The Geek From Browntown

"He is not my mayor. My mayor could never be Captain Kangaroo..." - A Brownsville Resident

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - They say that if he hadn't gone into law and made his millions, Tony Martinez likely would now be a snot-nosed waterboy for some semi-pro football team over in McAllen some 60 miles west of this throwdown town.

But he did go to law school and he did make his money, so that's why Martinez is now mayor here - the latest former street Vato to rise from a hardscrabble beginning to rule the local political roost. And it is now apparent that Martinez, a short and stocky man with a penchant for blinking when in lengthy discourse, will not be the politician to turn things around for the city's oft-whipped residents whose sole remaining dream is to one day see a non-Macho take the reins at City Hall. Tony, Tony has let them down.

The grade at mid-semester is not good.

Well, there's this, as reported in town by excitable blogger Bobby Wightman-Cervantes, a disbarred lawyer who has made a reputation for outing the outs of those who like to out others. Earlier this week, Wightman-Cervantes dressed-down the local justice system for being easy on another blogger. That one would be Juan Montoya, a one-time journalist who openly puts himself out for hire, offering his advocacy journalism for a fee. Wightman-Cervantes wonders why Montoya remains free after a few DWIs and after being trageted for non-payment of child support sought by the mother of his three kids.

But that's a story for another day.

Suffice it to say that Mssr. Wightman-Cervantes, on his blog http://www.brownsvillevoice.blogspot.com/, is angry at the mayor, a man who replaced former Mayor Pat Ahumada in the last election. If the blogger's assessment is correct, the new mayor is an uncouth cad, a novice at both politics and class. By looking at Mayor Martinez (that's him in the photo atop this story), you'd think: Here's an educated guy, a politician who knows its the Year 2011, a man among men, a mayor who knows the gender score.

But, he doesn't.

To back up: Last July 19th, during a rather wishy-washy meeting of the Brownsville City Commission, Commissioner Melissa Zamora was doing her duty by asking questions of a lifer city bureaucrat (Larry Brown) to do with the municipal airport. According to blogger Wightman-Cervantes, the mayor took umbrage and sent the discussion down the toilet.

Wrote the blogger: "Tony, being the consummate dick he is, decided to insult Commissioner Zamora by asking her 'any more questions, girls?' "

It remains as the blackest of stains in the history of this city's governance, a phrase Mayor Martinez is said to have stolen from Neanderthal literature written on the walls of newly-discovered caves in some remote part of the world. As could be expected in a bordertown owned part & parcel by the me-first Macho culture, neither Ms. Zamora, nor two other female city commissioners attending the meeting quarreled with the dim-witted mayor. The offending phrase merely hung in the air, there for all to inhale deeply and all to damn in silence.

"Any more questions, girls?"

The Geek had not stammered. The Geek had not blurted it out and then fallen back in his own disgrace. The Geek had not coughed and then blurted-out an apology. The Geek had merely nodded and gone on with his evening, leaving his female colleagues feeling like worthless sacks of beans and those in attendance thinking, what's with this boring pendejo?

Witnesses said the only person in the commission's chambers to laugh at the mayor's classless remark was the city's animal-control officer...

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