Vignettes of The Week...

"This blessed plot, this earth,
this realm, this England..."
- Shakespeare, Richard II

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - We're sitting at this bar when all Hell breaks loose. Some woman has burst in and beelined straight to her man, grabbed him by the hair and has slapped him silly while shouting obscenities in Spanish. "Pendejo!" she is saying again. The man, presumably her husband, has been standing alongside a cantinera, a woman younger than his wife and quite a bit prettier, like a lot prettier. "Eh, Eh!" the husband says in his defense in somewhat slurred speech that goes against the spirit of the cantina. "Leave me alone, woman." His words bounce off the floor and the other men in the cheap joint begin laughing. "Hablame en espanol, desgraciado!" his wife goes on, still beating him about the head and face. The man stumbles while trying to get out of the bar's foot railing and then says, "I'm gonna fuck you up when we get home." The laughter grows, enough to raise the false ceiling. "Callate, cabron!" the wife says in reply.

It is poor, little Brownsville. Language here is not only awful grammatically, but it comes at you in that oft-abused Spanglish, favorite form of communication for the proletariat. So it is with some wonderment that we learn of a language crisis in this bordertown. It seems one candidate for a justice of the peace slot is criticizing another's accent when speaking in English - Spanish accent.

This town is - what? - 90 percent Mexican and Mexican-Americans, and this is a fight? Hijo de sus pinche peras podridas, vatos! Take me home, ese. Ya parenle, que you are embarrassing me. Simon, dude. Tu! You speak like a pocho! Not me. Naranjas. Nel. Agarramela. Hanna High School, buey. Class of '92. Go ahead an make me a plate of tacos, mi amor. I just got paid at H-E-B. Soy de Bronsvil! Y que. Wassup, guera? Ah, language. It'll break your heart. Creemelo...

In Harlingen, the story is the city's bailout of the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings semi-pro basebl team. In debt to the tune of $100,000 at the end of last season, the Dallas-owned team is said to have made good on half of the amount, but still owes $50,000 it must pay before next season's Opening day. Welfare baseball, is what some town residents are calling it, correctly. What Harlingen is doing subsidizing low-rent, minor league baseball is the question some in town don't even want to think about. The city's lazy bloggers, usually a crowing bunch, have been surprisingly silent on the issue. One is legendary Valley Morning Star editor Jerry Deal, who should have jumped on this story long ago, but who can't because he works for the league in which the WhiteWings play. The other two bloggers don't know squat about sports, or how to write about the business end of it. Harlingen is a poor community, a town where some residents feed themselves by attending this & that civic function where food is availed free of charge. Baseball? You'd think city leaders would have better heads on their shoulders. They don't seem to. Instead, they keep details about the WhiteWings mess to themselves, perhaps thinking that city residents don't know the difference between a jock strap and the rubber on the pitcher's mound. Que lastima. As they might say about that in Brownsville downrange, "Waz zappenin', Harleeenchen?"...

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