 sex-starved fools were charged with one count of solicitation of prostitution. All posted bond and presumably went home to cry. A spokesman for the police department said 10 different automobiles carrying 12 different men approached the female officer during her 4-hour shift.

The going rate - from the client's perspective anyway - for sex was in the range of $20 for oral sex (mouth on penis or mouth on vagina) and $100 for sexual intercourse (missionary, spoon, doggie). Among the doofusess arrested was a Cameron County Detention Officer and an employee with the Brownsville Independent School District.

No word on whether the cop playing the part of the street prostitute would, in real life, have drawn the twenty for a backseat BJ or the hundred for the Around-The-World acrobatics...

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[Editor's Note: Angelo Margarita also writes about Brownsville crime for Alarma! Magazine of Mexico. He resides in Olmito.]

NEW CALL FOR SPANGLISH: Ben Neece Takes Rienda of Libertarian Party. Ha Ha...

By RON MEXICO

Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - Spelling never has been a strength for anyone in this pinche town. There was that gente at that fried chicken joint on the highway posting this on its marquee last week: Now Hireing. And there were those obreros at that llantera on E. Boca Chica Boulevard that offered tire alighments. Geez, Louise. Oh, and how about today's Brownsville Herald?

There's that story by periodista Emma Perez-Trevino, shown in photo above, writing about some Libertarian Party appointment. Well, it reads like this on the newspaper's website: Libertarian Ben Neece has taken the reigns of the Cameron County Libertarian Party, highlighting an alternate choice amid what he said is an increasing discontent of Democrats and Republicans with their parties.

He has taken the "reigns" writes Perez-Trevino, reportedly the daily's crack reporter. The reigns! Reins maybe, Emma?

Que wild. May we suggest that Emma strike out for all-out Spanglish. Neece tomo la rienda, eh? Que fiebre! Ay, amor, amor...mi cabeza se estrella. Si, mejor mejora Mejoral!

Sounds much better, and the imagery fits the culture, well, like a guante...

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In Cameron County, An Image Conundrum For Candidate John Wood...

By JUAN MO-TIME

Herald-Tribune Political Writer

HARLINGEN, TX - Who is John Wood, and why is he wanting to become the next county judge? Is he phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine or melancholic. Our readers wanted to know. We wanted to please them.

And so we were dispatched here by our editor to get an idea of exactly how this northern sector of Cameron County sees Candidate Wood in his bid to unseat incumbent County Judge Carlos Cascos. The responses were wacky, tacky and, at times, even Riki-Tiki-Tavi.

"I suppose he's a melancholy kinda dude," said resident Javier Elizondo, a shoeshine man at the local shopping mall off Highway 83. "But, look, I don't know the guy. I have no idea what he looks like or what he wants to do or has done. But I'd go for melancholy based on the sketch possibilities you just showed me."

The enigmatic Wood, still facing party opponent Eddie Trevino in the Democratic Party primary run-off next month, may never get a shot at the sublime Cascos. Still, he endures the race, its day-to-day nothingness and its occasional flare-ups. Run-offs, someone famous once said, are like kissing your aunt and your aunt expecting some serious tongue-action. So far, conventional wisdom has Trevino, a former mayor of Brownsville, mopping the floor with the older Wood before croc-wrestling Cascos in the Main Event later this year.

"Yeah, I'd go with the last cartoon - the melancholy one," said Barbara Ochoa, a customer at the Jardin Cafe, a popular eatery/bar. "I've heard of Cascos, but never of Wood. Is he kin to Tiger Woods? - No, that's Woods, right?"

Seated at the bus station waiting on a bus back to his home in Silver City, New Mexico, Bernardo Ceballos said he, too, would select the melancholy pose to depict John Wood. "I read the Blogs and I've followed the crazy politics around here. My cash is on Cascos, although Trevino is said to have an army of politiqueras at the gates. I'll be checking-in via the Internet."

Then there was a strikingly attractive woman who declined to give her name, but offered this: "Wood seems to possess some sort of weird vibe, like he's coming back from the 1920s or 30s. It's sorta spooky to look at him. He reminds me of some Charles Dickens character. Perhaps he should have gone into the movies. County government for him? Naaaaaaaaaah."

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In Town, Talk Of Historical Designation...

By COSMO INFANTE

Special to The Herald-Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, TX - I remember it was the night Mexican boxer Pipino Cuevas got his ass kicked by some Black guy whose name I forget. Maybe it was the leather pusher Aaron Pryor, or maybe it was the Motor City Cobra Tommy Hearns. But who cares? Pipino bled like a knifed thug, and Mexico cried for weeks.

Cuevas faded into oblivion. And all I know is that I caught the whipping inside The Palm Lounge here that fateful night, when the joint was packed with noisy, fight-hungry Mexican fans from both sides of the Rio Grande. It would be a scene I'd not see again until Alexis Arguello was beheaded by the same Aaron Pryor in a Las Vegas deguello. Arguello's English was never the same after that beating.

What is pretty much the same these days is The Palm Lounge, a downtown watering hole known far and wide along the harsh Texas-Mexico border. Mention its name in Rio Grande City 60 miles to the west and you get raised eyebrows from the women and wild laughter from the men.

The Palm Lounge is barely a 220-yard dash to the rusting international bridge that takes you to some 5,000 other border cantinas that will blow your mind. But that's another story somebody else will have to tell. I like to amble into the Palm Lounge on any night featuring a major sporting event, like Lucha Libre from El DF, heavyweight boxing, the Super Bowl or El Mundial, the mania also known as world soccer.

The Palm is not exactly a sports bar in a Big City sense. The mirror in the men's room of any Dallas beer joint is about the same size as The Palm's sole television's screen. For the architects, it houses a neat bar running half the length of the floor and back there near the rear one finds a few billiards tables alongside the jukebox, where farmworkers and other day laborers do their best to forget about buying new Ford T-birds and laying a woman without bad teeth.

Then there's the jukebox. Ah, the jukebox! Rolling Stones. Shakira. Beatles. Mana. Phil Collins. Jose Jose. The Troggs. Los Tigres Del Norte. Garfunkle. Los Bukis. A guy could go international quickly just listening to the tunes. "It's what makes us Mexicans and Americans," said a heavyset customer who gave his name as Gilberto "Me Entiendes" Mendez. "The Mexicans play the Mexican tunes and the Mexican-Americans play The Stones, etal. But, you know, I don't give a damn, so long as the music is on."

Built on street corner for sure 50-60 years ago, The Palm Lounge is this poverty-stricken border town's answer to the press club most anywhere else in the United States. "Every reporter who wrote for the Brownsville Herald in the eighties got soused at the Palm Lounge," said local wino Johnny "Te Explico" Federico, a retired Cuban shrimper and well-known gadly. "I knew most of those guys and, let me tell you, many of their crazy stories were born after a few brews at the Palm."

He goes on: "You could sit there with those guys - McHale and Susan Crixell, Montoya, Guevara and Robbie, DP-M, Crowder, McLanahan, Schroeder, Doyle May, Reddel, Urban, Fieg - and hear exactly what they'd be writing in the next day's paper. Man, what a time it was..." The Palm Lounge lives in its past, yes. There are clues, and there are the sounds of yesteryear. If you have any point of reflection; that is, if you've ever been there...you'll see and hear things you'll think you've lived before. It is quaint and it is magical. It is an institution and a memory-maker.

"There is a movement afoot to get historical designation for The Palm Lounge," said another resident wearing a grease-stained Manuel's Body Shop workshirt. "We'd like to see that happen, yeah. What else we got, dude? - the friggin' playhouse? The train depot? That frickin' cemetery where the high school kids go get laid at night ever since they closed Boys Town in Matamoros? The Palm Lounge is Brownsville! There's nothing else, Bato..." I plunked my share of quarters in the jukebox and drank myself silly waiting on some beautiful celestial virgin to mosey in and ask for me by name.

It never happened. I spotted six or seven physically-eccentric women moseying in looking for their men, but no knockout in a black mini and red pumps out to kill the night with a three-hour sexual marathon over at the Alligator Motel. But, then, that's not what The Palm Lounge is about, any swinging Galan in town will tell you. The meat markets are elsewhere.

You can get broads in any of a hundred other local public hangouts, like while applying for a job at the employment office. You can buy it afterhours along some alley, or you can talk some smack to some boozed-out broad and get it for free. There's spirited talk about such rack action at pretty much every booth and table inside The Palm Lounge. Even from the old goobers, who'll spin tales of sexual conquests that would make Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt dizzy...

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For Candidate Argelia Miller, A Long, Hard Climb...

By RON MEXICO
Staff Writer

BROWNSVILLE, TX - Upset City is a neat phrase favored by those who follow sporting events, held in reserve for those special moments when combatants collide and the planets re-align. Such a stunner is what local resident Argelia Miller hopes to spring on Brownsville Navigation District Board President Carlos Masso in the upcoming election for Masso's seat.

For Masso, an assistant district attorney and owner of a few suits, his is still a relatively warm seat, although Miller's bid is not unlike the one Masso launched when he won the office as a novice. Miller has never held elected office, yet she is the opinion that Masso has some liabilities.

She wonders how Masso can draw benefits from two pubic entities, his salary from the D.A.'s office and travel perks from the BND. It is, to be fair, not the race of the century in county politics, but it is a contest set to brew its own recipe for either a landslide victory for the entrenched Masso (shown in photo above) or just enough of a dust-up campaign from Miller to make things interesting. For the moment, Miller is working on defining her campaign and issues she expects to bring to the forefront. Insiders say Masso appears not to be worried about the challenge.

"Transparency," Miller says readily when asked why she seeks the office, noting the disaster that was the infamous $21 million boondoggle associated with a proposed international bridge that never was constructed. Miller sees Masso as a linchpin between the BND and the office of Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos, Masso's 9-to-5 boss. It was Villalobos who investigated the bridge mess and ultimately drew a $1 million settlement from the BND. Miller is still fuming from the D.A.'s decision to keep the million instead of funneling it back to the BND operating budget, a sentiment shared by many familiar with the dynamics of the probe.

As was the case during her unsuccessful bid for a seat on the Brownsville City Commission last year, Miller says her effort will again be a grassroots campaign, one not beholden to any one interest group or political clique...

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