Last Call For Women...

"The day Dolores Del Ruby arrived at the Rubber Rose, a snake crawled across the dusty road that led to the ranch, carrying a card under its forked tongue. The card was the Queen of Spades..." - Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - When the book of border love is finally written, it'll include a long chapter about doormats, not the ones sold in local department stores, but the ones kept at home, in the bedroom and in the kitchen. It'll be a doozy, replete with tales of men who chained their women, who snuffed-out their lives, who used and discarded them like worthless taco wrappers. This familial tale is not one often told in Brownsville, yet this town could claim the crown as setting for the worst of wanton female abuse.

The other day, it was the portly mayor dressing down the three women who serve alongside him on the city commission, swatting down questioning that came from the usually-forward Commissioner Melissa Zamora. The mayor went code, completing his stompdown by way of a clearly Macho question of his own: "Any more questions, girls?"

We're guessing here, but Ms. Zamora likely is the youngest of the three women on the commission. And, at - what? - 34 or 35, she is no spring chicken, not springy enough anyway to still be addressed as "girl," a lookdown term used by men when seeking to put themselves above on the gender ladder.

So, we ask: What is it about women of the Rio Grande Valley? Why do they take so much crap from their men? Why is it women always fronting the pages of the local newspapers in stories that tell of beatings, whippings, bitch-slapping, knifing and, in some cases, murder? What's that all about? Why would Valley men abuse women as if kicking a mangy dog that's ambled into the backyard, as if smacking down a fly swooping in for the Guacamole, as if shooting at a burglar trying like Hell to steal the family Buick?

It is an amazing cultural stain.

The questions posed here are not new. College professors at the local schools write alarming papers about it. Reporters occasionally rip the scab off the mess, as they did in the story to do with the killing of Rio Hondo schoolteacher Sonia Perez. The press has done its job, forever reporting on spousal abuse that comes straight off police reports. Woman battering is the sport of the Valley. Forget football or pitiful minor league baseball. A daily score on female whippings ought to be published in the front pages of every newspaper in the region. A blog should be created to monitor and record every single instance involving a man taking hand to a defenseless woman.

No one dealt these women a bad card.

No one singled them out for verbal and physical abuse.

No one said they alone should bear the brunt of their mate's bad finances, spurned adultery romance, a lost business opportunity, defeat at the polls, refusal to work or pay child support, etc., etc. These women have been so devalued that to try and gauge their current position in civilization is to try and see the farthest star in the universe. It's enough to say that their lot is not a pleasant one, rivaling that lived in the poorest of ejidos in neighboring Mexico.

And still they try. Still they go for romance. Still they fall for the fairy tale. Still they stay with a losing hand for the sake of the kids. Still they rise in the morning to go to work. Still they smile when they should cry. Still they willingly turn out the lights in the bedroom and do their sexual duty...

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