True Meanings - San Jacinto

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    The term "true meaning" of one thing or another.....the Feasts of the Nativity, Resurrection, All Souls and All Saints for instance....has been a sport of intellectuals, analysts, and commentators for hundreds, even thousands of years.   As a compulsive commentator, this means that the OROG knows that El Gringo Viejo is going to be commenting on some matter he considers to be important very soon.

     And, that very soon has arrived.  This time it is concerning the not-so-famous, and generally over-simplified matter of the Battle of San Jacinto, 21 April 1836.

     Texans have been all over the map on this matter.   In and around Austin and a few other precincts of the Republic of Texas, the Battle of San Jacinto represents the best image of the worst people in the world....the Americans, Anglo-Saxons, Southerners, men, and individuals who consider themselves to be sovereign entities.   That is the common opinion held by the University of Texas elites, certain women's and leftist political groups, and their satraps, the ethnic and racial agitators, and various sorts of anarchists.

     But, surrounding the Island of the Bunny's Burrow, is a wondrous circle of Briarpatches.   Places like San Marcos, New Braunfels, Round Rock, Georgetown, Pflugerville, Bertram, and Burnett…and a thousand other locales that have an intersection nearby...in communities tiny, small, and somewhat larger…that are filled with reason.
   They range from Stepford-type places, where a person finds Stepford wives, husbands, pets, children, home and lawn, schools, private arts and study classes, the best AAA minor league baseball and shopping....to dirty-fingernailed, blue-collar types of people and communities where a person has to prove he/she has dirty fingernails and/or calloused hands in order to register to vote or buy a lottery ticket.   Their unifying factor?    Traditionalist, private sector, conservative self-reliance and practice.

     Most of the rest of Texas, even in the South Texas area, there is, and always has been a mediocre to a fine understanding of the meaning of the victory by the Texian Forces over the Centralist Forces of the government of Antonio de Padua Maria Severino Lopez de Santa Anna y Perez de Lebron, (aka - Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna or more simply Santa Anna).   It is easy to make an ethnic or racial issue of this matter, but in fact it was none of that.   Even the ones who fought the fight thinking that ethnic and racial matters were important to the issue.....were wrong.   It was a much, much bigger issue.

    With reference to the above, we reiterate what has been written by El Gringo Viejo before that the Anglo-Irish settlers in the San Patricio Colony, near present day Corpus Christi, sided with the Mexican Centralists and their military during the issue.   While this occurred, another body of Texians north of that point....the Mexican/Spanish rancheros, business people, cattlemen, and farmers sided overwhelmingly with the Texian full-statehood cause, and then with the move to Independence from the control by Mexico City and its bi-polar political posturing.

AT THIS MOMENT, THE BATTLE HAS BEEN OVER FOR ABOUT THREE HOURS.   THE ISSUE WAS SETTLED IN LESS THAN AN HOUR.

     So, to the point of this analysis and commentary.  The very large and pursuing segment of the Mexican Centralist forces a total of 15,000 in five armies headed by 14 generals and colonels....commanded by the Presidente Generalissimo himself....had hounded a rag-tag "army" that never numbered more than 1,000 effectives.   On the day of the engagement....this day....it had at most 920 ready combatants, with no more than 50 rough and ready cavalry.   They would assault a very battle-hardened, fairly well to very well trained, accustomed-to-victory army of at least 1,900 soldiers.

    One side had two cannons, known as the Twin Sisters, while the other side had managed to lug 9 cannons literally across almost the entirety of Texas.
There were 8 nearby and the big 12-pounder on-site in the middle of camp.  Another 30 cannons were within a day's arrival distance, along with another 5,000 mediocre to crack, excellent assault forces including the much feared cavalry with their lancers.

     It was Sunday.   Each side knew of the other's exact position and strength.  There was no chance for deception save for one thing.   That would be the choice of one side or the other concerning ....."When?".     Houston settled that issue during the early morning hours of the 21st Instant.  As the orders went out a few hours later that the men muster and prepare for their deployment and orders to advance....fear, joy, excitement, commitment, final bonding between battle-mates, quieting of mounts who sensed something was up, and then....the predictable orders up and down the line...."No firing until the order is given....no firing until the order is given!!!!"  And then, quietly at first, and walking; then, a trotting but still silent advance;  and then the bolting of the small cavalry group in the advance and to the right of the line of infantry....sweeping forward at breakneck towards the enemy still sleeping in the face of the enemy during those dawning moments.....and then the entrance into the most formidable military encampment on the North American Continent....carnage of the worst sort...the devastation of the entire Presidential Divisional Forces....hundreds dead and wounded, many drowning in the San Jacinto River and its surrounding swamps.  Official numbers seem to back up these:   Mexican forces had 630 killed, 208 wounded, and 730 P.O.W.  while the Texians had 9 killed and 30 wounded.

     It was a horrible disaster for the hopes of a Mexican totalitarian's empire stretching from the Arctic Circle to the doorstep of South America.   And, it was a exhilarating moment for the men who had won against all odds and established in Texas some hope for common law, natural law, and the sovereignty of the individual.

    The capture of the man who at once was the head of the government, the army, and the entire Mexican political reality at that time had learned his military craft as a young Royalist officer in the Spanish Army.  He was a white Criollo (Spaniard born in the New World), and learned to relish his time and activity in the Army.   He served in various venues, including during a sweep of Texas many years before where opponents of the Crown were  picked up and executed even after surrender....and their heads removed and displayed for days in prominent viewing areas so as to chill the fervour of those disposed to revolt.  It was his experience and he had enjoyed it.

    Late in the Wars for Mexican Independence he changed sides (one of his more predictable characteristics) and brought his considerable abilities to the service of the Mexicans in their efforts to secure Independence.  He held various military and political positions, always at or near the edges of power until, around 1830, he began to have irresistible control and effect upon the exercise of political power.  It was his abrogation of the Mexican Constitution of 1824, liberal reform document providing for an American style tri-partite government with the citizens having certain inalienable rights, that put Zacatecas, Durango, Coahuila y Texas, the Yucatan Peninsula, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, Chihuahua and certain other regions into full rebellion against Santa Anna as a person and as a political force.

This depiction is near the age of  Lopez  de  Santa Anna around the time of his invasion of Texas

     To show how important and improbable this victory by the Texians was. it should be noted that with all it inefficiencies and breakdowns, the forces of Lopez de Santa Anna during the period from 1835 through 1836 had 28 major engagements that could be called battles or at least very significant battalion level engagements.  Lopez de Santa Anna's forces lost only two.   The first one and....the last one.    The decision of General Urrea to acquiesce to the demand that Mexican forces withdraw to the south of the Rio Bravo (Grande) before any consideration of dealing with the captured Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was also a source of wonderment to historians and contemporaries to the issue.   There were enough forces to overwhelm the Texians in a second, but some think that Urrea's hatred for Lopez de Santa Anna and his war crimes, arrogance, artibitrary nature, and generally corrupt manner caused him to take advantage of this chance to humiliate the despised generalissimo.

     Urrea would die a few years later during a duel in Mexico City, but Lopez de Santa Anna would live on to torment the Americans and the Mexicans before dying, broke and friendless in June of 1876 at the age of 80.

     But Texas as a continually evolving, conservative, imperfect, common-law, and natural-law political entity lives on.   It is the central beaming, casting light of that lighthouse of the side of the mountain...that most brilliant light within the that shining city that people from around the world wish their side of the mountain could be.   Texas remains a concept that is bigger than reality, bigger than itself, bigger than Hollywood, bigger than any imitator, and a force entirely capable of returning to freestanding status.

     Recent serious surveys had found that a plurality (about 38% of Texans now seriously believe that Texas should seek a path apart.   Among Latins in Texas 25% favour separation and the re-establishment of the Republic of Texas....that number being roughly equal to the number of Latins who are active and/or self-identifying Republicans.  My wife…perhaps her children…who are also mine…feel strongly in this inclination.

      That we could have come from San Jacinto against all odds, been annexed, seceded, "Reconstructed", re-admitted, and then arrived back to the point where we began....rejecting an arbitrary, arrogant, corrupt and far-removed central government, is a matter of interest to observers of contemporary as well as historical Texian issues. 

     So, true meanings?   Until Gabriel plays that last tune, the true meaning of the Battle of San Jacinto is not known.  We should hope, however, that it does not mean that Texas is resigned to be a dull piece of gravel in a recovered aluminium-metal crown that marks the monarchy of fools such as we have in the White House and executive department of to-day's central government.

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Thank you all, as always for your time and interest.  We shall try to be "back in the saddle" sooner, rather than later.  

El Gringo Viejo

Bridges and Blather...

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        One must either quickly learn himself up into modernity, or simply accept the cultural and social changes as the occur during any given lifetime.

     Presidencies in Mexico and the United States have been problematic for the past couple of

Pena - Nieto

terms especially.   The previous President of Mexico, Pena Nieto and his successor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, have served to muddy the water, pontificate, dodge and weave, and generally have little impact on anything.  In some ways this has been good for Mexico…less meddling by corrupt politicians, significant but never definite and final degrading of the cartel corruption, and the appointment of secular humanism as a replacement for morality and self-discipline are the hallmarks of their services.

    The United States of America, on the other hand, was guided as a rudderless ship by marxists and secular humanist thinkers of the Obama Administration.   This guidance was almost always executed in such a way as to almost guarantee the degradation of America role as a shining city on the side of the mountain.

     And, while Donald Trump has done some surprisingly good things and performed far better

Lopez - Obrador

than his substantially deranged and / or  overly elitist detractors, he has performed poorly in the matter of dealing with Mexico and the northern Central American quagmires.

     It is readily recognised that the United States…in these times…is every day more strangled by the boney fingers of the leftist nihilists movement.   Their incessant march to prohibit normalcy and to defame reasonability by legal action…the filing of absurd injunctions…the endorsement of ridiculous perversions as "constitutional rights"and the eradication of the history of the United States has done much damage to the character and cultural fabric of the United States.

Barry Soetoro with Vlad

     Modernity and leftism, coupled with ill-defined nationalism has placed Mexico in a very similar position, culturally, as the United States.  Fads and feelings dominate over resolve and basic catechisms that embrace and endorse positive cultural characteristics.   We think there is still hope for this pseudo-migrant invasion to be blunted, but it will take much effort and much resolve.   We even think, with time, the United States might successfully help to restructure what is left of Central America into a self-sustaining and prosperous in-its-own-way…but that will take two or three generations.

Donald Trump

    The matter of the coverage by the Obsolete Press in the international "community" as well as the United States, I humbly assure all readers of this particular screed that the reportage is severely and intentionally wrong, deceptive, and dripping with ulterior motive on many fronts.   The Obsolete Press has a knee-jerk, marxist, and pro-"migrant" spin on this movement of people from one place they have ruined to another place that they will attempt to turn into a domestic garbage heap.
     When this these places that are so elegant and which continue to be under assault by people who eliminate all nature of human waste within sight of Nancy Pelosi's Palace are further inundated by these new "migrants" there will come a judgement.   That judgement might take the form of over-reaction against the "migrants" and anyone else who thinks he/she can live life as a professional parasite.

     We are distressed by the fact that our President could not move quietly and firmly behind the stage curtains and establish a body of plans, deployments, tactics, and strategies to blunt and deactivate this horrid invasion from the once pleasant Central American countries.   I genuinely fault our President's loud and overly spontaneous voice when he begins speaking in ghastly over-generalisations and factually crippled logic concerning the Mexican officialdom and intellectual class.
     Were he to go to Mexico City and declare to the gnomes and apparatchiks and the poo-bahs and billionaire and other wealthy people that…"We are going to have to stop this unsustainable movement of people before they cross the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.   We are going to have to re-patriate all the Central Americans who came up during the past 15 years without entry Visas.  We will be glad to contribute military, economic, and social assistance in large amounts, if Mexico as a wealthy and increasingly prosperous nation, will join with the same vigour they have shown in confronting the Cartels.   That effort by the Mexican military is a great pride for the Nation in that matter."   Quietly…without publicity…without tweeting…and with compliance. 
    I truly sense that the initiatives the central Mexican government began to implement some weeks back, using the Isthmus Line…would have been fully implemented by now had Donald Trump not gone out of his way to speak highly of North Korean dictators and poorly of Mexico's various small and medium sized successes in our commonly suffered problems.

     That will have to end my rant  to-night.   We do include my "Consuegro's" observations,  gently castigating his "consuegro's" (me) for not having wailed against the Democrats and Obsolete Press since returning from our little hideaway in the middle of NoWhere, Mexico.   I include his observations and admonitions below!
      

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Consuegro, what's happening?  You've been back for a few days and I  had expected that you would've ripped the Dems apart by now. 

     
We're all going to see all the kids for Easter.

Oh!  And I had a guy tell me that the Northern States should force all the migrants to stay in Texas, because…."after all, you're all Mexicans anyhow".

I told him to remember that when we secede again to be sure that my motto will be: "Let north freeze in the dark". 

After we have all the oil and refineries.

(I never liked the Bum, anyhow)

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Remember, "consuegro" is Spanish for …being the father-in-law of his son, when he is the father-in-law of my daughter.   Suegro is the word for 'father-in-law'.

El Gringo Viejo

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Basic Truths About the Falsities of the Central American "Migrants"

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    The following points are seldom reported.  It is vogue in these times to disregard the truth and to embrace the falsity.  The following is a representation of why the invasion being conducted now across the southern frontier of the Republic of Texas and the United States of America is an accurate grouping of truthful  facts.  Such information is not and/or cannot be                                    broadcast, printed up in news released, or apparently even be mentioned in public places.

     Our nation is evolving into an emasculated social-democracy, quickly retreating into a mindset of accommodation, paying blackmail, sealing our lips that used to speak the truth, of feeling guilt for being successful and self-supporting.   Dark clouds have formed on the near horizon, and those clouds move ever closer with the lightning bolts of judgement and ruin.

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This is not a "Migrant" situation   -   migration comes and goes, as do the birds of
 the season.   The vast majority of these people coming up do not intend to return.

(1)     First and foremost, the people flooding up from the Central American states of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua are not "migrants".   They are in my best estimate composed of 80 per cent intentional invaders, parasitic invaders, and criminal invaders.   Being very liberal, there might be five (5) per cent who are legitimately seeking immigrant status and permanent adjustment of citizenship to something that is truly American.  But, even that figure is probably too liberal.

     

     (a)    Intentional invaders are those who arrive just to see what advantage they can take.

    (b)   Parasitic invaders are those who, with malice aforethought, enter the United States in the condition of pregnancy, or to become pregnant.
          Parasitic invaders are the ones who actually hope to gain or keep membership in an anti-social "pandilla" (gang) such as the Mara Salvatrucha 13 or Callejon 18, or one of the scores of farm-teams that co-ordinate with the larger menace.  Crime is fun, and it pays a lot, and it allows a person to hate Americans and kill and wound them…and then you die.  It's a good life.

         And there are the lone-wolf criminal Parasitics who specialise as single or very small cell operators…holding up primarily convenience stores and stealing motor cars.

   (c)  People from the aforementioned nations who are hunting down other fellow citizens who promised to send money back to repay a loan, or who stole something from a friend or relative before sneaking away from home under cover of darkness and heading north.

  (d)  It is difficult for commonly decent people to comprehend that, especially in terms of El Salvador and Honduras, one-third or more of the male population is directly involved in criminal activity.   Once they arrive onto United States soil, they will be shadowed and before 90 days has passed in Newark or Chattanooga or Oneida or Dalhart they will be given a choice to become involved with the gang or face the consequences (death or serious disfigurement).   The females will fare little better…most of them will be shadowed by madams and "padrotes"and a large percentage will be involved in prostitution within 24 months.

Our humble little mud hut

   (e)   Each reader of this Broadside must accept this Apologia:

                    The writer is a person who has property in Mexico.  My wife and I went through considerable efforts, formalities, deposits of considerable amount, payments for purchase of significance,  and quite legal payments as required by the law and the Notary Public endorsements (an NP in Mexico is similar to what might be called a lawyer / judge with authority of record over transactions of considerable value).

     We have paid the taxes, improved the property, and been a positive inclusion in the locale where we built our home. The writer is a person who did considerable University study  as well as life experience and business in Mexico.  We  remain constant in staying fresh concerning matters pertaining Mexico and Latin America, (especially Mexico).  He is the fourth in generation, beginning in the 1880s, of people who invested and relied in and upon Mexico and Mexicans.

     His wife, and therefore his children and grandchildren, are both colonial Spanish (1580s- Monclova - Carvajal y de la Cueva) and Texian (Escandon period - north of the Rio Bravo - 1760), and by her my grandchildren are 15th generation Texian.  By this writer they are 7th or 8th, at this point I lose count.   We are not immigrants to New England or Espana Nueva.  We were and are colonials.

     We are definitively not racists or bigots. We are Caucasian.  It is neither blessing nor curse.  It is simply from whence we came…we have been here since the first batch of ships sailed.  It is not our fault, it is not our blessing, nor is it a curse upon us.   What we are witnessing here in the McAllen and Hidalgo County area of Southernmost Texas is a tragedy and an insult to the most profound  degree.  It is a sacrilege…it is an arrogance that consumes people so presumido that they think the law pertaineth not to them… that their specialness is somehow greater than that of the people who are here and who have helped in every flood, earthquake, and contretemps that has transpired.
     And now we are beset upon by people who have ruined three beautiful countries and turned them into ruin and avarice.
    Nicaragua will fall next, due to the stupidity and corruption of the Ortega Brand.   Take over a country with a strong man (Samoza) who is arrogant, if well meaning, drive him out, murder him with a hired gun in the United States, and then put Nicaragua on the downhill track with the Ortega Brand.
    Nicaragua is full of gold, oil, fish, tourism, vegetable and tropical fruit farming, silver, stunning geographic, Oh Mien Gott!!  And guess what…it is becoming the new Honduras. 

    It is like Puerto Rico…the corruptos corrupt everything before, during, and after the hurricane…and then blame their own sloth, stupidity, corruption, and vice on…Trump?
        Truly a wonderland comes upon us.  

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Corrections must be made.
   The idea of receiving anyone coming up to the frontier of Texas
 or the United States without an entrance Visa in hand that has been issued by the American
Embassy or appropriate consular office of the United States of America is insulting.

(2)     There will be no improvement even when the above conditions are cured, as if by miracle.  The reason nothing will be permanently cured is because of the curse of the notion of Sanctity of Nativity on Terra Americanus Sanctus.   The notion that a female of the species can come across the Rio Grande and stagger into a midwifery and whelp…and thereby qualify as being the mother of a United States of America or Republic of Texas person is patently offensive.
     
     (a)     The simple passage of a statute rescinding this legal regulation will eradicate the parasitical, bloodsucking tidal wave of girls and women coming here to whelp, and thereby gain Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), rental subsidies or free housing, SNAP (food stamps) the famous feed-the-fat programme, free schooling (meals included) beginning at pre-kindergarten until the child drops out and/or joins a pandilla (gang), MedicAide, and various other "free" goodies they can shake down the politicians who then shake down the productive class so that slobs, invaders, and parasites can live "free".
       And before the sensitive and caring class cries foul and puffs up with indignation, the above scenario is exactly what happened with the last amnesty, during the latter part of the 1980s…right along with "chain-migration", whereby the third cousin of the mistress of a person's great-uncle's fourth common-law wife somehow qualifies to come in under the "Family Umbrella".

      (b)        Anyone who is intercepted after illegally crossing the International Boundary between Canada or Mexico and the United States or Texas will be guilty of illegal entry.   All foreigners and returning Americans and/or Texans must report through established ports of entry. This same requirement is enforced by the Mexicans for their Republic and the Canadians for their Dominion.
    A further set of conditions should, must, and will be:
                    

...that there be no application, verbally or otherwise, for "amnesty".

…that there will be no deferred adjudication with a date given for return for

a hearing by magistrate.   Agents of the Customs and Immigration and / or the

Border Patrol will determine the time and place and manner of repatriation, not

adjudication.   To the extent possible the illegal alien(s) will depart for home in

three days.   

                                                                              

…that there be no guarantee of any kind concerning children…Any child whose

adult companion(s) cannot demonstrate proof of parentage or legal authority for                                                      

minor child will be removed into protective, and perhaps permanent, custody.

Undeniable extraction of DNA samples will be made without exception.

…any funds or valuables borne by the offending illegal alien will be removed

from the possession of the offender and used to pay for repatriation to his/her

country origin.   Any remaining value will be forwarded via Western Union.

…the attempt to return or to file for a visa during the subsequent five years to the

initial expulsion and repatriation order will result in that person being declared

a persona non grata in perpetuum …no if's, and's or but's.                                          

     (c)      Furthermore, the fact is the great majority of the Latin element in Texas that is legally naturalised, native-born and/or of colonial extraction in Texas are fuming about these accommodations.   The Mexican who came in during the various Wars and served and chose the option of taking American citizenship due to military service, the native born people of Mexican / Spanish ancestry, and the people who went through the arduous studies and expenses to gain that coveted Naturalisation Certificate (a truly imposing and elegant document meaning much) are fuming about these arrogant invaders who see themselves as entitled to other people's assets.

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    We include the list below,  with the names of certain entities to be considered by the reader.  One might notice the grouping of Roman Catholic and Jesuit or Jesuit-related organisations.   All those using the term  Catholic or Roman Catholic or Jesuit are members of the Liberation Theology movement…as is the most recently elevated Pope.  The group Pop No'J is a secular cultural organisation, and seems to be more dedicated to developing a strong Mayan culture integrated with the general culture in Guatemala.  I find no real marxist positioning or leftist agenda with that organisation.   All the rest, including the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, which is virulently anti-American and pro-socialist / marxist, are actively helping push the idea of "storming the American border".

     We have taken clips and phrases from their own words, taken from a newspaper article published very recently.   The entire article was pretty much oriented towards the point that the poverty and disorder in Central America was due to the gluttony of the American public and the existence of Climate Destroying industry and the indolence of the billionaires and millionaires. 

(a)     Smugglers often paint a misleading picture about conditions on the U.S.-Mexico border and U.S. immigration laws, says Carlos López, who manages a migrant shelter in Guatemala City run by the Catholic Scalabrinian Missionaries.

(b)    “Many people left because the coyotes said that children were an entry pass,” said Agradeli Martínez, whose father, Justo, left in March for the U.S. with her 14-year-old sister.

(c)       Some 1.3 million people in Guatemala were affected between June and August by the severe drought, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.   “We can’t underestimate the impact of recent droughts in the region to explain why people are leaving. Climate change is a factor,” says Úrsula Roldán, an immigration expert at Guatemala’s Rafael Landívar University.

(d)     Guatemalans tend to avoid caravans because they know Mexico better, migration experts say.     “They are invisible in Mexico,” says Andrea Villaseñor, head of the Mexican chapter of the Jesuit Refugee Service, which provides shelter and aid to migrants across the world.

     “Most Guatemalans keep traveling the traditional way, with smugglers. That makes it more difficult for Mexican authorities to detect them,” says Juan José Hurtado, the head of Pop Noj, a pro-migrant nonprofit.

(e)     They also have stronger family networks in the U.S., and relatives willing to help with money to hire coyotes. They go straight from southern Mexico to U.S. border crossings without relying on shelters as much as other migrants, says Joanna Williams of the Kino Border Initiative, a binational Catholic organization that aids migrants in Arizona and the Mexican border state of Sonora.

(f)     Mexico is struggling to contain a surge of Central American migrants making their way to the U.S. border that has been fuelled by a softening of Mexican migration policies and a severe drought in Guatemala, something that is no longer totally true.

(g)     Every day, during times of normalcy, two or three million Mexicans come across the international boundary.   They come from the organised classes, they have their American Entry permit Visa, they have a Credencial Electoral Federal, and the Pasaporte de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos in hand…

     They come in, go about their business, and cause no real problem.  Some stay longer, some go to Las Vegas or Disneyland, some just spend a day or maybe three, shopping the malls and the nice downtown area of McAllen.  During Holy Week, South Padre Island changes its name to San Pedro Island, so named because San Pedro de Garza Garcia is the suburban city adjacent to Monterrey where 500,000 millionaires and billionaires live…it is the wealthiest city in Latin America.   Albeit a bit arrogant, they are also quite friendly and open and inclusive…they are "migrants" because they come and go by the seasons … or the three and four day weekends.

     The Monterrey metroplex is about 5,000,000 strong.  About 10% are stunningly wealthy.  About 70% are in various positions of the middle-class…blue-collar, technicians, doctors, teachers, small business, huge business and so forth.  It is a very industrious place.   Similar places are Tampico metroplex, Saltillo, Torreon, Ciudad Victoria, San Luis Potosi, just to name a very, very few.

    The Monterrey metroplex is not a perfect place.  However, it is a really nice place to be.   The people groan and complain continuously, but sometimes I have to point out to them how far they have come in a relatively short period of time. 

 This is a downtown-most view of Monterrey
 very Centre - the Macro Plaza - with the emblem
 Cerro de la Silla (Saddleback Mountain) and
 the Cathedral to the right.  It is said that on
 any given Sunday there might be 1,000,000
 people enjoy the 99 acre downtown Plaza.

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    The bar becomes quiet, but then they start again. "The Gringo is right.  But we still have to keep complaining.  It's only the squeaky wheel that gets the grease."   And that is the realistic nature of the people.  It is said that Monterrey began to separate from the Third World back in the 1890s after a huge cholera epidemic.   The Grand Poobahs of the area…all Spanish / Jewish industrialists and English engineers, decided to install a pure, potable water system throughout all the cities of what is known as the "Regiomontano" (Mountainous Kingdom).   Part of that installation included the establishment of a brewery…Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc…that provided a very decent beer by the name of Carta Blanca.  It is still brewed to this day.  The Business, part of a family held conglomerate, has bought and owns several Beer trademarks, and it continues to produce the old fashioned stuff.   Along with Carta Blanca,  there is are other brands and recipes that have been incorporated over the years.   Among are labels such as Tecate, Bohemia, and Victoria and a few others.  The Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc is a multi-billion dollar operation that is affiliated with the "Grupo Alfa", a combination of seven or eight huge industries with similar sales characteristics.  It is good to remember, for instance, that Cementos Mexicanos is the largest cement operation in the World, and its home is Monterrey.

 This to the left is a scene on the west side of the Monterrey Metroplex.   It is the Chipinque part of that section of the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountain  range.    Oddly enough, the view being seen actually is looking  over the "Seven Cities" and the entire metroplex.
     It is part of the contradictions one runs across when  travelling or doing business in Mexico…whether it be the North or the Central or the Indian areas or the Mestizo and/or White areas.    It behooves one to take seriously the advice of the old blowhard down at the end of the bar when he says,"Whenever you hear someone say, 'All Mexicans…'…one should stop listening."   In my opinion that advice was well rendered and has served me during my travels and interaction with people who have very different and very similar positions and attitudes as the Gringos in general.

Chicken Little and the Never Ending Threat: We are all going to die because of Global Warming, Climate Change, and the Coming Ice Age

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         It is fairly well established fact in to-day's Academia that the World came to an end sometime around 1996 or so.  AlGore said so.  He told the entire Planet that the United States was poisoning the atmosphere in such a way that life on Planet Earth could only exist another 12 years.  And, of course, he was right.  We are all dead.   The elephants, the mosquitos, the kitty-cats, the earthworms…everybody, everything is dead.

     Then a flying saucer noticed there was one last Polar Bear on a tiny little chunk of ice.  The little chunk of ice was floating towards Hawai'i and the Polar Bear died too…in 2010…the last living thing on Planet Earth.   Incredibly, although it must be true because AlGore said it, it just so happens that presently there are four times the numbers of Polar Bears to-day as there were twenty-five (25) years ago.  But, of course, they are all dead as well.

     The East Anglia University debacle, wherein and whereat a group of snotty professors fudged all manner of climate data to prove that AlGore was right, that life on Planet Earth ended in 1998 or sometime exactly and precisely, more or less around that time…came to an end.   Everybody knows it and that is why they have to keep it secret.

     It makes Alice in Wonderland appear to be a function of normalcy.   AlGore flunked out of Divinity School and Law School, from two reputable universities.   George W. Bush passed through two degrees from two reputable (one time long ago) universities.  Both are dolts, in my opinion, with AlGore having the more severe case of Doltotis.    After all, after AlGore dumped his dumpy wife for a new honey, he bought the new squeeze a magnificent mansion right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, at a level that he himself said would be inundated by 30 feet due to Polar Ice Cap Melting, "…in less than 12 years."

WITHIN THE NEXT  12 (or twenty depending upon the level of stupidity and ignorance ofthe audience) YEARS THE ENTIRE PLANET WILL DIE DUE TO (choose one or more):  GLOBAL WARMING, GLOBAL COOLING, NUCLEAR WINTER, CLIMATE CHANGE, and MARTIAN RAY-GUNS DOING FRONTAL LOBATOMIES ON THE HUMAN RACE.
     The above admonition has been refreshed by a nice lady from Austin, Texas…Citadel of Reason and Truth and other disorders brought on by the proclivity to believe in marxist and socialist cultural and political reforms.

    Miss Julie Range was kind enough to submit to the Valley Evening Monitor, a McAllen newspaper, a Letter to the Editor that gave us the warning that we, as Texans, are killing the Planet again.  It is because of the wanton desire to poison everybody and everything with the burn-off of natural gas that occurs after the completion of almost every successful perforation.
     Miss Range is kind enough to not include the sources of ambient and other earth contamination that contribute well over 98 per cent of said ambient and terrestrial blight.  Interestingly, over 80 per cent can be traced to two nations, Red China and India.  The remainder, almost exclusively, can be traced to permanently third-world nations that are mired in hopeless corruption, violence, organic law, and general jungle rules.
      
     BUT!!!  We know that we can trust our informative friend, Miss Range, because while she lambasts the oil and gas industry (while folding in some slightly complementary comments) she cites the ever so reliable Earthworks company as some kind of standard for evaluating oil and gas production.  We are supposed to be disarmed when she rattles up the shibboleth that Earthworks is a "non-profit".   That title or qualification is proof that they are better than the foul people who actually produce wealth that can be distributed in an inefficient but very effective way…called free enterprise.   Non-profits are things like the previous Soviet Union.

Miss Range expounds:
     "Natural gas, plentiful in Texas, is an excellent bridge fuel from coal.  But, we diminish its value as a bridge fuel if we do not harvest it responsibly (?)  We must minimise fugitive emissions, the wasteful practice of flaring, and pollution of neighbours.
     "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we have 12 years to cut our emission in half.   This means business as usual must change.
      "Texans already feel the effects of Climate Change with more powerful droughts, floods, and hurricanes.  Industry needs to be responsibly regulated. Texas needs leadership at the Railroad Commission willing to put the interest (sic) of Texans above that of industry."

To which El Gringo Viejo responds:
     It is a wondrous thing that there is a mass of humanity within the confines of the Republic of Texas that chooses to bray at the moon and jingle hollow platitudes so as to gain a sense of self-worth, no matter how unfounded their conclusions and beliefs.   Miss Range perhaps was born after 1960 or so.  Quite possibly she was born much later.

There were, supposedly, 11 buildings left standing.
Among them the damaged Baptist, Roman Catholic,
Episcopal, and Methodist Churches.

     My point is not to say that I have proof that my way of thinking has a monopoly on the nature of the Planet's comings and goings.  I shall point out that during the period from 1893 up to and including the year 1900, my great-grandfather and my grandmother endured three huge snows and freezing episodes…in Llano de Enmedio, Vera Cruz State of Mexico…far below the Tropic of Cancer.   They had a sizeable property producing avocadoes, mangoes, even a little coffee and other tropical products…especially for the markets of Mexico City and Monterrey.   After these freezes and snows, however, they had to throw in the towel…it was a 16 or more year labour by my great-grandfather, and my grandmother put in several years there as well…learning Spanish by practice to a level of perfection, and learning two different Indian languages, Totonac and Huastec  along the way.
     As an aside, please be aware that the Rio Grande froze solid on each of these invasions from the

 An accurate count was never determined
although bodies were found as much as
15 miles from Galveston... 

North Pole as well.  Other freezes of particular note were those of 1949 and 1951 and 1962,  all of which did nearly mortal damage to the concept of citrus production in the Magic Lower Rio Grande Valley.   Also, with reference to droughts…we went through the drought of 1949 through 1954, with a total for McAllen of 9 or 10 inches for the entire period…down substantially, I would say, from the normal 20 inches per year, more or less.   We had to irrigate with well water, because the Rio Grande had no water…and the well water was nice and clear, but it was very sulphurous. Not really good for citrus and vegetable crops.
     And, if you want hurricanes, try on the Hurricane of Galveston in 1900…with winds estimated into the 200 mile per hour level.   No one could come up with a good count but it was "estimated" that between 7,000 and 13,000 people died in that event.

So, and therefore…allow this humble writer to suggest that Miss Range, who is quite obviously ignorant of even relatively recent history, is also obviously not competent to advise us, the unwashed, stupid, neanderthal, reprobate, slobs about matters of climate change.   My eldest brother was the head of the College of Geology and Geography of Louisiana State University.  He was, among other things, a court certified expert on matters of Earth -  Solar relationships, Climate, and Weather, among many other things.   He and those who had no political agenda scoffed at the ridiculousness of this movement about global warming, global cooling, climate change etc… and he was correct.

Thanks one and all for your time and attention.
El Gringo Viejo

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