Antsy BPD Sacks Murder Detective...Chili Perez Handed The Case...

By HANDS VELA
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Public outcry against the soulful sobbings of a city police detective investigating the killing of a 23-year-old college student has led the police chief to assign a new man to the job. Chief Charlotte Garcia has named rising department sleuth Chili Perez (see photo above) as the man to replace Det. Alfred Alpaca in the sensational case.

Alpaca was the first detective at the scene of what many already say was the vicious murder of young Louise Herrera. Alpaca's weepy appearance before a press conference at the police station drew thousands of telephone calls to Chief Garcia's office - all of them demanding that Alpaca be taken off the case.

"The citizens wanted someone else," Garcia said late in the day. "Many of them said Alfred was being too emotional. They wanted a hard-ass on the case. Chili Perez is that man."

Ms. Herrera's body was discovered by a jogger cutting through thick wild brush and mesquite trees in an area known as a favorite haunt for coyotes. The jogger, who told police he was a mediocre welterweight boxer from Olmito, said he spotted the woman's body and at first believed it was a large doll. Cops declined to give the boxer's name, saying he remains part of the investigation.

Victim Louise Herrera had been in the news of late following her accusation that Paz Files writer Rudolf Von Bulow had tanked her up with booze and then repeatedly raped her at his condo on South Padre Island. The case was working its way through the courts when Ms. Herrera's body was recovered by the coroner's office. According to Det. Alpaca, she had been stabbed in the back multiple times. Chief Garcia said Det. Chili Perez would not be availed to the press. Perez is known within the department as a no-nonsense officer with a photographic memory and a penchant for solving New York Times crossword puzzles.

"Chili's sharp," said another BPD officer who requested anonymity. "He's the detective who worked the Judge Lupe Limas bribery case behind the scenes. Chili doesn't get publicity 'cause that's the way he wants it. I'd say he's got the sort of personality that may make you think he's just another lazy Mexican, but there, underneath his shitty hats, sits the brain of a chess grandmaster. He'll work all angles and he'll solve the case."

According to Chief Garcia, there is no one suspect on the radar screen. She, however, poo-poohed any talk about anyone the public may have in mind, including Marquita Washington - the woman who expressed anger at being told her ex-boyfriend, LaCandrelle Jefferson, had been enticed by Ms. Herrera onto her bed. Jefferson, himself, was found shot to death inside his Mini Cooper recently. No arrest has been made in that case, either.

Marquita Washington, meanwhile, is said to be somewhere in Mexico with her current flame, DaQuan Monroe, and their child. At last report, they were holed-up in a second-story flat in Acapulco, but a call to the apartment went unanswered today.

Rudolf Von Bulow arrived in Harlingen aboard a Southwest Airlines flight shortly after noon, but dashed off to his island residence ahead of a trailing pack of reporters, who then camped outside the condo building awaiting comment. Von Bulow, who had been in France since the allegations surfaced earlier this month, had denied raping the junior college beauty, insisting that the deviant sex they enjoyed had been consensual. He nonetheless had offered the Herrera family $1 million to drop all charges, but, as with everything in the Land of Tomorrow, nothing had come of it.

There was no comment from the Herrera family today. Efforts to reach them at their humble Cameron Park house were unsuccessful and a neighbor came out to say the family was incommunicado and in mourning.

Det. Chili Perez was seen leaving the police station in a battered 1980 Volvo sedan...

- 30 -

Shocker! Louise Herrera Dead...No Arrests Yet...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Stunned authorities stepped out of the city police station to report on rumors that local college student Louise Herrera, an attractive 23-year-old at the center of a rape scandal involving Paz Files writer Rudolf Von Bulow, had been viciously murdered inside an abandoned barn in the northern reaches of the county.

"We have a good idea as to who may have done it, but we're waiting on additional investigation," said veteran Det. Alfred Alpaca. "She was stabbed in the back and left to die at the base of a craggy mesquite tree near a ravine known as a haven for coyotes."

Alpaca did not elaborate on who the main suspect may or may not be, instead noting that there are a number of people involved in the victim's life, including Von Bulow, former boyfriend LaCandrelle Jefferson and Jefferson's former galpal, Marquita Washington. The detective, fighting tears and sobs after saying the killing was "senseless and cruel," added Ms. Herrera was not pregnant at the time of death.

Earlier reports had her saying she was carrying Jefferson's baby.

The rape case had drawn wide attention in this gossipy part of Texas, mainly because Ms. Herrera had made serious allegations of being forced to perform deviant sexual acts while allegedly raped by Von Bulow following a long night of drinking and partying on South Padre Island. Von Bulow has denied the charges and tried to deflect criticism by offering the accuser's family $1 million. Ms. Herrera's death absolves Von Bulow of all allegations. He was said to be on his way back to Brownsville from Paris, France.

Detective Alpaca would not point his finger at any of the main suspects, but many in this ever-saddened, forever-weepy bordertown say the principal suspect should be Marquita Washington. It is Washington who some believe was behind the recent murder of Jefferson. That charge was led by Wilona "Weesie" Washington, mother of Marquita.

Alpaca did say the crime scene was "a bloody mess." Included in the findings was a rap songbook, something the detective said may have been used to force Louise Herrera to perform some songs before her death. "It's something you see in the inner city," he went on while dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief. "You'd have to know something about that lifestyle to understand it."

Louise Herrera's body was nude and showed signs of sexual activity.

"They just sat her up against the tree and left her there," the detective told story-hungry reporters gathered outside police headquarters. "The blood told it all, but it could've been a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting of a young woman merely enjoying a meadow on a bright, sun-splashed day."

No comment came from the family, although one of her siblings said Louise Herrera had completed her initial studies in paleantology at Texas Southmost College and was to enroll at UT-Brownsville for Spring classes to complete requirements for her degree.

"This one's on me," Det. Alpaca said of his hunt for the killer...

- 30 -

Blues War In Brownsville

"Art lies in concealing art..." - Ovid, Art of Love

By JUNIOR BONNER
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - City fathers here are agonizing over a bizarre trend that has local bars and nightclubs pushing the blues. They say the dominant Mexican culture needs the traditional strolling musician to retain its true identity. To that end, this bordertown home to some 140,000 legal and illegal residents is asking the music sector to rally behind its move to bring back the celebrated street-ambling mariachi.

"This crap about the Blues and the Jazz and the ha-ha-ha will simply kill us," said a worried City Hall insider. "We're Brownsville, Texas, not New Orleans or Memphis! We're more Mexico than Mississippi, more Chicano than Texan, more Vato than Redneck, more Chaparro than Negroe."

Not since the border bandit Juan N. Cortina terrorized this part of the state has anything so unnerved Brownsville. Cortina's wild-flying bullets played a bad tune; the Blues now roil living room conversations here in the same manner that Cortina's maniacal assaults looped locals.

"I can see maybe having some Blues records at the Mall," said Salvador "El Bandolon" Colunga, a resident of the poverty-stricken Southmost neighborhood. "But I want my corridos, my cumbias, my merengue, my Rigo Tovar, my Tejano before I want the Blues. My nagging wife is my Blues!"

Yet, even as some wonder what the noise is all about, those pushing the Blues down local throats are doing it in warp-speed, coloring the idea with first-rate posters and writing up the mood in Blogs that approach the task with the zeal of a crackhead lighting up his next hit. It is at once comical and ridiculous. Brownsville's flirtation with the Blues is the equivalent of that now-gone flirtation with bordellos in neighboring Matamoros, Mexico. Came the time when city leaders there said enough is enough. The Bordello was shut down by the Mexican Army in a raid back in 1980. Here, the Blues are the new weed.

"I'm hip to the trip," said Maria "La Pelona" Lopez, a 28-year-old divorcee interviewed at a downtown Tex-Mex cafe. "I partied in Austin one weekend and I found it absolutely exciting, like I was in another world. The Blues settle me down, not like Tejano, which is like being hit on the side of the head with a bottle of Coca-Cola. I'm for the Blues, yes."

Another resident sees it as nothing more than the latest fad, something some in the city can say is something new coming to town, like the hula-hoop or the Davy Crockett coonskin cap.

"We went apeshit with the Urban Cowboy craze," said Porfirio "El Miserable" Ochoa. "We had Disco and everybody went over to Mervyn's to buy the white Travolta shoes and nylon shirts. Then we had Rap and every freakin' young Mexican started talking like Black people and wearing their pants below their waist, like pendejos. That's who we are - followers, not trendsetters."

Will the Blues find fertile ground in Brownsville?

"It's just a few Old Geezers looking for it, writing it up," said Ninfa "La Uva" Jeantete, a local waitress. "They are harmless guys. Let them think what they want to think. My idea of the Blues is something else, but who am I to blow against the wind..."

- 30 -

Marquita Spotted In Mexico

By HANDS VELA
The Paz Files

ACAPULCO, Mexico - A source familiar with her recent travels says Marquita Washington, former galpal of murdered Paz Files Sports Editor LaCandrelle Jefferson, is living it up in this Mexican vacation paradise in the company of reputed ghetto drug dealer DaQuan Monroe.

"They're down there with their baby," says her estranged mother, Wilona "Weesie" Washington. "They been there since she killed LaCandrelle."

According to her mom, Marquita and Monroe are staying in a second-floor flat roughly five blocks from the beach and simply going about their business as if in town for the winter tourist season. Marquita Washington is believed to be the shooter in what Starr County authorities in Texas say was the gangland-style asassination of Jefferson. County Coroner Moose Hernandez determined Jefferson had been shot once in the head and four times in the groin as he sat inside his red and white Mini Cooper along an orchard-lined backroad north of Rio Grande City.

"Marquita never liked anyone messin' with LaCandrelle," Wilona Washington went on. "But she especially was not cool with LaCandrelle foolin' around on her! She told him. She told him she'd kill him if she found out about other women in his bed."

Jefferson had publicly acknowledged an affair with Louise Herrera of Brownsville, a college student who also has accused another Paz Files writer, Rudolf Von Bulow, of repeatedly raping her following a long night of drinking on South Padre Island. Ms. Herrera, 23, later claimed she had met Jefferson before seeing Von Bulow and claims to be carrying LaCandrelle's child.

"That's what drove her crazy! Crazeeeeeeeeee! Ooooooooh that girl was crazy, " Wilona Washington threw out in a recent telephone interview from her home in Atlanta. "I know she called him on the phone after she found out and she let that boy have it. She be screamin' shit at him like he was some punk wet behind the ears and I wasn't hearin' LaCandrelle sayin' shit back to her. Marquita can whup a man if she get mad. I seen it. One time she cold-cocked this thin-boned idiot at the club here, a blues place called the Birdie's Bar, jes cause he tried to feel her big butt. I think the fool went stupid after the ambulance guys woke him up."

Why flee to Mexico, I asked next.

"She knows what she done," said Wilona, laughing. "She know she better get away from Texas. They be quick to give black people the death penalty down and that girl's got too much life left in her. DaQuan being with her is good, 'cause DaQuan is a big man in a way she likes men to be big, if you know what I'm sayin'. That boy'll settle her down, but it won't last, no sir, it won't. Marquita needs noise in her life. She needs drama and action and fighting and yelling and hitting and being hit. Marquita shoulda been born a panther, or sumthin' like that."

Asked about Marquita's feelings for Louise Herrera, Wilona said this: "If she finds her in Mexico, Louise Herrera is dead. Marquita, if I know that girl, will get around to taking care of that woman. I jes know she will. You know what I'm sayin'? Sheeeeeee-it. Ain't no stoppin' her once she makes up her mind. But will she come back to Texas to do it? Only if she be pissed enough. I wouldn't want to be that Louise woman and be sayin' I loved LaCandrelle. Marquita will fly into town and pull that woman's hair all-out, drag her in the mud and bitch-slap her til she be silly."

And then she says, coldly:

"I do believe she would give that woman the Devil-whuppin' of her life..."

- 30 -

Leftwich Primed For Run...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - His clamorous critics are loud and nasty, but City Commissioner Robert Leftwich knows there are moments when politics calls and others when it tugs, pulling you in directions defined not by personal wishes, but by the times one lives in. The mayorship in 2013 looms on his horizon like a rising sun greeting this town's new dawn. There are those who say he's the one for the job.

Leftwich is not broaching the topic yet.

Indeed, he has gone out of his way to fend-off rumors and innuendo related to a bid for the office, delaying a decision perhaps just long enough to organize and mount a winning campaign. Harlingen has no other commission member in his position, that of presumed frontrunner. The cards and coffee shop talk say he'll do it.

Leftwich, popular in most quarters of the city, has a year to navigate the local political swamp, to forge a strategy whereby he diminishes the power of the so-called Old Guard, a small group of aging political movers & shakers not shy about saying Leftwich will never gain their support.

Still, Harlingen needs to find a candidate able to move the trains on time, someone who will allow the community a chance at replacing the past with a progressive future. Leftwich has that at his disposal if he wants it. His reputation on the commission points him in that direction.

Will he come out early and set the stage as he wants it? Will he be able to frame the contest on his own terms? Strategizing all angles with plenty of time to amend the campaign would be the best approach. Coordinating support and arranging a public schedule that would hit all areas of the city with mini-Town Hall meetings would serve Leftwich well, allowing him to stay ahead of the relentless salvos he'll get from those opposed to his bid for the city's highest office.

We believe Leftwich has the experience and temperment to effect the needed change, to rid Harlingen once and for all of that "Power Elite Crowd" sentiment that both emboldens some and disenfranchises others. Leftwich has no other rival at present, and no one on the current City Commission is remotely ready for the job.

A yearlong campaign allows him the opportunity to be seen and, better yet, be heard by everyone in town, to take their questions and their praise or complaints, to assuage their worries. Walking the streets seguing into a series of in-depth press interviews, followed at various points by insightful "issue" columns submitted to the local news outlets would get the sort of saturation he'd need to not only make the fight, but win it.

The Year 2012 promises to be a humdinger all the way around from coast-to-coast. National politics will rule the end of the year with the presidential election, but the race for mayor of this struggling Rio Grande Valley town with both an image and an economy problem bodes well for Leftwich. He's been there to see and hear every citizen concern, and he's no doubt had time to form opinions on what has to be done and how.

One would think he's ready...

- 30 -

Greetings From Falfurrias...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

FALFURRIAS, Texas - As is common in most smalltown newspapering, the Christmas Edition of the weekly Falfurrias Facts arrived full of holiday cheer, color photographs of locals in full spirit and a few items of serious news. We picked up a copy at a roadside store, that and a snack or two - fuel for the road.

It is odd to read a newspaper that does not these days offer a story about the current presidential political campaigns, the country's struggling economy or a Big Time sports story about the Texas Longhorns or Dallas Cowboys. The Facts is all-local, all-the-time, which, on one level is refreshing. We can't all agonize over the stumbles of cornpone Rick Perry or the failings of our beloved football teams. There are times when you have to bring the news home. You can get your fill of Falfurrias in its little newspaper.

There's Mayor Anna Garcia in her own column on Page 2. She's in the season's spirit, writing, however awful, "In encourage the residents of Falfurrias to shop locally. Falfurrias has a lot to offer if you look around. Merry Christmas and remember Jesus Christ was born on Chfristmas Day."

It's cute and it's homey, but that's Falfurrias, there on Highway 281 south of Premont and Alice. Page 3 is the Obituaries page and we note that Ramon P. Garza died on Dec. 13. Ramon was a U.S. Army veteran and owner of Clancy's Cafe, it says on the page. Next to his opbit is an advertisement for Cowgirl Corner Tanning Salon (located at Selina's Bail Bonds), where, in its monthly plan, you can tan an entire month for $35. A single session will cost you $10. At the bottom of the page is a larger-sized Ad for The Silver Dollar, a business on St. Mary's Street pushing its New Year's Eve party, from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., music by Joaquin Chavez.

The top-half of Page 4 offers listings of local and area churches, with the rest of the page taken over by business-car Ads for a wide range of enterprises, from H-E-B, to Fred's Fine Furniture, to Falfurrias Muffler Shop, to Funeraria Del Angel and the oddly-named Carousel Adult Day Care. It's a lifestyle. Smalltown people aren't very demanding. They see what they have and do with it all they can. A fancy McDonald's would look out of place in Falfurrias.

Page 5 is for Classified Advertisements. Legal notices take up part of the page. There's a posting for a public hearing to address building occupancies at various locations. It is signed by City Clerk Idolina Perez. The remainder of the page carries two news stories, one in which Gil Salazar, principal of Falfurrias High, announces the schol's second-six-weeks' Honor Roll. The other story is a canned feature noting that the Texas unemployment rate has dropped to 8.1 percent. There is no mention of the unemployment. A smaller Ad carries news that a two-bedroom house on Bennett Street is for sale, going for $35,000. Below that is a larger ad for Viagra and Cialis that shows a young woman smiling, her man in the foggy background waiting in bed. It gives a one-800 number and offers "4 bonus pills free" if you call now.

In the sixth and seventh pages, readers get those annual photos of pretty much every city and county official and their staffs. Few of them are smiling, although County Attorney Homer Mora flashes a big one from behind his thick mustache. He is accompanied by his wife, Norma, in the black and white photograph.

Letters to Santa round out the back pages. Falfurrias kids are no different than kids elsewhere. They want, want, want. Writes Marie Morales: "I have been a gooid girl. I want a Barbie. I want an Ipad. I want a laptop." Little Pearl Hinojosa is identified as being a 1st garder. She writes in her letter: "I have been nise. I want a desi and an ipod. How is misis Clos?" Christian Lopez is friendly in his note: "Dear Santa, how ar you doing? I have been a good boy because my teacher givs me happy faces. I love you, Santa. I want a PSP for Christmas. Your friend, Christian."

In the larger Ad below the letters to Santa is a photograph showing Ellie, Monica, Mr. Diaz, Maria, Ester and Cassandra, all in businesswear, all employed by the Greater South Texas Bank, FSB.

The rest of the newspaper is more celebratory Ads. There's one showing the "friendly" staff of the Dairy Queen, one for the crew over at the Alamo Lumber Company and a half-page Ad for R. Trevino Electric & Refrigeration that shows three guys on camels on a rising desert mound, a shiny star in the sky ahead.

It's the Christmas Season in tiny Falfurrias and all is warmy and joyful.

Well, not entirely. The Facts also reports on its Front Page that four area residents have been indictment for activities connected to smuggling of undocumented aliens. The story is at odds with the adjacent color photographs of the town's lighted Christmas Parade...

- 30 -

Christmas In McAllen...

"And Man will live
forevermore
because of Christmas Day..."
- Mary's Boy Child

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

McALLEN, Texas - Back when my main interest in life was playing Little League baseball for the Hidalgo Lions, it was hitting a line drive over third base that thrilled me like little else, that or robbing another kid of a triple down the leftfield line with my magical glove. I loved being 12 years old. My old glove, that dirty, No. 5 uniform and bag of peanuts in my backpocket, that was my life as a youngster in this town. The Lions had drafted me after tryouts and I played two years for Coach Garibay, a fair-minded, always positive man.

In between games, however, I spent the rest of my time in the basement classrooms of Sacred Heart Catholic Church, learning the scripture and learning the protocol of the altar boy. It was another kind of uniform, this one without a number, but I felt I was on yet another winning team, perhaps the best one ever.

I'll be back in McAllen this weekend to celebrate Christmas with family. And I'm sure we'll be at Midnight Mass on Saturday night, again at age-less Sacred Heart, the same downtown church where we held my mother's funeral mass and the same church where I gave the eulogy for her. In the many years that followed, I lived elsewhere, at times too far to even consider returning. Critics may laugh, but McAllen remains important in my life for a variety of reasons and memories. It is my homeland, my handy refuge from the faster life of the city.

This Christmas, I will go to my church and take to my knees to say a prayer for my mother, perhaps using the same words I have used whenever I've found myself inside a church, and especially since her death. That was four years ago this coming April, the day I confirmed for myself what I'd heard forever - that the blow of a mother's passing is the toughest of blows a man will ever face. It is true. Don't fool yourself if you haven't yet faced that moment; it will crush you and crush you some more.

That last Christmas before her death was a roller-coaster of emotions. I was living in Fort Worth and slowly realizing that my mother's illnesses were getting worse by the week, that everytime my brothers and sisters relayed information it was always bad. My mother spent the last three years of her life battling heart problems that, as is often the case, segued to inevitable surgeries. Months into her treatments, when the inevitable loomed all-too-real, doctors told us they'd done all they could do. Tired of the invasive treatments and perhaps knowing her fate, my mother choked out a request that she simply be taken home, that she wished to die at home. Sons and daughters aren't the best judges of medicine when it comes to parents. We hoped, but we also knew that age breaks the body down. We all wanted the doctors to work miracles. Of course, they cannot.

But in the end we agreed with my moher's wishes and had her discharged from the hospital. The next three weeks turned into a three-act play, with my mother slowly coming out of her drugged world, then seeming to gain life the second week, before succumbing to her age at the end of the third. She was 83 years old.

I think of her all year, of course.

Christmastime adds a bit more to her story and to our memories. We were not a rich family. My mother would save those Green stamps she got at the grocery store and then walk us to the claim center when she had enough filled booklets to get us something or another. One year, I got a Baltimore Colts helmet that felt as real to me as the one worn by the real players. Another year, she got me a toy gun I'd seen on a TV western. My siblings got their own stuff, dolls and toy soldiers and games. She saved those stamp books the entire year.

I'll inhale a lungful of Rio Grande Valley air when we drive into Edinburg and likely not breathe until I get to my family's house. It's never easy for me anymore. My mother not being home saddens me. She was always there when we rang the doorbell, when she would say "Who is it?" and then open the door to flash a huge smile. I loved hugging my mother and I wish I could do it one more time. I wish I could, I really do. And maybe that's because I also know that there were times when I didn't go see her when I could've, when other things in my life and my career seemed more important.

She's gone and won't be there when I arrive Saturday, not physically anyway.

But I'll feel her love just moving in her hometown. I've written variations of this story over the years, always remembering, always sighing, always wondering if I said "I love you" to her enough times. My heart hopes that I did; my brain tells me I didn't even come close.

Christmas 2011 is here, and, again, the religious celebration I studied for long hours in Bible classes tells me I must honor the birth of Jesus Christ as part of my faith. I will do that, but I also will spent some time with my mother at the cemetery, talking with her in a pastoral setting offered and provided by our God. It'll make her happy and proud.

Merry Christmas...

- 30 -

Those Little Town Blues

"I love Hell.
I can't wait to get back..."
- Malcolm Lowry

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - That year, one of the early ones in the 1980s, the day's kick was to write a newspaper story and hit a joint like The Palm Lounge or The Pilot Lounge or the original 1-2-3 Lounge for a few cold ones. Bullshit reigned supreme, with local reporters like Jerry McHale talking-up his latest hit piece in The Brownsville Times and Rey Guevara-Vasquez laughing at his own story in The Brownsville Herald. It was a fun time to be in Brownsville.

Much, I fear, never happened in the dusty bordertown at the end of the Rio Grande. I hear The Palm is still there, but that The Pilot is gone, as are most of the joints that made Market Square the place to party all night long for under $10. Going in, I found the town somewhat intriguing after completing college upstate. I mean, a City Hall surrounded by cheap bars and economical cafes? You could walk the second-floor hallway on your way to a City Commission meeting and keep an eye on the broads headed into and out of the bars. The smell of urine in the street gutters battled, but lost the war against the smell of bad Matamoros perfume moving with every Big Haired dame. Novelist Charles Dickens would have pulled up a folding chair and seen his depressing novels amble by, the butchered Spanglish of the streets no doubt bringing him great laughter.

I read about Brownsville from time to time, mainly in the blogs. And I see McHale's tireless rah-rahing of the seemingly spectacular local nightlife. At times, if I'm not careful, it's as if I'm reading about a better place, like Chicago of the 1920s or Paris of the 1930s. A handful of other blogs do their best to chase McHale's apparent lost chord, some chiming in with their assessment of the noise they heard last night at this & that bar - writing forever fattened by the sugared vocabulary of the fawning groupie.

My suspicions are that Brownsville remains a poor bordertown doing its damndest to survive bad times, a place with little yen for the luxuries of music, a place more in tune with salving familial pain and with buying that pound of hamburger meat at the local HEB grocery store. I could be wrong, although I've not seen a spread about Brownsville's much-ballyhooed Blues Revival in Travel & Leisure Magazine. Not a word in Texas Monthly, either. Or, really, any publication north of the ever-harsh Texas-Mexico border. Maybe the monthlies in neighboring Mexico, like, perhaps, Alarma! magazine.

It's not that I wish the town anything bad. Brownsville has its charm, but it is the charm of a Mexican past and not anything to do with the music of the Mississippi Delta. It should not be chasing a repeat of the French Quarter, as is often postured to loud laughter. It should glorify - no, scream! - the virtues of Mexican partying. Bluesman Peetie Whitestraw would be offended to hear that Brownsville musicians think they approach his sound. Peetie proudly christened himself, "The Devil's Son-In-Law," which, ironically, likely fits most of the deadbeat dads who call Brownsville home. Then again, those guys were a dime-a-dozen back when I wrote about city government for The Herald, so maybe that's more of a cultural badge than anything else.

What I say about small towns is that writers find a wealth of material in such locales, perhaps too much. The temptation to write something in a manner that elevates such a community is great. On the other hand, they also breed a certain depression, filling bored and idle minds with images not quite there. McHale may be hearing the Blues in his brain. That would explain part of it. Who knows? People who love to write can see a picture and dream-up an accompanying story in no-time-flat. I do it all the time. This blog, in fact, is more of a writing laboratory than anything else for me. It allows me to takes jabs at real life and at the one I imagine. Big deal.

So, weep not for whatever you see about Little Brownsville on this blog. It's just a goof, a stab at interrupting a little town's life impulse. We're accused of stomping on Brownsville from time to time, but folks in Harlingen would say this about the societal whippings it receives, "Goddammit, get in line, Brownsville!"

Still, some brave Brownsvillian should stand up against outright lies and fabrications. When you have grown men painting your community into something it is not, well, you should say something to those nutty funnyboys. Like most Humans, Brownsville residents of course know the score. They have eyes and can see the disappointment moving across town like an old, hole-filled Army blanket. They have ears and can clearly hear the wailing of their suddenly-unemployed neighbors. They have memories that remind them of the bad times they've endured. They have photo albums full of better times. They have records at the courthouse and at the police department to brand them this and that. They have relatives who have made it and who have blown it. They have stories to tell! Brownsville is not immune to pain and suffering, and some of these "writers" should pick up a guitar and document these "real" Blues.

Why climb on the back of artists from Memphis and other Blues cemeteries? Browntown is not an attractive shank of geography, but it is a unique place in the universe - a hangout for bearded bums and suit-and-tie speculators, a fertile breeding ground for more of the same for many more years to come.

Brownsville Blues are genuine.

You can see those haunting songs in the faces of pretty much everyone in town. Plus, there has to be a great story in the demise of The Pilot Lounge. Has to...

- 30 -

Story Of The Year...

"I looked out across the river
today. Saw a city in a fog
and an old church tower
where the seagulls play..."
- STING, All This Time

By RON MEXICO
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The pirujas in short skirts pussyfooting around me all looked stupid, as if in a psychotic trance of the sort you see in darkest Africa, their lips in natural pouts and their black makeup on the run. Lapping-up next to them were short and stubby, heavyset men in thick mustaches, all wearing polyester shirts adorned with flowers and little cars and trains and planes. It was Disco Night at one of this bordertown's newfangled Blues Bars.

A ruckus has come to town, all dressed-up and ready to go, like a young, mullato prostitute on her first night of serving a string of rough-edged men with few sexual skills, but carrying all the desire of a powerful panther. That music is being offered as "Blues" is the kicker, for everyone who has been to this part of the world knows the blues have been here for centuries. Indeed, it is often said - and written by anthropologists - that no one wears pain and suffering better than a resident of the Texas-Mexico border. Blues? Black & Blues, is more like it! Are they celebrating spousal abuse? Wife-whipping? Neglect of the region's children? The color of another dead-end year?

What's with the recent attraction to the Blues anyway? You'd think that any of a dozen genres of Mexican music would be more suitable for the locals. Conjunto? Sure. Banda? Absolutely. Corridos? Of course. Traditional? Bring it. Tejano? I'm inside Selena.

The Blues?

I'm no Count Basie wannabe, but it's gotta be a joke on somebody. There isn't a worthy piano within 250 miles? Blues Guitar? Spare me the laughter. Blues, they say. Da' Blues? That's funny. I see a dude at the dingy convenience store in a pair of ragged, brown slacks and an orange Mervyn's shirt and I don't see the Blues. I drive onward, spot a fat woman with a gross overbite selling tamales at the corner and I don't see the Blues. A high-throated bartender at a bar on 14th Street laughs in my face when I ask about Blues on his dusty jukebox. "Que te pasa, buey?" he asks from behind a row of corn-yellow teeth. Blues? Where!

This town moves on cooking oil, used in the making of eggs for breakfast at the downtown, Tex-Mex cafes, for those tasty refried beans, for those killer tamales, for the fucking, Sunday morning menudo. Blues? You cannot be serious. Play me something else by Mahalia Jackson, sonny. What's that? You want me to hear local blues? Indulge me. Keep looking. I'll know it when I hear it.

Atop this story you'll see a photo of a happening town in action. True, blue stuff, not some imagined bullshit thrown about like rice pilaf at a Gay wedding. Get me a photo like this one of a local scene and then we'll talk. Chase that lunkish broad up the sidewalk, lad. You tell her the Blues at midnight'll set her straight. She'll turn around and look at you as if you're the next moron to hit on her before she tells you to scram, to get lost. You don't know shit about the Blues, cause you're from this falling town.

So, there's my Story of The Year, a non-story, really.

That's what's breaking here, becoming the nouveau addiction, cutting up the town's craggy, fajita-like face like some teenage acne episode. Blues? You're still with that?...

- 30 -

LaCandrelle's Secret Life...

"You want one rib?
Well, honey, here's
yore one rib..."
- Marquita Washington, in Email

By HANDS VELA
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Shortly before he was fired late last week, former Paz Files Sports Editor LaCandrelle Jefferson received an email from a woman he hadn't seen in several weeks, his angry wife. Marquita Washington was telling him she'd just heard about his sexual escapades with Louise Herrera of Brownsville, the same Louise Herrera who now has accused writer Rudolf Von Bulow of raping her following a night of drinking at several South Padre Island nightclubs.

"You in trouble, boy," she began in the Internet mail.

And LaCandrelle Jefferson, indeed, was in trouble. Marquita Washington was promising to fly down to the Rio Grande Valley from her home in Georgia for one and one reason only, to perform surgery on his manhood. Or, as she put it in the email: "You done sumpin God-awful with that thing of yores, LaCandrelle. Awful as awful can be. This bitch be mad!"

At that very moment, Jefferson was driving back to his apartment in his red & white Mini Cooper after being fired for glibly discussing his sexual affair with Ms. Herrera in a news story. As someone who knew someone who knew him put it, LaCandrelle was beating feet for his crib so that he could pack and vanish. Marquita Washington also did something women enjoy doing - she had emailed him a photo of herself in the nude (see photo above) and added the caption, "This booty's gonna go partying. Ain't no man able to say no to this booty! Uh-uh, nobody!"

Jefferson has not been seen or heard from since the day of his firing. Authorities here, however, say they have not received any info related to his going missing, and there is no way of knowing if Marquita Washington even made it to Harlingen. Police did inform Louise Herrera of the threat made against Jefferson, a man she says is the father of her unborn baby.

"Just a precaution," said a portly detective who declined to give his name.

A cursory review of police records in the Atlanta area revealed several incidents involving Ms. Washington, including several burglaries, a credit card scam, and theft of mail charges to do with a variety of welfare checks she had cashed illegally. One report had it that she also filled her car with gasoline and then sped-off without paying, later calling the gas station's evening staff to say she'd be back to pay when she had the money. Another said she had viciously assaulted two women at a black club in Atlanta after the women accused her of flirting with their boyfriends. According to a police report, one of those women was treated for severe nail-scratchings to her face, while the second one said Marquita had stolen her purse and swung it over her head, emptying its contents across the bar's floor. Bar employees said they'd never seen so many condoms come of out of a woman's purse.

"By the looks of her, I'd say this particular lady is not one you'd want to antagonize," said another detective. "We have an officer at the airport on the lookout for her. Hey, I know. I know. He is carrying that naked picture of her, but it's the only one we have. Hopefully, she'll be dressed provocatively, if she does fly-in."

The woman apparently was married to Jefferson, although it is not known if that was a legal union or merely a 1960s-style shack-up. The email was signed, Yo Mama...

- 30 -

Angst & Smalltown Religion

"God is not a Cosmic Bellboy
for whom we can press a button
to get things..." - Harry E. Fosdick, Prayer

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - In religion, you live and die with imagery and perception. Faith may be the communal linchpin in this hemisphere, but personal belief makes its own fierce fight. God, someone once said, is merely a concept for how we measure our pain. In some homes, that God is the sole reason for living; in others it is the maker of pain and unrest.

Voters of a humble sector of this Rio Grande Valley community elected a man named Danny Castillo to the Harlingen City Commission on Friday. The election was largely insignificant, regardless of what some of the local mediocre bloggers said for days on end. Castillo, a former chief of police here, like most mortals, has his good side and his bad side. We're speaking morality, but then who are we to judge our fellow man? In any case, it was often said during the heated campaign for the commission's District 1 seat that Castillo harbored harsh feelings against the Catholic Church. In places such as Bangkok or Beijing or Saigon, that would not matter one iota. Here, where the larger perecentage of residents call themselves proud Catholics, Castillo's stance seemed at once insane and dangerous.

What the new commissioner's actual religion is only he knows. Some have speculated that he must be a member of some fringe outfit, such as the severe Jehovah Witness kingdom, or perhaps the more palatable Baptist faith. Who knows?

But in a part of the country where marital infidelity and cash exchanges play a larger role in politics, Castillo's ranting and raving against Catholics proved a bit much for some. In most postings, local Bloggers damned him. Oddly, or perhaps not, Castillo ignored the religious jabbing, saying nothing about it the days leading up to his election night victory. Does it matter that he is so anti-Catholic? It would be nice to get his actual thoughts on his position against the region's dominant church, but, no, it doesn't matter. Not yet. Not until Castillo takes his religion to the commission chambers, which would be his first cardinal sin.

Does it portend to future religious strife here? In politics, anyway?

That would be interesting in more ways than one. Lately, religion and politics have been mixing more and more across the country. Evangelicals dance on the national psyche daily now that the 2012 presidential race has begun. Right-wing zealots are burning Americans at the stake with precious little evidence of some horrible social virus that would threaten mankind's existence. Conversely, those who hold truth that religion is something allowed, but not revered by the collective are themselves dancing with contrarian ideas, ideas that go against the teachings of western religion.

Would it be a sweeter pill to swallow if this community wondered about new City Commissioner Castillo's sexual preferences? Would the voters care if he took the unpopular side of that issue? Is he for the religious tenet that says marriage is only between a man and a woman? Does that matter to the struggling residents of ever-struggling Harlingen? It's something to think about - for one day tops.

Castillo has postured himself for elected office and he has won the peoples' vote.

Whatever else he may - or may not - be likely will surface in the coming months, and, like Catholicism itself, he will be judged on how his dogma plays...

- 30 -

In Nasty Brownsville, A Cubist Blogger Paints A Ghastly Canvas...

"The more things a man is ashamed of,
the more respectable he is..."
- George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The story of Jerry McHale is the story of the laughing snake. He is this town's Big-Time political operative, a man who's crafted his own savage journey across a piece of harsh geography so tough that many men simply give up and go on the government dole. McHale, editor of a string of biting blogs that have both entertained and damned this community, has asked for little in return, oblivious to the pain he has caused, pushed onward by the realization that, like Neil Armstrong, he's had to account for a largely-criminal world not his own.

In our search of the one person who stood out or made a difference in The Year 2011, we pondered the work of such notable achievers as Manny Gomez, head coach of the wildly-successful Harlingen High School football Cardinals who made it to the quarterfinals of this past season's state playoffs. And there was Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos, the rare Hispanic Republican, who fended-off attempts by the opposition to steal his election and then proceeded to do nothing out of ordinary, other than keeping things calm, allowing the press to look elsewhere for cheap scandals. In the judge's insular world, the villain became Roger Ortiz, the county elections administrator who played the partisan pinata for several days before rendering the verdict Cascos wanted. Outside his home, Ortiz lives in infamy.

So it is McHale who takes the honor: Person-Of-The-Year.

We have often both praised and criticized him. A California transplant who arrived in town some 40 years ago, the ingenious McHale has become the incontrovertible face of Brownsville. In fact and myth, he is both weathervane and weather stripping. In columns on his whip-like blog (http://www.browntownnews.com/), the largely-uneducated citizenry gets the good, the bad, the ugly and the ugliest. Whether it is a write-up about the college president he despises more than any of a hundred local women who over the years declined his sexual advances, McHale also generously brought fame to humble shopkeepers, street vagabonds, lissome waitresses, barbacks, gadflies, fuck-ups and a host of other Brownsville characters who were handed their 15 minutes of fame free-of-charge on a blog many call "the town's paddle."

In the negative column of his ledger came horrible reports so unfair that even he had to laugh while typing them. When his best friend and fellow blogger Juan Montoya was jailed for driving recklessly and driving while intoxicated, McHale wrote about Juan out on some lonesome prairie, unable to maintain his own blog. When Montoya was again jailed this year, McHale wrote Juan was off to Cuba for something or another. It's a human failing, but one forever forgiven in this vulgar bordertown home to some 160,000 legal and illegal residents. McHale's attacks have spanned all that is life in town - from politics to the courts. He's been sued, he's been threatened and he's been derided by almost all of the locals he has upbraided. He's written in favor of the Gay lifestyle except for that lived by another local blogger, Bobby Wightman-Cervantes.

And he has tirelessly and ridiculously pushed Brownsville as some nightclub paradise, a sort of Mecca without the prize, a honeymoon without the wife. But he's drawn support even for that joke, the populace here possessing what pop-sociologists call the "Goddamned Particle," that ability to blow-off falsehoods in the name of the oppressed collective. A barhopper from way back, McHale has been everything from Disco Freak, to Urban Cowboy, to Panama beach boy to wannabe boxer, his lone battle in the ring ending in a quick, one-punch knockout at the hands of a heavyset teenager from Mercedes.

But that was yesterday.

Today, he is the recipient of our Person-Of-The-Year. In our learned estimation, McHale exhibits the quintessential personality of anyone calling themselves a resident of the star-crossed Rio Grande Valley, a person able to look at the face of poverty and laugh, able to see wrong being done and still call for another beer, able to ignore a friend's failings and still throw dirt on another in the same boat, able to be completely at ease with Texas-Mexico border life as partly truth and partly fiction...

- 30 -

Von Bulow Case Implodes...

"Took a drag from my last cigarette,
took a drink from a glass of old wine..."
- Neil Diamond, I Am, I Said

By HANDS VELA
Special to The Paz Files

BROWNSVILE, Texas - The curious case of Rudolf Von Bulow took a wild and wicked turn toward the far-strange today, when the woman who accused him of rape stunned reporters gathered outside the Bora Bora nightclub by saying she is pregnant.

"I am pretty sure I am carrying LaCandrelle Jefferson's baby," she said during a bizarre press conference called by her attorney, Rene "The Plump Partridge" Oliveira, in an effort to get ahead of the scandalous development. "I met Mr. Von Bulow through LaCandrelle, who I met through Jerry McHale one night last month at another hip Brownsville bar."

The development threw the Von Bulow case into uncharted territory, and a woman working for his defense team quickly said lawyers representing the writer will most certainly call Jefferson to the witness stand. "We'll want to know how soon after they met...they, ah, had sex," she went on during a brief cellphone chit-chat with this writer. "This is fast becoming a ridiculous soap opera case with every passing day."

Ms. Herrera, a 23-year-old junior college student, insisted, however, that she still believes Von Bulow raped her following a long night of partying in a variety of South Padre Island bars. The rape, she again noted, took place in his high-rise condo, an assault she has described as being perverted and overly-brutal in nature. "My baby is not part of the story," she said on several occasions during the sidewalk press conference. "LaCandrelle has said he will take care of us."

Jefferson is the Sports Editor for The Paz Files.

Reached at his apartment in Harlingen, Jefferson begged-off requests for comments, but confirmed having a relationship with Ms. Herrera. "The Von Bulow thing blew me away, mon," he said. "I mean, bro, I work with the dude. All I know is that if the facts fit, you can't acquit. You know what I'm sayin'?"

Jefferson said Ms. Herrera, a spitfire of a looker, may be about six weeks pregnant, a timeline that coincides with his arrival in Brownsville from a previous job for a newspaper in Jamaica. He would not speak about the scope or seriousness of the relatonship, saying only that he'll pretty much have to wait and see about things after the Von Bulow case is resolved.

"That crazy town she lives in is a living witchcraft web," he explained. "I'm sayin' she's a pretty girl and all. You know what I'm sayin'? She's got it going all over the place. I ain't blind, you know."

He explained that Ms. Herrera had vigorously disdained use of contraceptives during their lovemaking and had at various points insisted that he consummate the act in the traditional matrimonial manner. "You axe me and I'll tell you no man, No Man!, woulda not done it," he threw out, his deep, bass voice booming at the end of every sentence. "You axe me if I'm complainin' and I'll say no, no, I ain't! She's the queen-ass booty of the Valley, mon."

The explosive development, however, changes nothing in her case against Von Bulow. And although her attorney declined to make a comment, citing a stomach ache, Ms. Herrera, smiled openly for the covey of photographers in attendance, including one from Jet Magazine, which had a reporter present while he worked on a profile of Jefferson, who is a former college football star in his native Alabama.

"I have no idea where this fits into our story," the lanky, high-throated Jet reporter said. "But they do say there is no literature without sex, so..."

Von Bulow's spokesman, Klaus Von Nostrand, said he was shocked by the news.

"This could be good, or this could be bad," he said. "But you can quote me as saying that Mr. Jefferson will definitely be called to the stand...

- 30 -

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Reporter Hands Vela is a Brownsville free-lance writer. Wishing to remain objective in the face of their staffer's legal problems, Paz Files editors decided to turn over coverage of this story to a freelancer. Hands Vela has written for several publications, including Sports Illustrated and Successful Farmer magazine...]

Evening In Tortilla Flat...

"I have never heard a better version of Dylan's All Along the Watchtower. Both the sounds and the ambiance evoked visions of Woodstock..." - A sheltered Brownsville resident

By RICARDO KLEMENT
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Working the basic life impulse has never been all that difficult here, is what the waitress was telling me after she beelined past rows of aging, wooden tables occupied by fat Mexicans getting stoned on cheap, warm beer. "They breathe and then they go for their unemployment check," she went on, laughing as she threw her big hair back like a javeline thrower and then fronted me a rack so enticing that I forgot my next question. "Like you said, any hole in the wall can be the next big thing in nightclubbing."

To hear some locals, Brownsville is now very much Big D's Deep Ellum and Austin's Sixth Street rolled into one, with the added pungent smell of bad salsa being pumped in from every bar's kitchen. Throw in a blackjack table and this dusty, vulgar bordertown would see itself as the next Vegas. Of course, it isn't that.

But those who live here can do nothing but fire-up their lousy existence. Paste a sexy-sounding name on a new bar and then paint is as exciting as Trader Vic's or Antone's. It'll sell. Throw a South Pacific name on another and believe you are actually there. It's the joke of the day along the Mexican border, a land exceedingly good at making itself look - or appear to be - better than it really is, faking it being the singular talent of the grass-whorled masses.

The other night, a sultry one, I pulled into one of the city's new joints and was quickly bored to death. Amateur musicians playing rock 'n' roll standards in what was, well, mediocre style. It was me in Nicaragua all over again! There inside the Cantina Revolucionaria in lake-front Managua, doing the Funky Chicken with a woman just in from picking the beanfields in the unforgiving surrounding hills. Dump a few monster truckloads of dirt around Brownsville and imagine a killer mountain range. Have local women walk down from atop those hills dressed in their usual Big City copycat style at sundown and imagine an honest-to-goodness, thriving, fast-arriving party town.

As yet, Brownsville is not that, no matter what every swinging dick here says - newspaper reporters, bloggers and bar owners, especially. You want a Party Town, go to Austin, or to New Orleans or to The Big Apple. What you get here at present is nothing more than a Mexican mirage, one that comes with great publicity, but horrible actuality. It is the 50-cent cinnamon roll without the frosting, the enchilada without the cheese, the tamale without the meat. Something, but not everything there, in other words.

I've had better assignments in my long and storied journalism career. Brownsville is a lot of things, but it is not the next big thing in partying. For one, there are too many faded, gray-haired hippies parading as credible rockers when they look like they're two beers from the grave. Who wants to party with 66-year-old guys in pony tails? I mean, get real. That's "nursing home" material, if you get my drift. So, stay out of this town if you're in the mood for a genuine good time. And don't fall for the young beggars selling Pepto-Bismol outside these joints.

You hear someone say the Bob Dylan song being butchered onstage is the best they've ever heard and you know you're dealing with some genuine rubes...

- 30 -

Deadbeat Town On Trial

"The cases are real!
The people are real!
The rulings are final..."
- Judge Judy

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Special to The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - This is the town that undresses with ease. You can find dirt on just about everybody here, from the poorest of deadbeat bloggers, to the people in city government, to the elite who know they'd not be elite anywhere else. This is where writer Rudolf Von Bulow's people spend their days mining info on a local woman who has filed charges against him alleging wanton rape. As things are going so far, Von Bulow may not have enough suitcases for the mountains of info he'll gather on his accuser.

Already, and this is weeks, perhaps months, ahead of any legal proceeding in a court of law, Von Bulow's crack investigators say they have found the motherlode of horrible facts about 23-year-old Louise Herrera, the local college student behind the allegations. She says Von Bulow drew her into a long, long night of rough sex after a night of drinking in a variety of nightclubs on South Padre Island. Von Bulow says she came willingly, that the one-night stand the two had a few weeks ago was consensual.

Questions about Ms. Herrera's past have hung over this town like the hanging of letters from a mother seeking back child support payments. Everybody has seen one, some of the ever-pleading letters even addressed to them. Child support payments are rarely made in this vulgar bordertown of some 150,000 legal and illegal residents. Pick a name out of the telephone directory and you won't be far off. News of abuse was born here.

Some of Von Bulow's expensive gumshoes, say they have the goods on her, enough anyway to sway any self-respecting jury into rendering a quicksilver verdict of not-guilty. The Von Bulow camp is not releasing the greater, more-damning portion of the discovery, but some of those involved say Ms. Herrera's time on the witness stand will not be fun.

"She's made allegations about things she's done before, but never complained about," said one insider. "She cannot be serious."

Initial press reports had Von Bulow funneling large amounts of booze down Ms. Herrera's throat. This, say the police reports, was followed by Von Bulow's decision to carry an inebriated Ms. Herrera to his condo, where he allegedly had his way with her, engaging in deviant sex that Ms. Herrera may contend has ruined her for life. Details are always sketchy this early in a case, but one investigator, who asked that her name not be used, said Von Bulow enticed the young woman into accepting anal sex that last until dawn. Lawyers for Von Bulow have pored over medical records associated with her gluteal examination at an island clinic.

"They want to know if evidence is available of her engaging in anal sex prior to the night in question," the investigator threw out during a brief interview at The Vermillion, a popular restaurant/bar here. "She cannot allege damage to her physical being if she was already damaged. She'll be asked that very question in court."

Von Bulow, meanwhile, is on a leave-of-absence from The Paz Files.

"He'll be back when all of this is resolved," said a statement from the website. "Until then, we are holding his stories and declining any he may wish to submit."

A member of the Von Bulow family told story-hungry reporters here that Rudolf Von Bulow was in France, taking a Journalism refresher course at The Sorbonne, the most prestigious school in Paris.

"He's being kept in the loop about the investigation," the family member said, noting that the Herrera family has not replied on an offer of $1 million to drop all charges. "The Mom has said she is skeptical, because it is her opinion that no Brownsville bank has a million dollars in cash in its vault. Go figure. I believe we're bickering about the payoff now."

As for Louise Herrera, well, she has not been heard from since the night of the alleged rape. At the local junior college she attends, one of her classmates said this: "I kinda believe her. And then I kinda don't. It's confusing..."

- 30 -

Song Of The Children...

"Children begin by loving their parents;
as they grow older they judge them;
sometimes they forgive them..."
- Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - A little girl and her brother died last week in the dusty bordertown of Laredo, where their 38-year-old single mother shot them for the worst of reasons: she could no longer care for them, no longer clothe them, no longer feed them, no longer promise them life.

The two kids, 12-year-old Ramie and 10-year-old Timothy, endured the last days of their lives somehow knowing their fate. They and their mother, Rachelle, were at the lowest rung of the social ladder, living in a battered camper trailer in one of the city's trailer parks, fighting for food and shelter each and every day. Their mom, lost in the unreliable netherworld of child support and unable to get state and federal authorities to help her, killed them in the building that housed the state's food stamps office, where she had recently been turned down after failing to submit paperwork related to her monthly income.

Rachelle Grimmer also shot and killed herself.

Those who knew her at the trailer park said she struggled to take care of her children, that she gathered food as best she could, that she feuded with the social service agency workers, that she finally snapped and did the unthinkable. Family members added she'd seemed lost after splitting from her husband, who lived in Wyoming and Montana. All she had at the end were minimal child support payments. It wasn't enough.

Little Ramie Grimmer, shown in photo above, had posted a message on Facebook last Monday that was cryptic as cryptic could ever be: "may die 2today." Her harried mother had taken a supervisor hostage in the Texas Department of Human Services office in a dispute over her denial of food stamp benefits. Rachelle Grimmer eventually released the supervisor, but after a seven-hour standoff, police say she shot Ramie and Timothy Grimmer, before killing herself.

The story has resonance in the Rio Grande Valley, as well, where countless women struggle to make ends meet when the fathers of their children bolt and then refuse to pay child support. It is the unspoken stain on the border culture, a situation that places women in the same straits Rachelle Grimmer found herself in last week. Often, when jailed, these deadbeat dads find sympathy on the part of the Macho-friendly courts and are quickly released. The women, meanwhile, get pushed aside, their children forced to depend on welfare assistance or help from family members. It is the Mexican way in the Rio Grande Valley, a sport that goes against the very culture of the ethnic group that historically said family comes first.

But in the RGV, it doesn't take much for a man to bolt his family. One loose skirt and they're out the door. So long, child support. And if that same man gets wind of a second man in his woman's life even after he splits, well, bar the Godamned barn door - that woman will never get a cent. It has been so for much of the Valley's modern history. Children are not as valued along the border as they are elsewhere in the country. That is the sad lament told by the overwhelming majority of these abandoned women. You hear horror stories at every stop, from the welfare offices, to the laundromats, to the cantinas. Women weep; lazy men sleep. Children go to bed crying, fully-knowing that they have less than other neighborhood kids, and fully-aware that their Dad, for some reason, won't work, won't get a job to support them.

It remains the shame of an entire region, one without solution.

Friends, hold your head high and inhale a deep breath. It's Christmastime and, supposedly, there is joy across the land. But while you're celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, ask yourself these questions: What are you doing for your children? What have you done? How much do you care? Are they healthy? Do they have clean clothes? Are they eating well? Can you look them in the eye?

They say the best thing you can do for kids is to be good to their mother.

Yes, that is true. Some men know that, some do not and never will. A woman at the end of her rope is not attractive; they're fighting for survival. Children under the care of such a woman soon realize they are helpless. They see their Mom going through Hell and all they can do is cry, all the time wondering where Dad went and why he won't help.

If you're among the lucky, your children adore you. If you're among the uncaring Deadbeats, well, you should know that these same children remember everything about their Mom and Dad, and they know who was and wasn't there when the going got tough. They'll know who answered their prayers for clothing and shelter, and who busted their tail to make sure they had food on the table, a blanket in bed, a roof over their head.

Youngsters Ramie and Timothy Grimmer went through familial Hell in their final days, not knowing if the lousy trailer they lived in would keep them warm, not knowing if Mom would be able to find a loaf of bread or another can of beans at the local food shelter, not really knowing if Christmas had ever been meant for them...

- 30 -

The Year That Was, Part I

"I make my living off the evening news
just me something, something I can use
people love it when you lose
they love dirty laundry..."
- Don Henley, Dirty Laundry

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

PORT ISABEL, Texas - Just west of here, as you drive into town from Harlingen or San Benito or any of a dozen other hardscrabble towns dotting the Rio Grande Valley map, we found a piece of discarded paper someone had tossed out into the winds. The writing had faded, perhaps because of the harsh South Texas sun or the dried-out mud that covered most of it, but it read: "If you find this note, get away! Get away from this hellhole fast!"

The scribbled signature of the long-gone author was not decipherable. Who knows who that person was, or where he may now be? The message, however, seemed serious. Too serious. I took my cigarette lighter out of my jacket pocket and lit one end of the paper before tossing it into a rusting trash can the county had set up for outbound tourists leaving nearby South Padre Island. I was upwind, so there was no distinguishable aroma to the burn, although one could have said there was a tinge of either rotten catsup or soft-ass, nursing home salsa there near the end of the flame. That end of the flame is where most of the people who call the Valley home reside.

It is always soon-to-be-a-minor-motion-picture time around here. Strange and wicked tales rise out of the gutter and sail out into the streets, some say wrapping themselves around the necks of some of the more celebrated folks from here to Rio Grande City out west. You'd need a 50-foot, hydraulic shovel to get to the bottom of these tales, and even when you poked at a good one, well, the story would always end the same way - in tragedy.

Welcome to Hard Times.

The Year 2011 is coming to a close and we again take a stab at noting some of the news doozies that came down the proud highway. We begin:

THE CORRUPT JUDGE - Abel Limas didn't just sit on his ass in his district court; he sold it. An indictment that came out of the blue earlier this year son unfolded into tales of bribes and favors and more bribes. Limas was raking it in, every dollar and peso in exchange for favorable rulings for losers who appeared before him. He said little in confessing; he merely walked off the bench and into infamy. The legal system in his Cameron County took the hit, one more, and everyone who thought you could take a bath and be clean realized it isn't just the roads that are dusty in Brownsville, oddly a geography where the Limas name had earned a good place in law enforcement. Prison for the judge, was the call from the doomed populace, even as someone noted that the region's harsh geography and low-rent politics already had claim to that characterization.

THE BAD POLITICIAN - Kori Marra, attractive daughter of West Texas, came to the Valley accompanying her husband, a U.S. Border Patrol agent. The marriage went sour and the two divorced. Ms. Marra entered local politics and gained election to the Harlingen City Commission. District 3 was her seat until last month, when she was removed from office after being convicted of violating ethics guidelines. Her reputation was that of a single, wing-footed party girl, forever being photographed with a drink in her hand, but it wasn't really the Real Kori Marra. That one did not surface until a post-conviction interview she did for Action 4, the local television station. In that interview, Ms. Marra looked and spoke in a professional manner, like an elected official of the sort her constituents had always wanted. It was a spectacular performance that came a bit late, however. Also part of the exit strategy was an appearance before a recent City Commission meeting, where she delivered her most intelligent discourse while inside City Hall. Her departure is a loss, is our feeling. We have always said that it is female politicians who will save the Rio Grande Valley from its addiction to elected office corruption. We're disappointed in Ms. Marra, 'cause we sort of know that she would do things differently if given a second chance.

THE INCOMPLETION - High school football, as played in the Valley, is the cruel, annual hoax. Every year, young lads turn out for the teams, and every year these same lads end it with defeat. No community is spared. Every year since 1961, the last year the Valley had a state champion that ended things with a victory. This year, it was the Harlingen Cardinals. They ran roughshod over 13 opponents until they met a speedy club from San Antonio Madison in the 5A quarterfinals. When the last second ticked off the field clock, Harlingen had tasted bitter. No one knows what this does to the region's psyche. The kids keep playing, even as they are turned back in that December rite now known as Valley Week, when whatever area team is in the state playoffs folds and comes home a loser.

BLOGOSPHERE - Much news broke in this world. Bloggers came and went, one to jail, and others merely lost their edge. It happens. Writing is fighting. Most who do it well know that it is the worst of mistresses, always there demanding more and more and more. Brownsville Blogger Bobby Wightman-Cervantes eased into retirement after issuing a damning indictment on his readership. He could write his arse off, he said, but nothing ever changed in his dysfunctional, too-Mexico hometown. Blogging neighbor Juan Montoya was jailed for not paying back child-support. It is becoming an annual Christmas ritual for the hard-edge border blogger. As another week came to a close, many of his readers were offering to contribute to his bail fund, as well as gather Christmas gifts for his children. Blogging is fun and sometimes rewarding. Children, however, rarely get the joke Juan is playing on Brownsville. In Harlingen, blogger Jerry Deal slowed down to a crawl, turning the task of informing readers on news developments to his readers' comments. A distinctive turn toward advocacy journalism was also detected on Deal's blog. where once he championed fairness, of late he began to shill for his side of the story, penning favorable stories for those politicians he supported and harsh ones for those he did not. It was the Fall From Grace of The Year, one some readers blamed on Deal's advancing age. Brownsville's Jerry McHale, the Dean of Valley bloggers, dropped his porno blog in favor of what started out as a pro-Brownsville blog that has now returned to his old way of slamming his usual opposition, namely the female president of the local university. This was the year McHale declared would be his "classical period." It hasn't turned out that way. A flyweight pretender arrived in the form of Brownsville blogger Jim Barton. We say pretender because, like other bloggers who harp on a few personalities or take sides and ignore the complete story, Barton has not as yet found an altitude of credibility for his blog. What is it? And where is it going? His decision to mock writer Junior Bonner branded him a rank amateur, an assignation we hear he is fast-trying to lose. On the flipside, Blogger Gregg Wendorf of still-booming Pharr (http://www.gbwendorf.com/) is gaining a wide readership with his biting socio-political commentary. He's on the rise, and, for Valley bloggers, that is rare flight.

THE WEAK PRESS - No one has investigated or gotten to the bottom of the weird death of that Cameron County assistant district attorney whose body was found slumped inside his car in the neighboring Mexican bordertown of Matamoros. And nothing came of the bloody killing of that jet-skiier in Falcon Lake earlier this year. Word was he was gunned down by operatives of a Mexican drug cartel, or that is what his surviving wife said. But there were rumors that David Hartley had been running with the drug pushers in Reynosa. Both stories made national news, but local newspapers simply let them fade. No outlet has managed to find out what became of the former Valley Morning Star publisher (Tyler Patton) arrested on a DWI charge. Was he fired? Where is he now? Nothing. Nothing either for Real Reporting on the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings semi-pro baseball club. They played out their season at city-owned Harlingen Field and did well, although some word surfaced that the club was delinquent in paying its utility bill. And then, when they won the Southern Division pennant and traveled to Canada to play for the title, club management was told none of their nine players from the Caribbean would be allowed entry into the country. In a bizarre move, the team quickly drafted nine replacements from their rival San Angelo Colts and still lost the championship. No one in Valley sportswriting raised an eyebrow about any of this...

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Black Man's Tacos...

By LaCandrelle Jefferson
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Stumpy, short-necked batos say football is the sport of choice in this dusty bordertown, second only to drinking and getting stoned. Who knows? I've only been here less than a month, but it seems to me that the true Numero Uno deporte is the scarfing of the ever-humble taco.

Forgive me if I'm being too much like a newcomer. I'm going only on what I see and smell. I see everybody eating tacos everywhere I go, from the gas stations, to the fleamarkets, to the downtown streets, and all I smell is spicy hamburger meat and the burning lard left behind by crisped-over tortillas. Every now and then, the aroma of a fresh-cut tomato or lettuce sends me looping. What is it about the taco?

I was raised on grits and greens in my hometown of Plains, Georgia. Peanuts, too.

My new friends in this vulgar town tell me tacos are a sort of winter blanket this time of the year, that, when the temperature drops below 70 degrees, everybody heads for the corner taqueria to put away a dozen or so tacos - beef, chicken or pork. I swear I never heard of a fajita until I cruised into this town from my last job in Jamaica. My first taco encounter was a real trip, equal to that day when I first tasted sex.

"How do you hold it?" I asked a heavyset woman selling out of a battered, one-person stand on 14th Street. She glared at me as if glaring at a moron, frowned and went-on with serving a couple looking like they'd just left a saggy bed at the Alligator Motel on Central Boulevard.

Perplexed, I looked at the folded corn tortilla and decided to lower my head and stick my tongue between the folds, to get to the tomato and lettuce and the meat. It reminded me of oral sex as I practice it, but it didn't quite feel right.

The guy with the pouty, big-haired girl walked over and told me to pinch it in the middle with one hand and take a bite off the end. I did that, and then said, "Oh, I get it. Like a hot dog!"

His girlfriend looked over and smiled like some happy-go-lucky ox. She had looked uneasy when I was eating the taco my way, tonguing it. So, I ate my six taquitos and chased the street meal with a bottle of Big Red while the couple strolled over toward an ancient picnic table set not more than 10 yards from the order counter. I was thinking of heading back inside the nearby bar when a strolling mariachi ambled up and began playing a lot of trumpet stuff. The couple at the picnic table nodded as if wanting to keep up with the music. I could see the woman lip-synching the song while her man stuffed his mouth.

I stood there, thinking: "Reggae spaced me out in Jamaica, but this stuff is going to eat my brain."

Overhead, the moon rose cold and mineral...

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Enraged Mom To Von Bulow: "No Deal!"

By RON MEXICO
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Genoveva Herrera says she doesn't have a hateful bone in her 56-year-old body, but she's quick to add that nothing gets her goat like knowing someone has hurt one of her kids. The local seamstress wants writer Rudolf Von Bulow to pay the heaviest price for raping her daughter, Louise.

"Someone came around and offered to re-roof my house and get me a new washer/dryer and a bigger refrigerator than the one we have if we would drop charges against that barbarian," she tells me during an afternoon interview outside her home in the town's Southmost subdivision. "Louise says he was mean to her, that he was crude and that he hurt her."

Von Bulow is alleged to have assaulted the 23-year old college student during a recent weekend on nearby South Padre Island following a long night of partying at several island nightclubs. Louise Herrera has said she did not engage in consensual sex, although Von Bulow is saying the opposite, that the young Hispanic beauty dressed in tight blue jeans and wore a halter top that served her intent - to entice him into a compromising position.

Island police have said little about the incident and Von Bulow has hired a team of lawyers to defend him in court. But, already, rumors have surfaced that the Von Bulow family is willing to negotiate a financial settlement in exchange for the dropping of all charges.

"That's not happening," said a stoic Genoveva Herrera. "My daughter is not a prostitute. He wants to pay us for raping her? Is that a Nazi thing, or what?"

Von Bulow's ancestry is German and several members of his family served Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party ahead of, and during, World War II. Rudolf Von Bulow says that is not relevant in 2011 Brownsville, that to play the Hitler Card is a joke he will not join in laughter.

Louise Herrera is back at Texas Southmost College where she is completing an associate's degree in Paleontology. Asked if Louise would grant an interview, Genoveva Herrera said her daughter will speak about the alleged attack, but only from the witness stand in court.

"Will you change your mind if Von Bulow offers you $1 million?" she was asked near the end of the interview.

"No," she said, quickly and tersely.

And then she glanced back to her humble home, toward the leaky roof that needs repair, to the broken windows facing the unpaved street, to the rusting screen on her front door, to the weeds in her front yard, to the battered mailbox...before saying: "He's wanting to say my daughter is just a piece of ass, isn't he? Well, we're poor in this neighborhood, but we're proud. Mr. Von Bulow can take his money and shove it youknowwhere."

Her face grows red with anger, and it is the wailing of a baby inside the home that forces her to retreat. The final scene leaves this reporter with the impression that this particular retreat is one she'll allow - not any other.

Rudolf Von Bulow, the suave, sophisticated world-traveler, is in for a fight...

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For Valley Vets, A Lost Year

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - It is the last battle of Vietnam for the Rio Grande Valley, a recurring nightmare that seems to have noble intentions, but is forever branded a sure sign of still-more whining from the region's military veterans: namely, their dogged effort to get the government to build a full-service hospital that will serve them exclusively.

Once again, it is not happening.

Decades have now passed and little progress has been made. This past week, the U.S. Senate approved the Defense Authorization Bill that would have funded it. An amendment included in that legislation sought by South Texas veterans failed to gain needed support. That was only the latest bad news, although bills with the same intent remain in the House of Representatives pipeline. No one, however, is holding out hope that the hospital will become reality anytime soon. Budget people in Washington, D.C. are axing funding right and left for much more important projects, including military jet fighters and a host of other defense and social measures.

What will Valley veterans do now?

The year has come to a close and they are largely in the same place they were when 2011 began. Veterans Administration medical clinics are still doing gangbusters business serving a Rio Grande veteran core made up largely of aging Vietnam-era vets, former servicemen whose medical care is more expensive. The vets continue to note the aggravation they find when seeking help for serious maladies in out-of-area VA hospitals, the one most often mentioned being the veterans hospital in San Antonio some 300 miles to the north.

Will the Valley ever get its own veterans hospital?

The odds are heavily against it, and time is passing. South Texas is as far away from the nation's capital as it could ever be. The constituency is poor and politically powerless. Its representatives are not the power-wielders in Congress. As the years go by, Vietnam fades in society's rear-view mirror. The sooner Vietvets die, the sooner that embarrassment conflict will be wiped off the national psyche, is a common assessment. Vietnam was the 1960s, say these same critics. That was a long, long time ago, back when an entirely different set of priorities saddled America.

No one disputes the fact that Valley vets have a right to be angry. They went, or were called, to battle in a time of need. Some came back, some never did and some came back all messed up. The country, of course, should be sympathetic to their plight. And under normal circumstances, the country would probably do everything for every veteran it drafted or enlisted to push its politics or defend its turf.

This is not one of those kind of times. Everyone, from sea to shining sea, is struggling. Young families somehow march onward without medical insurance, and those who can afford it still juggle finances to make ends meet. Unemployment is strapping the country's workforce. Jobs are scarce. Federal benefits of all damned kinds are being availed to the booming New Poor.

Cold-hearted as it may sound, veterans in the Rio Grande Valley will go to their graves without ever seeing a hospital rise along that idyllic, palm-lined boulevard they'll tell you is there, there still waiting...

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