A Most Depressing Town

"It's us, man. We're near the bottom of the pile. Who do we blame? I blame our elected officials and our Rednecks..." - Melvin Ybarra, Resident

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - As he tells it, a high-throated wino approached writer Junior Bonner at a local bar and not only asked for a dollar, but he also asked that somebody drive an obituary he had written over to the offices of the newspaper.

"That's it for me," Bonner said the man said. "May as well call it a life. Ain't crap happenin' around here anyway. Tell them to use the black & white photo attached to the obit. It was taken in 1967 and I'm smilin' in the damned thing."

People die here, of course.

They get old and they get left behind, then discarded, then buried. A write-up in the Valley Morning Star is their last stab at wanting others to see them one last time. It's part of the journey, but, here, in the Land of Unfulfilled Dreams, an obituary is the best they can do for paying homage to a life. The newspaper carries them dutifully.

Bonner is on a story to expose the most depressing town in the Rio Grande Valley, and my vote goes to this one: Harlingen, Texas. If it had no high school football, the town of almost 70,000 love-starved denizens would be just another ugly weed patch on the road from all-dressed-up McAllen to vulgar Brownsville. That's the story here, an entire town waiting on its obituary.

So, what is it about Harlingen that drives residents of its many neighboring towns nuts? Is it the history of brazen racism? Is it the low-rent politics? Is it the annoying Winter Texans who flock here more than anywhere else in the tropical Valley? Is it the lack of "Big City Things," such as primo car washes or reliable dry cleaners or even half-assed minor league baseball?

What is it?

Something's in the air. You can cut it with a gangbanger's knife, is what our writer Ron Mexico says, perhaps too often. He was the victim of a mugging last year, when local thugs stole into a popular gym and made-off with Ron's clothes, leaving him a pink leotard-like outfit that can be seen in one of our sidebars on the left side of this page.

Is Mayor Chris Boswell boring? Does he contribute to the local ennui? Is it City Commissioner Jerry Prepejchal? Is it City Manager Carlos Yerena? Is it the multitude of insipid bloggers who are good at lobbing crap at others, but never step up to help this city move forward? Is it the location? Would Harlingen be better-off in Indiana? What is it? What's the problem?

What makes Harlingen the whipping boy of area mayors and cops? Why Harlingen? It has just as many goof-offs as pretentious Brownsville, doesn't it? You can see them there, sitting forlornly in local bars, toothing free toothpicks and waiting for the free botana of queso & chips. They all look like notorious blogger Juan J. Ortega, looking almost like walking tributes to the tamale, shorn of any ambition, of any idea that they could spring forth and offer the spectacular. It is a town begging to be invaded and brought to its freakin' knees.

Maybe Rio Hondo will go for it...

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Monday Night In The City

"The jig was up. And even as they screamed and bitched at each other, the bloggers were already out with the story..." - Jimmy Herrera, bartender

By RON MEXICO
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - They were whooping it up all across town. Pro football was in the air, but it was hard booze that electrified the surly crowds. No big revelation there; on any given day, it is beer and hard liquor that fuels this town. It is said that without beer, Harlingen would be The Vatican. It is the Number One cause for trouble in this struggling town of some 70,000 fun-starved souls. It's been years since anyone read about the spectacular. Alcoholics, and guys just driving around as if alcoholics, rule the local social roost.

A year ago, it was newsman Juan Montoya. The Brownsville blogger downrange known for journalism blows to the body spent his 90 days in jail after being busted for reckless driving and doing it under the influence. A bit closer to here, Rio Hondo City Administrator Hipolito Cabrera, no relation to Foster Brooks, is on the hot seat after news surfaced that he'd had a few DWIs on his record, but had left them off his job-seeking resume.

Then came Tyler Patton, the publisher of the under-achieving Valley Morning Star that seems to do its best to not cover the news here. Patton was busted, as well, after leaving a popular bar frequented by other local newshounds, one being the indefatigable Jerry Deal. Patton is on leave from his job, this after being flashed on the pages of his newspaper in the most unflattering way. Well, maybe next to being accused of fondling little girls. But it's a serious hit for Patton and the newspaper. Drinking and driving never mix. You throw a few cocktails down your throat and chase it with a few beers and, well, you start believing you're Parnelli Jones, or Evel Kneivel, a daredevil in the making.

Patton's fate is likely sealed, if Freedom Newsppaer's regional honcho, Olaf Frandsen, has his way. Frandsen is as unforgiving a boss as were Ghengis Khan and John Ehrlichman. Not that it should matter much to the Valley Morning Star. Its value to the community has sunk dramatically. Where once it chased legitimate stories to do with elected officials and their sexual affairs, it now waits on the annual influx of Winter Texans to fatten its subscription base. Cover the Hispanic community as a contributing factor? Ha ha ha. The Star would rather do anything but that.

So, let Tyler Patton sit things out.

Maybe he had a bad day at the office. Maybe he lost still-more advertising. Maybe the boys at the chamber of commerce, where he also does his buisness impulse, told him his enterprise has lost all steam and is no longer seen as a viable member. Maybe the editor told him the newspaper needed to get off its air-conditioned ass and do real journalism. Perhaps the staff marched in and told him to get his shit together. Or maybe he was pissed cause the Cowboys barely beat the Redskins on Monday Night Football.

Any of those things, and thousands of others, drive Valley men to drinking.

It's part of the culture, part of being so dispossessed as a region that booze is the only social salve for the area's forever-agonized masses. "Wanna get a cold one?" long-ago replaced "Get a job, yet?" as the principal question of the community's day...

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[Editor's Note:...Writer Ron Mexico admits that he likes a glass of red wine for breakfast, and that he chases it with his beloved pan dulce. "Un marranito," he says, proudly...]

The Perry Killer...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - He is now known as the candidate who humiliated and took down Country Rick Perry. A political loser himself, Rick Santorum, former congressman and U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, has been renewed in his longshot bid for the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nomination. It is a sure dramatic rise for a candidate who was thoroughly whipped following the Ames Caucus in Iowa a month ago.

But at the recent GOP candidates debate in Orlando, Florida, Santorum, a lawyer and the 53-year-old son of an Italian immigrant father and an Irish mother, arrived as if a pit bull ordered to maul Perry, the then-darling of the GOP.

Perry has not been the same since that night.

Santorum likely has no real shot at winning the nomination, but he may get credit as the one who took out the brash and blustery Texan who first sought to secede Texas from the United States and then decided to seek its presidency. In pro hockey, they would call Santorum the enforcer, the guy whose skills are lacking, but who is willing to punch-out the other team's villain. He has so far done an excellent job of beating on Perry.

Santorum charged after the stammering Perry on the issue of immigration and on Perry's ridiculous claim that the federal social security program is a "Ponzi" scheme. In machine-gun fashion, he loudly assailed Perry, who uncharacteristically appeared stunned, more like a chump than a champ.

Gary Bauer, one of the GOP's most influential of the Christian conservative leaders, said this about Santorum recently, "He has been impressive in the debates. Eventually one person will emerge as the alternative to Mitt Romney. I think Santorum could easily become that alternative, and many social conservatives would agree."

Still, Santorum was among the Republican debaters who said nothing when the Florida audience booed a Gay soldier shown asking a question via video from his base in Iraq. Santorum later said he got an inkling the booing was wrong, but was caught up in the moment. Bad news. Regret, however, is not something Republicans wear openly.

Santorum has bigger problems, himself.

He still carries the stigma of having been roundly beaten in his 2006 bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate. In that contest, he lost to Democrat Bob Casey, Jr. 59% to 41% - the largest margin of defeat for a senator since 1980. That's an astonishing whipping that came during the Bush Administration's wild rallying of GOP candidates.

So, who knows how much longer Rick Santorum goes in his effort to become the Republican Party's standard bearer against incumbent President Barack Obama.

But the lad should get all the credit he wants for exposing the flaws in Country Rick Perry...

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What Brown Does For Me

By JUNIOR BONNER
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - My current old lady is a young chick of twenty-six from Honduras, a spitfire of a woman with a sexy overbite who just can't get enough of anything. Anything, I tell you! She shops til she drops, buying tight jeans mostly. She eats and eats, Mexican food up the wazoo. And she can drink like any Port Isabel shrimper worth his weight in gold. Party? She's there in a flash. But what I like about her is that she loves me - this crazy, old, skinny cowboy from Combes.

I am a lucky guy.

But, then, brown-skinned women have always come easy for me. There was Maria from Harlingen, a daughter of the devil who would make love to me like a panther, but also cuss me out when I wasn't up to it. Hey, I'm 68 and not a bad lover, only I can't just get it busy without a little time to get into it. You know what I mean? Maybe not. Latin guys can get it up even when pumping gasoline or waiting in line at the post office. That's what I hear anyway. Who knows? My other galpal, Rosanna, once told me her ex-husband would get a hard-on in church, especially after taking the sacrament with that drink of wine.

So, anyway, as most of you who read my stuff here and previously at The Tribune, I was in Europe all of this past summer, just traipsing about and getting a nip here and there from those Scandinavian babes. They are lovely birdies, but nothing compared to my little Rio Grande Valley chicanitas. These women here know the score. Too much make-up and short shorts. They lap up to you to get what they want and then they can tell you to go to Hell without it meaning anydamnedthing at all. I do wish that Adam had run-up against a Latina in the Garden of Eden. Then, perhaps things would have gone differently for his lousy planet.

My girlfriend, Cilantra De la Torre, is here illegally. But I don't care. She's mine and that's that. Uncle Sam can go screw himself. Romance knows no borders; love knows no laws. Yeah, baby, what has Brown done for you? Ha ha ha.

I'm going out for some supplies later to day, to get stuff I need to re-do the mobile home's bathroom. Cilantra wants a bigger bathtub, one big enough for the two of us. Those short, stubby thighs just mesmerize me in the shower. I have to bend down, but I want to. You'd have to have a shot at her to understand. I'm not being a pervert here, just telling it like it is. She's my world and I don't give a damn about Rick Perry or about the mayor of Brownsville or about some suck-ass, amateur-hour annexation showdown in boring Harlingen. Small potatoes, as Dan Quayle would say about here.

I'm back in the Valley and, this time, I'm here solely for my Brown women.

Pass it on, Mamon...

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[Editor's Note: ...Writer Junior Bonner will eventually get down to the business of manning our Brownsville News Bureau. He just wanted to re-introduce himself with this piece...]

Tales From The Bunkhouse

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - Suddenly, all that crap flinty Rick Perry's been spewing on his roundabout way to the White House seems irrelevant, like the noisy crowing of a rooster without a henhouse, like the bluster of a rancher with no cattle, like the bragging of a closeted Gay man still talking about sexy, well-hipped babes.

Rick Perry has dropped dramatically from the short list of serious contenders for the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nomination. In one fell swoop during last Thursday's candidate debate in Orlando, Florida, Perry went from Darling to Dumbass of the GOP. What happened?

This was the candidate so many Republicans felt was "The One," that savior who could not only arrive with the confidence of a big, fat thug showing up at a Quinceanera, but could articulate all that is wrong with America and the governing Democratic Party.

Now, barely 44 days after he entered the contest, Perry looks like a rural chump who dared to want inclusion in a club for elites. Perry, a low-achieving graduate of Texas A&M, has made a mini-fortune as governor of Texas, but nowhere near the cash principal opponent Mitt Romney has in his personal wallet. Same for brains, apparently.

Perry stumbled and stammered his way through semi-tough questions asked of him during the debate about immigration and foreign policy. He is simply out of his mental element, a man able to dress the part, but never complete the spiffy image of a wordly gentleman. He is a farm boy from Paint Rock, Texas now clearly exhibiting his desire to be the poster boy for the Peter Principle, the one that says you rise to your level of incompetency. Perry couldn't carry a public school teacher's lunch pail, much less hope to gauge classroom competency, as he and his so-called conservative bunch like to do when looking for crap to throw on the state's public schools system. Sadly, or perhaps providentially, Perry has been exposed.

So much for an Aggie in the White House. My feeling on that is that if we were to ever consider an Aggie for president, that Aggie would have been John David Crow, the school's legendary halfback. Perry, a cheerleader at A&M, is no John David Crow.

It'll be interesting to see where he goes after his horrible performance at Thursday's debate. He simply blew it. An exploding balloon has not seen air sucked out of it as fast as air has been sucked out of Rick Perry's campaign. That money he's been attracting as a frontrunner for the nomination will dry-up faster than a brisket fart in a West Texas summer when his backers realize that they have bet on a losing horse.

But, well, he's an Aggie.

We're sure there are many good Aggies in Texas, but, dang it, I can't help but know that Texas A&M has just seceded from the Big 12 Conference and thrown its lot with the Southeastern Conference. What is it about that word and these Aggies? Secession is something Rick Perry threw out liberally during his Summer of Tea Party loving. He teased them with the idea that Texas could leave the United States. Or was he teasing? A&M wasn't teasing; they're gone from the Big 12. I dunno, I dunno. Maybe it is as some say; that, well, Perry started out as a Democrat and still retains a taste for that party, what with his support of the Dream Act and lower college tuition for children of undocumented Americans and his opposition to a border fence along the Mexican border.

It could be that Perry is perhaps seeking the wrong party's nomination.

But, then, he'd have had to take on another Harvard graduate in that one in President Obama.

Man, oh, man. Maybe it's true: Some cowboys can only dream of getting the gal and the horse at the end of the movie...

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El Marijuano...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - The very first thing you notice about Gary Johnson is that he seems folksy and perhaps too calm of a dude to be messing with national politics. He's the former governor of New Mexico whose face you first got to see in last Thursday's Republican Party presidential, debate in Orlando, Florida. He was the guy farthest to the left on the stage he shared with Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and five other lesser candidates.

Left is where Johnson belongs.

He is more a Libertarian than a Republican, even more-so than Ron Paul, also a candidate for the GOP's 2012 presidential nomination.

Johnson is a former construction handyman who birthed his own construction company in Albuquerque, New Mexico back when many in town where heading for the desert and toking a joint or two. He has never denied smoking it, and, in fact, is known about his lovely state as a guy who will light up when the mood hits him. That confidence always has been a part of Johnson's appeal. Unlike Rick Perry, Johnson does not hide under Tea Party skirts, nor does he usually shy away from offering his opinions.

I lived in New Mexico for two years a few beers back soon after Johnson left office in 2002, but his name forever came up as someone who would one day seek higher office. For the most part, his name was replaced on the front burner by that of Democrat Bill Richardson, who also became governor of the Land of Enchantment state. Richardson's star rose as Johnson's faded a bit.

But not much, because whenever the topic of marijuana and government came up in Santa Fe, the City Different, it was Johnson's philosophy that quickly entered the conversation. Marijuana, he says, is not as bad as is often portrayed by Republicans. His flirtation with it, however, has a sort of convenient angle. He injured his back while paragliding in Hawaii and, dang, there was a handy joint to soothe the pain.

"Rather than using painkillers, which I have used on occasion before, I did smoke pot, as a result of having broken my back, blowing out both of my knees, breaking ribs, really taking about three years to recover," Johnson says. Prescription painkillers, he adds, had caused him to suffer nasty side effects. Plus, the pain of withdrawing from the pills proved unbearable. As he explains it, "someone" who cared for him gave him marijuana to deal with the pain.

It's a believable tale, one you hear often from Hippies out West.

But what's refreshing in stodgy Republican circles is Johnson's unapologetic comments. He used marijuana and is okay with it. It's 2011, and a lot of Americans are coming to terms with their own peccadillos. Screw it, they are saying, I am what I am. For Republican Newt Gingrich, it is adultery that makes living worthwhile. For Johnson, it is a joint.

Who knows how far Johnson will go in this campaign? Being asked to the Florida debate was a plus. He'd been ignored during the first two. Johnson is no brash Perry, however. He is more of a Jon Huntsman-type, a candidate interested in speaking not with wild bluster, but with calmed-down common sense.

Country Rick Perry won't even address his Gay accusations; Johnson fields the marijuana-use question with the aplomb of an All-Star major league shortstop, gloving the hard grounders and taking care of business.

Like a man and not an Aggie, we should add...

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Romney's Night...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - Ah, those wild and crazy Republicans. They'll break their own hearts sooner or later. Throw a gang of lame candidates up on a stage for a velvet-glove debate and what do you get: No presidential timber. Jab at each other as if the best of high school nerds, one, the only woman on the stage, looking as if she's just come off a long date with the football team's backfield. One Black man doing his best to feel wanted. Boo a Gay soldier?

It was, as they say in boxing, a preliminary bout featuring amateurish nobodies.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is going nowhere in his bid to gain the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nomination. If ever a Back-40 candidate looked out of place in a national contest, it is Perry, who is fading with each passing debate. He stumbles on questions to do with foreign policy, with immigration and, when the opportunity to roast longshot opponent Rick Santorum on his anti-Gay soldier diatribe, Perry says nothing. The Texan who some say may be Gay took a pass on that softball, even as the crowd began to boo the poor soldier who had asked his question from the war zone via pre-recorded video.

These empty suits are the best the GOP can offer? Jeepers, where is heady Dan Quayle when you need him? Where's Spiro Agnew?

If anyone can claim victory in the latest candidate gathering, this one held last night in Orlando, Florida, that one may be former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. He is the only one who looks remotely presidential. Herman Cain, the sole African-American in the building, did not. Free-thinking Texas Congressman Ron Paul hasn't left the moon. Adulterer Newt Gingrich wants to fight the world. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is strictly vice-presidential material. Emotional Michele Bachmann, the pride of the dreadful Tea Party, is on the wrong bus. Bachmann is better suited for less-important, less-brainy battles. And debate newcomer Gary Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico, seemed out of sorts with the moment, crawling his words as if high on weed.

So, much was left to Romney and Perry.

Again, Perry assumed the position. He bent over when called on his ridiculous posturing in his book, mouthed a non-answer on a question to do with nuclear bombs and Pakistan and went all-out naked on the topic of immigration. The Texas Aggie, not exactly a brain in college, seemed disoriented when Easy Rick Santorum, a former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, assaulted him verbally on his immigration stance.

"I don't think you have a heart," Perry said lamely, as Santorum tore into Perry's support of tuition cuts at Texas universities for undocumented students. Santorum drew applause from the audience when he sank his tool deeper, noting that the problem with the Texas program is that it amounts to a taxpayer-funded subsidy of illegal immigration.

Standing alongside Perry, Romney could only smile.

Mitt Romney knows the tide is changing for Perry, a candidate in the fray only for the past 40 days and a candidate whose shine fades with every vacuous utterance he lobs into the winds. One wonders how he would do when debating that other crazed Texan, George W. Bush. Would Perry make Bush, Jr. look like JFK?

He made Romney look more presidential.

Romney is a bureaucrat at heart. His stint as governor was short - one term. He really made his name as the guy behind the 2002 Winter Olympics in his mother state of Utah. A millionaire several times over, Harvard Law graduate Romney looks to much like the Hamptons guy with a nice collection of expensive yacht boat shoes. Is he the answer to anything? How would he fare against smarter politicians such as New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, or against Rudy Giuliani? Would John McCain even take the stage against this horribly-weak field?

Republicans are an easy lot to rile. Throw them some red meat - anti-immigration crap and anti-President Obama lies and anti-Gay slurs - and you have them ready for air-conditioned laughter. They like to deride the poor, to damn public schools, to look at government and ask that it be destroyed...until wildfires and hurricanes torch and shred their belongings; then they are quick to seek that federal emergency declaration.

Hypocrites and military service-dodgers fill their rolls. They are Americans until tax time.

So, when the question surfaces about who won the debate or which of these guys is the answer to America's current malaise, well, the astute would argue that it would be none of the above. Perry as a national leader, as man who would represent you abroad? Insanity. Herman "999" Cain? An utter joke. Michele Bachmann? A ditz who would be over her head alongside the leader of, say, China, or even Mexico. Huntsman? He should have stayed as ambassador to the same China. Santorum? He was beaten in his most recent Senate campaign. Ron Paul? A Jeopardy! contestant on the wrong game show. The physically-eccentric Gingrich? Adultery written all across his grubby little, fat face. Gary Johnson? Artsy-fartsy New Mexico settles you down, perhaps too much. Romney? Just another Democrat, really.

In the end, it was Romney's night, however.

He seems to get a kick out of bitch-slapping the doltish Perry, of swatting him down as a big brother might swat down a little brother, of making Perry look too much like the rube that he is, of sort of knowing that Perry does not have the brains needed to win a political marathon...

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Big Mitt And Crazy Rick...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - Flinty Rick Perry marches into Orlando, Florida tonight to debate his Republican opponents in the race for the party's 2012 presidential nomination. He arrives much-whipped and in dire need of a convincing victory.

His position on social security benefits, however, may doom the hard-headed Aggie.

Florida is a senior citizen haven, and senior citizens used to receiving their monthly social security checks want nothing to do with anyone interested in messing with the check-delivery schedule. Perry is on record as calling the federal program a "ponzi scheme." That lingo, brash and blustery within the insipid Perry Camp, will not sell in the Sunshine State.

Already, pundits and others who follow national politics say Perry's showing will say much about the future of his Wild West campaign. Stumble and lose whatever edge he received when he bolted onto the scene 40 days ago. Get through it without seeing a mob of seniors storm the stage and rip his face off and, well, as they say here, it'll be "Git along, Lil Doggie" time for Slick Rick.

At last check, a double-digit lead Pery held over Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and the second-place candidate in the race, had been sliced in half. Still, he remains the frontrunner in a race many say is nothing more than a precursor to Perry's 2016 aspirations.

It is still early. The General Election is a year and two months away, yet Perry has managed to make his bid a win-lose proposition even before the race gets to the primary in South Carolina. He is not expected to win the Iowa Caucus vote in January, and he is not projected to win the New Hampshire primary ahead of South Carolina.

Florida is a key state in the Republican primary, and in the General Election.

To body-block the government's social security program would seem to be a bad move by any candidate. Senior citizens now number a sizable block of votes, and, as everyone always notes, seniors do vote, come rain or shine. Rick Perry does not like to back down, even from his crazier comments, such as secession from the union and wishy-washy stances on immigration, but he would be wise to re-frame his concerns for the workings of the social security program.

Ponzi won't sell in Florida.

Too many of the state's Jews were blindsided by Bernie Madoff in his Ponzi scheme, many losing entire fortunes. They remember, and they absolutely do not make the connection between the SSN and Madoff's criminal work Perry makes so cavalierly. Their numbers are huge, most of them retirees who have flooded-in to occupy the state's Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

No one is calling this race between Perry and Romney yet. The first turn is still up ahead and their dust is barely leaving a trace. Both gallop along, looking over their shoulders and seeing the likes of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and Ron Paul slowly falling farther and farther behind.

It's a two-horse race now, and all Perry's backers can do is hope he can rein-in his penchant for making idiotic statements...

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Death Of A Racist...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - It was the ugliest murder in modern-day Texas, a crime so horrific that trial juries wasted little time in sentencing the three racist to death. One of them, Lawrence Brewer, shown in prison photo above, dies this evening. There is no room for mercy, no chance of a commutation, nothing but Hell awaiting this animal.

To back up, 49-year-old James Byrd, an African-American, was on his way home along a backroad that took him to his hometown of Jasper, in East Texas, that June day in 1998. Three white men - Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer, and John King - thought they spotted an easy target, a Black man they believed needed to be punished. When Byrd asked the three for a lift, they happily obliged. But barely miles down the isolated road, they tied his hands and wrapped his ankles with a heavy logging chain before tossing off and then dragging Byrd behind their pick-up truck along the road's asphalt pavement.

Byrd was pulled for about two miles as the truck swerved from side to side, the three men yelling racist words and profanity at their victim. Slowly, Byrd's arms and legs came off, and then his head. They stopped the truck, unhooked the chain and sped away, leaving a trail of blood and body parts.

Berry was tried and received a life sentence, while King got the death penalty. King, however, is appealing the verdict. He remains in Death Row.

The 42-year-old Brewer is scheduled to be executed tonight at the state prison's Death Row in Huntsville, north of Houston. As is always the case, there will be those protesting the Death penalty outside the prison, and the news media will cover it as such. The execution, painless as it is, is a barbaric result to a barbaric act. But, this time, it is merited.

It is the ultimate punishment for Brewer.

It is justice...

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Battle For The Past...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

SAN BENITO, Texas - It's been yet another wild and wooly week for Rio Grande Valley military veterans. In nearby Harlingen, out blared the 17th verse of a musical cry for a hospital that would serve veterans exclusively. Here, in the hometown of frizzy-haired rock balladeer Freddy Fender, local veterans want their memorial to stand for anything but free speech.

They have banded and asked city leaders to ban protests and other congregations at the San Benito War Veterans Memorial, shown in photo above. It likely will not pass muster.

Military service is a strange undertaking in the home of the brave and the land of the free. Too many have died since the country's birth, some for noble reasons, but most for political ones. We won't debate the import of such action, but suffice it to say that war is Hell - during and apparently after. RGV vets are not shy abut seeking post-service benefits. Many, many of them apply for - and receive - every benefit authorized by the federal Veterans Administration, from medical care and drug prescriptions to pensions. It is not something to scoff at; veterans do extremely well these days.

Still, they find the spotlight, continuing to ask the state and Congress for a hospital that would presumably be painted in red, white & blue and avail a symphony of military marches within its wards and hallways. It would be nice, yet why is it that veterans elsewhere in Texas do not come across as being as greedy as Valley vets? There are VA clinics in most cities, and there are full-service hospitals in the metro areas, accessible to all vets. In most cases, the VA will pay gas mileage to vets who have to travel longer distances. And in the case of emergencies, the VA will authorize use of general hospitals for documentable illnesses, such as kidney problems. It's a fine time to be a veteran in this country.

Those who came before this wave, and we include veterans of the Vietnam Conflict, weren't as lucky. They served in combat and later came home without as much as a shot at college. VA clinics? They are a modern luxury. And, yes, it's true that many vets suffer tremendous illnesses during their later years, but so did those who came before them, and they did it without going to the news media and without coming across as whiners. Memorials? Trust me, there are enough across the land already.

Valley veterans would be wise to tone down their incessant need to be helped. Everybody is suffering in this sluggish economy now playing across the national map. A hospital in the RGV is not an urgent need. It simply is not.

As for the fight in San Benito, well, these same vets who want their memorial to stand for unanimous reverence must also know that the very protests they disdain are the essence of the freedom they fought to defend. City resident Joe Rodriguez, a former candidate for the city commission here, put it nicely when he said, "You can’t restrict political demonstrations in a public setting. It’s hallowed and sacred, but you can’t stop someone from protesting the war in Afghanistan. That’s free speech."

Precisely.

Seeking a city ordinance to stomp on free speech is laughable. It is a lawsuit in the making for the City of San Benito, one that will bring bad publicity and make laughingstocks of the city and the veterans involved.

A suggestion for these veterans: Undertake some benevolent work that will place you in a better light. Muster the troops and help the elderly with their lawns and roofs and vehicles. Gather up a squad and spend a morning cleaning trash along US 83, from Rio Grande City to Brownsville. Organize food drives for the poor, for invalid veterans especially.

In other words, do something...

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Legends Of The Fall...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - When they finally whipped Abilene this past Saturday, the boys playing for the Harlingen football Cardinals gained a needed out-of-the-Valley victory and they also got a second, perhaps more meaningful honor: a Top 25 ranking.

According to the respected people at TexasFootball.com, the Cardinals begin this week at No. 24, as they prepare to battle the always-tough Edinburg High Bobcats this coming weekend. For the team, and Coach Manny Gomez, it is the feather in the hat every Rio Grande Valley high school squad has dreamed of since that magical year of 1961, when the Donna Redskins beat a Quanah team to claim the Valley's only state championship. No RGV club has come close to repeating that achievement.

Gomez may be the coach to take the Cardinals to the next level, that being victories in bi-district play and gaining a spot in the finals against those dreaded teams from North Texas, the same teams who annually scoff at football played south of Austin.

It is a high time in this town of some 70,000 residents, a town where football quickly erases citizen discontent with its politicians and with current economic woes. It is said that when the Cardinals take the field, well, an entire citizenry goes to battle against any and all opponents. The Cardinals have swamped Corpus Christi Carroll (72-0), a fighting team from neighboring San Benito, and last weekend they climbed a mountain to beat proverbial powerhouse Abilene High School in double-overtime.

So, it was no surprise that, this morning, when the new rankings came out, Harlingen High was up there with the state's best. It's a long season, but Harlingen High School has only Valley teams left on its 2011 schedule, teams it has run roughshod over in the past few years.

Is this the magical year all over again? Is Cardinals QB Kevin Ledesma the new Luz Pedraza of Donna fame? That's the promise that the Cardinals carry onto the field each time they strap-on their helmets for Big Red.

These, then, are the latest 5A rankings:

1. Allen 3-0
2. Katy 3-0
3. DeSoto 4-0
4. Euless Trinity 4-0
5. Cibolo Steele 4-0
6. Dallas Skyline 3-0
7. Coppell 3-0
8. Arlington Martin 3-0
9. Southlake Carroll 3-0
10. Longview 3-1
11. Converse Judson 4-0
12. Pearland 2-1
13. GP North Shore 3-1
14. Cedar Hill 1-2
15. Denton Guyer 2-1
16. Lufkin 3-1
17. Klein Collins 3-0
18. Midland 4-0
19. Arlington Bowie 2-1
20. RR Westwood 4-0
21. Spring Dekaney 3-0
22. SA Brandeis 4-0
23. SA Warren 3-1
24. Harlingen 3-0
25. Abilene 2-2

San Antonio football fields have historically been cemeteries for Valley grid iron dreams. Numerous teams, from Sharyland, to Edinburg, to PSJA North, to Port Isabel have made the trip and have all met defeat at the hands of faster and bigger squads from northern schools.

Perhaps Harlingen High's win over Abilene at San Antonio's Heroes Stadium last Saturday night is an omen of what's to come this particular season...

- 30 -

Just Another Pretty Spot...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - The world knows of Sixth Street here like it knows of Beale Street in Memphis as a main drag for the blues and of Canyon Road as the path to the best art galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico. What you see in Austin is what you get, and, often, that is insanity, right there, right outside the booths in bars and restaurants up and down the city's most famous street.

Relatively new to the area's drinking and partying scene is a Tex-Mex eatery whose gaudy, blue-yellow sign, faces Sixth Street, there next door to Emo's nightclub. El Sol y La Luna stands proudly not more than two blocks west of I-35, and some distance from its previous location on South Congress.

The attraction is the food, of course, but it also sports a nice bar and a decent stage where nightly shows allow patrons to catch up with unique Spanish music or, during the South By Southwest annual music extravaganza, some hard-ass rock'n'roll. A peek at the eatery's excitable ceiling is worth the visit. Art flows like runaway tap water in Austin, is what they say - always the avant garde and always the excitement of something done just a little differently. Yep, keep Austin weird.

We settled in for a late-morning breakfast after picking a booth alongside a row of picture windows that faced Sixth Street. It was early in the day; people cut across the street at strange angles, some dressed as if part of some visiting circus act, glitter and bright fashion, boots thrown in just because it's Texas. Across town, at scenic Zilker Park, the masses were beginning to gather for Day Two of the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Huevos a la Mejicana for me, I said to the petite Hispanic waitress after Margaret opted for the chicken enchiladas.

"Chips, mas chips," I threw out some minutes later, wishing to sound All-Valley in the busy restaurant. Like my mother used to say to me when I was a boy, this waitress fired back with her own local line, "If you eat too many of those you're going to ruin your appetite." I nodded and she departed, returning minutes later with a second basket of the damned things. I'm something of a salsa expert, but only the red. Green salsa is a joke, better suited for cows and horses; those ranch superstars, or maybe even some lost, anachronistic pachuco in town for supplies. Whatever.

Anyway, its owners put it this way: "Now in its 16th year of business in Austin, El Sol y La Luna Restaurant is a local, Latina and lesbian-owned establishment." Okay. It was bound to happen. Americans are wearing their mores out in the open these days, so why shouldn't businesses?

The owner is a woman named Nilda de la Llata, who moved to Austin the mid-1980s and began her career as a restauranteur by working as a waitress.

Her approach is not unlike that of other Tex-Mex joints: she greets her customers as if greeting family, offers semi-decent grub and provides evening music ranging from the staple Mariachi stuff to soulful balladeers to Mana-style Spanish rock'n'roll. It's on the city's main party drag, so the colorful restaurant keeps party hours, closing at 2 Ayem, like the neighboring bars.

As for the food on this sun-splashed Saturday, well, it could have been a bit better. But it's salsa-drowned eggs and rice and beans and warm tortillas, so...

The Lesbian angle eludes me, perhaps because I have no way of judging that aspect of the restaurant. I mean, does it matter that the owner is Gay? The only other weird eatery in that league I recall is another Tex-Mex joint, this one in Dallas: Monica's Aca y Alla.

That owner, however, was a husky Hispanic man who liked to dress in women's clothing...

- 30 -

The Bum Deal...

"There has been no media word, nor word from manager Eddie Dennis (his cell phone is not taking calls), no word from the Wings' public relations person traveling with the team, nor is there any word on their whereabouts from the league, or Edmonton Capitals brass..." - Jerry Deal

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - You'd have to understand baseball fans. They get silly-in-love with their teams, elevating players to the Heavens and never saying never when things go badly. You could be down 11-0 in the bottom of the ninth inning and you'd still be there in your seat, cheering-on the club as if two outs and a 3-and-2 count against the last hometeam batter is nothing.

I'm that kind of a baseball fan, an all-out guy who will stand by his team, no matter what anyone else may say. But, and here's the key, I have to believe in my team and my team cannot let me down with any off-the-field shenanigans, like firing the manager without telling me what happened, or why it has to be done. My team cannot rip me off. It cannot be involved in anything that would bring scorn or shame. In exchange, I give my team my support, all of it.

Perhaps that's the kind of ballfan Harlingen blogger Jerry Deal is, as well. He'll go to the mat for his team, the weird Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings, only Deal apparently isn't as discriminating as I am. He has shielded that minor league team like Luca Brasi protected Don Corleone. No compromises, no criticism.

Now, in his latest post on MyLeaderNews.com, he feigns being contrite and actually writes about the WhiteWings being "victims," of some unknown plan by the North American Baseball League, a conspiracy maybe, aimed at cheating local fans at season's end. We say it is the fans who were victimized by this club and by the league.

No home games in the championship series? Ridiculous. So much for supporting the team all year long. That is too much like spending everything in your wallet on that date with a semi-attarctive woman and getting, well, nothing, not even a glance backward as she walks up the sidewalk and into her house, as if you're not even there. Disdain? Well, sure. Deal would like everyone to think that he, himself, was a victim (no return of phone calls this week, for an explanation, not even from his good buddy, the team manager Eddie Dennis). Talk about used & abused. Deal must feel like that guy in the expensive date. Nothing from Eddie Dennis, a guy Deal postured as not only a great field manager, but a good friend. Shocking.

No, the City of Harlingen got nothing in return for availing its taxpayer-owned baseball field. Not one title game? Nothing from what likely would have been a nice-revenue series. Deal writes not a word about that angle. The team has been victimized, is his morning sermon.

Harlingen residents should march on City Hall and lift Assistant City Manager Gabe Gonzalez on their shoulders. It was Gabe who wanted the WhiteWings gone earlier his year, when word got out that the team was late on its payment of utilities it used at the ballpark.

Gabe Gonzalez was dead-on. This team and this league delivered zip, zilcho, nada. Left to assess its role, Harlingen must acknowledge that the deal must be sweetened if this league is to use this ballpark again next year. That's what Blogger Jerry Deal should write next, his epic on a baseball season that never was about baseball, but was about milking a poor town of its few resources...

- 30 -

Dreams Of McAllen...

"Father expected a good deal of God. He didn't actually accuse God of inefficiency, but when he prayed his tone was loud and angry, like that of a dissatisfied guest in a carelessly managed hotel..." - Clarence Day, God and My Father

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

McALLEN, Texas - Manuel Torres had lived his life to the bone by the time he died that year, for the Torres family a year that became one to be most cherished and one to be damned. The old man had died while reaching down for a sun-baked water hose he used to water a jungle of unkempt plants in his weed-filled backyard. Sara Torres had passed five years earlier and the old man had never recovered from the loss of his loyal wife. They had been inseparable, through the good times and the bad, mostly bad.

And now his son, Hector, had come to the old, frame home that sat flanked by two craggy mesquite trees on the poor side of town to gather some of his father's belongings. The old man had lived a spartan life during his last few years, choosing to talk to birds that flew into his backyard and loose dogs he'd see when on his morning walks. He didn't talk much to anyone else, and his longest conversations usually came when Hector or his daughter Sofia stopped-in to check on him. They always found him sitting on the ancient rocking chair out on the front porch, his face not changing even as they walked up the sidewalk. There, at his feet, they'd see the old dog leash once the property of his dog, Paco, a German Shepherd who'd died the same year his wife had fallen to breast cancer.

"You okay, old man?" Hector would ask his dad.

A slow nod, the creaky rocking chair still moving on the porch's aging wooden floor.

"Brought you some milk and bread..."

An arm rose and Hector grabbed at his father's outstretched hand. It felt of brittle bone, skin barley discernible in the shake. Looking at it, Hector thought it looked too much like a rubber hose shriveling by the day, like a stem on a rose that was about to go from semi-fresh to a full-out rotting. You could see the small blue veins under a splattering of age spots, but barely. Hector cleared his throat while his father rocked and stared ahead. There was nothing moving up and down the street, no dogs or people walking by, no delivery trucks, nothing. What the old man stared at only he knew. Perhaps it was some little, insignificant thing grabbing his attention, like the falling chain-link fence across the street, or the same neighbor's rusting mailbox or maybe it was something way beyond that.

"Take your medicine?"

A shaky pointing to the floor, to a plastic container alongside his old shoe. Two of them, in fact.

"Well, I've gotta get going, Dad..."

Three-four measured nods, something to be offered as agreement. Minimal energy, some thought given to the words. Hector bent down to kiss his father on the forehead. The old man managed the tiniest of smiles, all I can give you, boy, all I've got left.

"Kids send their love. You know that, right?"

One last nod and then a soft-gargling of sorts that stood for, "I know they do..."

"I love you, Dad. Gotta run..."

The old man inhaled deeply, but said nothing.

Hector walked toward the droopy fence gate and then on to his shiny pickup...

- 30 -

Season Of Disgust...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - It's over, mercifully. See you next year, boys. This one is fading to black. Ballfans here can be excused for wondering the weird: What the Hell was that all about? Did someone in town anger the Dugout Gods? Why us? Why use us as part of the joke?

Those amazin' Rio Grande ValleyWings dropped the fifth and final game of the North American Baseball League's best-of-seven championship last night in Alberta, Canada. Edmonton Capitals 7, RGV WhiteWings 3. Say goodnight, Jerry.

What began earlier this year with the promise of good baseball ended up being a long inning of drama, strange moves and, finally, inglorious defeat. The Wings are coming home losers.

Five games in Canada, using nine borrowed players from the hated San Angelo Colts, did nothing but again paint the portrait of nothingness for a ballclub doing its damndest to play some semblance of pro ball. It isn't, of course. But, then, Valley fans came to know that firsthand.

A manager in nearby McAllen toiling for the Thunder was dismissed by the club midway through the season without comment from the league. At this level? Must've been something embarrassing to the McAllen Thunder and the NABL. We'll never know why ballyhooed manager Matt Stark, introduced as the new Casey Stengel ahead of the season, left the team.

The Southern Division pennant series between the WhiteWings and the Colts was another joke, with some scribes opining that the games stood the possibility of being tainted by umpires favoring the Colts. The Wings swept the series four games to none.

Then came the Canadian immigration people to say many of the RGV players would not be allowed entry into the country. The series needed to go on; the Wings grabbed the Colts' best players and off they went to moose country. It didn't matter, the mighty Wings had struck out.

And so it went, with local Harlingenites who saw something in the team crying about the need for a new stadium. Nevermind that the City of Harlingen had bent over to avail a field, to make sure electricity powered the field lights and the hair blowdryers for the players in the clubhouse. It was a bummer of a deal for Harlingen, and whether the city made any money off this minor league enterprise is anybody's guess. No one is talking at City Hall.

You can't blame them.

It's always best to simply let the losers slink out of town...

- 30 -

The War Wounds...

"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories..." - Law & Order

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - They collared and jailed a woman here the other day. Cops said she assaulted her husband, apparently after she caught ear of him talking about another woman. It happens here, perhaps all-too-often.

Only this time, and not that it is all that rare, the woman was an elected official, City Commissioner Jessica Tetreau-Kalifa, a novice at the game of politics, but a hearty woman at heart.

Breathless reporting following her arrest last Saturday has been all over the Journalism map. The newspaper here says she was at home on the phone with her 58-year-old husband, Arthur, when something weird happened. Commissioner Kalifa, shown in photo above, somehow stayed on the phone after the conversation had seemingly ended and overheard her husband and a friend talking about a woman. His line, it seems, had not gone dead after he'd said adieu to his missus. Bad form. She says she heard it all.

It wasn't long, say other reports, before he got home. There, another sordid episode of local spousal sparring moved into rougher words and, say police, then into the physical. Glasses were thrown, glass shards finding their way to the husband's face. The newspaper reported the commissioner then bolted for the bedroom, from where she called police to report the assault. Cops arrived and nosed around, saw bruisings on the husband's face and busted her on domestic violence charges. Later, the plot thickened and the commissioner asked police to note scratchings on her chest. Sometime after that, someone at PeeDee decided they looked very much like self-inflicted nail-scratchings. No sale, wrote the screenwriter.

Tetreau-Kalifa was booked.

The wide-angle camera panned the town and someone said they heard the lady commissioner note that the female arresting officer had been a high school rival and that the arrest had much to do with the officer having it in for Ms. Tetreau-Kalifa. That chicken-on-chicken angle has yet to be confirmed. Observers, however, say the incident is not unlike any of a thousand other such assaults that take place monthly in this wild border town home to some 140,000 documented and undocumented residents. No mention was made of alcohol or drugs being part of this particular husband-wife melee.

It'll be some time before the loose ends are strung together, but things were not looking good for the recently-elected commissioner, owner & operator, it is said, of a car wash business. And who knows how much interest this story will generate in a town used to some of the most mind-numbing, barbaric spousal attacks? The newspaper was doing its part to keep the scandal alive, publishing the distressing police mug as soon as it was able. Story-hungry bloggers quickly jumped in, a few taking full advantage of the situation and making fun of the Kalifa family's foibles.

It was Commissioner Tetreau-Kalifa this time. But, then, a few months back it was the mayor being busted on charges of driving while intoxicated, and before that a city commissioner falling victim to the same. It's a wild ride for anyone wishing to call Brownsville home. Much fun & games comes with the adventure, yet, invariably, it's a mug shot for even the most so-called upstanding citizens.

Epilogue: As we've said a time or two before, and this does not necessarily go to this lady commissioner's case, but it does have to be said that it is unusual to die of shame...

- 30 -

The Woman From La Feria

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

KYLE, Texas - One of my ruthless professors in college would grab student papers at the beginning of class, laugh his way back to his desk and use three little words to answer those who openly expressed their agony about his always-tough assignments: "Writing is fighting."

And so it is.

I have morphed into this walking stick figure who bathes early, looks for black coffee and either the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal to help set my bearings for the day. Sometimes I am inspired to write a comment on someone's blog, more to educate than to please myself. The number of misinformed people in this country grows by the day. We seem to have bred a generation of idiots and fed, perhaps too well, an earlier generation of hate-filled slobs. I mean mental slobs, people whose glasses are stained not by crap one could easily remove, but my bigotry and scorn. Yes, they, too, type-away, not that it is writing, however.

At present, my mind is taken by my next novel, yet another look at the Texas-Mexico border. In the past, my work about my homeland has centered on men and bars and men and men being men. This one is a bit more ranging, titled: The Mexican Wife.

It is at this early stage a tale of love and disgust, of bad love and of the best kind of love. Is it possible in Deep South Texas? Can one find a good, loyal woman in that menudo-fueled miasma? The story begins as if it is entirely possible. Where it goes as it fills its middle belly and sets sail for the tale's finale is the essence of my present writing journey. I make no apologies for my work, nor do I like to explain the stories. That's only fair to the reader, who must be given his shot at making what he/she wants to make of the work.

I don't really fight it anymore, although there are days when I'd rather be out on the golf course or out and about in the little Hill Country towns that dot the landscape around Weird Austin. Why fight it? It'll be what it's gonna be and that'll be that, until the next salvo of chapters forms yet another literary boat shoe. Life is daily. You can't live life by the week, although I'd favor that. It would be a dramatic change and my feeling is that the ragged world we live in needs something huge to help waking up and to make it worthwhile.

So, about writing: It's either in your blood, or it isn't.

Methods of approach are many. You can lock yourself in a bedroom (we have converted one into what is now my lovely office, with a view of goofy, yet quaint FM 150!), or you can check yourself into a cheap motel that comes with a saggy bed, noisy shower and thin walls and go about hashing out whatever grabs your mind. The work will stand on its own, and there is no need ever to ask yourself whether it's worth the time and effort. It always is, because it's your contribution to the masses, your glance at your subject and your decision to take it this way or that, your primal scream.

The Mexican Wife challenges me in a new way. I am often criticized for being too critical of Mexicans and of my Rio Grande Valley upbringing. I laugh it off; I'm Mexican! Writing takes no sides. It is loyal to itself. My view of the Valley is not anybody else's. I know that, and I'm okay with it. What I see in it, I see. My only regret is that I did not blog in Bethlehem back when it meant something to be there. I'd have blogged from the manger and posted a play-by-play of the fateful evening's doings. And I'd have taken road trips to Jericho to check that out. I'm not an atheist, but I have many doubts. Video of these Great Books events is what I need, although much of that comes from my trained cynicism as a Journalist, the one who knows peoiple will tell you anydamnedthing to make themselves look good.

So, I write on, somehow knowing that we may finish the work, or we may ditch it. Something new may pop-in and steal the day. A road trip could always change the point-of-view, items on the list of priorities, feed you a line you buy, meet someone who throws a strong image on your brain, like a sassy waitress or a well-read motel maid or some second-tier actress in a western town looking for her own raison d'etre. Life is funny that way.

It's part of the deal writers make with their subjects. Giving up control is okay. Allowing a new mood is part of it. Granting space is, as well. That country that is the writer's mind has no flag or boundaries; it is fully available and willing to let you waltz in and throw shit at the inhabitants.

It's Hell, but I can't wait to get back there...

- 30 -

Bring Me The Wife Of...

"Some people go crazy with porn. Why, I do not know. Perhaps it's some shame born hundreds of years ago, when the body was much uglier..." - Patrick Alcatraz

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - It's been a few weeks since the local Internet waves were rid of cheap pornography, leading the populace to rejoice and return to the pages of their ragged Bibles, to the comfort of the words that say it is not good to covet the neighbor's wife, gamble, or play with yourself. Of course, the local citizenry still does its life impulse, their adulterous adventures as much a part of the region's culture as is breathing.

So, why the angst over a few photos of naked men and women? Why was the once-popular blog El Rocinante damned from wall-to-wall here? Why did it cause consternation from top to bottom in a town so needy of reality? Sex is there, and sex is good, no?

The photograph shown above this story is about the work of New York Artist John Currin. He has his own ideas about why the naked human body, of the female especially, brings such disdain. He explains the photo this way: "this completely archaic pose, like the three witches or something. I think of them as Danish, because of the thinning blond hair and the gaps between the teeth. They’re not pretty enough to be Swedes. Oh, and I want to do a still-life down there in the lower right corner. I don’t really know where this picture is going yet, but I think it’s going to work."

Simple and non-offending comments, it would seem. No reason to go nuts over an artistic display of breasts and crotch. Just a lovely representation of women, is what I would say. They do shop and play with themselves. That, we all know by now. So, what's the big deal?

No further explanation of why El Rocinante, edited by our ally Jerry McHale, went the way of the 25-cent taco earlier this year. It was here one day, and then it wasn't. Gone were the excitable female nudes, the provocative sexual poses, the clear idea that, yes, Maria, sex is making its rounds across this paper doll town and it'll soon be your turn, sweetheart.

McHale, himself, was perhaps too silent about the demise of his porno-laced blog. Today, there is nothing for the hangdog-faced locals, other than the pornography of bad grammar and horrendous thinking in writing that can only be described as amateurish and lacking.

Porno and the border never have been friends.

Resident often choose to damn it and not welcome it. Some say it is the strong connection to the bondage-happy Catholic Church whose doctrine says porno is bad for the soul and accountable in the beyond. Of course, that is the worst of refined bullshit. A life is tempered by such ridiculous dogma, and we also know that when engaged in properly, sex is one wild and fun-filled ride. You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss. Okay, that's from some old song by some sex-starved singer whose name we forget. A leg is just a leg.

Answers rarely come when one poses questions about the border's take on porno. That's really because no one dares ask the question as to why. Is a photo or drawing so against the word of God that it must be stomped-on and burned? Is the body a despicable thing to hide and not exhibit. As one of our old friends here used to say, "Quien sobby?"

We fully believe that El Rocinante should storm back and fill-in that white space on the faded canvas that is this love-starved town of some 140,000 legal and undocumented residents. It's part of the literature of the harsh geography.

And, besides, someone famous once wrote that there can be no literature without sex.

There are those who say Brownsville needs better public servants and better streets and better jobs and better clothing and better educated denizens and better ideas for the future and better men. But, really, it needs better literature.

Says Currin: "Pornography is so associated with photography, and so dependent on the idea that the camera doesn’t intercede between you and the subject. One motive of mine is to see if I could make this clearly debased and unbeautiful thing become beautiful in a painting.”

There you go...

- 30 -

A Man And His Snacks...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - As I write today's story, this one, there is a bag of animal crackers just to the left of my laptop. In front, in the cubby holes of my antique desk are three candy bars: a 3 Musketeers, a PayDay and a Hershey's almond. Next to that are my fruit adventure tic tacs, and alongside that four small boxes of Sun Maid raisins. Behind me, on a small carved-wood coffee table is a bottle of my beloved Shiraz wine, there in front of my fold-out futon. Off to the side, on a bookshelf, rests a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. In the small trash can alongside my desk is a bag that once held a healthy amount of walnuts.

It's my day's fuel, what I need to get work done.

Snacks, from nuts to fruit to ice cream to cookies, set the tone for my mornings. I couldn't get crap done without any of them. And, aside from my sleep, it is my work on here that rounds out my days these days. You could say I'm a lucky guy. I reach inside my animal crackers bag and draw a zebra, a monkey, a buffalo and a hippo. Tasty stuff! Hmmmmm.

So, what is it about snacks and the human experience? Most people think they are bad for you, that too many sugar cookies equal too much sugar and that too much sugar leads to horrible things such as diabetes and iron-poor blood. Who knows? I've been a champion snacker all of my life, and, well, I seem to be okay, still full of energy and still wishing to raise Hell.

A trusted college friend once told me to eat raisins instead of candy, but then another friend told me that raisins contain a lot of sugar. Same for Ketchup; it has little tomato but a load of sugars. Blueberries also find their way to my desk, sometimes in vanilla ice cream, with walnuts just because. I find it a super snack. Throw in a good story to write and, honeybuns, don't bug me until dinner is served.

I think it started when I was a kid. My early years - one to 10 - were largely awful years during which I often was sick of something or another. My hospital record still lives somewhere with lengthy notations about serious stuff and semi-serious moments. Conversely, my adult years have been relatively free of illness, other than a horrible episode with my kidneys in the 1990s that led to an operation. I remember it well. When I asked my doctor if any ideas of penis enlargement had gone out the window, he said, "No, you still have one good kidney, and most people can live a healthy life with that one, if you take care of yourself." I never did enlarge it; it's more than I probably deserved.

Yeah, being human is living a flawed existence. You get X-amount of years and then comes the exit, often without grace. I hate my skeleton, but that's a story my friends and family have grown weary of hearing from me. The entire body operation is woeful, from the two-lung design to the essence of bowels. You'd think the creator would have had a better final product. The human body is a failed experiment; it is akin to throwaway consumer products -organs with a short shelf life and a bag to be utilized while alive, but to be disposed of when the time comes. I used to use a phrase that said most bad people are nothing but "skin and seven holes," when annoyed. It's true, but we rarely look at our bodies as anything other than either handsome or pretty or ugly and eccentric.

Dietitians will tell you that some things you eat can make you ugly. To much cheese, is what I say, but some of these people scoff at that. Alcohol is bad for the skin. Tamales will bulk you up faster than a pregnancy bulks-up women. The intestines are fragile personalities. They hate the idea of menudo, cause those, too, are someone else's intestines. I hate menudo, as much as I hate casseroles and porridge. Feet hate dirt. Arms and legs seem sad. The poor ass is, except for rare moments, wholly utilitarian, like a sewer line. But it's also true that you can make yourself sick wondering about foods and the good and bad in them.

I'm sticking with my animal crackers...

- 30 -

Showdown In Pig City...

"You should pass this jobs plan right away..." - President Barack Obama

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas -Until Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers launched his first pass shortly after 8 p.m. last night, the week had been filled with strange and crazy politics. It was a night for wondering about the upcoming National Football League season and about the very existence of the country.

The Packers did well, whipping the scrappy New Orleans Saints 43-34 in the league's inaugural game.

Miles to the east, President Barack Obama did his best a bit earlier in the evening to shake the heads of a few Republicans that just can't seem to bring themslves to do something positive for the struggling country.

Obama, a Democrat in the third year of his term, addressed Congress with the main idea of his speech being his desire to float a plan calling for $447 billion in tax cuts and government spending to boost the nation’s lagging economic recovery. Bridges and roads and schools would be built; workers would be hired.

It was an okay speech, under the circumstances.

The president currently oversees a wildly-divided land. His party is pretty much comatose and the opposition is flinging red meat at the antsy masses. What's a nation to do when its representatives go insular and openly say they are for us and not for you? It will sink, that's what.

And that is why 18 million Americans are still in the sack this Ayem, Americans with no job and nowhere to go get one. It is a damned shame and, from the perspective of the unemployed, it does have to be said that it is unusual to die of shame. So, they suffer the malaise brought on by a Congress fighting itself for power.

The president's speech was a bit better than those slobs sitting in the Republican aisles deserved. They have opposed every measure aimed at helping stir the economy in moves that smack of partisan politics.

One thing did bug me about Obama's speech. He referenced Republican President Abraham Lincoln and his struggles during the American Civil War. That was a fair, but slightly skewed correlation.

Lincoln had his problems financing the war, but he did not have assholes from the South to deal with in making decisions to move the country against the pro-slavery clowns fighting for the ill-omened Confederacy...

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The Raw and The Cooked

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - Never mind Michele Bachmann. She's gone. Same for Herman Cain and Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Jon Huntsman may be positioning himself for the vice-presidency. while Ron Paul may be on the next capsule to the moon.

It's all about Mitt Romney and Rick Perry now.

Last night's Republican Party debate at the Reagan Library in California did one thing: it winnowed the field of crazies seeking the GOP's 2012 presidential nomination. Only one other Republican personality can turn this into a bigger circus: the Alaskan hillbilly Sarah Palin. She wasn't there last night and rumors had it she was over at Reagan's gravesite, seeking advice on how to go forward with her Pollyanna act.

For now, Mitt Romney has the savage-minded Perry to deal with.

And while adulterer Newt Gingrich dreamed of asking the press to quit asking questions simply to make Republicans fight each other, Romney sandbagged Perry at every opportunity.

"It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years today you're paying into a program that's going to be there," Perry said perhaps too-boldly about the nation's Social Security program. "Anybody that's for the status quo with Social Security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids, and it's not right."

Romney let go with a line that seemed to have been written much earlier and had been rehearsed for hours over in Hollywood. He said: "You can't say that to tens of millions of Americans who live on Social Security and those who have lived on it. Our nominee has to be someone who…isn't committed to abolishing Social Security, but who is committed to saving Social Security."

At that, Perry could only smirk the hundredth of such smirks he offered a gathering of fat Republicans seated under the shadow of a ridiculous jetliner viewers were told had once served as Air Force One for the peripatetic Reagan. The Texas governor, who had a day earlier been to the scene of raging wildfires in the Lone Star State's Bastrop County, seemed at ease in sparring with the former Massachusetts governor he has quickly replaced as his party's frontrunner for the nomination.

Much work is left, but it was a hot-cold beginning for the glib Perry.

He may not believe in science as it relates to global warming and he may wish to bring sleepless nights for the millions of Americans who need and receive their monthly social security checks, but if last night's performance is any indication, Perry will likely not back down from those two positions. Taking on seniors may not work for him, however. Perry has to go through Florida to win the nomination, and that Ponzi thing will not work there.

In rapid fashion, he has accused the director of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, of being a major part of the country's lousy economy and suggested Bernanke would be whipped silly in Texas and now he has said the Social Security Administration is a criminal operation (Charles Ponzi was a Boston criminal who defrauded his investor clients in the same manner that Bernard Madoff later took his investment ruse of paying clients with new-investor funds to much higher levels, leading to stunning rip-offs and his eventual recent arrest).

American voters seem to be ready for change. President Barack Obama, a Democrat elected in 2008, will address the country's horrendous unemployment problem in a speech scheduled for tonight ahead of the Packers-Saints NFL tussle in Green Bay. Noise is coming at him from every corner of the ragged Republican world and he can only hope that Rick Perry's campaign will eventually be as hollow as the gutted Boeing 707 jet hanging from the ceiling of that gaudy Reagan Library.

Most pundits gauging this first GOP debate awarded Perry a passing grade, while others said his brash words against Social Security and against science largely dooms him with the general election voters. Perry, after all, could only muster a D in economics while at Texas A&M, his graduation marred by the fact that his 2.1 Grade Point Average barely got him his degree in Animal Science - ironic in that he seems to have it for science in general.

Is he up for the grueling haul that is a party presidential nomination?

Who knows?

He got a C in gym class...

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The Cruel Joke...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - There's a baseball team on its way to Canada representing this oft-whipped border town, but it's not the same squad local fans supported all season. Talk about a strange twist in the story. The Rio Grande Valley Whitewings of the obscure North American Baseball League have unloaded a pack of foreigners and loaded-up the team with players from their hated rivals, the dreaded San Angelo Colts - a team they whipped mercilessly last week in the run for the league's Southern Division pennant.

It is, of course, minor league baseball, and this particular newfangled league has made a name for itself in the weirdness side of entertainment. It hired disgraced major leaguer Jose Canseco, who now manages the league's pitiful Yuma (Az.) Scorpions, and sanctioned Lady Gaga Night last Memorial Day. It lost one of its star managers, Matt Stark of the McAllen Thunder, halfway into the season amid rumors of something or another.

Now comes this queer bombshell: many of the close-knit WhiteWings squad could not travel to Canada for the championship series because of immigration issues. Or as the league itself put it in a press release: "Due to the Canada Border Service Agency’s (CBSA) policy, all non-US citizens on the WhiteWings’ roster were not permitted to cross the Canadian border, forcing several roster changes. Overall, nine original WhiteWings players will not play in the championship series against the Edmonton Capitals." Nine! Wow!

WhiteWings Manager Eddie Dennis, shown in photo above, and no relation to Joe Torre, took the news in stride, opting to speak glowingly about the new players that were added to his team. "We lost some good players, but these new players really add to the team. We add a lot of depth and some really good power in our lineup now. I can’t wait for the series to start," he said, without laughing.

The new WhiteWings, all members of the San Angelo Colts, joining the team were identified as Cory Patton, Daryl Jones, Landon Camp, Logan Williamson, Chandler Barnard and Brian Henschel. Jones was the league's homerun king. Patton and Camp finished second and fifth. The trio is not shabby, accounting for 77 homeruns, although homeruns are a common sight at these low-level games.

Another addition, thrower Logan Williamson, led the league in strikeouts.

Pitcher Henschel also has played for the same Colts, amassing 34 career wins for the WhiteWings main rival. Now, for this so-called championship series, he will be a Rio Grande Valley WhiteWing. Ridiculous and pathetic.

WhiteWing favorites not making the trip they dreamed of all year long are closer Edgar Martinez, who led the league in saves with 22. Others whose names are known to Valley fans, also not going to Edmonton, are Alexander Concepcion, Edgar Trejo, Wander Perez, Luis Chirinos, Francisco Santana and Welington Dotel. As the league out it, coldly: All are citizens of the Dominican Republic or Venezuela.

So, what exactly is this - an All-Star Game?

One thing is certain. It is hard to take this league and its low level of play seriously.

We know. We know. We're not ignoring that bizarre story by local blogger and tireless WhiteWings booster Jerry Deal in which he bemoaned the possibility that the Southern Division pennant series between the WhiteWings and the Colts might have been rigged by an umpiring crew favoring San Angelo. The WhiteWings swept the series in four forgettable games.

Yeah, to us it was just the set-up line for the ultimate joke...

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Last Bottle Of Salsa...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - One of those starched-shirt Eastern varmints walked into town a few weeks back to survey the local culture. He was armed with notebooks and tape recorders, and he wanted to look into the entire cornucopia that is employment and its consequences in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. His name is Paul Osterman, an economist at the prestigious M.I.T. Sloan School of Management. It was not the first time the Valley was being studied. This time, however, it had all to do with jobs and illnesses.

Osterman gathered his notes after countless interviews and visits here and there, and then he issued a report that was both alarming and predictable. His conclusion: Valley residents work cheaply and they get sick too-often.

Specifically, the report noted that the median wage for adults in the Valley between 2005 and 2008 was an astonishingly-low $8.14 an hour. And, he went on, one in every four workers earned less than $6.19 an hour. Osterman was drawing from statistics gathered by the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas that said the per capita income spanning the Valley's two prinicpal metropolitan areas - Brownsville and McAllen - ranked lowest and second-lowest in the country.

Osterman further notes that he interviewed a wide range of locals, including priests, operators of medical clinics, school principals and four focus groups of RGV residents, teenagers included. His principal finding: All residents characterized their lives as being that of scraping by, living from paycheck-to-paycheck and fearing job loss would equal homelessness.

The Valley's children drew a harsh review, as well. Osterman's study showed too many school-age kids are latchkey children; that is, they come home to no adult supervision because parents are at work. In other cases, he found that many children are deposited with relatives on a merry-go-round basis that has them with staying with aunts, uncles and grandparents in an effort to save the family on expensive childcare. Plus, those same children are watching "too much TV," the report added.

Economic strain apparently has Valleyites selectively choosing which bills to pay, opting to delay paying one in favor of paying another. Interestingly, Osterman writes he noticed some residents study the collection habits of certain companies and play the "deferred payment game;" that is, they wait until the very last possible day to pay some bills. Much of this, he adds, contributes to reasons that strain marriages. Teenagers in church groups often asked priests about the value of schooling when it's only low-paying jobs they have upon graduation. In other words, why waste your time in school for a $6.19-an-hour job.

About what ails the Valley, Osterman said his interviews with doctors at various clinics yielded this distressing situation: Many, many patients are suffering from anxiety and depression, and children are falling victim to Type 2 diabetes, an illness that is a direct result of a family's inability to buy needed medicines.

The Valley is not alone in suffering the pain of the nation's strugging economy. Across the country, one in five adults work in jobs that pay them poverty-level wages. Osterman looks at economic trends and worries that unemployed Americans have given up, have stopped looking for work or stopped dreaming of better days and lives.

There is no "Culture of Poverty" in the RGV, he concludes. What is hard to overcome is the region's historic low-wage economy, a lingering situation he says is corrosive and continues to arrive with tragic consequences...

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