Our flooding situation here in the McAllen - Mission area remains pretty much the same. Those of us who understand the hydrology keep a wary eye posted on our weather radar on the old home computer. Any significant rains....say from 5 to 10 inches over a three to five day period and over a extension of 30 to 50 per cent of the area from the face of the Sierra Madre Oriental to a point near Acun~a, Coahuila/ Del Rio, Texas down to as far as Montemorelos, Nuevo Leon can conceivably wreak disaster on the Lower Rio Grande Valley. All Mexican reservoirs are filled to beyond 100 per cent of capacity....and the international reservoirs are at or near capacity and the floodways throughout the Lower Rio Grande Valley are running at or near capacity. So....while people on both sides of the Rio Grande / Ri0 Bravo have become a bit complacent and/or accepting of the danger....the proximity of catastrophe remains. We have another ten days, perhaps a bit longer because of recent moderate but significant rainfall in the watershed, to remain especially vigilant.
Our place, the Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre, still remains dry, although I am informed that the Rio Corona, adjacent to our property, has remained at high levels. At least it is contained within its maximum flow stage, and remains about 160 yards away from the house. The Rio Corona does not drain into the Rio Grande. It does join the Rio Soto la Marina at the juncture of Lake Vicente Guerrero, east of Ciudad Victoria.....all of this is 200 miles south of the Frontier. The Rio soto la Marina runs due east upon leaving the lake and empties into the Gulf of Mexico near La Pesca, Tamaulipas. (great surf and estuary fishing)
For those who have inquired, my father-in-law is better....but better is certainly a relative term. He is extremely limited in his scope of activity, but at least he is not suffering or in any severe pain. It takes three family members, two health workers, and one doctor to address his issues. My mother-in-law and my wife are the ones who are paying most of the price of caring for this fine old gentleman. My brother-in-law, his wife, and my sister-in-law have spared nothing in the way of effort....(which is considerable, in that they live a great distance from the Valley)...or resources. We are fortunate that things are only as bad as they are.
Other things that do not seem to change is Chilpancingo, Guerrero, the capital of the State of Guerrero. This is an important State to us Gringos because Acapulco is situated there. It is also a place that has long been associated with violence....violence between the various Indian ethnicities, violence in politics, violence caused by bandits (sometimes against other bandits). This has been a characteristic of the area since before the Spanish Conquest. The white man came in and changed things...(?)
One particularly telling statistic is that since the Mexican Revolution of 1910 - 1917 no Governor of the State of Guerrero ever completed his term. I think this rule has been violated recently....but only once or twice. The Governors were either run out of office by angry Indians, lynched by angry everybodies, or skipped town ahead of the crowd, or sneaked out to the United States, Cuba, Spain, or France with a generous portion of the State Treasury.
Various States of the Mexican United States have had frequent and/or extended terms of "gobierno militar provisional temporal". Guerrero is certainly one. Another State, San Luis Potosi, had a "proviosional military temporary government" run by a nice gentleman named Gen. Santos on three separate occasions. The joke in San Luis Potosi was that they had a permanent temporary military government.
To be sure, the violence and absurdity we are witnessing in Mexico at this time pales before the violence that was being witnessed just before the Revolution of 1910 to a point shortly before the outbreak of World War II. This is especially true if one considers the issue on a per capita basis. In those years ten or fifteen thousand people of all classes, races, ethnicities, and pursuations were slaughtered, PER YEAR....when the population was less than 20,000,000. Americans living and working in Mexico at that time numbered between 20,000 and 40,000 in any given year....but well over 2,000 were murdered ...many especially by leftist Carranza supporters and general banditry during and just after the Revolucion.
But I diverge.....In Guerrero State, apparently there is the rize of a "White Hand". Six bodies of known thugs and cartelistas were found outside of Chilpancingo with a notice that read " No more rape, no more murder, no more kidnapping, no more violence, (signed) The Cartel of the Sierra". Supposedly the each of the bodies had a tag...."corruption", "rape", murder", "extorsion", "kidnapping", "violence". Perhaps a cryptic "six horsemen of the apocolypse". The international press declared that it was the rize of a new drug cartel but such a thing is very, very improbable.... many Mexicans are of the opinion that it is a bunch of people who have been watching old Cisco Kid and Zorro shows. Who knows?
I shall be signing off again for a bit. Any new news will be reported quickly. As usual, thank you for your kind attention and time.
The Old Gringo
