Les Miserables...

"I will tell you this - one story kills me because it tells the truth about Tony Martinez - he is as bad and unethical as the rest of them..." - Blogger Bobby Wightman-Cervantes, speaking about the mayor.

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - I used to think this town, this town, was the one town in America run like some low-rent laundromat in the bad side of a Mexican town. That was a few years back. These days, my image of it has mellowed. There must be a good side to it, I tell myself whenever my mind sends me that way. No, there's been no great change here in the past 50 years, nothing anyone could look at and say, "Well, now..."

Brownsville remains a town unable to bridge into the 1980s. It is a stuck 33 rpm album playing the same two tunes it has always played: I, Me, Mine and Everybody's Somebody's Fool. That's it, and don't let that online buzz about a resurgence in downtown nightclubbing fool you. That is as much a mirage as is the idea that city government will do something for the oft-whipped citizenry. That hasn't happened in modern times. Nothing of note, anyway.

Politicians still gather and laugh among themselves at the way elections are run and won here. It is a smoke & mirrors undertaking fueled by dollars slipped into some old bag's purse as the days near the voting. How many of the city's better-known politicians know of that game? All of them. Not one is free of shame, free of the stench more often associated with teh Mexican towns across the Rio Grande.

You'll notice that Brownsville never takes its fights to the streets, never raises its voice to its elected officials, never does anything to turn the wagons around, to breathe new air. It is the petri dish for a kennel full of stomp-me humans. There is no move toward something better, not at City Hall and not in the schools. The bars are refuge for the has-beens and never-weres. One cold beer erases the pain, they shoot at each other while seated on broken-down bar stools, while making excuses, while noting their aches and pains, while telling tales of how they once had a plan, a plan no one endorsed.

That is Brownsville.

If seen as a waitress in a border bar, Brownsville would be the woman in the ragged nylon dress and strap-sandals, a pink blouse and too much makeup. Brownsville would smile the smile of a weary prostitute still believing she can ply her trade, even as her legs and arms and breasts betray her. Send in the shrimpers; they're only passing through. Love is relative, a litttle is better than nothing. It's one way to know you're alive.

Something happens when one thinks of the Mexican border. It all melts into one, both sides of the mess. The reason is obvious: It is one and the same. Those people are our people; our people are their people. Si, que tal? Como esta usted? We're okay over here. Still blowing it.

A few years ago, someone threw out the idea that Brownsville could've been so much more. It could have been a world-class seaport, a tourist destination for all world travelers, a French Quarter of the sort that New Orleans offers. Never happened. The town remains the best line in a sad ballad to failure. It is a song sung only on Sunday mornings, in local churches, where the congregation is told suffering is part of the journey to Heaven.

Suffer on Earth; find glory in the Kingdom of God.

They really fell for it in Brownsville...

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[Editor's Note:...Blogger Wightman-Cervantes, editor of BrownsvilleVoice.blogspot.com for many years, has ended his crusade against local corruption and apathy. His blog went dark Friday night...]