Crank Time In McAllen...

"Before this is over, the City of Palms will know agonies far worse than simple gout, or leech fever, or even the heartbreak of psoriasis..." - A Party Animal

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

McALLEN, Texas - The Mexican kid fell to the dance floor like a sack of beans, heavy and with an uneven thud, his torso slamming horribly ahead of his head. Then, seconds later, he was dead, a victim of the local nightlife on a local street that is fast becoming as notorious as was Nixon Way in Saigon back in the 1960s. The thing is they want to party here, and that's bringing the late-night fun and the midnight frolic. But it's also bringing an end to some young lives.

A party boy by the name of Alberto Rosales died in the wee hours of last Saturday.

It wasn't long before superstitious moms blamed it on the devil. The lifeless Rosales was sprawled on the floor of Le Rouge Club, gone from the planet from a spot on the dance floor at 109 S. 17th St. No one is sure what exactly offed this guy. Cops aren't talking and club owners would never talk. It's bad for business. What was said in guarded whispers was that some sort of disturbance involving Rosales had led to someone pushing him ahead of his fateful fall. City Police Chief Victor Rodriguez was holed-up in his office, perhaps unwilling to take on the power of the burgeoning entertainment district's burly bar owners. Boozing is part of the pursuit of happiness in this border city of some 120,000 residents. Now, there are those who say hard drugs have invaded the drinking scene, marching the local young straight to Hell.

McAllen's plans for this six-block stretch of bars and nightclubs seemed noble a few years back, when greedy businessmen began buying old flower shops and cafes and finance companies and barber shops that lined the street. It was to be the centerpiece of progress, the cherry on the partytime parfait. Booze would be trucked in and, yeah, young people would pay the $12 for a cocktail just to be seen. It is the very insecurity among the people of the Rio Grande Valley that allows for the creation of such killing zones. These kids are nobodies and they want to make it somewhere - even along old 17th Street, once the favored byway of the city's poor Mexican community loathed by the city's Anglos.

This Rosales kid may be only the beginning. Those who know say drugs walk the street in the pockets of weekend party animals, girls included. It is not a drag for the middle-aged or the elderly. They boo you loudly if you're over 30 all the way from Business 83 on the northern end of the street all the way to Houston to the south, over by what used to be little Roosevelt Elementary School. Get your $30 steak at El Patio and go on home, old timer, goes the line.

Booze has flowed like a runaway river now for almost two years. Complaints centering on loud music by residents living along neighboring streets have been entertained and ignored at City Hall. Sales tax receipts still look like winning Lotto tickets to the cash-starved mayor and his city commissioners. One death isn't enough to shut the keg down. Just play something by Santana and get that body off the freakin' floor.

"The city has nothing to lose," said one critic. "It has hired the daughter of the Devil, himself, to bring the action and it will dance. This is just the beginning of a long, cruel nightmare that even the church will have trouble explaining."

The majority are fed up with this orgy of dumbness and debauchery. It is one thing to allow the entry of drug money from neighboring Mexico to help the city's economy, but it is another when the Mexican clientele starts thinking it owns the joint.

"McAllen went after this Entertainment District for the people from Mexico," said a well-connected resident. "It went all out to approve every bar that came looking for an alcohol permit. What McAllen has on its hands now is what Reynosa across the river had before the drug war, its own Zumbido."

The words crash on the hot asphalt of the noisy, crowded street on this Saturday night. McAllen as a Zumbido may be harsh, but no one quarrels with the jagged landscape. It would take a dozen cameras positioned just right to capture this scene: Rosales falling in killer slow-motion, glazed eyes to the disco-balled ceiling, his last gasp for air coming about a foot off the floor, his back slamming onto the floor, his stunned soul rising and then hurrying to come up with an explanation for St. Peter...

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