The Last Pachuco...

"Vuela amor, vuela dolor
Y no regreses a un lado
Ya vete de flor en flor
Seduciendo a los pistilos..."
- Mana, Mariposa Traicionera

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - It was morning. Henry Zepeda rolled out of bed and headed home. Sleepy Sara faced the far wall, perhaps dreaming fairy tale images of the previous night. It had been a wild one, the cumbia dancing followed by the drinking followed by the crazy lovemaking. Sara liked to think she was his princess; Henry thought he was her panther - a Macho on the planet to spread his love. She rousted just enough to hear the engine in his pickup roar to life. Sara rolled over on her back and stared at the overhead fan, the one with a single blade, the result of a fit of anger from her boyfriend, Henry.

She was pregnant, only Sara had yet to tell Henry. He was known in town as "Champagne," and she knew he'd not take the news well. Henry had no job and supported himself by setting-up old timers in billiard games at his favorite bar, Las Tres Lichas Lounge. That reputation as a pool shark and ladies man he wore on his sleeves would clash with the idea of fathering a child. Sara had seen him with kids. He'd seemed a good man around them. But she was unsure about Henry having his own brat, his own, as they said in the barrio, Esquinkle. Sara cleared his nostrils and then rose from the saggy bed to turn off the damaged fan. She smiled at seeing it beat itself to a stop. it was abitch, she told herlsef, living atop this goddamned tire repair shop, second floor to a business that threw noise at her all day long.

In the kitchen, she turned on the light, connected the coffee pot and then reached for the half-gone loaf of bread. She'd throw a pair of slices in the rusting toaster and grab some butter from the aging fridge. Breakfast would be quick. She was due at Walmart in a half-hour; there, she would spend the day working in the shoe department, helping a steady line of mommies and their annoying kids. It was a job. She beat feet for the shower, took a short one, and then threw on her work uniform before walking down the wooden stairs to the parking space where her battered Buick rested between a pickup full of used tires and a motorcycle belonging to one of the mechanics. Work would be boring, but she needed the paycheck.

That evening, after she'd fixed Henry a plate of mole enchiladas, Sara gave him the news.

No one ever knew what happened to Henry "Champagne" Zepeda. He'd left Sara's apartment in a good mood, or so she thought. He'd said he had a name for the baby: Lazlo, if the kid was a boy, and Perla, if it was a girl. Sara had laughed at both suggestions, thinking of others she thought would be better. The pickup had roared off in a cloud of dust, but she'd thought nothing of it. Henry had a flair for the dramatic. He called all his shots on the pool table and praised bar waitresses in the manner of a Pope praising nuns. Sara had been at the apartment's front window when Henry had downshifted and angled a turn toward town.

There were rumors that Henry had split to avoid getting married and raising a child. Others said he'd been offed by a gang of elderly men he'd beaten in the billiard games, those people saying a search of the Rio Grande bottoms likely would yield his body. Still others said Henry had simply left town, left it after taking his share of local women. Sara had delivered the baby on a hot, steamy night with the aid of a midwife. The kid was now nine years old.

In any case, Henry Zepeda never came home again...

- 30 -

The Mexican Wife...

"At the corrida we'll sit in the shade
And watch the young torero stand alone
We'll drink tequila where our grandfathers stayed
When they rode with Villa into Torreon..."
- Dylan, Romance In Durango

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - That last time they'd been to visit her in-laws, Claudia Gonzalez had decided she'd give up on her husband, Rafael. Something told her life was passing by in a blur, days simply moving from one to the next, her fairy tale dreams long-gone and Rafael in the same rut. She would tell him, and then she would announce the decision to her family. Eighteen years of marriage and she had little to show for it. Her 19-year-old car, one she'd gotten while still in high school, moved along with a loose fender. "That's my life right there," she'd said to herself when it became clear Rafael had no interest in fixing it.

On the morning she planned to visit with her mother, Claudia stopped at the mall and walked into her favorite dress boutique. Maybe a new blouse would make it easier, put her in just the right mood, the best frame-of-mind to do what she'd been wanting to do for months. Rafael had been absent from her side of the bed for just as long, their once-hot romantic interludes a thing of the past. Frustration, she would tell her mom, had led to desperation. She needed fresh air.

Inside the store, Claudia walked the aisles and settled on a display for colorful nylon blouses. Rafael hated nylon; he was a 100% cotton guy, and he liked to see her shop at better stores. Nothing grabed her eye until she spotted a blouse in orange and yellow. The weather still called for warm clothing, but this far south in he country, well, tomorrow might bring 90-degree heat, was her feeling. She took the blouse from the rack and walked back to the fitting room, where a young attendant helped her to a stall. Claudia's clothing at home rested between dark-browns and grays, clothes for a woman 10 years older. Rafael liked her in conservative garb, nothing showy and especially nothing sexy. This blouse was a bit of a sparkler. When she looked in the stall's mirror, she could see right through the material to the bra cups and her cleavage.

The ring off her cellphone rousted her from the moment.

"Yes, mother, I'm on my way," she said, after answering.

Claudia took the blouse and walked it back to its place on the display. "I'll come get it later today," she told the store clerk. Shortly, she was walking outside the mall toward her car. On the boulevard, she snaked around delivery trucks and other vehicles. Her mother had coffee and pan dulce waiting. Claudia worked on her speech. She would run through all the problems she and Rafael faced, all the arguments, all the debt, all the fighting, all the deceptions. She needed this talk with Mom. Claudia gunned the engine and swept around a city bus lumbering past the tall palm trees that lined the street. This was a good day to end something, so that something new could begin.

At her mother's house, Claudia took little time in getting to the news. Her mother gasped, and then reached across the dining table to clasp her daughter's hands. "I'm done," Claudia said, bringing an end to her side of the conversation. A brief silence filled the small kitchen and Claudia could only lower her head. "Don't," her mother said next. "Hold your head high, and don't even think about crying." Claudia smiled and reached for her coffee cup.

Minutes later, she was back on the road, driving toward the shopping mall. She would go back to the dress boutique. Traffic was lighter as she drove while listening to a love song by Phil Collins coming out of her dash radio's speakers. A string of green lights at arriving intersections seemed an omen, she thought. Overhead, a bright sunball had cleared away the morning fog. It would shine all day long.

At the dress shop, Claudia beelined for the blouse rack and found the one sexy blouse she'd tried-on earlier. Taking it, she turned to head for the register, but stopped after a few steps.

Reaching toward a chrome, upright rack to her left, she grabbed a pair of red, crotch-less panties and let out a little laugh...

- 30 -

The Councilwoman...

"Smart and coy, a little crazy
The kinda face that starts a fight
Let me tell you 'bout the girl I had last night
Piercin' eyes, like a raven
You seemed to share my secret sin
We were high before the night
Started kickin' in..."
- Survivor, High On You

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

LA FERIA, Texas - She left her house just before sundown, aboard that funky American car known to all in the community, and headed for a bar everyone in town knew as a reliable hangout for the drinking press, the ever-angling politicians and the crazy swingers. Somewhere in her pocketbook, Candy Robles had a phone number she'd need by the end of the evening. She hadn't seen him in days and the absence was making her grouchy.

Earlier in the day, Candy, in her role as city councilwoman, had taken care of a few duties, read her mail and made a few phone calls to do with city business. That new, million-dollar playhouse she wanted for the city's children was front-center on her mind, but so was seeing that man, the one that had her juices in a swirl. She'd met him at a chamber of commerce gathering a few weeks earlier, exchanged phone numbers and then waited three long days before he'd called. The wait, she now told herself, had been unbearable. Something about him, about his muscled body, took her emotions in a blender, mixed them all up and gave her something approximating an orgasm. Candy Robles was sure that treat was in her future.

Tonight, she'd been told he would be at the bar. She'd bathed slowly, lathering her body from head to toe in expensive gel she'd bought at Bed, Bath & Beyond, the one store that stocked that body gel from France she loved. It smelled like caramel, and she knew caramel drove local men crazy. After sitting in the tub for almost a half-hour, she'd risen to towel-off, working the soft, red towel across her pear-sized breasts and then between her legs, working it up and down her thick patch of pubic hair. Another half-hour with the makeup and she'd been ready. Still nude, she walked into her closet and grabbed at the short, black dress that always drew stares. Candy, tallish, statuesque, the proverbial lovely Hispanic woman, liked that, liked being eyeballed. She was almost 30, still single and no kids.

This guy, she told herself on the drive to the bar, is the guy for me.

At every traffic stop, Candy looked in the rear-view mirror, at her face, pouting in a way she thought was sexy. She pursed her lips and worked on that come-on she'd used since high school. She was on the make and that's all there was to it. City business could wait, as could that children's playhouse. This was about the moment, about seeing and being with a real man, a newcomer to town, a man she thought would look good next to her. Candy moved into the turn lane and angled into the bar's parking lot. Happy Hour. Parking lot filled. She angled in between a BMW sedan and a Hummer. The players are all here, she thought, correctly. Her man drove a Datsun S2000, a little two-seater. When she scanned the parking lot, she did not see it. Perhaps he was late, or on his way.

Inside the joint, she quickly spotted Ramon Fosforo, a gregarious colleague on the city council. He wore his usual leisure look, a pair of tan slacks and his ubiquitous Nehru jacket. He waved her over and then introduced her to a man who bore a striking resemblance to a guy she'd met at a 14th Street cantina in nearby Brownsville. He smiled and extended his hand while intrroducing himself. Candy felt him holding her hand longer than customary, like he was wanting to say more, moving his index finger slowly around the palm of her hand. She smiled in return and then looked around. No sign of Mr. Right.

The lanky Ramon Fosforo excused himself, saying he'd spotted someone he knew across the bar. Candy nodded and next heard Mr. Hand Shake ask if she wanted a drink. "Cuba Libre," she told him, out of habit. It was her drink of choice. Antsy, she kept looking for her handsome stranger.

"Here you go," she heard a minute later, quickly taking the cocktail glass.

Long minutes of idle chit-chat passed, Candy noting a few things about herself while the guy did the same. She hadn't asked him his name. It didn't matter. She didn't care. Her mind was on the man she'd come to see, only he wasn't in sight. The excitement she'd felt driving-over faded, even as the music grew louder and the laughter enveloped the bar. Bastard, she thought, framing a portrait of a woman slapping a man. Hot was not the word. She was livid, feeling dumped.

" 'Nother drink?" she heard next.

"Sure," was the only reponse she could offer. She watched him move toward the bar and thought that perhaps she'd dismissed him too quickly. High shoulders, long legs, big hands and shoes, expensive shoes. The bar was shaking, people dancing and the live music pushing the false ceiling to the roof. Something had to happen. Too much "getting ready" for a wild evening couldn't possible equal going home alone.

In the morning, she rolled over in bed to see the face of the guy who'd bought her drinks at the bar. He was asleep. Candy slid toward her pillow and raised her back just enough to sit-up. She ran a hand through her longish hair and wondered. She wondered what had happened in the sack, what she'd done and had done. Her unknown lover's face offered no clue. He was sleeping like a baby, long hair tussled and wild. She ran her hand below, to her crotch, and fingered herself. Checking. Then she lifted her hand to her nose and smelled the ends of her fingers. Nothing discernible, she told herself, nothing manly, nothing pasty. Not that it would have mattered; she remembered nothing from the previous night.

At the City Council meeting later that day, Candy Robles voted in favor of funding the children's playhouse...

- 30 -

[EDITOR'S NOTE:..This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any living person is strictly coincidental...]

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...

- 30 -

GOP's Fear Of Losing...

"The trouble with radicals is that they
only read radical literature,
and the trouble with conservatives is
that they don't read anything..."
- Thomas Nixon Carver

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - God-fearing Republicans across the country aren't exactly jumping in the pews these days. Well, a few of them are, but those are the ones squeezing into what they believe is the creator's private box, front row in church, otherwise known as that oft-mentioned extreme right wing of the GOP cathedral. For the larger majority of the party's ever-dizzy flock, this ongoing 2012 presidential nomination process is now a stunning disaster.

Last night, presumed frontrunner Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, eked out a win against his three opponents in the Michigan primary, barely topping former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick Santorum by a 41.1 to 37.9 percentage margin. In the Arizona contest, Romney did a bit better, winning there with 47.3 percent of the vote to Santorum's 26.6. Perennial also-rans Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul arrived in third and fourth place, as they have done in the recent primaries.

What's troubling for Republicans is the lingering image of Romney as a member of the country's wealthiest class, a candidate whose social status will hurt him in the November general election against incumbent President Barack Obama. Romney is not suffering, as is most of America. His manner of campaigning strikes an elitist chord, making him appear to not be someone sympathetic to the plight of the dominant working class, the so-called 99-percenters. At last check, the U.S. counted more Democrats than Republicans in its population, although Independents generally move between both parties in presidential voting.

Romney glowed in his victories last night. Things hadn't been as cheerful in his camp in the days and weeks prior, however, when giddy political pundits opined he might lose his homestate primary in Michigan, something that would have crippled his campaign.

But his chief opponent these days is an idiot by the name of Santorum. He's the one who labeled President Obama a "snob" for daring to wish every American student a shot at a college education. Then he took on former President John F. Kennedy and blamed him for the endorsing the concept separation of church and state in this land. Santorum is in the wrong race. Really, he should he posturing himself as the nation's answer to our lull in good, late-night comedy.

Still, he is, believe it or not, not as bad a candidate as are serial adulterer Newt Gingrich, the last place finisher in Michigan, or Fake Libertarian Ron Paul, the last place finisher in Arizona. Gingrich lives to eat off the public trough and has an annoying wife; Paul still carries the stamp of racist newsletters he published decades ago and the backing of White Separatist groups. Compared to these two, Romney looks like a billion dollars and Santorum like a sane Italian.

This Republican Party is going nowhere in November.

And, worse yet for the Grand Old Party's stalwarts, it is seeding the sort of growing contempt that might spark a credible Third-Party push needed in this country. Thank you. Send in the clowns...

- 30 -

Miracle At Los Flores...

By JUAN DAVIS CARRANZA
The Paz Files

NUEVO PROGRESO, Mexico - Rain started to come down with the arrival of a cold front as Raul turned south from the expressway, at Weslaco, for the eight mile drive to the border crossing at Progreso. He considered turning back, but had promised his tio, Mario, he would make the crossing and pick up his uncle’s heart medication.

In Nuevo Progreso, there is no visit-to-the-doctor or prescription required to buy most pharmaceuticals. Tio Mario was down to his last two tablets, so this errand could not wait. Nearing the bridge, Raul decided to park and walk across inspite of the rain, or more precisely, because of the rain. He knew the muddy, poorly-paved and patched streets in Nuevo Progreso would be slick with rain, and, the chance of an accident was high. An accident in Mexico would mean making a sizeable gift of cash to one or more police officers, even if not his fault. No, today he would walk.

Raul walked a short distance from the parking lot to the bridge. He arrived damp, thinking, "I’m wet, but at least I didn’t melt." The sidewalks on the bridge are covered, and the throng of mostly older persons was moving slowly once out of the rain. Near the center of the span, foot traffic almost came to a stop by a brass plaque announcing the demarcation of the U.S. and Mexico. Couples and small clutches of day-trippers asked passersby to take their photographs while posing by the plaque. The south end of the bridge had changed since Raul’s last visit in November. Gone from the foot of the bridge was the Mexican army tank, with its barrel aimed straight down the seven blocks of the main drag. Also missing were the sandbagged machine gun emplacements on either side. A temporary truce was in effect between the Mexican government and the cartels, one establishing a military checkpoint three miles south of town - and a cartel checkpoint seven miles south.

Otherwise, in Nuevo Progreso, or Los Flores as it is known locally by old-timers on both sides of the river, nothing much had changed. On this day, the narrow sidewalks were packed with locals and winter visitors alike, jostling elbow-to-elbow under awnings and overhanging facades, all trying to avoid the rain. The crowding was made worse by carts and business stalls lining the curbs, vendors hawking crucifixes, shoestring bracelets, bootleg DVDs, and, of course, by the many boys offering shoe shines.

Every corner was packed with men handing out cards and flyers for dentists, doctors, liquor stores, pharmacies, and the most recent commercial enterprise - waxing salons. And everywhere the streets and sidewalks were slick, coated in muddy water. Raul plunged into the press of bodies, with the sounds of Mariachi music blaring from a bar and snippets of conversations from the multitude of buyers, sellers and gawkers passing by. There was the babble of voices, and a wide range of accents, but mostly the flat, broad consonants and tonal inflections of the Midwest prevailed.

Raul set about finding Mario's pills. He avoided the pharmacy closest to the bridge because its prices are said to be high. On the second block, he entered Poncho's, a store offering almost everything Nuevo Progresso has to offer, except prostitutes. Regrettably, Poncho's pharmacy did not have the pills he was looking for. The pharmacist advised him to try Farmacia San Joaquin two doors down.

At the San Joaquin, he was advised to try El Medico another two doors down. So it went for six more stops, each just two doors down, until Raul reached Farmacia Crystal. Yes, they had the medicine in question, and yes, they would be only too happy to sell him a bottle. Raul, considering the length of the search, and the unpleasant aspect of having to return anytime soon, asked for two bottles of Mario's pills. Most solicitously, he was informed this was the last bottle in stock.

The pharmacist made a quick call to a sister store, and told him, that, in a few minutes, another bottle would be forthcoming. Ten minutes later, a runner arrived with the second bottle. Before leaving, Raul asked the location of the sister store for future reference. The pharmacist replied, "It is the first pharmacy you come to, on the right, after crossing the bridge." Exiting the pharmacy, Raul started to cross the street, squeezing between a cart vendor peddling tamales and a kiosk selling sunglasses. Halfway across the street, while waiting for an army truck full of soldiers to go by, Raul was almost run down by a bicyclist. The cyclist's attention was on the soldiers and not on where he was going. The rider looked ahead just in time, wobbled left and right and Raul took a quick step back. A handlebar snagged Raul’s shirt and the cyclist tumbled onto the muddy street.

Raul helped the man up, and then quickly faded into the crowd before attracting the attention of the police. Achieving the sidewalk, Raul headed back for the bridge. It was then he saw her. She was sitting on the cold, wet, muddy sidewalk with her legs drawn up beside her and her back against a storefront. She was wearing a long skirt and a plain white blouse, her long, braided black hair hanging almost to her waist, and she was thin, painfully thin. She held a plastic cup in one hand and with the other a nursing child. She was "Pura india," pure Indian; a class looked down on by many in Mexico who trace their heritage back to Spain.

Here, she was a figure of desperation, lost in the world. Looking closely, he could see she might have once been a beautiful young woman. Now, she looked tired and worn, much older than the twenty-five or thirty years he guessed as her age. It was easy to see that a hard life, poor nutrition, and giving what energy she had to the child at her breast, had drained her strength and stolen her youth. She sat there without a word. She did not beg or look up - she just held the cup in her lap and her daughter to her bosom. The moving crowd passed by, no one giving this woman or her child a second notice.

Raul saw in the cup a few coins, small change, far less than a dollar. Border wisdom says not to give money to the poor as it only encourages more beggars; and then there is the old saw, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life." Both were reasons to just keep moving, to continue on his way, to justify no action, but Raul could not simply pass by. Knowing there was nothing he could do to greatly change her life, but also knowing that, for an amount that mattered to him very little, he could feed her for the day, Raul reached in his pocket and felt some bills he had received in change at the pharmacy.

Pulling out a bill, thinking it was a ten, he leaned over to place it in her cup. As he dropped the bill, he saw it was a fifty. Raul was surprised, but the woman was visibly moved, all she could do was gaze at this "little miracle." Slowly, a look of wonderment came over her face. She looked up, as tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and started to thank him. Raul quickly held a finger to his lips. He knew, if she attracted attention, that in a short time someone would relieve her of the money. She smiled, and, as her face lit and up - briefly there appeared a vision - the face of "Our Lady, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe." There was a faint scent or roses, then, as quickly as the vision appeared...it was gone.

Raul was shaken. Stumbling backward, he quickly made the Sign of the Cross and was caught up in the moving crowd. He was shoved along until a half block down the street he was able to turn and look back. The "Little Madonna" was up and moving toward a café, her baby now held in both arms and the cup gone. She was away from the long parade of muddy shoes and boots and, away from the gnawing hunger in her belly - at least for one day.

Two blocks down, Raul encountered an obese man and a woman. They were standing, sheltered from the rain under an awning. As he passed, he heard the man say, "Let's stay here for a few minutes, and maybe the rain will let up." Sarcastically, the woman replied, "By all means Henry, we wouldn’t want you to melt."

Raul just smiled and kept walking. He didn’t care about the rain, he had seen a miracle. He was now giving thanks to God that he had passed up the first pharmacy...

- 30 -

[Editor's note:...Writer Juan Davis Carranza resides in San Benito. This is his second report for The Paz Files. He can be reached via Email at: juandaviscarranza@hotmail.com. Disclaimer: The Paz Files merely publishes this story without vouching for the existence of a God in the universe...]

A Writer's Homeland...

"I started out on burgundy
But soon hit the harder stuff..."
- Dylan, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The other day, a friend I've known for many years asked me why I write so much about the Mexican border, about the Rio Grande Valley, when I don't even live there. I didn't think too long before I gave my answer. I've been around the national block, having worked out west and back east for newspapers and magazines. The Mexican border, I said, is a writer's motherlode, stories, true and half-true, jumping on you at every corner.

Writers have literary paradises, settings, they keep close to the vest. You find a place that inspires you and, well, there you go. The Mexican border does inspire me, but it also upsets me to know that my homeland is so awful, its current inhabitants the result of other bad inhabitants. Why shouldn't I write about it? Good characters, for writers, are elusive. Sure, you can throw out a name, or throw out a name and give it a nickname, but when those names are closely aligned to the geography you write about, it is not hard to pump out tapeworm stories full of regional color, vocabulary of the land and things that take you right to the heart of a culture.

The Rio Grande Valley is a literal entertainment theme park for anyone wishing to write about good and bad romance, winning and losing politics, worthy honor and dishonor. It is a land better suited for snakes, scorpions, lizards and spiders, but its people can often play all four of those roles on any given day. I see it from afar and, yet, it seems that I can put myself in that mess simply by writing three or four paragraphs.

Rio Grande Valley women are traditionalists, yet closet risk-takers. They chase the lifespan of their passive counterparts in neighboring Mexico, but they take a stab at following other American or European trends. Today's border women have a hard time raising their voices, in familial or political fights. Their blood is the blood of the kitchenworker, the washerwoman or the faithful, yet pining wife. She is damned willing to stay at home and have her babies. When they venture into business or politics, they arrive knowing their inroads will be measured by men. And so they play at it. They mimic women they see on TV, in law & order programs, in news talk shows, in sitcoms. But they fail to complete the equation, fail to gain that last foothold on legitimate power, falling through the glass ceiling with a smile. In the end, they, too, realize they are better suited for the attendant role, for the service economy.

Border men, meanwhile, are cursed with a history that says all gains will be local, and that is where the mark is to be made. Local clout is something that never translates to regional or statewide clout. In fact, when local clout moves north, it is beaten back as not being good enough; hence, you have civic leaders and politicians who essentially willingly wall themselves to succeed, or to act the part of success, some of them turning to coat and tie, as if that is the picture to offer. Their power ranges to the city or county limits, there to shine on the local population brightly, but dim noticeably as it moves to the beyond.

So when one goes to craft a story set along the Mexican border, one knows it will be steeped with fatalism, with this rolling philosphy that says something that looks thoroughly successful will merely die-off in the end. Valley football knows this journey quite well, as does Valley politics. No good has ever come out of Valley politics and only one football program has ever reached the summit of the sport, that being the 1961 Donna Redskins. Mountains of complaints surface whenever anyone dares to write the truth about the Mexican border. You'll hear it all. Mexican bandits were not bandits; they were heroes of the poor and the oppressed. That street is not dusty; it's just not paved. That string of bars is not a row of cheap cantinas; it is the essence of our culture. That mayor is not stupid; he just acts that way. That woman is not fat; she's not skinny. That salsa is not hot; it's cool. That policeman is not Gay; he's Catholic. That woman is not looking for love; she's married. That dog-faced guy is not angry; he's unemployed.

Plots is what moves stories, and what gets in the way of writers seeking to tell a tale set in the border is that life there is not any one thing. It is a layered existence, a life of daily ups & downs, but, unlike Big City downs, these downs are really down. Dreams here are easily accomplished undertakings elsewhere. You think about writing a police detective novel and you get yourself a neat lead character and you set sail. Invariably, the work becomes a hydra-headed chore. What to leave in, what to leave out. And, really, only because the Border is a unique land. It has its own language, its own music, its own food, its own law. But, then, it too is an ungovernable land, so...

On those times when I've been criticized for writing about the seamy side of the Rio Grande Valley, I have shrugged it off as being overly-emotional humor in search of a better audience. Writers don't give a damn about criticism. The work will be written and allowed to stand for what it is, whether a punch to the region's gut or a hug of the sort one reserves for lovers - it's the story, baby, and that'll be that. There'll be another one tomorrow. Deal with it.

I get another free pass, since I am from the Valley. It hasn't been my home since high school, but I get back there every now and then. I have eyes, so I see things. I have ears, so I hear things. In doing the life impulse, I form opinions and ideas. If something looks short, dumb or stupid, well, it's going to be short, dumb or stupid in anything I write about it. If it looks cute, it'll be cute. The same goes for every other place I write about. You live somewhere and you invest yourself and your time. It's called local knowledge in golf; that is, you know enough about a local golf course that you know every sand trap and water hazard, even the roll of the fairways and greens at certain points.

And so I write about the Rio Grande Valley, that dramatic, fiery, valiant, insolent, bloated, wish-I-could-kick-it-in-the-face Rio Grande Valley I know...

- 30 -

The Small Man's Mother...

"His mother's tears fell in vain
the afternoon George tried to explain
that he needed love like all the rest..."
- Rod Stewart, The Killing of Georgie

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - Life had not been kind to less-than-handsome Lencho Chavarria. Kids in school made fun of him all through junior high and high school. His grades were mediocre and his activities outside the classroom non-existent. Lencho Chavarria, better known to his enemies in the Barrio as El Manco because of his manner of walking, had grown up to claim his place in the working world, taking a string of odd jobs that included washing cars at a fleamarket, making tacos at a side-of-the road taqueria and selling insurance to the elderly. Lencho liked to think of himself as being human, but his life was more that of an animal.

At age 60, he found himself with little to do. The insurance job he'd held for nine years was gone, taken from him by a supervisor who openly said his looks were hurting sales. Lencho loved to wear his yellow pants, the green ones and the orange ones also part of his fashion. "Perhaps you should try working at a Casa de Cambio," his female boss told him when she dismissed him for wearing bright-red pants, a green shirt and a white tie. "Those, Lencho," he was told as the security guard led him out of the company's office, "...are the colors of the Mexican flag. You do yourself no favors with that ridiculous outfit."

Chavarria had not had the smarts to make his case for bright colors. He'd worn odd clothing all his life, and had even tried starched khaki pants, but lost them when he'd grown in age. Unsympathetic clerks at department stores forever pointed him to the children's department, and he went that way into his late-20s.

But it was his mother who Lencho blamed for his rotten existence. She had never been a woman to praise him, to lift him up when he was down, to believe in him. In fact, he drew on the beatings he got from her, on the cursing and on the abandonment. "That's what ruined me," he would say to his only two friends, Alberto and Javier. They, too, were from the Barrio, and both of them had lived similar lost lives. Alberto had enlisted in the Air Force and been drummed out after a fellow male airman complained of sexual harrassment. The troublemaker Javier had worked as a policeman in Los Fresnos, but been fired after lying about a donut break. The trio now hung around together, seen in local bars and seated inside Javier's battered pickup, Lencho always in between the others in the front seat.

Then one day Lencho Chavarria began working for a local politician. He would bury campaign signs and nail posters all across town. He felt good about that. Nothing he'd done to that point had brought such satisfaction. Lencho began thinking he was doing something meanigful, becoming a player. He worked long hours and eventually became the politician's Gal Friday. He updated the man's Internet site without fail all day long, 24/7/365. And when the boss needed a snack, Lencho popped-up and raced to the Taco Bell at the nearby corner. Things were finally going in the right direction. He felt good about himself for the first time in his life. Booze and women had been replaced by politics and website-updating. Life was good.

But lost in flawed Chavarria was the concept of truth and honesty. His boss was not a good man; in fact, he had no morals. The guy would do and say anything he wanted, forgetting the idea that serving the community carried some responsibility. Lencho never saw it. He kept pumping out positive stories about the candidate he backed blindly. Not a day would pass without Lencho claiming his boss was "viable" and upstanding. Of course, he wasn't. The underworld of Chavarria's universe was soiled and largely dishonest. He could see it, yet he did nothing about it. He kept on his path to ruin like a trained monkey.

When he found a free moment, Lencho would pick up the phone and call his aging mother, to report on his work and to seek advice from the only person he trusted 100 percent.

"No seas un pendejo," his mother would say, succinctly. "No te burles del mundo, cabron."

Lencho would nod. He knew what his mother was saying, but something else drew him elsewhere. He had always been shunned by the popular kids in school, seen as a Naco, someone not good enough to befriend. Lencho Chavarria knew he got some respect by associating himself with the politicians, even the ones who openly called him an idiot. Bad love is better than no love at all, he had written on his palm one day, a line he would soon tattoo on his upper arm.

When his mother died several weeks later, Lencho Chavarria cried like a child. He'd kept his feelings in check throughout his adult years. It was his way of fending off being seen as a wuss. But, here, he let go a river. His mother was dead.

For the first time in his life, he had no one who might aim a kind word in his direction. Lencho watched the cardboard coffin lowered into the grave and felt a line of tears stream, down his face. "I'm sorry, mother," he said, softly. "I have been a bad person for most of my life, mi viejita, and I have dishonored our family name."

Then, like a thug expected elsewhere, he turned and began walking away from the burial ceremony, leaving the only two other attendees, her mother's weeping sisters, there to watch the pouring of the filling dirt. By the time he cleared that section of the weed-filled cemetery, Lencho had returned to his world

There was the politician's website to update. He inhaled and threw out his small chest. It was an angry face Lencho flashed at a gravedigger arriving to prepare another site...

- 30 -

[EDITOR'S NOTE:...This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to living persons is strictly coincidental...]

Keep The Change...

"Dear Father
We dream, we dream
We dream
While we may, while we may..."
- Neil Diamond, Dear Father

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Florencio Mendez dropped his accordion on the dinner table and walked over to grab the Bible from atop the kitchen's aging refrigerator. He was tired, beaten down by long hours of playing his instrument at a local nightclub known as The Blue Moon. Exhausted, he told himself as he tucked the Bible under his arm and then reached for the fridge's door handle. From inside, he plucked a bottle of beer.

Seconds later, he was sprawled on the old couch in the living room, lifting the beer to his mouth like he'd done thousands of times. Music was his moneymaker. He and his conjunto played all across the border region, and sometimes they took a quinceanera gig when the club business slowed. The Bible was his new addiction. Florencio read it every free moment, a revelation that had shocked his wife, Olivia, of twenty-some years. She'd known him as a hell-raising musician who drank alcohol like an Irish sailor, who smoked marijuana in his pickup and who strayed from his marriage vows at every opportunity.

Los Huercos Alegres, his band, were well-known in town. Florencio could draw a crowd, especially when they played at the cheap cantinas. It was there, Olivia had told their children, that her husband took his pay and a little extra for the show, the little extra being a waitress with time on her hands after closing.

"I am turning my life over to God," he had announced one day at dinner. "I bought this expensive Bible and so that I can now promise you." Olivia nodded, hoping again. His oldest son, Javier Luis, shrugged and lowered his eyes to the carne asada on his plate. The girl in the family, Elizabeth, was eleven, too young to analyze the news.

In the ensuing weeks, Florencio Mendez kept his band busy, but he also took his knees to the local Catholic Church he'd been to as a young man with his mother. She had passed almost 10 years earlier, back when Florencio's straying had been at its zenith, when he'd dared to bring women not his wife to his mother's house. "Eres un marijuano!" his mother had thrown out in anger one day, when Florencio had lit-up at her dinner table, there next to the woman of the moment, a young spitfire in a short halter top and tight blue jeans.

"Soy un artista!" Florencio had fired back, inhaling while pawing at his girlfriend's round ass. "Soy un musico!" His elderly mother had stared at him, but said nothing. Her anger was plain to see, however. Her scorn buried itself in the attitude she now reserved for him. Florencio had left her house in laughter that day, his arm and hands back there, dancing across the young girl's rump. With measured, disdainful gruntings, his mother had shut the door behind him noisily.

"I am preaching at a church in San Benito," he declared a few weeks later.

"What?" was his wife's only response.

"At a Christian church," he went on. "I know the pastor, and he has said I can preach to his congregation next Sunday."

"What - he is hoping you draw your usual dance crowd of cheaters and drug addicts?" Olivia asked, believing it.

"Anyone can come," he told her. "You, too..."

A year later, Florencio Mendez was arrested for stealing an elderly woman's car title and forging her signature to register it. He told police the woman had donated it to his church, for use in the ministry. He'd asked for donations during sermons and had even passed out envelopes addressed to himself. The money had come in steadily, with Florencio instructing Olivia not to mess with his mail. He had, he told her at one point, banked almost $90,000 - much more than he'd earned as a musician.

The story would shame her and her family when it hit the newspapers. That guy being handcuffed in the color photograph on the front page is not my husband, she told friends, not the father of my children. She hoped he'd be punished. A reporter for a television station had interviewed the old woman and the video not only shocked the community, but angered most residents. Florencio Mendez's name was dirt.

In his jail cell, he impressed prisoners with his deep knowledge of the Bible and some guards even went to him for certain passages to do with grief, honesty and courage. Florencio complied happily. He was and wasn't like the others in jail.

"Get some of the cash in my checking account and pay the bail," he said to Olivia one morning. "It's God's money and God wants me out, wants me out there preaching his word!"

"God wants you right where you are," Olivia told him, tersely...

- 30 -

Still In Town: That Racist Republican Tent...

"As you grow older, you'll see white men
cheat black men every day of your life,
but let me tell you something and don't you forget it
- whenever a white man does that to a black man,
no matter who he is, how rich he is,
or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash..."
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - The mood of the country is not good. Too many angry white men on the loose, all of them interested in seeing the president of the nation in another setting, perhaps hanging from an Alabama tree. We are our own worst enemies, that remains true. You get a little fearlful in this country and we all know it's time to scoot back to our own. That is understandable, but even more so when the country's economy is in the dumps.

Last night, four white Americans seeking the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nomination took turns whacking each other in an effort to clear the field, to win. In between, they all took jabs at Democratic President Barack Obama. Nothing wrong with that; it's politics at its rawest.

But another cloud hangs over America. The popular president who has taken the country's poor under his wing, who has rid the world of the terrorist Osama Bin Laden, who has tirelessly stayed on task in the fight against evil emanating from the Middle East, who has calmed the brain-dead economic missteps by former Republican President George W. Bush...is still under attack for the color of his skin.

If it isn't the crazies still wondering about his birthplace, his Kenyan father, his white mother or his singing, it's what you would want to call the somewhat-sane within that party saying he is a socialist, someone who favors Muslims over Christians, who listens to psycho preachers, who has anarchists as advisors. It's all unrefined crap, of course, but there it is.

When will it end? When will we as a country, a country of immigrants, of people of all skin color under the sun, accept ourselves?

In the Republican tent, the clear answer is: Never.

Republicans are okay with their massive failings. They accept adultery (in the form of candidate Newt Gingrich) and they accept defeat (George W. Bush's failure to hunt down and kill Bin Laden). It is documentable, only Republicans love to gloss over their cancers, their open wounds. It is a drag for the country, a shame for all Americans and an anvil on hard-working shoulders that ought to be plowing better ground. That a Republican like candidate Rick Santorum has even one cross word to say about the president is ridiculous. Santorum is a political loser on many levels, and we don't just mean his last election night loss, when his U.S. Senate opponent in Pennsylvania stomped him by 18 percentage points - a literal landslide.

Santorum is not the answer for today's America. None of these flawed Republicans has a clue. The super-millionaire Mitt Romney is the proverbial country club candidate, at last check praising Michigan for having trees of just the right height. Gingrich is an awfully-soiled man and Libertarian Ron Paul, bless his heart, is simply performing in the wrong circus tent. President Obama, in comparison, looks like a million dollars. Obama has no family scandal chasing him. He has not eliminated one job as CEO of a private company. He has not been ousted by voters to the degree that voters rejecetd Santorum. He has not talked about abolishing the IRS or any major federal department. He has moved toward higher ground.

America is down a bit.

But this president is not ready to say all is lost. Instead, he works at improving everybody's lot, not just that of the wealthy Romneys of the world. High Society roustabout Romney does not need the presidency; The United States needs President Barack Obama...

- 30 -

Nobody's Angel...

"Cuando tengo mucha lana
me pisteo con las buchannas
y cuando no tengo nada
me pisteo con las caguamas
si acaso es que ando borracho
Siete dias de la semana..."
- Grupo Montez de Durango, El Borracho

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - City police picked up Juan De Dios Morales for weaving, cutting through traffic and being a general danger. He'd been drinking at a nearby bar, a cheap joint with a Catholic-sounding name - La Casa de Mama. The owner, an orphan by the name of Beto Flores, knew Juan De Dios well. He knew Juan drank Bohemia, and he knew Juan always wanted his botana at his side. Beto also knew Juan's mother, Manuela, a woman who washed clothes for pay in town. In fact, Manuela washed Beto's clothes and even ironed his shirts. Sometimes, Beto would let Juan De Dios drink without paying. There was a Juan in every town along the rough Mexican border - men in their late-forties who no longer had a job and who lived on welfare extended by the state and federal government.

The policeman asked Juan one question: "Are you drunk?"

Juan, thin and lanky, shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. He felt the headache and thought it weighed at least a ton. Crap flew around his head, bugs, little gnats and big, fat flies. The cop walked around Juan and pulled at his arms, to cuff him.

"The hole?" Juan asked in Spanish.

"Back to jail, yes," he heard from the mustachioed policeman, a cop he knew from their days in junior high school. "One day you'll stop drinking, Juan. That day will be my best day as a cop. You know how many times I've arrested your ass?"

Juan shook his head. He didn't know. Alcohol filled his skull.

"Twenty-eight times, man," the officer told him, as he stuck his right hand under Juan's lower back and pulled at Juan's salsa-stained khaki pants to begin the walk to the backseat of the police cruiser. Juan cleared his throat and then spit out a glob of saliva mixed with bits of peanuts marinated in Tequila. "Twenty-nine now, twenty-nine, cabron."

Juan slid into the cop's car like a dazed worm and fell over on his side. He was sleepy, but that spin in his head sounded and seemed as if it was an old washing machine going gangbusters on its final spin cycle. "Don't freakin' puke in there, Juan," the officer said next. "You do that and I'll kick your ass."

Juan grunted and felt the bile rise to his throat.

At the city jail, two other cops came out to help get Juan into the booking room while the arresting cop called Juan's mother. Twenty-nine times, he told himself. My monthly quota.

He heard the telephone ring four times before he got an answer.

"Quien es?" the frail old woman on the other end asked, not knowing she was about to be informed of her son's latest arrest. "Que? Quien habla? Eres tu, Juanito?"

The veteran officer, schooled in the business of busting drunks and then dealing with relatives, raised his voice a bit and repeated his sentence, "Habla el policia Lionel. Hemos arrestado a su hijo, Juan."

"Que?"

The officer tried again, this time with his voice in full-volume. He knew she had trouble hearing and it hit him that perhaps it got worse for her late at night. When he finally thought she understood, he heard her say, "Pues alli me lo cuidan." Then she said she'd pay his bond in the morning. The policeman hung up the phone. He knew she had little money and none for bailing anybody out of jail. Her husband, a carpenter known well in town, had died a few years back, the cop knew. Juan De Dios did little to help his mother. He drank daily, laughed with his pals at the cheap cantina and danced with the low-class women employed by bar owner Beto Flores. In fact, Juan's reputation as a nifty dancer was well-known with all the women who danced for their living. He liked the taconazo and he could cumbia with the best of them, they said. Once, he'd done the Limbo Rock to wild laughter, his nylon shirt unbuttoned and his Beatle boots dragging the wooden floor like the heels of a club-footed man.

Nallely Davila, one of the younger dancers, and just in from Honduras, was one of Juan's favorites. It was Hilda who had noticed Juan shined his boots on Friday nights, the day she served as the bar's "Discount Girl," the dancer whose rate was lowered as weekend promotion.

In fact, there were rumors that Juan De Dios had fallen in love with the 26-year-old Nallely. Beto Flores chided him for arriving with a single red rose he quickly gave to Nallely on those nights. Juan later confessed to taking it from the front yard of a house in the nearby Southmost neighborhood. Nallely wouldn't say it, but another dancer had told Juan to forget any ideas he might have of gaining her as a lover.

"You're too old," one of them said she almost said to Juan on the night of his arrest outside the bar, out in the parking lot, when he'd made a scene after seeing Nallely leave with another man, a younger man who had looked at Juan De Dios and laughed uproariously.

When his thin-faced mother walked into the jail to pay his bond, Juan De Dios asked cops to let him leave out the back door...

- 30 -

When She Was Good...

"Slowly she sank to her knees on the floor
Cursin' the freedom she'd won
From the torture she vowed not to take anymore
And the victim she'd almost become..."
- Kristofferson, Down To Her Socks

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - In her sleep, Betty Lou Thelma Liz Gonzalez always threw her brain toward one of those lovely dreams in which she always found her prince, romanced him and had one of those Happily-Ever-After lives. There were so many princes, however, that to work it into reality seemed the tallest of mountains to climb. The thing was Betty Lou Thelma Liz had this reputation for sharing her body with men, with documenting the relationships, with being unceremoniously dumped. What to do, loomed as her agony.

Woman in this part of the world, she'd learned as a young girl, arrives to serve men. All women were for men, the good ones and the bad ones. She'd had more than her share of the bad ones, went the line in the streets. And as she strolled into the bar, it was the weight of that baggage that depressed her to the point of wondering if perhaps she wouldn't be better off dead. The last prince had turned into a cad, abused her and dumped her. When her friends asked about him, Betty Lou Thelma Liz would say, "He got bored with me and, oh, well..."

The bar loomed as the own's latest magnet for the romantics, of which everyone in town was one. All local men thought they were handsome; all local women thought they were beauties. That wasn't the case, but the bar was dimly-lit, allowing for deception and wonderment. Its music bounced off the walls and settled down onto the thick carpeting, lyrics and refrains to be vacuumed in the morning. Betty Lou Thelma Liz cut through a departing group of patrons and beelined for the Ladies Room, where she would listen to the other women speak about the night's male prospects.

She dropped her purse on one of the sinks and stared at herself in the mirror. She pursed her lips and pouted, made faces and swung her hair in a manner she thought might be flirty. Then she patted her roundish rump, wishing for an evening workout down there. Betty Lou Thelma Liz knew the local ropes. She reached for the red lipstick in her small purse and then lifted it to her smallish mouth. It was the brightest of the sticks she owned. While a covey of other birds strolled-in, she threw the lipstick back into her purse and turned to leave. One of the arriving women glared at her and then said, "I thought Pedro told you to stay away from this bar." The voice was terse, although not loud. One-on-one mano-a-mano, the usual Spanglish thrown out inside these joints.

Betty Lou Thelma Liz stared right back at the girl, a Big Haired woman with huge breasts and a short skirt that barely made it below her fattened crotch.

"Pedro can go to Hell," Betty Lou Thelma Liz shot back, her voice equally in control.

Momentarily, three of the women with the large woman who had confronted Betty Lou pushed themselves into the conversation, one saying, in a voice that seemed straight out of a talking crow, "You want your ass kicked?" Betty Lou Thelma Liz said nothing, holding her ground, but now knowing that the women had blocked her way out of the bathroom. Fights in these situations were commonplace in Brownsville, although never reported by the local press. A few of the Bloggers had witnessed a few, but they, too, looked the other way, maybe because they were in the bars as partyboys and not as reporters.

A blow came her from behind, in the low-back of the head, someone's fisted hand cutting across, burying itself for long seconds before bouncing off and allowing for the surprised stars to form in her brain. Betty Lou Thelma Liz fell to the concrete floor, gasping for air. She did not feel the heels cut into her chest and, when she rolled over in self-defense, another pair landed on her upper back. One of the women next said, "Kick her in the goddamned head, so she'll remember why she had her ass kicked." It was a contradiction, but that's women in brawls.

Betty Lou Thelma Liz recovered three weeks later at the county hospital, her first bit of news from the doctor being that one of her cheeks had been caved-in during the kicking. Here, she looked like a mummy, head bandaged almost entirely, her purpled nose being the only facial feature exposed. But she was alive. She knew that. The rest she could not remember. The signs of a beating were obvious, but the faces of her attackers were gone, not a set of angry eyes or foaming mouth she could fashion. That too was life in town. Abuse ran rampant in all aspects of local life, and everybody said it was better to forget, to live and let live.

Betty Lou Thelma Liz was alive, a victim of a thrashing, but still alive.

On the morning of her departure from the hospital, she thanked her caregivers and joined her two sisters in the walk to their vehicle. One of them, the older one, patted her softly on the head and said something about helping with the bandages. Overhead, the day's sun already had the temperature on the run. All in all, Betty Lou Thelma Liz felt good. She was going home.

On the way home, the vehicle drove past the bar where she'd almost been killed. Betty Lou Thelma Liz looked over at the aging marquee and smiled a little smile, for herself. Her attackers had not been arrested, and not even identified. They were out there. Of that, she was certain. Another time, she might have plotted a worthy revenge. Not this time.

You can fight the ways of a bordertown, but you can never change them, she told herself once more as the vehicle rolled to the red light at the next intersection...

- 30 -

In Barton's World, The Calm Before The Pancakes...

"My blood runs cold
My memory has just been sold
My angel is the centerfold
Angel is the centerfold..."
- J. Geils Band, Centerfold

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Jim Barton threw a photo of a hot dog cart on his blog and then went on a confessional of sorts that had him, we think, explaining his reasons for blogging to St. Peter, St. Louis, St. Bernard and perhaps even to the patron saint of the laboring Mexican, San Cudo. The blogger who came in from the cold was, as they say at ringside on Lucha Libre Night all across Mexico, en fuego.

Coming after my own weekend diatribe about The Paz Files and its failings, Barton's Sunday afternoon at the front pew seemed to arrive as the flip side of my 45-rpm record. Well, Hell, good for Barton, is what I say. A little inner reflection is good for all Bloggers. Lord knows there is more to coming clean about law-breaking than simply writing about the workings of the county jail. Tell it all, brother. It's good for the soul. This bordertown, home to an equal number of urchins and angels, needs a daily cleansing, is my feeling. It is a town that ought to be spanked daily, there on the naked nalgas, there where excellence don't shine, as the old federal court interpreter Fred Kowalski used to say back in the day. A Mexican bearing the burden of crime and sin is not the Mexican God had in mind. Two things hobble a border Mexican, and I know, cause I'm Mexican: They harbor a tremendous fatalism that cripples any sense of dreaming for a better life, and they stick stubbornly to a diet that kills the brain.

Too much maize is no different than too much Valium. It dulls the brain.

So, give it up for Jim "Bad News" Barton. He's earned today's gold star on his class folder. A hot dog cart on his Blog? That is a spectacular intro to his confession that also came adorned with those Blue Corn tortilla tacos found pretty much everywhere in my beloved Santa Fe. What's next, Jimbo - a color photo of the quintessential Brownsville living-room couch? Throw a Mexican vato gordo on it and write a story about that trend, one that was originally labeled a "trend" in 1910, when locals dashed off to join the Mexican Revolution, got tired of no barbacoa and showers, and slinked back home to rest on the couch. They used to call them "Eslackers," is what the historian Estanislado Contreras wrote in one of his Poemas de la Revolucion. It was a beaut, Estan!

But what will Barton do next?

Will he walk the downtown streets and photograph sidewalk shoppers and note the fashions of the illegal aliens? Will he gather a smokecloud at his feet and storm a Charro Days stage? Will he stroll into a Blues bar and finally offer his readers a true and accurate account?

Or maybe he'll pluck a photo of casserole City Commissioner Melissa Zamora off the Internet and write about how this woman is forever taking photographs of herself with local men. We hardly know her, although often mentioned in connection with her name. It's an interesting style she practices. Photographs translate into perceptions, and, well, Jim Barton has shown a knack for fronting such a thing...

- 30 -

The Blogger As Superstar...

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact..."
- Shakespeare, A Midsumer's Night's Dream

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - When I was working as a reporter, it seemed okay to say I worked for this or that newspaper or magazine. There was some connection with reality, with the idea that I was doing something somewhat meaningful, perhaps even needed. Writing books allowed me to say my craft had segued onto another stage, had followed a professional progression of sorts.

Blogging? It is a low form of communication, a world inhabited by fattened egos and astonishing laziness. It is writing, but it is the sort of writing to be equated with publishing those thoughts that rise in the company of a pencil inside an outhouse or bus station bathroom stall. I wish I could say that my blogging is anything exceptional. It is better than some, but still a childish undertaking. I say that because I seem to laugh too much while doing it.

Here, "news" is my redwood hat rack. This blog rolls down an unpaved trail offering tidbits and nuggets and factoids related to ongoing events, local and far-flung. I don't profess to know everything, nor do I invent out of thin air. My sources for stories found here are usually other sources, from television to radio to newspapers and magazines. Sometimes a rumor or conversation gets me thinking and so I'll write something about it. But it's no great shakes. Blogs are the smallest stage for writers, just a tad better than scribbling on restaurant table napkins. You should know, of course, that there are now almost a billion blogs on the Internet. One more, or one less, matters little. It's all crap, really - guys like me who are able to put coherent sentences together to express a thought and guys like those others who merely sit down to copy & paste a freakin' press release to feel something or another.

The venue is not only cheap, but it is a mirage. They may look like sites for news organizations, but they're just electronic pages for zealots and malcontents to push their dogma. Do any of them gain traction as being credible? Perhaps some, but not the larger majority. Some are parodies, some are outright jokes and some are advocacy vehicles; that is, they are there to push the agendas of someone who'll pay pennies to have some word-monkey do it for them. Prostitution has a veritable history; blogs are just newcomer sluts.

So the next time you come here thinking this is a "News" site, well, boys and girls, take that societal scowl off your face when you enter this room. News is only a part of it. This blog explores the world of writing. When I write about my ally Jerry McHale, I am writing about the character I know as Jerry McHale. When I write as Junior Bonner, or Rudolf Von Bulow or Bob Veracruz or Ricardo Klement, it is acting out the movie in my head, frame by frame, by way of dialogue and characterization, nothing more.

Blogging has served me well as a laboratory, as a place where I can come unload crap in my brain. It is usually useless slop that needs to be out of there. I have no interest in being anyone's principal informer, nor do I have any interest in the people or places I write about. Everyone is a character, everyplace is a setting for my characters. And you'd know it if you knew that I whip these posts out in 20 minutes or so, much of the time being consumed by my search for an appropriate kicker quote and photograph.

There, that goes out to all of you who think I like to lump it on Brownsville and Harlingen and the Rio Grande Valley as a whole. Really? It's just a guy writing paragraphs that are partly-truth and partly-fiction. I've said it before, but here it is again - Blogging is an inexpensive date, a way to get your jollies while spending nothing, a way to joke around, and a way to stay in touch. I don't hate anyone or anyplace. Life is good. The sun's out this morning and the day's outing is planned. There's enough gasoline in the car to get me here and there, enough cash in my wallet to get a bite or a shirt somewhere. Things could be worse. But, no, I'm not the the kind of guy who holds grudges or bothers with someone else's millstones. I'm a Scorpio, for God's sake.

So come here to be with me, not to follow me...

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Halftime In America...

"Well, we're living here in Allentown
And they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they're killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line..."
- Billy Joel, Allentown

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - When you head over to the Eastside here, it's a part of Austin you won't see pictured in travel brochures or spotlighted in the local publications. The Eastside is the poor side of town, home largely to Blacks and Hispanics, some Asians. Along East Cesar Chavez Boulevard, it is a long string of bars, finance companies, used car lots and cheap housing that moves you away from the political power at the State Capitol, the partying on fabled Sixth Street and the expensive high-rise condos one sees when first driving-in from either north I-35 or the southern stretch of the same busy interstate.

That portrait of poverty isn't often associated with hip Austin, home to the Texas Longhorns, the annual South-By-Southwest music and film festival and a cavalcade of fairs and festivals that have made the Texas capital a national attraction.

Yet, even with the Willie Nelson songs greeting you at most bars, the tune also part of the local soundtrack is one whose lyrics say Austin has joined the Top 40 on that American poverty list. In fact, Austin's 20.8 percent poverty rate places it No. 36 in the rankings of cities with more than 250,000 population. With its whopping 37.6 percent, Detroit remains Number One as home to the poor, according to the latest study's author, Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College in New York City.

Cleveland placed second with its 34%, while Miami is third with 32.4.

The highest ranking Texas city is Dallas, with 23.6 percent, earning it 17th place. Houston is in at Number 22, with 22.8%. El Paso is six places below that with 21.6%. Corpus Christi is Number 38, with a poverty rate of 20.1% among its residents - tieing it with much-larger New York City.

Surprisingly, Los Angeles and Denver tied El Paso, with their own 21.6%.

The nation's economy is hurting. There is no question about that. And smaller communities suffer the same pain, perhaps even more meaningfully. One unemployed person in a town of 10,000 is not the same as one in a city of 250,000. It is for that one person, but cities tend to exist under a Big Picture scheme that says progress is measured by the collective. Past the Eastside's depressing mood here, a bit farther east, a major Indy-type racetrack is taking shape, funded in part by the state. Hit I-35 at the Highway 71 intersection on the way to the airport and see an army of panhandlers, and it's not just at that location. Panhandling is a job in Austin. If it isn't homeless, crippled veterans, it's shaggy-haired, middle-aged women asking for change to feed themselves. Poverty may be the next grab for soulful country & western songwriters.

In Detroit, America's Tijuana, things had deteriorated to the point that school officials earlier this schoolyear announced they planned to close half of the city's schools and send layoff notices to every teacher in the system. According to a 2010 article in The Wall Street Journal, Detroit at the time had 90,000 abandoned or vacant homes. Much of that was caused by the demise of the area's auto manufacturing industry, a job market that appears to be making a comeback, but a fall that cost Detroit workers good-paying union jobs. Homes were lost, the unemployment rate rose dramatically.

It is this economic meltdown that has given rise to a belief in America that income inequality is a real problem in our capitalistic society. Money has flowed upward lately, toward the bank accounts of the rich, crippling the capitalistic tenet that says such an economy worls only when money makes a full circle, goes from pocket to pocket. But poverty is only one symptom, that is true.

Still, it remains a mind-numbing eye-opener...

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Teabaggers On Welfare Against Welfare...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - The rallying cry of most of today's angry Republicans is this thing about the poor taking more than their share of entitlements from the federal government, goodies such as unemployment, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security benefits. They like to think that it is the insatiable poor abusing those social programs, not any of them.

They can think it, but it's not true.

Recent studies, one by professor Suzanne Mettler of Cornell University, show that 44 percent of Social Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 percent of those on Medicare believe they "have not used a government program."

Among those are a large group of Tea Party Movement followers who continue to crow long and loud for a reduction in federal entitlement programs (known now as the social safety net), presumably complaining only about what the poor receive. It is a confusion on their part being used skillfully by Republican political candidates quick to isolate government assistance recipients to the myth that is this; that, really, it is only Blacks and Hispanics who abuse the system.

Nevermind that much of the government's aid goes to children and the elderly, some of the latter somehow enticed into the Teabagger movement that only makes them look like unabashed retards. Would they endorse a candidate out to sink their social security monthly check? Of course not. But they show up at rallies and spout inanities that could very well turn around and hurt them.

Medicare is something most Americans enroll in at age 65, if only to help defray the high cost of medicine, drugs and examinations and surgeries. Only, don't tell a Teabagger he or she is part of the entitlement world. They are openly oblivious, quicker to point the finger at the urban centers and at the poorer neighborhoods. But they also file for unemployment and food stamps and every other "entitlement" program that will get them a check at month's end. Hypocrisy? Yes.

In his effort to avail every American a fair shot at healthcare, President Obama has endured an avalanche of lies from this particular group, yet he has not turned away from his desire that even Teabaggers enjoy the fruits of his work. Obama is condemned daily by the GOP's current crop of hardly-presidential presidential aspirants for not taking-on entitlement programs, yet they attack him for cutting Medicare.

Interestingly, the surveys also show that a large number of Americans residing in so-called Red States (Republican strongholds) are enrolled in some sort of federal aid or another, from food stamps to college tuition assistance. The bottom line is that the president has not expanded the safety net for poor Americans as much as it has been expanded by the nature of the country's sluggish economy, in large part the result of the former president's ineptitude, Republican George W. Bush. More unemployed workers equals longer lines at the welfare office.

In his report, Aaron Carroll of Indiana University, notes that, in 2010, residents of the nation's "most conservative" states got 21.2 percent of their income in government transfers. During the same period he studied, Carroll found that residents of the "most liberal" states only got 17.1 percent of the same benefits.

The studies are eye-opening, and one is left with the realization that those government moochers in the Red States are either too dumb to see that they also lap-up to the food stamps office or maybe the myth that White people simply hate to know that others are getting anything is very real...

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BORDER JEOPARDY!...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - It's that time of the month again, boys and girls. Put your notes and books away and take out a sheet of paper. Today's quiz is on Border Life & Culture. Seven out of ten correct answers is the passing score. Do try for more, however. The questions were prepared by a distinguished panel of South Texas scholars born in the region, but no longer living there. Good luck!

1.) He is a candidate for Congress whose background includes the killing of his father at a Sebastian, Texas cockfight.

a.) Who is Rigo Tovar?
b.) Who is Felipe Alou?
c.) Who is Armando Villalobos?

2.) When he leaves his wife, Brownsville blogger Jerry McHale generally sets up house at this hotel.

a.) What is El Economico?
b.) What is the Cameron Motor Hotel?
c.) What is El Western Motel?

3.) State Rep. Rene Oliveira is a chubby man who likes to eat beef, but his nickname among bloggers is...

a.) What is The Plump Partridge?
b.) What is The Luby's Marauder?
c.) What is The Menudo Monster?

4.) He is best known for stand-up reporting from storm-ravaged South Padre Island, where he invented the line, "I'm standing in front of a dead pelican."

a.) Who is blogger Jim Barton?
b.) Who is Brownsville PIO Bill Young?
c.) Who is blogger Jerry Deal?

5.) She is generally credited with helping Brownsville rid itself of plastic bags at grocery stores.

a.) Who is Yolanda Begum?
b.) Who is Erin Hernandez?
3.) Who is Melissa Hernandez-Zamora?

6.) The publisher of The Brownsville Herald has not made a name for himself, but there are those who say he never liked his name.

a.) Who is Cavazos Daniel R.?
b.) Who is Daniel R. Cavazos?
c.) Who is R. Daniel Cavazos?

7.) The population of Brownsville sort of mirrors that of this Mexican city?

a.) What is El Zumbido?
b.) What is Boy's Town in Laredo?
c.) What is Reynosa?

8.) This Browntown blogger was arrested during the past two Christmas seasons, for driving recklessly and for non-payment of child support, but he's not been in jail since then.

a.) Who is Junior Bonner?
b.) Who is Juan Montoya?
c.) Who is Jim Barton?

9.) This famous country singer was born in Brownsville, but never really lived there.

a.) Who is Wayne Newton?
b.) Who is Kris Kristofferson?
c.) Who is Johnny Cash?

10.) She was ousted as a city commissioner in Harlingen after a tumultous political ride that saw her get indicted and convicted for an ethics violation.

a.) Who is Whitney Houston?
b.) Who is Barbara Bush?
c.) Who is Kori Marra?

There. No go at it without using the Internet and, when done, set your pencils down, turn your papers over and leave the classroom quietly. [Editor:....Correct answers appear in red]...

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