WIRED: In Matamoros, It's Drugs, Guns and Rock 'n' Roll...A Long, Long Night For Animals...

By NICK RYAN
Special to The Tribune

MATAMOROS, Mexico - The flabby-bellied girl had just finished dancing "Have You seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in The Shadows" by The Rolling Stones when the soldiers stormed in, ordered everyone to the floor and quickly pulled the plug on a long, long night for animals. Partying in this city, once the playground of South Texas politicians and the wandering press, has come to an end. Where strained guitar riffs once sailed out into a booze-fueled crowd, it is now bullets that zing past you even as you scan the room for a semi-attractive doll who just may be up for some free "kill me" sex in some darkened corner.

It is the ongoing war between the blood-thirsty drug cartels that has fun leaving town in a hurry. Neoned nightclubs once as noisy as Hell's reception room now sit abandoned, looking like transplants from war-ravaged Fallujah or Baghdad. Streets that once moved thousands of night owls out for a good time now settle into an epoch that has them as lonely as an aging prostitute working Penny Lane at the local bordello. It is, they say, a fight that funseekers lost, and lost badly.

"We are world-class cowards," one man is saying in Spanish as I move down a sidewalk toward the international bridge that will take me back to Texas. I ask the bearded man with the Quasimodo slouch why he isn't home, where presumably it is safer than out in the open, and he says, "I am an old man. What is it that I should fear?" A rain of bullets, I tell him, and he bends his head back like a javeline-thrower and says, "They can kill me anytime, here or at my home, so why worry about it! My biggest problem right now is finding something to eat. Where did all the taco stands go anyway?"

He stops and scans the scenery, up ahead, to his right and left, and behind. Nothing. If there is a taco to be had on this street, well, it must be down in the sewer drains. I nod; he smiles. We are fools passing like shits in the night, bound for our own geographies. (Yes, shits, okay?)

"See you later," I say next.

"Alligator," he fires back, laughing like a hyena.

The street looms as lonely as a pregnant woman unable to have sex. I hear every moan and groan coming from below and above. If there is a God, I tell myself, he better be at the next corner. But I press onward, now thinking God is not interested. At the corner, a tamale-fattened cop stops me and asks for identification. I hand him my Tribune ID Card and he nods.

"You tell your boss I better not catch his ass in my town," he tells me, referring to Tribune Editor Patrick Alcatraz. I ask him why, and he says, "I was a big, fuckin' Ron Mexico fan. And Alcatraz fired him. For drinking on the job! Ha ha ha. We all drink on the job, man!"

I walk away, slowly. It is a cadaver's idea of night - nothing to be seen or heard. Somewhere else, the music is not stopping. People are dancing, guys are angling in on chicks and the booze is flowing as if forever.

Not here. Matamoros has died a horrible death...

- 30 -

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Writer Nick Ryan usually covers ethnic strife in Harlingen, but he'd heard all the bullshit about the drug wars in Mexico. So, he packed a bag lunch, filled his canteen with whiskey and walked across the bridge in Brownsville to check it out. This is his first report for The Tribune...]

In The Rio Grande Valley of Texas, The Road Goes On Forever and The Party Never Ends...

"With women, it's not what you said or did; it's how you made them feel..." - Patrick Alcatraz

By KERMIT PEREZ
Tribune Party Beat Writer

McALLEN, Texas - The phone call came at a particularly bad time. I was shaving my goatee into shape when I noticed my editor's name on the cellphone's caller ID: Patrick Alcatraz calling at dawn was not good news. I set my razor down, next to my expensive bar of face soap, there next to my $100 toothbrush, and inhaled as deeply as I could inhale. Jesus, was I being fired already? This was my first week on the job at The Tribune and I'd been busting my tail researching my first story.

What could Patrick possibly want?

I chickened-out and let my answering doohickey take the call. It was brief: "Write the goddamned story by mid-morning and send it in, Goddammit!" I exhaled. Wheeeeeew. Not fired yet. Great, I thought, stepping off the llama throw rug at my feet and leaving the huge mirror to head back into my cavernous bedroom. I am remodeling this abandoned warehouse and it will soon be my home, the place where I will entertain local ladies, the pretty ones, of course.

Kermit Perez doesn't just bed any woman. No, sir. They have to have brains, for one.

Anyway, I sat heavy on my King-size bed and lifted my leg to begin sliding into my Jordache jeans. They don't make these anymore, so I get them from the European black markets. $700 a pair, yessireeee. My laptop is on the glass dining table, there under the light of my large plasma wall TV and a yooooooge picture window that gives me a panoramic view of Business 83 just west of Main Street here. My job description says I do the party stories.

Well,so far the parties are everywhere. My place is in the shadow of McAllen's already-fabled Entertainment District, so the sounds of the bustling night fall into my abode somewhat nicely, enough anyway that this lovely, Big Hair chick from Edinburg said my place was the wildest joint in the Valley, rivaling, she said, the Shrine in San Juan. Kermit had a great time with that one, even sprung for a cab ride home for the poor child. Hopefully, we won't see her again. Party Boys like me hate re-runs, if you get my drift.

The goal is to check out as many area parties as possible. That's what my editor told me when he hired me for this gig. Said he didn't want to see recycled club notes or newspaper reviews. Said he wanted the skinny on the skinny and the fat on the fat. Of course, the Valley has plenty of skinny and fat chicks, so...

Harlingen is on the itinerary, as is Brownsville. We'll see which one holds my attention. I hear Harlingen chicks like to do the Limbo (not your grandfather's limbo, btw) and Brownsville ladies chase the Funky Chicken. Looking forward to hitting the 14th Street cantinas in Brownsville, although I'd hate to have anyone vandalize my new Beamer. And it's been years since I've partied with rough-hewn women. Still, it's my job. I dive in, as Lloyd Bridges used to say on Seahunt.

Hang on a  sec. There's another call from Alcatraz...

- 30 -

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Writer Kermit Perez was born on a bed of cold cuts in Houston the same year the Dallas Cowboys began playing football. He's a cultured man with an extraordinary ego, and he is a bachelor, although he tells us he's rarely alone after dark. This is his first report for The Tribune...] 

Children Of the Night: A Valley Dad Wonders About His Teen-Age Daughter, And About landing A Job...

By BOB VERACRUZ
Special to The Tribune

HARLINGEN, Texas - Jacobo "Lou" Lozano has no freakin' idea where his daughter, Evelyn, is on this particular night. He is driving like a maniac as he scoots past darkened streetcorners, past jet-black alleys and past rowdy cantinas offering accordion music that sounds like it's coming from the bowels of Hell. It is four Ayem and Evelyn has not been home since dinner, when she ate a chicken taco and then got up from the table to say she'd had it with her family's boring life.

"I need to find her fast," Jacobo was saying, as he spun onto Ed Carey Drive. "I don't find her by dawn and it'll not be good news for the wife."

Evelyn Lozano is 16, he tells me.

Harlingen does not have a teen curfew, so local kids have taken to partying and then partying harder. On most nights, they can be spotted cruising up and down downtown streets. On weekends, the action bolts for the fringes of this struggling community of 74,000 residents.

"Cops find them doing weed and drinking beer out of quart bottles," Jacobo is going on. "I don't wnat my kid in that world. Those kids are losers, dopers and drunkards. They're lost, not worth a damn to the city or its future."

Suddenly, a trend that has played out across the country is fast-falling on the defenseless RGVofTexas.

Next to rampant unemployment that has local men doing menial jobs for minimum wages, resolving the teen problem looms as important for some parents here as landing a good-paying job. Lou Lozano is on unemployment benefits. He hasn't work in almost two years, having lost his job at a construction company after arriving semi-drunk for his evening shift. "I was sick back then, man," he explains. "I was seeing two other women not my wife, and, well, I didn't have the energy to service all of them. I guess that's it, yeah. The day before I was fired, I spent the morning with my wife and then split the afternoon with the two other broads. By the time I got to work, I had no freakin' energy. My legs were gone, man."

He wheels the car into the parking lot of a popular nightclub and parks in a dimly-lit spot. There are two cars and a van in the lot. The club is closed for the night, but Jacobo suspects his kid is in the van with a guy, or maybe more than one.

"I see that van begin to rock and I'm charging that sonofabitch," he says in a quiet voice.

It doesn't, and Jacobo leaves after an hour. It is almost dawn. He is expected at a payment-under-the-table job in about an hour, at a place where they pay him $30-a-day to carry debris out of a vacant lot being readied for construction. Jacobo uses a wheelbarrow he found a month earlier. He says he found it, but he smiles when he says it.

On this night, he struck-out on finding Evelyn.

When I last saw him, he was wheeling a load of branches from the vacant lot to a flatbed truck that would take the trash to the city dump. He looked gone, his face a portrait of both desperation and defeat...

- 30 -

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Writer Bob Veracruz is originally from Madrid, New Mexico. He currently resides with his girlfriend in Brownsville. Mr. Veracruz has tried his hand at pro wrestling, cab-driving, bullfighting and once served as referee at a cockfight. This is his first report for The Tribune...] 

The Man Who Wouldn't Quit:...John Wood Won't Give Up the County Judge Ghost...He's Still In It...

By HARGIS BONNER
Special to The Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - They say politician John Wood doesn't have a give-up bone in his tall, lanky body. They say his decision to not concede the recent county judge's race against incumbent Republican Carlos Cascos, which he lost after several recounts, comes from his headstrong approach to politics. As the year ends, Wood is stubbornly hoping for a miracle.

"Yeah, he's still in it if Cascos dies between now and January 1st," said a resident of this poverty-stricken town as he downed a beer inside a downtown bar. "Wood would be county judge if Cascos couldn't take the office."

That may or may not be so, but why Wood won't concede defeat is the mystery.

"He's a politician, man," said another drunk. "He should know that you win some and you lose some. What the f...? The guy's making a fool of himself, man."

Cascos won the contest after a bizarre string of events that saw County elections Administrator Roger Ortiz first hand the victory to Cascos, then to Wood, and then back to Cascos in a series of moves being called "The Immaculate Deception" here.

"Who knows what really happended?" asked a well-hipped woman accompanying two fat guys drinking Bohemia at a corner table alongside a dusty jukebox playing a Rigo Tovar tune. "It's old news, is what I say. Let it go, dude. Go fishing, or plan the next election."

Wood has been incommunicado for the most part. Other than telling a local newspaper reporter that he is not yet willing to concede, Wood has stayed under the news radar. Some say he is "just sticking around the ballpark" in case something happens to Cascos.

"There are those who say the Democratic Party that endorsed him has dropped him like a dogmeat taco after the humiliating loss," said a strolling guitar player who ambled into the bar and began strumming a Cuco Sanchez song. "I believe it. Our politicians are heartless bastards. Heartless!"

Cascos, meanwhile, is said to be ready to take the oath of office on New Year's Day. Criticized viciously for driving to Ortiz's house and parking across the street from the elections administrator's home while the vote count was in question, Cascos reportedly has not been back on that street since that long, tense night - much to the relief of the Ortiz household...

- 30 -

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Writer Hargis Bonner resides in Port Isabel, Texas, where he is a "known figure" about town. A native of Alamosa, Colorado, Bonner is the older brother of former Tribune writer Junior Bonner. This is his first report for The Tribune...] 

Alleged Killer of McAllen Girl Pleads Not Guilty In New York...Bastard's Not Cooperating...

By HERSCHEL HERNANDEZ
Special to The Tribune

NEW YORK, N.Y. - The man accused of murdering Laura Garza pleaded not guilty today in his first court apearance related to the aspiring McAllen dancer's death in 2008. Convicted sex offender Michael Mele was arraigned on an indictment charging him with murder, manslaughter and evidence tampering in the death of the 25-year-old Ms. Garza (shown in photo above).

Orange County District Attorney Francis Phillips has not said how Garza died.

"We're not going to disclose that at any point other than in court at an appropriate time," he said after the arraignment. Mele (shown in photo at right) is currently imprisoned on an unrelated sex charge.

According to officials, Mele continues to refuse to cooperate with authorities in the Garza case, the Associated Press reported. Today's plea was entered by his lawyer, John Ingrassia. He declined to comment to reporters after the brief proceeding.

Garza had moved to Brooklyn only five months before her fateful encounter with Mele. Security cameras at the nightclub Marquee on Tenth Ave. filmed Garza leaving with Mele in the early morning hours of Dec. 3, 2008. Law enforcement officials believe Mele, 25, took the raven-haired beauty to his condo in upstate Wallkill, where is accused of killing her.

Despite an intensive search in the countryside near Mele's home, the Garza case went cold until her skeleton was found in a Pennsylvania field in April by people riding all-terrain vehicles. Her remains were analyzed in a state crime lab in Albany, but Mele was not indicted by a grand jury until last week.

Phillips called the discovery of Garza's remains "a substantial milestone," but he would not reveal whether any new development in the case led to the indictment. "The case has been taking a long time to develop, and we just wanted to go through it very methodically," he said.

After Garza's remains were found, state police combed Interstate 84 from Danbury, Conn., into Pennsylvania, searching the highway's shoulders and medians for evidence. Authorities would not say whether any witnesses spotted Mele in the area where Garza's body was dumped...

- 30 -

[EDITOR'S NOTE:...Writer Herschel Hernandez resides in Newark, New Jersey, where he moonlights as a sparring partner for a number of professional boxers, including Hurricane Carter. This is his first report for The Tribune...]

Blogging In The Valley: A Mental Adventure Tough On the Fertile Mind...At Best, A Silly Game...

"We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task..." - Jim Carroll, novelist

By AMARANTE CORDOVA
Special to The Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - For area Bloggers who love to frame their words carelessly and enjoy offering a sort of jaded outlook on local life, the overall attraction seems to be typing something today and waiting on tomorrow to type something more again. Forget depth; the style does not require it in the least. It's better to throw something out - anything! - and hope it draws notice in the way of reader comments. Yes, it's a cheap way of reporting news & information, but, then, it rarely is news, and whether it's needed info is up for discussion.

Welcome to Blogging in the RGVofTexas.

It is both entertaining and meaningless.

Choose your poison. There are enough Blogs to feed a moving school of fish, or a passing parade of morons. From the ridiculous in MyHarlingenNews.com to the sublime in BrownsvilleLiteraryReview.blogspot.com. In the same jagged broadband are the dense BrownsvilleVoice.blogspot.com and the dogged, ever-striving, but never arriving MyLeaderNews.com, which, unlike all the others, tries to stay true to the tenets of Journalism.

In the final analysis, these Blogs fail not only their readers, but their communities. MyHarlingenNews wants to be the breathless Town Crier bellowing news nuggets and rumor down on the streetcorner. BrownsvilleLiteraryReview is caught in a trap of not knowing whether to be credible or exist as just another childish porno site. BrownsvilleVoice, over-written by a wordy, disbarred lawyer, is in dire need of an editor, someone with a grasp of grammar and sentence structure. MyLeaderNews could use a little more fire, and it also could stand a good dose of through-and-through thinking when formulating its editorials. A generous helping of personal opinion routinely finds its way into its hard-news stories, and, like MyHarlingenNews, its editor seemingly is of the opinion that reader comments justifies a Blog's existence, a philosophy at odds with the very idea of being taken seriously.

So, what does it mean for the reader?

Everything, and nothing.

The RGVofTexas counts on a very passive population when it comes to letters. The Arts are misunderstood and comment related to anything in that vein rarely elevates the conversation. Blogs? RGVofTexas readers allot no standard, want no measurement and can take them or leave them.

These are, however, people at the keyboard. Their communities - Brownsville and Harlingen - suffer great social ills. One would think that at least one Blogger would break away and attempt a Blog true to the truth, to fairness, to news, to ethics. Not one chases that bent, however. Instead, what readers get is an amalgam of juvenile Internet playgrounds that come dressed in superfluous lingo, gutter pornography, God-awful grammar and mind-numbing ennui; that is, incredibly boring material.

The winners?

That's easy: under-performing politicians, misbehaving public servants, vicious trends that go ignored and that ever-present noun outsiders forever assign to those living here: malaise.

The day is coming when the region will get the Blog it deserves. Until then, it must suffer the words of Less-Than-Zero Bloggers who would rather confuse and entertain than serve a public quite ready for something better.

Perhaps in 2011, eh, Boys?...

- 30 -

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Writer Amarante Cordova formerly appeared in print as a character in the John Nichols novel, "The Milagro Beanfield War." He currently resides in the Brownsville suburb of Olmito with his longtime girlfriend, Ruby Archuleta. This is Amarante's first report for The Tribune...] 

Tough Stories From the Year 2010: Former Tribune Editor Missing In Shark-Infested Waters...Eliot Feared Dead...

By VINCE VALDEZ
Baja California Bureau

CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico (Sept. 26) - Authorities in Baja California continue to search for the body of former Tribune Editor Eliot Elcomedor after his boat failed to return to Cabo San Lucas yesterday and fishermen working the Sea of Cortez reported finding it upside down in rough waters. "There was no sign of no one," one of the fishermen told police after his group towed Elcomedor's boat back to land. "Those are shark waters and, well, if he fell-over, well, what always happens is that, well, the sharks get to you quickly."

Elcomedor, on his way to Honolulu and then Borneo on a Pacific vacation, was said to be accompanied by a woman whose identity has not been given. "He told the boat rental company he was just going for a quick run and would be back by mid-afternoon," said an official with local police. "The rental company manager reported the boat missing at 4 p.m. They do that because there have been times when drug-runners take their boats and never return. We have no evidence that Mr. Elcomedor was involved in anything illegal."

The Tribune immediately posted a $5,000 cash reward for information related to the stunning disappearance.

Authorities said Elcomedor was wearing colorful Hawaiian shorts and sandals, no shirt, when he and the young woman set sail yesterday morning under clear, sunny skies. The woman was said to have been wearing a red, Liz Claiborne bikini and expensive Italian sandals. "That woman was hot," said an employee of the boat rental company. "I just hope the sharks didn't get them. That would be sad. The guy (Elcomedor) said something about popping a bottle of wine out there and I just winked at him. She was a looker, like Canadian or something."

Police said the general area would be patrolled by air again today, but they also noted that it's hard to survive the Sea of Cortez's rough waters for long. "It's a recognized shark-feeding area," he said. "In fact, National Geographic magazine had a photographer out here last week taking pictures of them. He came back looking like a ghost."

Eliot Elcomedor leaves no family, although he had friends at the orphanage in Kansas where he was raised...

- 30 -

[Editor's Note:...The body of Eliot Elcomedor was never found, although some spotters aboard search aircraft reported occasional plumes of smoke coming from tiny islands in the Sea of Cortez waters. Landing parties, however, reported finding no sign of Mr. Elcomedor...]

Strange Stories From The Year 2010: The Mysterious Killing of David Hartley...Still Unresolved...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
Staff Writer

FALCON LAKE, Texas - Who knows where David Hartley's body is, or was, or may be? Some say it was boiled inside an acid-filled, 55-gallon drum by members of a Mexican border drug cartel who offed him for reasons only they know. Others say he and his wife staged the killing for insurance purposes, and that his body has not been found because Hartley is alive and living elsewhere. Whatever.

It nonetheless remains the story that had no ending.

For RGVofTexas residents, his reported killing has been relegated there alongside tales of the notorious carnivore Chupacabra, the cultural fancy of La Llorona in Mexican lore and the still unsolved murder of McAllen's Irene Garza back in the early 1960s, a case that tries to grab at the idea that she was killed by a lascivious priest who dumped her body in the then-weedy 2nd Street canal.

Hartley's wild tale has been rife with weird and creative speculation since the day authorities announced the 30-year-old was killed by Mexican pirates Sept. 30 while he and his wife Tiffany were jet-skiing on Falcon Reservoir, which straddles the U.S.-Mexican border here. According to the cops, Tiffany and David spent most of their lives in Loveland, Colorado, but moved to the border in 2007 because Hartley worked for a company that drills oil and gas wells.

At the time of his alleged murder, the couple was moving back to northern Colorado. Before doing that, they decided to spend one last time on Falcon Reservoir, where David Hartley liked exploring a sunken city. Tiffany Hartley told suspicious sheriff's investigators that the couple was approached by armed thugs in three fishing boats who opened fire without provocation. Tiffany told officials she saw David fall off his WaveRunner, and when she returned for him, she found him with a severe head wound. She reportedly tried to pull him into her WaveRunner, but was chased away by a hail of gunfire. Some Texas and Mexican authorities have questioned Tiffany's account of the attack.

Speculation sailed far and wide, with some noting that Hartley had been living in the Mexican bordertown of Reynosa and drove a pickup with Mexican license plates. That led to a belief that he may have been involved in the illicit drug trade.

Of late, nothing has surfaced indicating the case is active. Texas law enforcement officials say they never did lead the investigation, because the alleged crime took place on the Mexican side of the lake. Mexico has not exactly busted its ass, however.

David Hartley is dead, and nothing will bring him back, is the common sentiment south of the border...

- 30 - 

In One Of Those Rare Moments, He Looks To The Edges Of Life And Spots A Small, Neat Object...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

ELSEWHERE - I'm not much of a hot tea drinker these days, having exhausted my taste for Red Zinger years ago. Celestial Seasonings packaged and sold it, and I grew to know exactly where to find it at my local grocery store, wherever it was I was at any given time.

I believe it was an old college friend who introduced it to me. One cold, winter day while at that Lake of The Pines cabin we shared a few weekends, I'm sure. She had a flare for drawing me to places I'd never have gone alone, that girl. Who knows where she is these days? Like my love of RZ, she, too, vanished from one winter freeze to the next. Winter clothing is what she turned out to be, although if I think deeply about her, I'm sure there were a few redeeming qualities in that California woman.

In any case, I thought of hot tea when I saw the neat cup in the photo shown above. The imagery of enjoying that design, of playing with a woman's lovely legs, sent me reeling, as those lustful things tend to do.

Perhaps that cup would toss me back into the world of tasty teas. It's an insular society that suffers no fools. You see a person sipping hot tea and you know, well, you know something about that person. What that may be depends entirely on the setting, whether a lakeside cabin or a sidewalk cafe in Paris. We don't see many hot tea drinkers in the RGVofTexas. Maybe because you'd have to drink a few gallons to get a buzz, buzz being the required ingredient. Who knows?

It's cold and I just didn't feel like writing about anything anywhere near serious. It happens.

Plus, the year's almost over, and it's a time to angle over toward the bar and down that last one. Drink up...

- 30 -

In Today's Troubled Time, America Sings "If I Can Dream," Then Trashes Dream Act...It's Our History...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - Back during the early days of this country, it wasn't rare to see Americans welcome foreign workers and scholars. It was imported Chinese coolies who built the national railroads and, a bit later, it was German rocket scientists who created America's Space and Weapons program. In between came the waves of poor, then-hated Irish, Italians, Poles, Russians and a sprinkling of everybody else on the planet. It's who we are, and always have been - a nation of New Americans.

Now comes the flare-up over a proposal to incorporate some of our brightest young minds into the national conversation. Congress is currently entertaining the Dream Act - aka the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. It is federal legislation first introduced in 2001 and most recently re-introduced in the House of Representatives in March of last year. As being considered, the bill would provide certain illegal and deportable alien students who graduate from US high schools the opportunity to earn conditional residency. They, however, must be of good moral character, must have come to this country illegally as minors, and must have been here continuously and illegally for at least five years. They must also agree to serve in the military.

Those requirements would get them temporary residency for a six-year period. A bigger challenge would have them earn a college degree. And, asisde from the military requirement, they risk being dropped for the simplest of violations, something that would immediately return them to the immigration status the alien had prior to receiving conditional permanent resident status.

So, what's the big deal? We have made greater allowances for lesser immigrants.

And at a time when our own citizens are failing miserably on scholastic tests, it's good to know some good, fertile minds want to join our journey. These are, from what we have seen and read, accomplished students. What's so wrong - or threatening - about allowing successful students to raise the bar for our own pitiful failures? Doesn't UT-Brownsville allow for concurrent enrollment that has its students doing remedial work at smaller, less-stressful Texas Southmost College? I'd trade one of our strugglers for a Dream Act kid any day of the week. Perhaps it'll spark something positive.

It is true that many of our citizens cannot find jobs, and that would be something to think about - if our unemployed really wanted to get off their sheltered asses and work. To understand our current economical woe as it relates to employment, well, you'd need to review your history. This "Hey, there are no jobs, man" crap is, for many, a road-weary handy excuse. This country has gone through countless times when Americans had trouble finding jobs. Now, it is just a reason to sit at home and watch television. Americans who should be out cold-calling for jobs are instead more interested in walking to the employment office, where they will sit for long, boring hours, waiting to file unemployment compensation forms. Filing those things is now an industry from coast-to-coast.

These DREAM Act kids are not asking for assistance. They pay - and have paid - their own college tuitions. They have not applied for food stanps, as many of our citizen college kids do these days. They pay for their medical care, and I suspect they would willingly flip burgers for 50-cents an hour if it would help them gaining a foothold in this country.

Citizenship should not grant you the right to receive unemployment checks of more than $1,000-a-month for 99 weeks. That is outrageous! Six weeks, maybe? 99 weeks? That is almost two years. No other country in the whole damned world does that. 99 weeks. I don't even want to do the math on what it means in dollars.

Here's what I'd agree to: Six weeks of unemployment benefits, with documentable proof of an active job search. $200-a-month in food stamps for the same period. And if a recipient absolutely had to be extended, in the case of a nuclear family (not Gay/Lesbian) with young children, for example, then that recipient would be required to give his community 20 hours of service every week while drawing the additional benefits. Such work would include picking up trash from all neighborhoods and highway frontage roads, doing custodial work at City Hall and local public schools, washing city government vehicles, caring for landscaping on local government property and maybe even driving a school bus for no pay.

Harsh?

Perhaps.

But it strikes us that too many Americans are on the government dole. Hard-working citizens are not getting a damned thing in return. Many of these men who claim to have walked the concrete sidewalks looking for jobs from sun-up to sundown for the past 20 years have given up. Let them give-up.

DREAM Act kids are here, and they want to work. They want to contribute. We would be stupid to say no to these latest New Americans...

- 30 -

The Tribune's Person-of-The-Year: In Valley Food and Culture, It Once Again Involves The Taco...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - This year will go down in border history as a time of unbridled violence with no seeming end in sight. Blood fills area streets. When gauging the lifestyle from top to bottom, we are forced to conclude that the Year 2010 will stand as a bridge from something bad to something worse. Such is the historical fate of the region. So, when we went looking for our Person-of-The-Year, we came up empty. From gardeners, to drug dealers, to politicians to other public servants, what we saw was a vacuum of success and no sign of promise. Things will not change in 2011 on those failing fronts. Silver linings this far south on the ragged national map continue to chase the illegal, the wrong and the criminal.

But the one positive that hangs on like a Godsend is the trusted taco. They may be too fat, too greasy, or too cheap in some taquerias, but they rarely fail to handle even the farmworker's appetite. So, for that reason, we are honoring the many, many Valleyites who labor daily in preparing the meats, greens and salsas so that all of us - yeah, you, too! - can amble out to scarf on a half-dozen at taquerias that beg for architectural explanations or a bit fancier restaurants that offer air-conditioning and table service.

The taco, however, cannot be beaten.

It is there come Hell or high water, drought or hurricane, tough times or gunfire. In a select few places, an order of tacos will get you a helping of rice and beans, and at times even a drink. Such is the tradition of this tasty folded, rolled, or corn or flour morsel. The taco is the star; the taco maker is the honoree here.

Every day of the year, from Rio Grande City to the west and Brownsville to the east, women rise to bathe and comb their hair before heading out to manage the ubiquitous taquerias. The day begins with breakfast tacos, with eggs and cheese and bacon and ham and chorizo and crazed combinations for the tougest of culinary daredevils.

Through days that come with 110-degree temperatures and passing rainstorms and dust clouds that would fell a healthy camel, these women do their kitchen impulse without complaint, readying the fare for the ever-fattened masses. They are the border culture's brightest stars, the ones no outlaw would rob, the ones the church venerates in silence.

It has been a wonderful year for tacos, better than last.

Enjoy yours today...

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Nobody's Angel:...A Rebel Gets Into The Christmas Gift-Giving Mood...Writing Takes A Break...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

SOMEWHERE ELSE - "Dad," my daughter likes to say, "...What does one give a man who has everything?" And every year about this time, I laugh at hearing her lovely, young voice. It could be Gabrielle Patricia calling from New York, or Cynthia Paula from Fort Worth. Well, I tell them, I don't have everything. It's not even close. My style is to have those things I need and do without a lot. But they love the Christmas Season and all it brings, so I play along, as I have played along with those two beautiful kids for many years. It's the best side of me, and I am a good guy in general, as most who know me know.

So, I went looking for things I thought they might want me to have.

1.) A Reliable razor: No electric shaver for this face. Top-of-the-Line thing, best of shaving creams. At present, I have a Gillette Fusion razor and accompanying blades. It does the trick nicely, and, for a guy who cannot stand facial hair, that's a blessing and a half. Check out: fscbarber.com for what I mean. Not cheap, but it's for your freakin' face!

2.) A Neat Watch: I lost my lovely Tissot watch last year during a drinking outing in McAllen. Who knows? Perhaps the leather strap thingee broke and I didn't hear it fall to the ground or bar parking lot. It was a gift, so perhaps my losing it brought an end to something altogether, which was a good thing. Check out: bellross.com for a watch worth the cash.

3.) A Warm Sweater: Every man needs at least one those sweaters to be labeled the "dependable one," the one sweater you'd not leave behind after splitting with your girl or wife or mistress. I have a handful of black sweaters, one with a mock turtleneck I wear when traveling, especially. It's me, as they say in fashion, and it keeps me warm even in the presence of ugly people. I jest. The sunglasses at right can also be purchased at this same site. I got them for Father's Day earlier this year. Check out: urbanoutfitters.com

4.) A Great Cherry Pie: I heard of this place in Central Texas called the Texas Pie Company in Kyle, south of Austin. Well, I went, and it was as good as advertised. It sits in what constitutes the growing city's small downtown, there alongside Hitter's Bar and across from a plaza-like courtyard that includes the old courthouse and a Holiday sign that counts down the last days leading into Christmas Day. A small, personal pie is $3.25, a whole pie goes for $12. Tell owner Julie the guy with the mop top hair sent you. All the usual flavors, yes. Google it.

5.) A Worthy Book: I like to put away a few books a year. This go-around I'd suggest Life, the autobiography of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. Haven't read it yet. I'll get it myself if no one gives it to me. Second choice would be the novel Driving The Rim by Thomas McGuane. It'll impress you. McGuane writes with superb grace.

6.) Music: This time of the year points me to people who bring us Christmas music. Sarah Brightman is a favorite. Her version of Oh, Holy Night can be found on Youtube.com, the one which she sings at the Vatican. That same song by Aaron Neville will bring out the full-humanity in you, make you believe that there is no need to quarrel with anyone, instill a smidgen of goodness in even some of you sinners.

And that, my loyal flock, is what the Holiday Season is all about, isn't it?

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New Dwarf Blogger Hits Town And Promises To Unfurl Harlingen's Gluteal Folds...He's Tanned, Rested and Ready...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
Staff Writer

HARLINGEN, Texas - A loud and annoying dwarf who recently moved to this Mid-Valley community is causing strange ripples across the entire spectrum of local life. New Blogger Chap Chapman, shown in photo above, is the latest overnight sensation in a night that has gone-on seemingly forever here. Chap promises to specialize in bad grammar, childish petulance and self-promotion.

"Chap is my name and crying like a little girl is my game," he told this reporter from down around my knees.

In a ranging, no-holds-barred interview at a local McDonald's playground, Chap said he stands just under 5-foot tall, has no birth certificate and is not an American. "Haven't served in the military, either," he went on while licking an ice cream cone. "But I'm a player in town. People respect and fear me. I've got people covering things for me, like at City Hall and at political gatherings (see photo of his boys). I am the best blogger in Harlingen, the number one."

Chap claims to have skipped college in favor of a job and acknowledges that he is oblivious to the rules of English grammar. "For me, a comma is a bed," he said, laughing from the bottom of his little lungs. "Get it. A comma is a bed. I'm bilingual, which blogger Jerry Deal can never claim."

The operator of a blog called MyChapsterNews.com, Chap promises to expose wrongdoing his secret corps of news soldiers bring him. "I have people inside the police department who give me all my scoops," he added. "I know where the skeletons are in this town."

Asked about other local Blogs, Chap said, "Jerry Deal's MyLeaderNews.com ain't no competition. I don't compete with him. Why? Because I'm not a newsman. I am fluent in the lingo of the streets. I can talk with Pachucos. Deal is too sheltered. He would run from a Pachuco."

About The Tribune, Chap said, "I can never understand their stories. What's the point of using big words in the Valley. The Tribune would have to dumb-down its offerings for me to get it. I have a dictionary, but it's on the top shelf and my ladder broke last week, so I can't get to it. I don't read The Tribune unless one of my grandkids is in the house and can read it to me."

We asked The Chapster if he would be allowing reader comments, as do other blogs in town, and he said, "Comments are for queers. Why in Tom Thumb's name do I need someone commenting on my stories! My stories will kick ass. Comments? Screw you. Are we done here? Hey, tell that cat to bring back my sweater. Hey, lady, those aren't your baby's shoes!"

Shortly after Chap began chasing a woman who had taken his little shoes by mistake, the manager of the Kiddie Playground at the McDonald's, where we met for this interview, arrived to take Chap by the hand and walk him outside.

"No one older than 11 is allowed in our playground, mister," Chap was told. "You gotta problem with that?"

Chap held his ground and tugged at his little belt that held his little pants around his chubby, little waist.

"I'm gonna write about this cheap-ass joint!" he screamed at the manager. "And just for that, you can forget about running an Ad in my blog. I've got friends in high places, higher than my height. You ever hear of John Wood, Mister?"

As I departed the scene, I could see Chap getting angrier by the second as the taller manager waved him off the property...

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[Editor's Note:...Any similarity between our subject, Chap Chapman, and any other local Blogger is strictly coincidental. Readers should also not read anything into our story's angle or phraseology. Chap Chapman tells us he is a Mexican national and the offspring of a Mexican mother who dabbled in pro wrestling and a black father whose principal interest was living off wrestlers. We fully expect his Blog to succeed, as is our wish for all other RGVofTexas Blogs...] 

The Silver Toilet Awards: In A Year Full Of Surprises, Some People Stunk Up The Joint...2010 In Review...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - No other town along the Texas-Mexico town counts on as many controversial sorts to shake things up as you'll find here in this Mid-Valley outpost known for waiting on things to happen. For us, then, it stands as the foundation for much of what is wrong with the Valley as a region. From flashing its rows of decaying buildings as a skyline, to offering the area the poster child for a bad public servant, to serving as home for the world's worst blogger, Harlingen rules the disreputable roost we know as The Home Of Defeat. Duds, flops, lemons, wrecks, turkeys, incompetents, losers, that stuff. Disappointment is a word that has been scratched out of the dictionary at the local Chamber of Commerce. Yet, a certain funk lives here. We shall note a few of them in our Worst of The Worst in 2010 presentation.

1.) Harlingen City Commissioner Kori Marra - One word about this elected public servant: inept. If ever, in the history of the RGVofTexas, there was a public official so out-of-synch with his or her local geography, it surely has to be Ms. Marra. As a reprentative of a sizable district constituency, perhaps she is doing what keeps them happy. But as a member of a citywide group of elected leaders presumably out to advance the town's standing, well, she is the so-called broken spoke on the bicycle wheel. Time after time, in incidents that challenge the normal mind, she has turned the page to find herself still the subject of whole-hog ridicule and concern. Is she healthy or not? That is the question on the minds of many Harlingenites who wonder why she misses so many commission meetings. Marra won't respond. Her approach to date is to believe that sticking your head in the sand is one way to deflect criticism. Once seen as a novice who could've learned on-the-job, Marra now looms as the futile Gang of One - at complete odds with the word "instrumental," which is what local residents wished for when she gained her seat. It's useless to seek out any worthwhile accomplishment this one delivered in 2010, unless it was the idea that locals now have a good model for the sort of politician they should never elect...

2.) Blogger Tony Chapa - Once, in an All-Chicano galaxy far, far away, lived a man with great ambition. He would storm out into the streets to do battle against evil. He would retreat from time to time to write about his community's ills, and, he believed, he would be rewarded with great adoration and love. Laurels would come his way on those occasions he ventured into a public setting. All would be good. Well, things went the other way and Blogger Chapa soon found himself in a ragged and ever-dirty BizarroWorld. His one-man crusade to rid Harlingen of the Good Ol' Boy style of governance lies in ruin. No one reads his Blog anymore, and those that do forever complain about his bad grammar, his shallow postings and his inability to read the writing on the wall. His blog - MyHarlingenNews.com - is sooooooooo-oh yesterday that it boggles the imagination to think that this man sits at his computer keyboard 24 hours a day, as he often notes in pumping his own smallish, barrel chest. Chapa never had the skill to pull-off his dream. He depended on rumor and innuendo that came from parties allied with their own causes. The community aspect of his effort never gained fruition. In the end, his enterprise was no different than a border tire shop selling dangerous used tires to the elderly. The worst part for local residents about all this is that feeble Tony Chapa likely will still be around in 2011, so we'll save this write-up for use next December...

3.) The RGVofTexas Culture - We're okay with being Roman when in Rome, but being Valley when here is something of a beast of burden, as the song says. We wish to spotlight the local diet without getting everybody in a huff, mainly because we believe that a plate of six double-tortilla tacos chased with six beers is not healthy. And we are of the opinion that it is the diet that leads to marital discord, i.e. beating of the wife and kids. Women should work at breaking this vicious tacos & beer cycle. It is a winner this year, but we feel spotlighting this local phenomenon is something we would've done had been here for the past 100 years. Included in this category is the idea RGVofTexas women have of being photographed. If it isn't those cheap-ass shots taken in photo booths at the carnival, it's photos of women with a hundred guys. How that can ever be seen as being a positive is the mystery. So, yeah, we say, stand back from the table and put that taco down. And you lovely lasses over there in Brownsville, kill the urge to photograph yourself into eternity with all those guys. There comes a time when the myth becomes life, when the camera doesn't lie, when the joke is not the picture, but the person in the picture...

4.) The Jailing of Juan Montoya - Bad news for the longtime Border Journalist. It took a few beers and a bitch of a road that must have looked crooked as All Hell, but Juan Montoya found himself at the county lockdown for a six-month stay that included this Holiday season. We're all for dropping the heavy boot on anyone driving while intoxicated, but seeing Juan in orange is not our idea of a neat Xmas postcard from the border's best street reporter. Montoya is expected to be out of jail after the first of the year. Let's hope he finds the better path, but life is hard in the Valley, so much so that most men are driven to drinking too much booze sooner or later. It comes with the territory, we were told upon arrival. That may be so, but we think booze is to be held in reserve for those times when pretty gals are part of the scenery. Here, they are, and why would any guy want to get bombed before bedtime? Juan Montoya is in his late-50s, so perhaps that's part of it, too. Getting old in a place like the Valley has to be rough. The only available refuge for the Geezers, it would seem,would be the Old School cantinas of the sort you find along Brownsville's 14th Street, which, we 're told, are well-known to Montoya. Someone amble into El Siete Mares lounge and drop a coin in the jukebox for Ol' Juan. Yeah, something by Los Tigres Del Norte...

5.) The Ever-Present Ten-Percenters of the RGVofTexas - No one disputes the fact that the Valley counts a large number of people who do little to advance the so-called economic ball down the field. Too many people are unemployed; too many men have given up. Call it the Coca-Cola Crowd, that group of Batos & Roocas who just won't get off their asses to contribute. You see them up and down the Valley, ferrying grandma to the grocery store, where a 24-pack of Budweiser invariably lands in the battered shopping cart. That guy living across the street has only one fear: arrest on that warrant that says he owes a shitload in missed child support. Who knows how big of a population this group is, but it's sizable. All you have to do is overhear the conversations at the popuar breakfast joints, at the neighborhood fajita burn-out, in church, on the day the monthly bills are due. I've listened enough, and they are stories that would shame Charles Dickens into thinking the shitty world he described in his novels do not approach the miserable  plots he'd hear in this part of the world. But, sure, we wonder. We wonder if the prevalent can ever be changed. Perhaps not...

There were other candidates, some who should have been featured more prominently here, such as Harlingen Blogger Jerry Deal and his Ga-Ga flirtation with disgraced Major League Baseball player Jose Canseco, who one day played baseball in the Valley. But, sure, it was a long, hot summer...and maybe Jerry Deal lost one in the bright lights of those sun-parched afternoons. Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada's drinking habits brought a DUI arrest, which wasn't his first. McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez tried to sell-out the city to big corporations, but failed on several fronts when the voters told him to go take a hike, especially as things related to a popular community park on the city's West Side. High school kids again went down to annual defeat in football games played outside the Valley. And then there were all those valley cops who found themselves on the other side of the law, too many to count or list here. It's true: we could go on and on and on..

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The Agony of Defeat: How John Wood Lost The Cameron County Judge Race...Cascos Marches In...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ

Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - They're blaming handy fall guy Roger Ortiz for candidate John Wood's worst humiliation. They say Roger knotted the kink into the chain that was to help wheel Wood into the Cameron County Judge's office. They say Wood now looks like the county fool.

Officially, or as much as anything is ever official in this rotten bordertown, incumbent Carlos Cascos is back in the saddle, ready for another term as figurehead leader of county government. Wood will retain his seat on the county commission, but he is a tired dog, as they say at the track. He is tainted goods, a loser in a county full of Election Day losers eagerly wishing to stay with the lost cause. Wood is said to be contesting the results of the Nov. 2nd vote that saw the Republican Cascos edge him by a few more than 60 votes. He should give it up.

Not that the Democratic Party, which sponsored Wood, wouldn't like to stretch the fray in court. It's just that, at this point, the populace already sees Wood as the runner-up, the guy who almost got the job, the also-ran, the long fly ball that only made it to the warning track, the bridesmaid. How did this happen to such a try-me politician?

Was it Roger Ortiz's fault, the elections administrator who waffled like the greatest flop of Aunt Jemima with his you won; no, you won; no, yeah, you won style of conducting the vote count. Not since Eve voted non-performing Adam out of the Garden of Eden has a human being been so flailed by his brethren. We ask: Is Ortiz just as injured - professionally  - as is Wood? Would a shave of that pencil-thin mustache aid Wood's rehabilitation? Would a Beatle wig help the balding Ortiz?

Wood knows he lost. He conceded gracefully once, and he should do it again. A contesting of the final vote count giving Cascos the win is an uphill fight of the sort only Sir Edmund Hillary could undertake. Wood, we believe, does not have Edmund's legs. It is our learned feeling that the battle was lost when suspicion entered the room. Wood let it in, and, for that, he is paying the price of seeing his reputation take a Chicago linebacker's best hit. Cascos made his share of goofs, but the winner is always forgiven. So, he parked his vehicle in front of Ortiz's home when he saw questionable defeat staring him in the face? He's Mexican, and that goes to the typical response from our culture. It may not always be parking the truck in front of a bureaucrat's home, but how many local Mexicans have parked their cars in front of the ex-wife's place, waiting, waiting for evidence of - ahem - wrongdoing? Carlos Cascos simply went "Chicanoe" in that sordid "I'm out here, and I'm gonna get your ass, vato" episode.

But, is it really all over?

Yes. Johnny Wood should call a press conference ASAP and be as graceful as his flinty-look allows. To go under the radar, and to have everyone believe he is plotting legal action, only keeps painting an image that is not kind to him. Politics is a bitch, someone famous once said. And losing politics is the ugliest of the bitches.

May John Wood find the energy to finally take the high road...

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