Romancing McAllen...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
The Paz Files

McALLEN, Texas - For the last few years, the downtown business district here has been an unabashed All-Mexico, All-The-Time welcome mat, a literal embracing of the neighboring country's culture. Shops geared toward the Mexican trade dominate buildings where once Anglo-McAllen traded. Today's Main Street looks very much like the old, calmer Reynosa, Mexico of the 1980s and early 1990s. Once proud stores such as Woolworth and Terry Farris and JC Penney which occupied prime real estate on the city's main drag have been replaced by electronic shops, bridal outlets and discount clothing stores that are seemingly frequented only by shoppers from Mexico.

There is Gilberto's on 15th Street near the new bus station, and there's Hollywood Fashions up toward the intersection of Austin Street. The yellow-splashed La Mordida Mexican Restaurant is two doors east, not far from a money exchange business. On a recent Saturday afternoon, downtown McAllen looked very much like downtown Monterrey. The hustle and bustle of Mexican shoppers jabbering with each other as they made their way past stores blaring Mexcian music is as much a part of the scenery as are the many vehicles sporting Mexican license plates.

It's an occupation of sorts for the City of Palms. McAllen has opened its arms as wide as it can open them to welcome all Mexican trade. At the corner of 15th and Austin streets, a vacant building is being offered for lease. The realtor's sign notes that the building is "in the Entertainment District," and the metal being used to frame a new front door overhang says, "Arco Metal. Hecho en Mexico." Made in Mexico. That's right, and likely paid with income generated from the numerous Mexican shoppers.

Soon, it appears, it will be yet another of the entertainment district's many bars, clubs and eateries. Indeed, it is impossible to move about McAllen without sensing that you're among moving crowds of Mexican nationals in their country. They're, well, everywhere, at the mall, the movies, the restaurants, the car dealerships, the health clubs, the tennis courts, the spas and, yeah, the Botox clinics. In exchange for throwing the border door wide-open for them, McAllen receives hefty sales tax revenues other Rio Grande Valley communities can only dream about.

Is McAllen just the lucky city in the RGV? Or has McAllen, unlike Harlingen or Brownsville gone all-out to take the lead in boosting its economy with cash coming in from the south. Mexico is going through Drug Cartel hell, and many Mexicans are not only driving across the river to get away from the fear and danger, but also to outright relocate. McAllen's population is listed as 106,000 on the city limits signs. On any given day, it swells by more than 40,000. Saturday is a business gangbusters day at La Plaza Mall on South 10th Street, where the Mexican shopper mingles with locals.

Downtown, it is largely the Mexican crowd. Few locals shop the Main Street stores, and fewer even know of the action at the bus terminal, where locals using that sort of transportation go to buy a ticket that'll take them to San Antonio and Mexicans a ticket on a bus bound for San Luis Potosi. The spacious bus station lobby is a veritable scene out of a bus terminal in any large Mexican city.

Flinty, mustachioed men in straw hats, wearing ostrich-skin boots and matching belts funnel in and out all day. Physically-eccentric women in tight jeans and hefty bottoms drag their kids to the ticket counter, arriving to pay the fare with a string of questions. Near the snack store on the side of the station facing Austin Street, a woman wearing flip-flops adorned with the Chivas futbol logo grabs a pastry, a bottle of water, and five Lotto tickets.

I marvel at the ant-like movement inside the terminal, marvel because it is a sort of organized arriving parade of humanity. It is the counter dealing in tickets to Mexico that is busiest, far outworking the one for Greyhound buses headed north, in the opposite direction.

That McAllen has opened its arms for all-things-Mexico is no longer in doubt. Mayor Richard Cortez speaks positively of the historic relationship at every opportunity. Mexican citizens in town is nothing new. The city's history on that is clear: It is what it is. End of discussion. Indeed, the Mexican flag has joined those of Texas, Canada and the U.S. on the four flapoles in front of the bus station.

Nothing wrong with that. Clashes of culture happen elsewhere. Here, it is an arranged marriage that seems to be working...

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