Bad Nerves In Fat City...

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes.
Some kind of high powered mutant never even
considered for mass production. Too weird to
live, and too rare to die..."
― Hunter S. Thompson

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - By sundown, it'll be four primaries down and the dawning of a forced march to next summer for the Republican Party. Aboard that rudderless sailboat will be the billionaire Mitt Romney and, it appears, the southern adulterer Newt Gingrich, each fully believing a victory against President Barack Obama in November is possible.

Not this cycle, boys.

If anything, the GOP's candidates for its presidential nomination have struck out for boredom, not one catching the electrifying spark that propelled Democrat Obama to the White House in 2008. For non-Republican America, this one is an exercise in watching grown men crying themselves to sleep. Romney is doing his best. The former Massachusetts governor, son of a Mormon family that birthed him in Mexico, is now singing the national anthem at all his campaign stops. Gingrich, a two-time loser in marriage and an expert at enriching himself off the public trough, is banking on a single Las Vegas casino mogul to fuel his expensive campaign. These are the two frontrunners for the Republican Party's flag.

A step behind them is former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, who lost his re-election bid by a whopping 18 percentage points, and Libertarian Ron Paul, an anachronistic candidate with visions of 1963 America.

It for a reason that the White House sleeps nicely these days. President Obama must be laughing, knowing that a Romney win in his party's contest will throw him up against a man whose health care plan in Massachusetts was the embryo for the president's national plan. If it's the insipid Gingrich, the president has a fat windbag with so much baggage that his targets will be 50 feet across. No, this cycle's candidates from the Grand Old Party do not inspire anyone, other than the small tent of Redneck voters forever quick to hate. America awaits, but America knows the Democratic president will be back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue this Fall.

When Obama chased the prize, he had George W. Bush to play against. These Republicans, try as they may to paint the president as a bad president, do not have such ammo. Obama's successes are there: saving the economy from a virtual Depression left behind by Bush, Jr., killing Osama Bin Laden when Bush, Jr. said the terrorist mastermind was "out of my mind," ending the costly Iraq invasion/war that drained billions from the national treasury and blew the treasury's deficit skyhigh - all Republican Bush, Jr.'s doings.

There is a reason why the Republicans Party does not wheel out George W. Bush to push its candidates. Bush is a serious negative, one still as powerfula s it was at the tail-end of his service. The hits on the federal budget wrought by Bush, Jr.'s administration, have yet to be totaled. This is known: his cronies, Halliburton and the oil industry as a whole, made out like gangsters. He didn't fare badly either, translating his White House days into a veritable financial windfall. Not bad for a West Texas oilman who was dead broke only two years before he ran for governor of Texas, when his father got him a seat on the board of Dallas-based Harken Energy, a post that quickly earned him $600,000 in shares, which he used to buy 1 percent of the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Today, Bush, Jr. lives in a stately home in a ritzy section of North Dallas.

Money is central for Republicans. They chase it for themselves. It is not a sin in a capitalistic society, but, in political definition, it is the single clearest difference between Democrats and Republicans. A look back at modern history reveals little, if any, Republican action that benefitted the poor and, lately, the Middle Class. Republican Bob Dole is credited with brainstorming the national food stamps program, but he did it as an aside to earmarks on a bill that helped his state gain expensive projects paid for by federal funding. And even at that, these Republican Party candidates now on the campaign rarely go a day without blaming Obama for the millions of Americans availing themselves of food stamps.

For Mitt Romney, a man whose investments earn him a reported $57,000 a day, food stamps likely is nothing more than a talking point. Romney hasn't worked in 10 years, since leaving his Bain Capital, a company he started using El Salvadoran wealth and a company that came to be known as a job eliminator. He now lives off residual income from that enterprise. He could care less about the program, or about the Americans who need it to feed their families - the larger portion of them being Whites. Aside from his adultery, Newt Gingrich forgets he was forced out as Speaker of the House of Representatives for a number of ethics violations - forced out by his own party. It cost him $300,000 in fines. But he's the one for some Republicans, the savior, the future.

Barack Obama may not have been what voters in 2008 hoped for, and he may not have accomplished all he wanted thanks to a recalcitrant, Republican-led House, but he's got one thing going for him that the others don't: He's clean...

- 30 -

The Brownsville Syndrome...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - There it was a few weeks ago in a story coming out of Brownsville in the Rio Grande Valley along the Mexican border: One Hispanic candidate for a justice of the peace office asking about another's ability to speak and understand English. In Brownsville, Texas? Hijole, Dude!

Well, the story has moved west, to the tiny bordertown of San Luis, Arizona, where a candidate for the city council has been knocked off the ballot because of her English skills, or, really, the lack of them.

As Angelina Cabrera, shown on the witness stand in photo above, sees it, who really knows about English anymore? The university professors? The journalists? The Rednecks? Who speaks the best English in America? She wonders.

"When he took my right to be on the ballot he took away the right of the people who want to vote for me," Cabrera said in a recent interview, one she conducted in Spanish, about a judge's ruling that her English is not good enough for anyone wishing to hold public office.

As with the fray in Brownsville, she was fingered by another Hispanic, Juan Carlos Escamilla, the mayor of San Luis. He told reporters he was concerned that Cabrera might not have the proper grasp of the language for the job. Escamilla responded by filing a lawsuit in December that asked a court to determine whether her English skills qualified her under state law to run for the council seat.

And, also like in Brownsville, those who support her say she is speaking the English of the community, however lousy it may be. Many of her constituents, she noted, have the same grasp of English as she does; that is, a woeful one. Questions about her handling of the language led to a court hearing to determine whether Cabrera spoke English well enough to be able to run for office. The ruling was that she did not.

At issue is this: Exactly how much English do you have to understand to run for a political office? And who defines proficient? The hearing's judge in her case determined you need to know more English than Cabrera was able to demonstrate. Still, she insisted she's fluent enough to serve her community.

"I think my English is good enough to hold public office in San Luis, Arizona," she told the press. "I am not going to help (at the White House). I will be helping here."

When she says that her English is good enough for San Luis, Ms. Cabrera raises a point that is central to the debate about her language skills. In San Luis, 87% of residents speak a language other than English in their home and 98.7% are of Hispanic origin, according to 2010 U.S. Census data. Most of the resident, by all accounts, speak in English and in Spanish. When in the comfort of friends and family, they'll speak whatever language they want to speak.

So, what's next?

Has the Hispanic population in the U.S. reached such heights that it will mock its own community? And should little bordertowns like San Luis, Arizona and Brownsville, Texas bend to the national curve? They don't do it in most other aspects of life, so why do it on this issue?

Language is communication. Do we really need Shakespeare's English along the Mexican border? You don't hear that learned English along the Texas coast, an area home to Redneck Texans whose command of English is, well, not commanding at all. The Arizona mess will settle itself out. At a time during this national election cycle when some would wish to make English the official language of the nation, well, it's somewhat funny that the people of Brownsville and San Luis settle under the cultural umbrella and say "Eh!" to the rest of the population.

English, as with all other languages, will fit in somewhere for those living along the Mexican border. That's the way it's been for years and years, and that's the way it'll be forever...

- 30 -

Caldo Del Cielo, Part II...

"They say everything can be replaced,
They say every distance is not near..."
- Nina Simone, I Shall Be Released

By RUDOLF VON BULOW
The Paz Files

BOCA GRANDE, Texas - He lay face-down on the taco stand, a hot tortilla in his hand. That was the photo taken by the Boca Grande Herald photographer, a skinny, frizzy and Afro-haired guy whose work dominated the front page. El Alcalde was dead, but the photographer, perhaps wanting to, but unable to do it, had not included the knife in the mayor's back in the frame. By noon, the bordertown was abuzz, with a sprinkling of facts, loads of rumors and innuendo as to who did it and why. At the corner of all downtown intersections, young Mexican boys screamed the sensational unfolding of the day's news.

Something was up. Someone had sent a bloody message.

El Alcalde, a philandering slob, had nonetheless been liked by some in town, irrespective of his penchant for drinking, for being arrested while driving drunk and for chasing the town's young ladies. One of the bronze-skinned beauties had been routed from a closet in his office at City Hall by his first wife, the one that now worked at the U.S. Post Office, handling money orders bound for Mexico. The knife had been a dull one, said one policeman at the scene. Too bad for El Alcalde; a dull knife is no way to be stabbed. He'd gasped when the blade cut through his shoulder blades, said a woman manning the taco stand. And then he'd blurted out an obscenity before his head fell on the half-gone plate of Tacos de Trompo. The Big Haired employee had grabbed her cellphone and dialed the emergency number. "What?!" she'd heard someone say, before she told them the mayor had a knife in his fat back.

The rain had washed away the blood by the time the television reporters arrived. That evening, the news on TV had it that the killer may have been a man believed to have been seeing the mayor's wife on the side. The side of the road, the side of the bed and the side of her body, mused an onlooker at the murder scene.

Laughter chased the story, for El Alcalde was more than just the mayor. He was a local celebrity and everyone knew that those were the people to laugh at, to mock.

On the Blogs, the killing was sensationalized even more. One blogger offered to host a wake at a Blues bar, where he said the action would reflect the mayor's manmountain addiction to young breasts. Another said such a barbaric act would never have taken place in his native Seattle, where not even calamitous snow was something to be feared. Yet another blogger blamed the county district attorney just for the sake of stirring unrest.

At home, Clara Hernandez-Hernandez, a woman who had met the mayor the night before and bedded him at a Central Boulevard motel, tested her brain for a motive, a reason. El Alcalde had treated her well, given her $200 for her sexual performance and promised more would come her way. She'd been heading home from work, from the maquiladora, when she'd heard of his murder. It was uncharted emotional waters for her. No one she'd made love to had been killed like this. El Alcalde was in his 60s and she thought his age had something to do with her thinking in those terms. All of her lovers had been in her age-range, the 30s. Suddenly, she felt dirty for having undressed alongside the old man, looked at him with feigned affection and worked her midsection as if for real. The afternoon sun would be a killer. Already, the temperature was in the low-100s. For sure. Humidity rising. The price of hamburger meat at the H-E-B almost $4 a pound. Crows flew freely across the harsh geography.

"Que pasa con ese pinche mundo?" she asked photos of JFK, The Pope and the Virgin of Guadalupe hanging over the couch in her living room. "Que hare yo, mi Dios?"

Radio news reports were saying El Alcalde's funeral mass would be a private affair...

- 30 -

Return of Junior Bonner...

"From the rocking of the cradle
to the rolling of the hearse
the going up was worth the coming down..."
- Kristofferson, The Pilgrim

By JUNIOR BONNER
The Paz Files

COMBES, Texas - What ah hears in town 'bout me is no great shakes. I always take a shine to a good rumor, lak I do to a bar full of good weemin. Ah think you know what ahm sayin' at you, you Internet sodbusters. Yeah, ahm doin' okay. Fiddlin' muhself to sleep, drinkin' a bit and, sho'nuff, wonderin' where old Cylantra went. That woman was mighty fine about this time of the day. Ya know, when the day's almost done and the sunset is right 'bout appearin' in the western sky, over toward Borneo. Ah enjoyed muh Cylantra, yep.

But it's a new day, son. Got muhself a new set of wheels, that black beauty you see under the title of this hear Blog. Yessireeee, that's an El Camino - the damned ride of champeeens. Ya hear me! Not jes 'nybody owns a car lak that baby, no, sir. Ah got it from a guy who used to act in Hollywood movies, dude ah met in New Mexico when ah tried breakin' into cowboy movies. Man's name is Norman Tom, a real jumpy fella who said he wuz gettin' too old for that car and needed one of those Gay SUVs. Those veeeeeee-hicles ain't for men. SUV's for weemin! A man needs a real set of wheels. Standard, like my El Camino.

Got it for 13 Big Ones, and that was a steal! Lookit. Look at it, boys! Why, it makes my heart cry jes lookin' at it. Drivin' it is one pointed boot joy, if ya knows what ahm sayin' at you.

Plus, ah also got a new mobile home. Thar it is in the picture above my name on this here story. Beaut, ain't it? Comes 'quipped with lin-o-leum floor and a sink in tha kitchen big 'nuff for a family. Got me cold and hot water, a shower that's sorta small, but I can lean over to rinse muh face. No biggie. Ah had worse in the Army back in '68, man. Sheeeeeeeeee-it, ya kiddin; me, son? Only thang make it better'n what ah got is for Cylantra ta join me in a bath. But lak I said ah don't know where she is. Heard in the bars in Harlingen that she'd run-off with some other hombre, a thin Mexikan with a white belt da same color as his boots. If she's 'round, ah'll spot her. Ah know that woman's smell and iffa she's in da same grocery store ahm in, well, ah'll know it. A man gets close to a woman he loves. Cylantra was muh sun and muh moon.

Ah know, ah know. Ah failed her. Ah tangled with another woman and she had all the rat to kick muh ass out into the alley. She did that, didn't she? Ha ha ha.

In any case, ahm bar-hoppin' again, so ah'll see you Batos in town.

Ammo shuffle on down to the conveeeeenience store and buy me a pouch of that Bugler...

- 30 -

Letter From Llano...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

LLANO, Texas - The weekly newspaper is full of news: tours at the ancient jail have been nixed by engineers worried about a roof collapse, a community salute to first responders, and the touching story about a city vendor who did a job without getting approval and now wonders if he'll ever get paid. It's the little things that move the ground in Texas's small towns. A happy-go-lucky crowd of just a tad over 3,000 call this town home.

But it shakes its own trees enough to give everyone the idea that things may be slow, but they're never boring. Llano, located about 70 miles northwest of Austin on Highway 71, has two competitive newspapers, the Llano County Journal and the Llano News, which crows it has been the hometown newspaper for 183 years. It is the more staid version of local news. It's front page this week carried the buzz of a story headlined: "Llano Elementary School Names Interim Principal."

In the Journal, that story about the vendor, a local security business owner by the name of Bode Barker, had the county judge, Wayne Brascom, asking commissioner's court to pay the man. Barker, argued the other commissioners, undertook the work without getting what is equal to gold in smalltown government transactions: a purchase order.

Barker's Cher-Tex Communications installed cameras at several county communications towers needed, he said about discussions he'd had with county employees, to prevent vandalism. He billed the county a little more than $4,000 for the work he did last month.

Discussion at the commissioner's court meeting was country as country could be.

As published in the Journal, the issue unfolded like this, after County Judge Brascom asked that Barker be paid:

"Do I hear a second?" Brascom said.

When no commissioner seconded the motion, Brascom expressed his displeasure.

"Can I ask why there is no second?" Brascom asked again.

"I'll second it so that we can get on with an up-or-down vote," Commissioner Johnnie Heck threw out.

Brascom's request went unheeded and the vendor was not paid. According to the newspaper, Barker's bill will enter the bureaucratic pipeline, with Barker told he'd have to again meet with county employees to set the matter straight, to re-inforce the guideline that all county expenditures needed that purchase order before any work could be undertaken.

In smalltown towns, rules and regulations magnify. And $4,000 in tiny Llano is four grand, no small amount to sneeze at during a struggling economy. Interestingly, the "Llano County jail Log" published by the Journal shows a sprinkling of arrests to do with credit card abuse/fraud and the passing of hot checks. Non-payment of child support and public intoxication gets their share of listings in the log.

On a sunny Friday, Llano is a quiet town. Not much going on at the city square with the ornate courthouse as centerpiece. Diners were few at The Acme Cafe & Grill, a converted dry goods store on the square charming square. It's been the property of Maurie and Jim Beasley since 2004.

"Maurie Kay grew up on a farm, in a little bitty town called Fred," read the notes on its menu, "...just a spit'n distance from Louisiana, where pick'n peas, shuck'n corn and peel'n shrimp were all national pastimes. Maurie Kay learned how to cook from a slew of relatives that believed food was the main attraction. With Cajun aunts, Italian uncles, Alabama cousins, a reunion was a time for catching up and sharing recipes."

It's a cute cafe, with wooden floors and a high ceiling, but the food is nothing to make you drive in every weekend. Prices stay in the $7 and $8 range per plate, nothing spectacular. Chuck Wagon Chili Pie will set you back a mere $5.29, a slice of pecan pie is only $2.99.

It'll sell you those desserts, but, as the menu instructs: "Ask about our whole pies and cakes...24-hour notice required..."

- 30 -

Day Outing: Llano, Texas...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

LLANO, Texas - We're expected at Cooper's Barbeque here for lunch. It's one of those Smalltown, Texas restaurants with a stellar regional reputation. Great brisket, killer ranch beans, super real fries. Ice tea to drown with. It's been a wicked week with that Tuesday storm that knocked a few fences and trees down, but the morning has broken bright and sunny, so we're out and about. Lake Buchanan awaits a few miles down State Highway 29.

The map shows a generous sprinkling of little towns all around Austin, from Lockhart to Blanco to Marble Falls - each with its own stake on the best of country living. Think I'll switch my usual Oldies channel on Sirius Radio to C&W today. Just one day. Too much of that stuff and, well, too many brain cells'll die.

So, enjoy your day.

Put Newt Gingrich's crapola aside over the weekend. Get out. Eat well, make friends. It's early in the year, too early to get too serious about any damned thing. The Super Bowl is next weekend and it's still a bit before you have to get cracking on those federal income taxes.

Life is a long, long series of decisions, some more serious than others. It's cool and the Big Blue sky is clear of clouds. Lucky spin of the planet. Nothing to do but enjoy it. Next week will be here soon enough...

- 30 -

A Blogger Sells Out...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - The news blogger Jerry Deal likes to say he has a quick trigger on issues affecting his beloved hometown, that when an elected officials blows it, he is there to make note of it; that when city leaders make mistakes, like not paying their taxes, he is there to bring it to light; that when the wrong resident rises to seek a position at City Hall, he is there to sink that campaign.

It's his journalism training, he'll tell everybody.

But a funny thing happened to veteran newsman Deal last week, when bad news surfaced in the local daily about his beloved Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings, a team he represents as an employee of the North American Baseball League. In a Sunday edition write-up, the Valley Morning Star gave light to a $100,000 debt owed the city by the Dallas-based owners of the semi-pro ballclub. Then, additional news came that the team had paid $50,000 in installments and had agreed to pay the remainder before the start of the coming season.

Jerry Deal, labeled an "excitable blogger" by another Harlingen blog, said nothing, wrote nothing. He distanced himself from the story, fending off comment by blaming a bad, malfunctioning home computer. By week's end, Deal, a former editor of the Valley Morning Star, was back at his keyboard, initially posting his corny "Community Briefs" before going hard after Mayor Chris Boswell and his State of the City Address. Deal is of the opinion that the mayor does not have the citizenry in mind when he holds the function at the private Rotary Club, where a lesser crowd can attend, and where attendees are charged $12 for the evening meal. Deal wrote nothing about what the address centered on, choosing to attack and use journlism's traditional "what about the poor?" angle.

Not that Deal is off-base.

But the exact same argument can be made about the WhiteWings enterprise. How can such a lax business relationship help the city? When taxpayers bankroll private enterprise, the loser always is the taxpayer. Would the WhiteWings be back for more this coming season if the city sued them in court for full payment? The answer here is a resounding no. We've said it before: Jerry Deal does his own community a disservice when he looks the other way on this relationship. It is, to date, a flawed arrangement if the citizenry has to bail out the ballclub. Deal is taking a beating on the blog http://www.myharlingennews.blogspot.com/, as he should be. He has abandoned true journalism in the case of the WhiteWings, and, worse than that, he thinks he's still fair and objective.

Harlingen needs many things, but it doesn't need a slow-paying baseball team any knowledgable fan would easily label as Amateur Hour. The city is paying a high price for availing its taxpayer-owned ballpark and ensuring utilities services for the team's games. Jerry Deal is paying a much higher price: his credibility.

But, then again, maybe he knows he's sold-out, and maybe he knows he did it long ago...

- 30 -

Bad Omen in Chili's Case...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The entire police department here has been placed on alert following the assassination of eccentric Det. Chili Perez. And now, just when Perez's story seemed to be surfacing, a new wrinkle in the mystery has this bordertown wondering about its neighbor to the south.

For some reason, authorities in Matamoros, Mexico, only a 9-iron from downtown Brownsville, have cleared out the bar where Chili Perez spent his last hours and drank his last Cuba Libre. The Mocambo Bar, located just west of the city's fabled mercado, is shown in photo above. Matamoros cops are not saying anything and the bar's owner has not been identified. In Brownsville, the chief of police said she has lodged a complaint with the Mexican government, noting that she had asked her Matamoros counterpart to secure the scene. Chili Perez was shot in the head as he walked a sidewalk on his way to his car.

Perez, a detective known for his unorthodox manner of solving cases, had vanished roughly two weeks ago after being named lead detective in the murder of local college student Louise Herrera. Police said they have no leads on Perez's killer, but an officer familiar with the case who spoke under anonymity said this, "There was a small, metal German swastika left at the scene of Chili's killing. You make whatever you wish of that."

The German angle may be meaningful in light of the fact that the man Louise Herrera had accused of repeatedly raping her is Paz Files writer Rudolf Von Bulow, a descendant of a senior Third Reich officer. That tidbit, however, is playing lesser fiddle to the clearing of the Mexican bar, action many Brownsville policemen said is a clear sign of a conspiracy between the Mexican government and remnants of the Nazi regime.

Said a gruff-voiced police captain, "If Chili was drinking at that bar, and we think he was, cause he always liked his Cuba Libre at sundown, well, there should've been loads of evidence, like from bar patrons who may have seen something, or maybe broken furniture from a fight, that sort of stuff."

The Mocambo Bar has its own squirrely history. It was long a favorite watering hole of alcohol-fueled Brownsville press types who frequented the joint while hiding from their editors. Indeed, most Brownsville journalists memorized the songs on the bar's dusty, corner jukebox.

"If that's where Chili Perez bought it, and they close the bar forever, well, that's a second tragedy," said sensationalist news blogger Jerry McHale. "I always played B-17 on the jukebox. Yeah, an old Bob Seger tune about night moves. Chili Perez knew the best bars in Matamoros. Hell, he was known as Bad Chili from one side of Mata to the other!"

According to McHale, the tile floor inside the bar made it easier to cumbia.

"I've danced at El Siete Mares and at the 1-2-3 Lounge, but the Mocambo did something to you," the outlaw blogger threw out during a cellphone interview with this reporter. "I was Vicente Fernandez, Jose Jose and Rigo Tovar rolled into one when I was at The Mocambo! In fact, one of the bartenders there, Modesto, a heavyset guy they called El Mendigo, taught me to play acoustic guitar."

Late yesterday, the bar's colorful exterior was being painted over, its yellow-red marquee covered in jet-black paint...

- 30 -

America's Coach...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - It's taken me awhile to put the death of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno in perspective. Paterno was a good coach, but a better man. His death this past Sunday again brought up the messy imbroglio concerning one of his assistant, the alleged child abuser Joe Sandusky. In the end, Paterno's record as the winningest coach in major college football will live alongside the stain of Sandusky's actions, one involving alleged sex with a young boy in the shower of the school's athletic complex. No coach can possibly overcome such an incident. But Joe Paterno was a big man on campus, elevating the school's football program to the elite and donating millions for the library and student scholarships.

His tireless work for Penn State will be part of his legacy. And then there's that other fabled coach - Vincent Thomas Lombardi, the true epitomy of football coaching in America.

Lombardi coached during the country's tough, 1960s civil rights era, an epoch when most college and pro players were white. Still, he is credited with holding hard to idea that all players, good ones, especially, were welcome in Green Bay, where he coached the Packers, a team he inherited as losers and, within three years, made them world champions. Lombardi's era included the first Super Bowl, a game in which his Packers drubbed the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 behind QB Bart Starr and stalwarts such as Paul Hornung, Max McGee, Jimmy Taylor and Willie Wood. He would go on to compile a spectacular 105–35–6 record as head coach, and never suffer a losing season. The Packers won three consecutive NFL championships — in 1965, 1966, and 1967 - an accomplishment seen only once before in the history of the National Football League. In all, he coached the Packers to championships in five of his seven seasons as head coach.

Lombardi's popularity, like Paterno's during the good days, soared beyond the game. President John F. Kennedy sought him out to coach Army, but Lombardi respectfully declined stayed true to the Pack. When lineman Lionel Aldrige, a Black man, brought his white girlfriend to Green Bay, Lombardi told the team he would not stand for any prejudice, and then he delivered the same message to Green Bay businesses, a position that brought heat from the league, but didn't sway Lombardi to change his mind.

In 1968, Richard M. Nixon considered Lombardi as a vice-presidential running mate. Lombardi declined, noting that he was a "Kennedy Democrat."

His death in 1970 of cancer was mourned in the same manner as the passing of a head of state, his native New York turning out to line streets when his hearse arrived and departed St. Patrick's Cathedral. Roads leading the procession into New Jersey, where he was buried, were lined by onlookers the entire route, many of them waving the American flag.

Vince Lombardi didn't have it sweet all his life. He experienced rejection as a young coach. When he applied for the head coaching job at Wake Forest, he was told no Italian would ever get the job. He worked his way up from a high school coach to assistantships with Army, under the legendary Red Blaik, and with the NY Giants. When he lost out on the head coaching job with New York, he accepted an offer with upstart - and perennial loser - Green Bay. It would take only three years for Lombardi to turn things around in northern Wisconsin.

Green Bay quickly became Titletown, U.S.A. and pastoral Lambeau Field became the feared Frozen Tundra that killed the dreams of visiting teams, including the Dallas Cowboys, who lost one championship there in what came to be known as the Ice Bowl.

Vince Lombardi had his share of laurels, but the biggest one came later, when the NFL named its Super Bowl trophy after him. The Lombardi Trophy symbolizes football supremacy, but Vince Lombardi was much more than simply a football man...

- 30 -

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?"...

- 30 -

Caldo Del Cielo, Chapt. 1...

"Divided, we flounder,
United we flounder..."
- Leonides Paredes

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
The Paz Files

BOCA GRANDE, Texas - Estela Monteagudo took the witness stand and let it all out: Yes, she had been the mayor's mistress and, yes, she had tied up his wife and, yes, she had pulled tight on the rope around her neck and, yes, she and El Alcalde had made passionate love afterward. "There is nothing to be ashamed of," she told the jury. "It's how this town operates. The mayor would tell me he'd scratch my back if I scratched his balls. I was in no position to complain."

She wasn't; that was true. Estela Monteagudo had seen here sister, Elena, shot and killed by one of her lovers, a man who told police he'd simply tired of her ceaseless requests for child support. Estela had not been in such a fix, but hers was a story with a load of similarities. She was more than ready to spill the beans on El Alcalde. Ten weeks in the can did that to a woman, she said, looking straight at the jury foreman, a balding Mexican with a fat mustache she knew as Balde "El Panteon" Hernandez, caretaker of the local cemetery. Balde's father, she also knew, had led a gang of middle-aged drug pushers until his arrest ten years earlier. The Boca Grande Herald had nicknamed him El Mocoso because of a strange penchant for cleaning his nostrils with the sleeves of his shirts.

Balde Hernandez would convict her in a second. She knew that. But this morning, it was not Estela on trial. She was answering questions from the prosecutor looking to hang the mayor for the murder of his wife. Estela had seen her charges dropped after agreeing to finger El Alcalde. Now, as the questions came, she fielded each of them after taking a deep breadth, after thinking things over a bit and after she'd stare at the mayor seated quietly at the defense table.

How did the day unfold?

"He bought the rope at Walmart and dropped it off at my house and said he'd pick me up at sundown," she went on. "Then, when we got to his house, he went in and turned all the lights out. I thought I heard a scream and then I went into the house and both of us tackled the bitch and then he put her face-down while I looped the rope around her neck."

Did she say anything during all this, the prosecutor asked.

"No, she just looked stupid," Estela said in reply. "You know, like she knew she was about to, uh, kick the bucket."

Gasps that rose from people seated in the courtroom made her take a hand and run it through her blonde hair. Estela's hair was really dark brown, but the mayor, she had said in an interview with a local blogger, liked her to go blondie.

"And what were you going to get for your troubles, Miss Monteagudo?" the prosecutor asked next. "Did the mayor promise you anything."

Estela could stil remember his words, of praise and of loyalty.

"He said he would put me up for city commissioner and that he would pay women to collect votes for me," she answered. "He said I would win, no question about it. He said he knew enough people in town to guarantee it, and that I would become rich through my new connections."

"What were doing before the mayor met you?"

"I worked at the bordello," Estela said, matter-of-factly. "The bar over on Central Boulevard and next to La Ultima Cumbia Nursing Home. - you know the area?"

Matilde Rodriguez, the mayor's now-deceased wife, had gone down fighting, and it was a clump of Estela's hair police found in her hands that had led to Estela's quick arrest. That and a few other clues left at the scene, one main one being the plastic bag in which the mayor had carried the killing rope into the house, the same bag that contained a receipt of the purchase, a receipt that included his name and credit card number. The mayor, Jose Maria Leticia Rodriguez, had clammed-up after his arrest and left his defense in the hands of flamboyant attorney Elpidio Virgilio Plata, a lawyer better known by his nickname of "El Dedo," earned after many flingings of the bird to reporters forever hounding him at the courthouse.

"Do you remember," the prosecutor continued. "if the defendant got, or seemed to get - any pleasure from killing his wife? What I mean is, was he laughing or expressing anything you interpreted as glee as the two of you choked the life out of Matilde Rodriguez?"

Estela Monteagudo sat back in the witness stand chair, inhaling deeply before speaking.

"He was happy doing it, yes," she told him. "He pulled on the rope tighter and tighter. I thought his wife's neck veins were going to burst. The look in that woman's eyes still haunts me. Her eyes were like two glass balls coming out of their sockets. It was a crazy scene, but I could tell the mayor was doing something he wanted to do. Oh, and he also took off one of her shoes and hit her on the head with it. I thought that was ridiculous."

"Then what happened, Ms. Monteagudo?"

"Well, when his wife looked dead, he told me to undress and he made love to me on the bed with his wife on the floor," she shot back. "It was crazy, man. I couldn't get into it, but he finished and we got dressed again. I don't think it was making love, like he said in the newspaper. How do you make love with a dead woman on the floor?"

"And after that, what did you do next?"

"We went into the kitchen and he opened a can of chicken and rice soup and we ate that..."

[To be cont'd]

- 30 -

Dark Side Of America...

"It’s not that I am a good debater.
It is that I articulate the deepest held
values of the American people..."
- Newt Gingrich, last night

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - For Newton Leroy Gingrich, the American people so far have been a relatively-small collection of Southern Rednecks quick to hoot and holler about food stamps, Gays, Blacks, religion and big government. Theirs is a dream long-dormant outside the living rooms of bigotry and racism. Newt Gingrich has tapped into this devil's veins, drawing, so far, the sort of blood transfusion that will only poison him.

Gingrich won last night's Republican Party primary in South Carolina, taking 40 percent of the vote and leaving former frontrunner Mitt Romney in his dust. Romney grabbed 28 percent, with the two other candidates, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul wresting 17 percent and 13 percent, respectively, from a partisan voter pool eager to turn back Democratic President Barack Obama next November.

It won't be Gingrich carrying their flag, however.

His victory, surprising as it was, is really just a reflection of the setting. You feed the dogs red meat in your neighborhood and they'll do your bidding. South Carolina? Old South, as in Old Racist South - the cradle of the ancestral remnants of that war fought between the states some 150 years ago. Southerners never forget that painful defeat. A few of them seem to think the South will rise again. Not with the serial adulterer Gingrich leading their pack. In sports analogies, South Carolina was Gingrich's "home field," and he took advantage, arriving a two-time loser in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, but fully knowing his next audience, all hometown racists would be willing to give him a needed victory.

The schedule goes on to Florida, where those residents take their turn at the ballot box on January 31st. Ahead of that, the "establishment" Republican Party will gear-up its drive to vigorously deliver Newt Gingrich the message: Son, you're not the guy.

Already, a 2012 party nomination process that was set to go Romney's way has turned into what should be a wild, free-for-all, with the to-date calm Romney going full-bore against his legitimized opponent Gingrich, a candidate who had been left for dead for weeks. Gingrich will not play elsewhere in the country like he played in South Carolina. Florida may give him a pat on the ass and push him down the road to the ensuing primaries, but the party will not let such a soiled candidate be its standard-bearer in the general election. He simply has too much baggage, beginning with his adultery, his three marriages, his forced ouster from the speakership of the House of Representatives for ethics violations and his feeding at the profitable trough of the government mortage companies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, where he took millions in lobbying fees.

America may be down, but that speaks to the economy and not brains.

Americans can also spot a fraud a mile away. Newt Gingrich is George Wallace, Bull Connor, David Duke and Orval Eugene Faubus all rolled into one. His political tent is the KKK's tent, a circus the country will not support. Gingrich will go on playing to that crowd. It's all he's got. He'll keep calling President Obama the Food Stamp president even when he knows the program was the brainchild of Republican Bob Dole and that there were more program recipients under former Republican President George W. Bush than there are now. He has thrown that out to his supporters enough to make others know he won't discard the stupidity, and he'll never admit that the majority of food stamps recipents are Anglos, a point his southern audiences also ignore.

Gingrich's method is to alarm the Far Right wing of his party, consolidate that with promises right and left before realizing he needs to move toward the center if he's to compete in a national race. He'll do it, he'll pander to the moderate Republicans down the road if he has to. He's a politician who's lived and breathed Washington, D.C. for almost 40 years, yet he is running against the federal government. He'll bend to the middle by summer.

But in doing that, he will alienate the blood-thirsty Redneck base, those same rowdy people in South Carolina who rang his ears last night with "NEWT! NEWT!" Next time, when the rest of America get their shot at him, they'll be calling his name to hang him...

- 30 -

The Itsy-Bitsy Spider...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The rough and tumble Rio Grande Valley along the Mexican border never has been a place where women have felt safe or comfortable. Moves across the harsh border terrain often bring the prettiest of ladies to their knees. The feeling of utter helplessness for them is magnified in the no-holds-barred world of politics.

City Commissioner Melissa Zamora, shown in photo above, knows full-well the pain of citizen criticism. Her foray into local politics came with almost-daily damnation of her personal life, some of it worthy of a Henry Miller chapter. Tropic of Southmost, is what Miller would have titled this tale.

Zamora overcame the assaults on her preferences in men and remains deep into her first term as commissioner. And although the successes have been few for her personnally, the sludge that is rumor trails her like an awakened wino suddenly confronted with a well-hipped prostitute on her way home. Ms. Zamora is back online, is what the blogger Jerry McHale reported this week, blogging minutiae to do with her public service, material always positive and never critical of herself, or her colleagues on the city government group.

Now, another blogger has lumped his two-cents-worth on her. This one, former Brownsville Herald reporter Juan Montoya, is hard and heavy on an incident he says involved Zamora and what he characterizes as conduct unbecoming a city official.

This is what Montoya, intractable operator of the blog-for-hire El RrunRrun, wrote: "Zamora, recently also made an appearance on a police report where she intervened in a police arrest on DWI charges of her friend Lupita Molina, a UTB-TSC media center employee. In her case, the police report indicates that she was talking to Molina even after she had been warned not to communicate with the suspect."

According to the blogger, Ms. Molina is a woman known to State Rep. Rene Oliveira.

"The report written by Patrolman Everardo Longoria, mentioned the fact that Zamora had disregarded his order and was heard screaming to Molina a second time through the closed windows of the police car," Montoya goes on in his story. "However, Longoria, the brother of city commissioner Ricardo Longoria, did not identify the city commissioner in question."

The blog notes that Commissioner Zamora "defended her actions" in a posting on her Facebook page, acknowledging the friendship with Ms. Molina. Montoya describes Zamora as "an executive at Elite Promotions," said to be handling the promotional side of Oliveira's re-election campaign.

Commissioner Zamora has said little about the incident.

In the Big Picture scheme of things, it is not a huge misstep. It does, however, go to abuse of power, or at the very least a horribly-weak attempt at it. For a newcomer, and someone who brought hope to a town dominated by Macho politics, Zamora's actions throw her onto that dogpile of border elected officials who never fail to feel anointed, rather than elected. Why was she at the scene, and who asked her to go out there? If it was Rep. Oliveira who sought her aid and she believed she was acting in the capacity of a campaign operative, that could be enough of a reason for her.

It isn't for the citizenry...

- 30 -

Caldo Del Cielo, Prologue...

"I find the people strangely fantasied;
Possess'd with rumors, full of idle dreams,
Not know what they fear, but full of fear..."
- King John

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BOCA GRANDE, Texas - It wasn't the bell. It wasn't the music. And it surely wasn't the noise coming from the bar, over where six or seven or eight men waited on the women. The men were restless, perhaps because of the day's hard rains. It had come in downpours now measured in odd-shaped puddles that filled the parking lot outside. One or two or three of the men had grumbled about the weather when asking for their drink. Another, the only one seated on a barstool, laughed out a joke about God again wanting to drown the town.

But, then, it wasn't the weather that annoyed on this particular night.

It was the women refusing to come out. The damned bell used by the bartender to summon them to the bar whenever a customer ambled in kept ringing. That music the girls liked kept coming out of the bar's overhead speakers, stringing soulful laments in Spanish, harsh voices over violins and trumpets. You could fix a plate of tacos with that music, is what the bartender liked to say whenever a client asked about it. And then he'd follow with, "A full stomach makes you a better lover." So the noise in the bar kept its own rhythm, it's own cadence familiar to the joint. It wasn't until the bartender went back into the lounge designated for rest that he ran into one of the girls. This one, named Maribel, was working on her toenails, head and shoulders bent forward, arms straight to the floor, one hand holding a nail polisher's handle and the other holding, cupping, the favored foot.

"Where are the others, where are Karina and Consuelo?" the bartender asked in Spanish, looking around. The lounge area was small, holding only three battered chairs, a coffee pot on a table set in one of the corners and a smallish couch that looked to be a hundred years old. A worn throw rug adorned the floor area in front of the old couch.

There was a protest of sorts going on, the girl shot back at the bartender in that slow voice of the experienced prostitute, the voice that has uttered largely the same vocabulary for years, the voice loyal customers grew to recognize as something warm in a darkened room, when their engorgements and thrusting threw the appropriate background behind chit-chat that chased the meaningless. It had to be hard for a woman working this trade to bring a fresh product to every man moseying in. "Listo?" they would ask as soon as clothing dropped to the floor. And the man would horse-up and say, yes, I am ready, baby.

"What's the protest about?" the bartender asked next.

A frown popped-up at him from a bit below, from that angled face on the girl still holding her foot and still dipping the applicator into the small nail polish bottle. If he caught sight of her ample breasts, the bartender didn't show it. He'd seen those breasts a thousand times before and, for men, well, such things did get old.

"The boss is on his way," the bartender went on, drawing a shrug that said uninterested. He'd had his problems with this crop of women. Girls working the trade weren't like those in the old days, he'd told himself. Those girls were pros, maybe not as cute, but pros of the first order. This one, for example, wasn't exactly carrying her load. Three guys so far tonight, barely enough to buy a broom for the business. She'd complained. The old broads never complained. They'd come to Boca Grande knowing that making love in a border town was as good as cleaning houses of the rich. An Old Broad would be humping, getting up off the bed as soon as she was done and then going after the next fish. Sex was nothing to wait on; you washed it and it was as good as new.

"I'm sending one of the customers out there back here and you take care of him, you hear," he said, not bothering to look at the girl. His voice was not loud, nor had he raised the volume of his speech. He spoke the language of business. This time, the girl nodded and he saw her lift her head and shoulders to confirm.

"Is it one of my usual customers?" she asked, offering a fake smile.

"The fire chief," she was told, without additional info or explanation.

"He always makes fireman jokes," she said, but the bartender was out in the hall by then. Shortly, she heard the approaching footsteps. She knew his likes and dislikes. She knew he was married and had four kids and that he liked to have a finger up his rectum, and that, when he began sexing her, he would croon a song she hated, but the good thing was that he never sang it all. She would step out and greet the sonofabitch; that's what they paid her to do. Fuck him, she said under her breath as she inhaled and dusted her bottom with her right hand. The nylon skirt was sorta new, a bright-orange thingy she'd picked up in town. The fireman would like it, she told herself. He always liked to undress her, wouldn't let her spring her bra or step out of her clothes. He would make her stand by the bed while he sat and he would bring her toward his face, use his teeth on the blouse buttons all the way down before pushing it apart and then licking her tummy, especially in and around the navel. She didn't mind that, but it was the smell of salsa on his breath that annoyed her. That was the bar's fault; it had salsa bowls for every customer.

Maribel took him by the hand and soon the two walked toward her room.

To be cont'd...

- 30 -

In Quitting Limp National Campaign, Rick Perry Endorses Another Loser...

"I believe Newt is a conservative visionary
who can transform our country. Newt is
not perfect, but who among us is?..."
- Rick Perry, today

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - He's been told the state is just damned tired of seeing him make every Texan look stupid. He's been stubborn about his ill-fated campaign for the presidency, but, today, Rick Perry realized what everyone else has been thinking for weeks: he's not presidential material.

The 61-year-old Perry ended his bid in South Carolina ahead of this Saturday's primary vote in that state, the same one where he first declared his national bid last August. Chased by horrible debate performances and ever-dropping numbers in a variety of campaign polls, Perry did the right thing in quitting.

But, then, like some dogged dunce, he again blew it by endorsing Newt Gingrich, perhaps the most soiled Republican to ever seek the White House. Gingrich is a mean-spirited, self-aggrandizing politician with serious moral flaws. He's lied about his enrichment at the public trough and he's acknowledged adultery. That's the guy Rick Perry believes can lead America?

What is wrong with these Republicans?

In their zeal to oust popular Democratic President Barack Obama, they would field a guy like Gingrich? If you've not followed the national campaign trail these guys have walked during the past six months, well, tune in to ABC News this evening. There, you'll get an earful from Gingrich's second wife, the one he took after losing his first wife and the one he lost after meeting Congressional aide Callista, his current wife. MSNBC.com is reporting that Gingrich's former wife will say he sought an "open marriage," so that he could stay married and continue a long-running affair with his present-day wife, Callista.

For his part, Rick Perry, a former West Texas Democrat who crowed he'd never lost a political race, the return to Texas should be a doozy. Bloggers in Austin who poo-poohed his bid from Day 1 have been laughing in stories and comments related to Perry's mental stumblings. Comments submitted to the Austin American-Statesman's stories about Perry's campaign have not been kind. Perry, they say, has done nothing but make the rest of America believe that all Texans are as dumb as he is. Those debate performances, they always note, were devastating for Perry, but also for residents of the Lone Star State.

Perry should come home.

He was ill-prepared to the point that, looking back at the last three months, one gets around to knowing that even George W. Bush, no Einstein, did much better than this low-performing Texas Aggie. And that's saying much.

So, there he stood with his forlorn wife, Anita, and talked about putting the country on the right path, about defeating President Obama, about the greatness of the flawed Newt Gingrich. And then he thanked his "many" supporters.

The thing is there never were "many" supporters. Perry got 1% of the vote in Iowa, didn't compete in the New Hampshire Primary and was polling a woeful 4% in South Carolina...

- 30 -

An Old Store, A Book...

"Old friends, Old friends
Sat on their park bench like bookends,
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends..."
- Simon & Garfunkel, Old Friends

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - There was a time when I thought books would come, would come calling on my brain, would make me dive into new worlds, bringing tales older than my hair, even those I bought in college that cost too much and seemed to do little. I've been messing with old books lately. Not just this past week, but lately as in the past 30 years.

Outings to the small, charming towns surrounding Austin seem to always yield a copy or two, aging, dusty books that throw me back to another time in my life, like some songs, some girls. It's easy for me to make associations that way, perhaps much like it is for you. It's a good time for me to be doing this, although the golf course calls as the weather turns spring-like and the day's sun isn't killing anything.

So, what is it about books?

Some in the publishing industry say the days of brick & mortar bookstores are numbered, that electronic books via Kindles and Nooks are the future. Buy a book, never worry about shelf space or dust. A Nook can store - what? - 3,000 books, all there at your fingertips, the entire library in bed or out on the porch at any time of the day you desire. I am not there, yet, no.

My office is not exactly a library, but it counts a number of books I enjoy. They're on a small three-tier shelf, not far from the fold-out futon, the coffee table and my tall stacks of old newspapers. In between all that stand my golf clubs (the corner farthest from my laptop and desk) and a sprinkling of stuffed monkeys and a small bear in a Zorro outfit someone will get for Christmas later this year. On the floor are several bottles of my beloved Shiraz wine and a variety of magazines strewn about the room. It is my refuge from the quiet storm that is rural life. My battles with traffic on two-lane ranch roads and that one grocery store across town and that idea that we have to drive some 10 miles to the heart of Austin if we want a choice in meals. It's a struggle living with so many people and with navigating killer I-35 traffic.

Books free me from all that. I enjoy reading my newspapers and magazines and my list of legitimate news websites and illegitimate blogs. They keep my brain dancing, the tunes changing, but my attention always on the mood. Don't send me mysteries or horror fiction. No, not that. I like a good, well-written story about human beings, not vampires or lawyers or space monsters. Biographies are cool. They're a full-open window into someone else's life, or so we hope. To me, the sound of a page-turn is the equal of a wine corking, of a fresh fish frying, of a thick, Land's End sweater falling over your head and onto your shoulders. It's one of those sounds forever free and always promising more. The last page got you wondering; the next page sets you back on course.

And when you get to the last page of a book, well, you read it.

You read it as if knowing that the last 300 pages were defining the journey and so the last page will settle all accounts, will bring either a smile or a nod - both silent, but both thoroughly enjoyed...

- 30 -

For Racist America: It's The Same Old, Same Old...

"He who will not reason is a bigot;
he who cannot is a fool;
and he who dares not is a slave..."
- Wm. Drummond, Academical Questions

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - Perhaps more than in the movies or breaking news videos, nothing opens the bloody wound that is America's race problem like a good Republican Party debate in a southern setting. Those people love to stick a knife in the wound, to again grate the rest, to remind us all of what we used to be. And who knows, maybe we still are what we were, things being what they are, the anger much more in the mix, the resentment fueling demons and spreading fear.

Racism, we mean.

Here in this great land. It rears its ugly head all-too-often to be ignored. We are what we are. It happened again last night at the GOP's 2012 presidential nomination debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., a usually neat place for vacationers seeking the Atlantic Ocean waters or the magnificent golf courses.

The moment came when Juan Williams, an African-American among the moderators for the Fox News Debate, asked this of adulterer candidate Newt Gingrich in response to Gingrich's earlier suggestion that Black kids work as janitors in public schools: "Can't you see that this is viewed at a minimum as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?"

Gingrich quickly replied: "No, I don't see that."

And like a scene from a KKK film, viewers watching on TV saw the crowd erupt approvingly, as if cheering a winning touchdown, a USA Olympic victory.

It was, at best, a disgusting scene for all of America. But these same incidents have marked every GOP debate so far this primary season. Race gets the audience in a tizzy. Republicans hate Gays, so they boo an Army serviceman, stationed in Afghanistan, who wonders about the military's stance on those of his sexual persuasion. That happened in Iowa, ahead of that state's early-January caucuses. Similar incidents followed ahead of the New Hampshire Primary, when African-Americans at a town hall meeting scheduled by Gingrich stood to ask him why he was singling out Blacks as those contributing to the rise in applications for food stamps and other welfare programs. Gingrich feigned an answer, as if to say, "What I'm saying about your people I am saying to my people." The Far-Right conservatives, in other words. The unapologetic racists.

Something is going on here that perhaps ought to be looked-at more carefully. I wonder about the presidential primary race, its route. It begins in mostly-White Iowa, moves to almost-all-White New Hampshire and then drops down to Mostly Redneck South Carolina. The Hispanic is not part of the picture and the few blacks are those who show up only when their race is maligned. Asians? Afterthought.

Florida follows South Carolina after this Saturday's vote in that state.

It's an archaic schedule. Iowa? New Hampshire? Both are tiny states. South Carolina is not exactly a state that brings "melting pot" to mind. Its politicians wear their southern roots proudly and openly. Are those people a credible barometer for the nation as a whole? No.

Better would be primary contests in the larger, more inclusive states, like California, Illinois, Texas or New York. All count on a sampling of racists, but the audience would be a bit more representative of the country at large.

Soiled politicians like Newt Gingrich play well with that racist crowd. How would he do in the larger states? Would he be as bold in dishing his racist crap? He's been booed before, as he should be at every stop. But throwing yourself before a national audience should be what the primaries are about, not merely making a stop in front of friendly people of your own race.

So far, this Republican field has painted itself as a collection of low-rent clowns interested in saying what this racist base wants to hear. That only means one thing: their dance is a fiddler's tune suitable only for a retard's barn dance in Georgia.

The idiot Newt Gingrich aside, we as a nation cannot be that stupid, that willing to fly so low, that willing to bend over...

- 30 -

For Harlingen, A Swing At Bad Baseball...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - Well, most of it finally came out. Thanks to the local daily, citizens here now know that semi-pro baseball team they're lugging on their shoulders has cost them some $100,000. That's a lot of taxpayer money for a form of baseball played by the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings most would call less-than-minor-league quality.

The city has acknowledged, according to the Valley Morning Star, that the WhiteWings have been slow to pay the lease and utilities for using Harlingen Field. Rumors had moved through this struggling town like word of neighborhood sexual affairs, each of them seemingly worse than the previous one. Were the WhiteWings paying anything at all, went one.

Confirmation of the debt and loose-ended relationship will certainly allow city leaders to assess its future. Nothing ruins a welfare program like news that it is being abused. The city should be faulted for not admitting the deal's failure much earlier, when the delinquency was nowhere near the $100,000 range. And the WhiteWings should have held up their end of the contract by paying, by being a good resident and not some outfit out to scam the city.

Pay the bill, WhiteWings. Pay the $100,000.

Pay every penny you owe and be glad the tired citizenry doesn't haul you into court, which is what the city should do, or should have done long ago. This is low-rent baseball, not some business the city and its people could be proud of and perhaps endure paying a bit of the fare on this losing economic journey. This baseball is at the same level as small college baseball, like that played by Tarleton State or Hill County College. It draws on players who either failed or never made it to the Big leagues, on foreigners who arrive with absolutely no loyalty to the community and who can't even play in the playoffs because of their immigration status.

For this, Harlingen goes $100,000 in the red? A few firings at City Hall are in order and a full accounting should be demanded from the mayor and the city comnission. The Star reports that the current agreement has the team paying $1,000 in monthly rent and $833 for maintenance of the stadium, in addition to utility costs. That electric bill is what brought out initial reports that the team had fallen $40,000 in arrears.

The WhiteWings have alleged that the utilities bill is high when compared to other stadiums, but that is lame. Trust is a big part of a business relationship. Is the team saying the city is lying? Bad move, it says here. Pay the bill, WhiteWings.

As the newspaper noted, "Other cities have not worked with teams for such a long period of time to get bills paid."

Harlingen has a litany of bigger issues to resolve. Throwing a questionable enterprise on its back while battling local unemployment and a lack of jobs is bad administration, bad politics. The citizenry is owed a professional approach to the handing of all business conducted at City hall. So a few fans enjoy the games. The price for fielding this team is too high.

They seek fan loyalty and promote the team as a Harlingen team, but the Whitewings are owned by people in Dallas who really could care less about local taxpayers.

One of Harlingen's own - blogger Jerry Deal - has pushed the team as a veritable collection of Babe Ruths. Deal is a former editor of the Valley Morning Star, a journalist with enough experience to know that something stinks when a team begins welching on its contractual obligations. Yet, Deal, who sometimes says he works for the league and at others says he doesn't, never wrote a word about the ongoing business problems, the ones dragging the city down. Instead, when this site begin posting stories about the team's problems, Deal wrote, "Give it a rest." Some journalist. It'll be interesting to see what Deal writes about his old newspaper's findings, if anything.

It's not world-beater money. That $100,000 could have done wonders for local kids sports like Little League or, perhaps, paid for the availing of swimming pools. It's less than $1 million, but it's still $100,000 big ones. The team should square the ledger with local taxpayers.

It certainly cannot show up again this spring and take the field as if everything's just dandy...

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Chili's Wheels In Mexico?

By HANDS VELA
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - A color snapshot appearing to show the car driven by missing Brownsville Police Detective Chili Perez has surfaced thanks to a citizen's quick-thinking photography, city officials confirmed this morning. Perez has not been seen or heard from in 10 days, ever since he was named lead detective in the case involving slain college student Louise Perez.

"Well, yes, it could be his car," Mayor Tony Martinez told story-hungry reporters gathered outside The Toddle Inn. "Today, we're sending the cellphone photo to the FBI's crime lab in Washington, D.C. to see if they can clear the latest mystery surrounding Chili."

The blurry photo, Martinez said, was turned-in by resident Leopardo "El Mofle" Morales, an unemployed graphics artist. Morales said he was "cruising Matamoros for cheap street tacos" when he spotted a battered 1980 Volvo moving up Avenida Insurgentes. "I grabbed my new cell and began shooting," he told police. "It was the best I could do, man. Four-hundred dollar phone and I'm just getting the hang of that danged thing!"

Det. Perez has been the object of a wide-ranging search characterized by officials as the most intensive since 1987, when a woman reported seeing the Loch Mex monster in a local resaca. The search proved fruitless, and there are some in town who insist that failure to catch the toothy serpent is the reason for this bordertown's ceaseless bad luck. Said Maria "La Mostasa" Salas, a resident whose home is along the banks of the resaca in question, "We hear the goddamned serpent swimming out there in the middle of the night. It splashes and then dives, comes up and splashes again. You don't think that's weird? It makes the hair on my body, all of it, tremble."

According to the chief of police, the department has placed all its resources on the search for Perez, who was on the search for the person or persons who murdered 23-year-old paleantology student Louise Herrera and left her body under a craggy mesquite along a ravine frequented by coyotes. Miss. Herrera at the time had accused Paz Files writer Rudolf Von Bulow of repeatedly raping her inside his ornate South Padre Island condo following a long, long night of drinking. Von Bulow is back in the Valley after vacationing in Paris prior to Herrera's death.

Chili Perez is believed to be working on a theory that has Von Bulow at the center of the murder plot. A city police officer who spoke on conditions of anonymity said this, "I've got no problem with Chili going underground, but he needs to call his mother. She's worried sick, bro."

City officials expected results from the FBI on Chili's car by the middle of next week, promised Mayor Martinez. He said the city is still considering posting a reward for info leading to an arrest and conviction in connection with the murder of Louise Herrera, but he noted there is still discord about that within the city commission...

- 30 -

In Brownsville, Ropa Usada Art Replaces The Blues...

"The beauty of things was born before
eyes and sufficient to itself; the heart-
breaking beauty will remain when there
is no heart to break for it..."
- Robinson Jeffers, Credo

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Sitting on a comfortable, but aging easy chair covered with annoying bright-purple velour, Larry "Bordello" Lopez lifted his cup of coffee as if lifting a toast to his woman, his bride, his greatest love. Shortly, after panning his eyes across his cavernous warehouse full of used clothing heaped in strategic piles, he pointed toward a corner of the dusty building and said, "That's the future of Brownsville over there."

Over there, as in by a row of shelves holding a variety of boxes and strappings, was a life-sized statue of the sort one sees in Italy. Glossy in shine, it seemed out of place in the old building much like, say, a sailboat would look if someone set it inside a barn in West Texas. Lopez is banking on an idea this town may never be ready for, but he's at it - bringing high-end Art to town to be shown - and offered via auction - inside what not long ago was an abandoned warehouse.

Ropa Usada is his trade. He sells the used clothing by the box to mostly Mexican citizens and entrepreneurs who re-sell it for a profit south of the border. This town's urban center is dotted with Ropa Usada stores, some as close as a 9-iron to the international bridge.

Will Ropa Usada art replace the Brownsville Blues as the town's main tourist attraction?

Larry Lopez's eyes grew wide as he set his coffee cup down on a new wicker table he had set up in front of his easy chair. Reaching for a slice of his beloved semita, he said: "It's as good as any stab we've made at becoming relevant to the rest of Texas and the United States. Who are we, is what I would ask. So we open a few bars and say the Blues will float our boat. But will it?"

He's pessimistic about the odds of that exploding into something fabulous.

Then, as if some prideful magician not done pulling rabbits out of his hat, he says - no screams: "It's not gonna happen! The Blues? Are you kidding me? The Blues!"

Lopez has thought about enlisting the aid of the same local bloggers who made the Blues push last month, a push that has evaporated and been dumped somewhere on the outs of town along with a few tons of Christmas gift wrapping paper and crushed bows.

"The thing is I want to get locals involved, but only if they know something about Art," he went on. "The Blues thing was okay, but those guys knew squat about the real thing. That's the difference between pros and wannabe amateurs. I can't afford an amateur."

And the ropa trade, we ask.

"It feeds my kids," Lopez threw out as another battered pickup truck backed into his loading dock. "See that guy? He's dropping a good $500 today. Nothing but ragged blue jeans, Mervyn's shirts and UT-PA sweaters in here today. I'll throw the guy a bone by giving him a few dozen pairs of shoes and maybe some of those weathered cowboy boots."

As we departed the new business, it struck us that this venture might succeed where the Blues project failed. The old, Mexican man had brought a young man with him and he simply occupied Lopez's easy chair, poured himself a cup of coffee and began barking orders at the kid doing the loading.

There was something clearly artsy about the mid-morning scene. In a Texas-Mexico border way, at least...

- 30 -

Mitt Romney and Mexico...

By AMARANTE CORDOVA
Special to The Paz Files

CHIHUAHUA, Mexico - Suddenly, the world is beating feet to my favorite taco stand here. This is where Willard "Mitt" Romney, the frontrunner in the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nomination race, reportedly ate his first street taco. It wasn't all that weird.

Romney's stubborn Mormon grandfather, Miles Park Romney, emigrated to Mexico in the 1880s ahead of prosecution for violating the Edmunds Act, which declared that polygamy was a felony. Young Mitt's father, George, was born at a Mormon colony near this God-abandoned desert town. It was, history notes, the Mexican Revolution of the early 1900s that forced his family to move back to the United States when he was a child.

So, is that enough for Mitt, the former moderate governor of Massachusetts to claim the Hispanic vote in next November's general election, a voting bloc said to belong almost unanimously to Demcratic President Barack Obama?

We shall see about that. So far, Mitt has done, or said, nothing to make anyone believe he's even after the Hispanic vote. He's courted Hispanics in Florida, but those guys are Cubans, and any Mexican-American living elsewhere in the country will tell you they are not Cuban.

The odds against Romney geting any meaningful percentage of the Hispanic vote are huge. He has gone out of his way to slam undocumented immigrants, including his gardener. Romney has fallen in line with his party's Right Wing zealots who want to finish building that fence along the Rio Grande, to keep out people who, we're told, helped his dad build that Mormon settlement in Chihuahua and who befriended his grandparents.

Romney would seem to be out of touch with his personal history.

"He's hoping his popularity with Cubans in Florida will translate to the Southwest, but it doesn't," said a New Mexican familiar with voting trends. "He'll not get anywhere with the larger number of Hispanics...

- 30 -

Cops Parade Suspects...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Nervous city police are reacting in a strange way as they wrestle with the recent murder of local college student Louise Herrera. Today, in yet another baffling turn, the investigation brought still more bizarria: the parading of two suspects dressed in large paper bags. "We're taking the indirect route to solving this case," said Police Chief Charlotte Garcia during a rambling 15-minute press conference held, oddly, near the food court of Sunrise Mall.

"We're trying to flush out the plot," she went on when pressed by story-hungry reporters from neighboring Matamoros, Mexico. "This is more about wanting to let the killer know that we're not playing his or their game."

Why the paper bags, she was asked.

"The city prohibits us from using plastic ones," the chief explained. "You can lap that one on City Commissioner Melissa Zamora. She led the fight against plastic, not that I worry too much about it, cause I'm pro-both. - where were we?"

"Chief," asked one of the disheveled Matamoros writers. "My pregunta is this one - is it true that you have assigned undercover officiales to go underground in Matamoros as a way to perhaps find your missing detective?"

A grumbing of sorts rose from the row of Brownsville reporters and bloggers, one of them saying that was the very question he planned to ask. The chief hemmed and hawed a bit, played with the hem of her blue uniform pants and tore into her reply, "No comment!"

Her detective, Chili Perez, remains missing and has not been seen or heard from for more than a week, since back when the Dallas Cowboys were still in the NFL playoff hunt and before Rick Perry's presidential campaign sunk in an abyss of what the French call ennui. Perez had been named lead detective in the hunt for the killer of the 23-year-old Mss. Herrera, a pretty paleantology student at Texas Southmost College. Theories abound about the murder and about Perez's disappearance. Miss Herrera's horrible death brought a sudden end to charges of rape she had lodged against Paz Files writer Rudolf Von Bulow and the mysterious vanishing of Det. Perez is blamed on operatives of the German Von Bulow who want him off the case.

Asked why she would call a news conference and merely trot out two guys in large paper bags, the chief said she had seen a similar ploy in an old Barnaby Jones episode on TV. The two men in her approach were identified as Policarpio "El Carne Molida" Uribe and Francisco "Mas Chips" Hernandez - two local men who make a living starring in Crimestoppers segments for a variety of Rio Grande Valley police departments. Garcia said the men were paid $25 with the added of permission of decorating their own bag.

The macabre scene was right out of a cheap comedy act, although its end came with an added twist, when local blogger Jerry McHale got into a quick fist fight with a woman reporter from El Bravo, neighboring Matamoros's largest newspaper. Cops who broke up the punch-counterpunch melee declined to arrest either journalist, with Chief Garcia saying she understood tensions were riding high in the wake of the murder and Det. Perez's disappearance.

"Tempers are going to be all over the map," she said, tapping her baton onto the palm of one hand. "That's understandable. We're not here to bring anymore grief to our town." McHale, sporting a quick-sprouting blackeye, issued a threat by saying he would be damned if the Matamoros press was going to lead on this story. The attractively-Catholic female reporter from El Bravo merely blew into her right hand, the one that had put McHale on the food court mat. "This town was Mexican land before it was McHale's country," she told her colleagues.

In gloomy Brownsville, the story has found both critics and believers.

Said hairstylist Elena "La Piernuda" Lucio, "If you ask me, and you are, aren't you, well my feeling is that Louise was killed by the Von Bulow clan and Chili Perez is simply taking a long nap. He was known as Rip Van Perez in middle school, cause he always fell asleep during class."

Seated in the waiting section of the hair salon, Oralia "La Coloreteada" Cavazos threw this out: "The media is making too much out of this. We have husbands out of work and children going without shoes and food, and you're asking me about a woman who was raped after a long, long night of drinking on South Padre Island? Puh-leeeeeeeeese. As for Chili Perez, why did he never get married. Is he Gay? What's up with that?"

The tale is only somewhere in the middle of its eventual unfolding, but, already, this bordertown is tiring of the roll...

- 30 -