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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