We have had a series of peculiar "incidents" while trying to complete and post the previous submission and this one. Sudden disappearances of text, words being re-misspelled, or if written in Spanish, being converted into other words of English origen. We appreciate the attention of our readers, and as always appreciate your comments and suggestions. I equally appreciate your willingness to put up with my lack of diagnostic ability in terms of disciplining an old computer.
We return to the battleground…
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Those who are not in the fifth column of the marxists, frequently are members of hideously violent organised young men between the ages of 13 to 25, and who are well-trained in the art of torture, killing by knife and/or firearms, theft of both large and small scale, and especially assaults on girls and women. With certainty they scoff at and despise everything about the peculiar institution of Americanism and the American Way.
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| From the 1990s, the "Ejercito Zapatista de la Liberation Nacional (EZLN).You all will remember"Sub-comandante Marcos"a white Mexican from the North of Mexico, with two University degrees and a hatred for his horribly upper middle class, white Mexican family. ___________________________ |
Twenty or thirty years ago, or seventy years ago, or run it up to 100 or more years ago and then some, we did have Mexican ruffians who would come across illegally and begin or maintain a life of crime. They were not the "noble wetback" or a legal temporary-labour person. This first named grouping of "bad" Mexicans were something of a parallel to Bonnie and Clyde, the James and Donaldson Boys, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. is now laughably dwarfed by the several hundreds of thousands of miscreants and gang-members who have come up from certain parts of northern South America, and the Central American nations of Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. These people are a menace to the society and the culture of the Republic.
Please be certain. I was born on a farm north of McAllen, as we have written many times. We have stated in our various letters, editorial comments, and in this blog that my parents employed hundreds upon hundreds of temporary agricultural workers, especially from the State of Guanajuato, followed by Michoacan, Vera Cruz, Tamaulipas, and Nuevo Leon.
Our old farmstead (it was new back then) had a good amount of acreage, a relatively huge orchard of Valencia orange, and the centre of operations, repairs, and storage for my parent's Grove Care business. Our rambling 16 room three-piece homestead, with a really nice interior patio and elegant carpet grass and floral and forever blooming bushes were almost always present.
But after all those years, and all those different men my father would point out that we never missed a watch, a fifty cent piece, or anything. And our rambling house had no locks on the doors (except the bathrooms). It is just the way it was; no PollyAnna, no false "defending the poor". It was just the way it was.
My parents had the same men, or children and brothers of the same men, who came and went as it was convenient for them and my parents. In all those years, according to my parents and brothers, and as I saw the men while I was growing up mixed among them, never did I witness any dishonesty or depravity.
As an aside, I frequently point out that our men did not want their pay to carry home. They would leave, take a bus from Reynosa, and bounce and bump and grind all the way to Guanajuato, and from there disperse to their hamlets…where frequently there were more citizenry that spoke Purepecha (also known as Tarascan) than Spanish. My mother and I (as a very young child 4 or 5 years old), and at times my eldest brother and I would go to the Telegrafos y Telefonos de Mexico in downtown Reynosa with two or three thousand dollars in cash.
There my "elder" official (brother Milton) would present the Mexican telegrapher with a stack of Mexican names and data, along with that citizen's official "numero calificado del portador" (qualified number of the bearer). Then there were the most flourishing elegant signatures of authorisation (frequently by a retired Mexican Army General) and the telegrapher would begin sending the remittances to "Jose Garcia y/o Maria Cisneros de Garcia" et. al.
The men preferred to send their money to the real boss of the house, thereby leaving behind the urge to liven up a cantina or play cards or dice in the back of the bus…jeopardising their hard earned lucre meant for Maria and the children. Our men were decidedly void of impulses that would cost money uselessly.
We are leaving the two above paragraphs as a vignette to illustrate to our readers the nature of things back then. Now we have almost constant war, constant invasion, and constant concern about who will be the next among us…we ourselves…our readers…our relatives…our workaday associates…the folks in general…to be involved as victims of violent crime?
I am old and unnecessary, but the civilisation needs its onward march of people being born, training themselves up, producing, and birthing out and raising their progeny, so that they continue the march into the future.
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| Rafael Sebastian Guile Vicente aka: Sub-Comandante Marcos, who styled himself as a communist liberator of the enslaved Mayan Indians of the Mexican State of Chiapas. He was active as a "marxist revolutionary" during the 1990s. He finally left in the early 2000s to Nicaragua. He now circulates in whatever marxist kitchen will feed him. _________________________ |
But after all those years, and all those different men my father would point out that we never missed a watch, a fifty cent piece, or anything. And our rambling house had no locks on the doors (except the bathrooms). It is just the way it was; no PollyAnna, no false "defending the poor". It was just the way it was.
My parents had the same men, or children and brothers of the same men, who came and went as it was convenient for them and my parents. In all those years, according to my parents and brothers, and as I saw the men while I was growing up mixed among them, never did I witness any dishonesty or depravity.
As an aside, I frequently point out that our men did not want their pay to carry home. They would leave, take a bus from Reynosa, and bounce and bump and grind all the way to Guanajuato, and from there disperse to their hamlets…where frequently there were more citizenry that spoke Purepecha (also known as Tarascan) than Spanish. My mother and I (as a very young child 4 or 5 years old), and at times my eldest brother and I would go to the Telegrafos y Telefonos de Mexico in downtown Reynosa with two or three thousand dollars in cash.
There my "elder" official (brother Milton) would present the Mexican telegrapher with a stack of Mexican names and data, along with that citizen's official "numero calificado del portador" (qualified number of the bearer). Then there were the most flourishing elegant signatures of authorisation (frequently by a retired Mexican Army General) and the telegrapher would begin sending the remittances to "Jose Garcia y/o Maria Cisneros de Garcia" et. al.
The men preferred to send their money to the real boss of the house, thereby leaving behind the urge to liven up a cantina or play cards or dice in the back of the bus…jeopardising their hard earned lucre meant for Maria and the children. Our men were decidedly void of impulses that would cost money uselessly.
We are leaving the two above paragraphs as a vignette to illustrate to our readers the nature of things back then. Now we have almost constant war, constant invasion, and constant concern about who will be the next among us…we ourselves…our readers…our relatives…our workaday associates…the folks in general…to be involved as victims of violent crime?
I am old and unnecessary, but the civilisation needs its onward march of people being born, training themselves up, producing, and birthing out and raising their progeny, so that they continue the march into the future.
What sincerely concerns me is that we have a return to catechism…a re-establishment of a standard code of predictable conduct…a willingness to require compliance and concurrence with realistic social values and codes of financial and cultural interaction. As spoiled and soiled as I was as a pre-adult, it would be certain that much, very much, of the conduct we see in public to-day would never have passed muster by any reasonable person's standard during those times.
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| Irene Garza 1936 - 1960 May she forever rest in peace _______________________ |
A young, very attractive and very accomplished and well-known member of the community went to mass at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church one evening, and even with 200 parishioners clanking beads, clicking out in high heels after the service, calling some over to others about going out for a bite, etc…one of the most accomplished and attractive single young women in South Texas…just did not come home that night. She had been seen, she had spoken with several of the parishioners. It was a distance of four blocks, twixt Church and Home.
Lamentably, several days later, her body was recovered, bobbing in the large irrigation canal known as the Second Street Main. There was a grate over the undertake running under Highway 83, McAllen's central east-west thoroughfare, and that had stopped her northward drift from where she had been discarded about five blocks to the South on 2nd Street.
To shorten the story, the entire City of McAllen all but stopped. Parents who could kept their children home or near did so. Police from all over converged, including Department of Public Safety from Austin, along with the Texas Rangers…and, of course, lawyers and ranking diocesan ecclesiastics from the Diocese…to assure everyone that the priest at mass that night had nothing to do with nuttin'.
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| Just a nice picture of our place down in NoWhere, Mexico where we have a little adobe hut at a very nice setting. ___________________________________ |
For everyone who was alive and there, anyone over the age of 10 or so, they have never forgotten that episode in their lives. McAllen had about 30,000 people…a busy place…and growing. Hidalgo County had about 165,000 folks, and a lively business and farming member of the 254 county membership of the Republic of Texas. Back then it was the 9th largest in population in the State. Now, approaching 1,000,000 people it ranks sixth with that count.
During these times, the main newspaper of record, the McAllen Monitor, will report from 25 to 40 homicides, attempted homicides, armed robberies, and felony assaults per week for the County of Hidalgo. That means, being generous, our home county will have had over 1,500 serious felonies committed…not including burglary, embezzlements, and other non-violent crimes. For the four county "Lower Rio Grande Valley" community…we are looking at almost 3,000 per year now.
In 1960, there might have been three or 150 such "serious violent crimes", with one fifth the population. That means a per capita increase in violent crime of twenty times the rate per capita now from sixty years ago. Twenty times more violent crimes per capita than before. And mind well, this does not include the weekly publication of some great embezzlement by some major entity and/or personality.
Things are not "just like they always were".
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| While this photo was taken in 1916 in Rio Grande City's Fort Ringgold, it was also a principal place of service by my father from 1929 to just before 1934. And, yes Virginia, this photo was colourised. I'm sorry. |
Long, long, long interethnic business friendships, intermarriage entanglements forged a "race" of people…primarily Spanish, Hebraic Spanish, Anglo, and Germanic people formed up what was the backbone of what was good about the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Goodly numbers of Jewish merchants and Czech and Polish farmers blended into the mix as well.
But people of lesser degree tormented the area off and on, for a long time. Some were bandits, others were "businessmen" of shallow commitment to the "win - win" code of commerce, and there were always the drifters and shysters.
El Gringo Viejo does not see our situation here improving, and much is because of the lack of catechism, of Sunday School attendance, of pursuits involving self-improvement, and of family bonding. With the much larger population, certainly we have numerous folks who "live the old-fashioned way". But with the "immigration reform" of the late 1980s and the near open-borders we had during the 1990s through President Bush and then the ghastly record of the O'bama years, we were literally inundated with scores of thousands of people unprepared to meet the complexities of life in Texas and / or the United States of America.
The main theme of a broad majority of people who came up were, in fact, of Mexican origin and were about 50 / 50 in their orientation towards being self-sufficient. Currently slightly less than all juveniles in Hidalgo County are supported by food stamps…and slightly more than 40% of all families are in those ranks. Years ago, there was a thing called the surplus commodities distribution programme. The percentage of the population taking advantage of that programme, from 1961 and before, was around 7.5%…mainly older people or handicapped in some manner.
The biggest problem we have now…and now we circle back to the previous issue, the previous posting…is the fact that this area as well a scores, and scores of neighbourhoods, smalls towns, cities of all sizes, and even rural areas have become the stomping grounds of the Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS - 13) of Honduras and the Callejon 18 based in Guatemala. To a lesser extent, fellow Central American countries and neighbours El Salvador and Nicaragua are very involved with the trafficking of people to the United States, essentially to birth babies and obtain AFDC, stamps, etc. as they settle into incomprehensible quarters and pay the "tax" to the gang-member for the "stamps and apartment" his group provided.
One need only to think about every dark alley, every dingy overcrowded, noisy, dangerous place in some backwater corner of some run-down city that has more people on welfare than on the productive workers' payrolls.
We shall take a bit of a breather and resume to-morrow, trying to make a little sense and to explain things the way I have come to understand them. Keep the emails and comments coming in, we always respond…sometimes slowly…but we respond.
EL GRINGO VIEJO
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