Sunday 7 August 2011

Spill Over??

     You all are aware that the Old Gringo grumbles about the  press's inability to get anything right....almost, it seems, purposefully choosing to mis-report events and facts.   When terms are used repeatedly incorrectly, and when facts are repeatedly misstated, one can chalk it up to lying, ignorance, or stupidity, almost always, or to a combination of the three.
      The new "for instance" is telling.   The McAllen Monitor, very much a border-based newspaper, being published about eight miles from the international border with Mexico, has long warned that "someday" we are going to see "spill-over" violence coming out of Mexico and into the Lower Rio Grande Valley.   Any time now,  some time soon, any moment, it's bound to happen in the near future.
     The Old Gringo has written how such matters have always been with us, since the establishment of the Rio Grande as the international boundary.  He has also demonstrated how, in its new encarnation, the drug/cartel wars being conducted on Texas soil has been going on since the mid-to-latter 1960s.
This is not an estimate or a surmision, or a guess.   It is just the facts.
      The same McAllen Monitor that runs articles very frequently forecasting this coming "spill-over" ran an article in this Sunday's paper, section A, page 1, above the fold...."ICE detains convicted Mexican national.....the 45 year-old who served time in a U.S.  (sic) prison for murder, faces illegal re-entry charges".
     The article goes to to explain that Juan Gilbert Hinojosa Gonzalez was convicted 21 years ago and sentenced to prison for involvement and participation in the murders of four men.   Juan, who is a really nice fellow, decided to clean up the area where the encounter took place by piling hay bales on top of the four dead men.    To make certain that no litter would befoul the sacred soil of Texas, Juan was good enough to saturate the area with diesel fuel and set everything on fire.    The fire was so intense that it melted the metal of the 1976 Ford pick-up, and completely immolated the four previous associates of Juan and his accomplices.
     It is not that the Old Gringo is pegging things to that date....this event was so common by that time that everyone knew that the whole of South Texas was awash with....was tsunami'd by....drug trafficking and its associated violence.
As early as 1981, the Old Gringo was present at a get-together where certain grand poobahs of the Lower Rio Grande Valley's financial sector were gloating that the "Carter Recession" had not been so bad for the Valley as for the rest of the country because we had everyone on food stamps and the drug trade was bringing a lot of money into the  Valley that it otherwise would not have.    By that time it had been in full swing for a decade and a half.
      Back then it was two or three bodies of being dragged out of orchards and canals every week.   Now it's five or ten in the four county area.   In the beginning there were no complex gang organizations, but that ended by the mid 1970s  with the establishment of the Triple City Bombers (TRCs) and the Los 13s, advanced glue sniffers who went about killing each other in drive-bys and the like.   Great Society graduates.   Majored in AFDC and all suffering from terminal food stamp poisoning.
     In any regard....because the Old Gringo really could bore everyone to tears with several thousand examples of spill-over violence and explanation of the sources...spill-over violence has been pronouncedly occurring in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, as defined in present day terms, for forty years.   Please note that the Sheriff of Starr County who arrested the perpetrators of these murders went to stay with the Texas Department of Corrections for a good long while shortly after this crime went down.      http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1108/a06.html

     That's okay though, because his chief deputy was appointed to serve, and was later elected to the position in his own right, and then re-elected.....but, alas and alack....he did not quite make it to the end of his second term due to massive corruption charges and, like his predecessor, connections to organized crime.   His story that he can point to with pride with his grandchildren is found at this link  http://www.themonitor.com/articles/starr-30026-county-years.html ,

     The Old Gringo could go on with this cut and paste for the next millennium.  It is twice a week now, a policeman, a border patrolman, a customs inspector, a Sheriff or deputy.....for instance, Hidalgo County, BEFORE these above mentioned incidents lost a Sheriff for taking gifts and  favours, and other matters....he went to prison for a good long while....and you all need to remember that Hidalgo County is the 6th largest of Texas's 254 counties.   The District Attorney....an arrogant old fool to begin with...managed to....Well, that's a messy story for some other time.     http://www.texnews.com/texas97/corrupt092597.html

     Finally, the good news is that Juan the Body Torcher was sentenced to 35 years in Texas, but was released with good time after about 20 years.   He was then deported, but snuck back into the United States where he was hiding in a rural area around Rio Grande City, perhaps the epicenter of drug trafficking in the world.   He was captured and turned over to the ICE people, who will in turn probably turn him over to the State of Texas Department of Corrections on a parole violation charge.   Juan's three accomplices are still serving life sentences.   Their four drug trafficking competitors are still dead.

Thanks for your time.    Beware of Spill-over...so as to not get any on your new white shirt.
El Gringo Viejo