In navigating through a human mind, a Winter Texan once told me she was as likely to recall a memory from 10 years ago versus something that happened yesterday.

As the years pass, the memories piling up like bricks on a sturdy frame,  such a statement makes increasing sense. A vivid dream with images from your days as a youth wakes you with a start from a night’s sleep, making clear what you thought you had forgotten is still embedded in your consciousness.

Looking at the current issue of Time magazine with its little squares of headlines from the leading news events from 2000-2010 stirs memories, rousing faint images in an era of texting, twitting, and generally short attention spans. They may not be events in your youth, but you look at one of the mini-headlines, and you know it’s true. Bush vs. Gore of 10 years ago this month does now seem clearer than some things that happened yesterday.

How cleary do you remember some of these other events? The Elian Gonzalez custody dispute in Miami, the Y2K computer scare, and the dotcom bubble bursting – all of which happened in 2000. We all remember 9/11 and what it spawned from that day in 2001.  The Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush and mission accomplished all bundled together in the so-called war on terror.

From the mid-decade point, there was Hurricane Katrina, the passing of Pope John Paul, $4 gas in 2007, the 2008 elections, the economic meltdown, and Republicans lashing back against Obama and the Democrats. It’s rather fascinating to see the Time cover with its patchwork of 2000-2010 news events and go through the decade of stories, realizing how fast we all move on to the next day’s news and hardly think of momentous moments like the U.S. Supreme Court deciding the presidential election of 2000.

If one were to assemble a patchwork of local and regional news stories from 2000-2010, what would be on that quilt? In Brownsville, it might include the development of Sunrise Mall and a slew of new retailing in its general vicinity – none of which existed going into 2000. It might include the building and opening of a nearly block-long federal courthouse named after two judges and local icons, (Reynaldo G. Garza and Filemon Vela), who died a few years after the facility opened.

It would surely include poplulation growth, more new schools, BISD going through five superintendents, Hurricane Dolly, the border wall going up after the anti-immigrant hysteria after 9/11, and the opening of a new bridge. We also had the housing construction boom with everyone and his brother becoming a contractor before the bubble burst like it did everywhere else.

In more recent times, there’s the astonishing development of UTB and TSC heading toward a divorce that puts the future of these institutions in some doubt with the university president somehow seeing it more of an opportunity than a crisis. And then there’s the daily violence between drug cartels and the Mexican federal government in Matamoros and Tamaulipas, with local residents now staying away from places and cities across the bridges that were like second homes.

What really happened from 2000-2010, the latest issue of Time asks. Going through the events and news, putting them into little squares across a page, we remember and realize. Our lives, our times, our communities, reshaped and changed, never to be the same again.

- R. Daniel Cavazos

Florida had the hanging chads of 2000 that were decisive in deciding the outcome of a presidential election.

Brownsville has the missing tally sheet at Burns Elementary School that has become central to determining who will be the next Cameron County judge. Al Gore and George W. Bush were separated by a few hundred votes in Florida a decade ago. There is no light in the vote gap between Carlos Cascos and John Wood. The difference is five votes.

In Florida in 2000, there was a ditsy elections administrator named Kathryn Harris who appeared to be more concerned about her looks on camera than getting to which presidential candidate really won her state’s vote. In Cameron County, there is the deer-in-the-headlights elections administrator Roger Ortiz, who needs an entourage of courthouse bailiffs to escort him in and around the building.

Why?  Maybe courthouse officials fear rogue politiqueras may get a bit rowdy if they have clear access to the shaky elections administrator. Even worse, a reporter may point a question Ortiz’s way, which may cause a meltdown of poor explanations.

Ortiz and his elections office badly botched an election recount of the Cascos-Wood race, in which the incumbent, (Cascos), was first told he had won by less than 100 votes, only to be told hours later, never mind, Wood actually won by five votes. It seems the before-mentioned tally sheets from Burns Elementary in north Brownsville weren’t properly counted, and when they were, (supposedly), the Democrat Wood had prevailed by five votes over the Republican incumbent.

Ortiz has gone into seclusion since the big mess-up and has been actively looking for places where he can dump this crisis. First he tried the Texas Secretary of State, but nope, that office said deciding the race’s outcome was a local issue. Now, apparently, Ortiz will dump all of the documents on the County Commissioners’ Court, which is hopelessly compromised given two of its members are the candidates embroiled in this mess.

This saga has some months to go before its outcome becomes a matter of record. In the meantime, conspiracy theories abound and word of evil plots of political takeovers bounce around the blogosphere.

In Brownsville, though, even when elections are over they’re really not over, especially when it comes to school board politics. Brownsville is a company town, and the company we speak of is the Brownsville Independent School District, with its 7,000-plus employees. Getting elected to the local school board isn’t about the children, as the campaign slogans go.

It’s about these three things:

- Who has the majority vote in deciding which firms get BISD insurance contracts and other big ticket items?

- Which voting bloc has the majority pull in deciding who the superintendent will be?

- When inevitable conflicts-of-interest are raised about board members and their relatives and close friends who are BISD employees, will those issues carry enough weight to generate the heat and anger that will give rise to election challenges?

The just concluded school board races had all of these factors. One faction was furious with the ouster of a former superintendent and vowed revenge against the board majority that forced said ouster. The board incumbents under seige from the angry voices said it really wasn’t  about the superintendent issue, but about insurance contracts, and attempts by their political enemies to give big business to preferred companies of influence.

After the local political battles were decided, (for this round anyway), it was time for the winners, (challengers to former ruling majority), to rub it in. Someone from the victorious camp sent an anoymous letter to a local educator who is related to a former board member that ended like this: “Payback is a —–!”

You may you use your imagination to choose the appopriate word to end that sentence. The letter’s envelope had a heading that said, “Citizens of Brownsville,” and the return address was 1135 E. Van Buren. That’s the address of this newspaper. Cute, not terribly clever, but cute. Payback apparently includes hiding behind generic names and falsely using the addresses of businesses that have no connection to the tribal wars.

Oh well, it won’t be long until the next school board races come around. Local forces are surely gathering to prepare a fresh challenge to the new board majority, and soon enough, Brownsville may well have the latest rendition of meet the new boss who’s a lot like the old boss.

Payback, meanwhile, in county politics may have to wait a bit. The elections administrator and his bodyguards are still confering on which candidate won county judge’s race. Five votes and no hanging chads. It could be a long wait.

- R. Daniel Cavazos

A recent edition of UTB-TSC’s Orange & White newsletter looked back to 1991 when the local community college and one of the nation’s largest university systems joined hands to form a partnership that seemed limitless in its good will and positive vibes.

There were smiling faces all around. The governor, the college president, the board members, and of course, the inevitable politicians crowding around signing documents that made it all official. It was no longer just Texas Southmost College. It was now the University of  Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College.

It wasn’t long before the locals just rolled it off the tongue – UTB-TSC – without even thinking. You couldn’t think of one without the other. In these parts, UTB-TSC is right up there with BISD, the city’s two biggest employers who seem to reach into  all things Brownsville.

Nearly two decades later, the famed partnership that is hailed for accomplishing so much is essentially in tatters.  After 15 months of back-and-forth discussions between UT System and TSC representatives, the big guys announced last week that they had heard enough in efforts to update the 1991 agreement. The UT System announced its intentions to dissolve its link with TSC by August 2015, a move that seemed to stun the local community college board.

The local board seemed to believe it could filibuster the powerful university system until the 2011 session of  Texas Legislature was over. After taking the lay of the political land in 2011, the TSC board would then go back to negotiating with the UT System after its recent rejection of a proposed new agreement. It was a stance that proved to be more than a bit naive, or perhaps  the TSC board displayed an outsized swagger in thinking it could stiff arm its much larger partner.

This whole matter is an endlessly complex issue with all sorts of subplots and power plays with essential educational institutions now hanging in stunning uncertainty.  The UT System insists it is committed to Brownsville, saying it will now prepare for a transition without TSC in its orbit. One wonders where UT-Brownsville will hold many of its classes since most of the buildings belong to TSC.

And on the TSC side, good points are made about the value of the insitution’s property, buildings, and general assets worth tens of millions of dollars that ought to be guarded as a local treasure.  Sure enough, but over the last two decades things have been so pushed over to the UT side of things that TSC’s institutional and administrative presence is  largely gone. Essentially, the community college can no longer exist on its own, be it the product of a methodical dismantling of TSC, (as some local board members contend), or a natural progression where the bigger brother swallows up the junior partner.

A key player in this drama is the UTB-TSC President, Dr. Juliet Garcia, who was there in 1991 as the community college president in helping to give birth to the new partnership. Garcia has been the  face of UTB-TSC for two decades now, winning national awards and accolades, having local schools named in her honor, a local girl all can admire. Garcia is an eloquent speaker, a smart and saavy academic administrator with strong political sensibilities who usually gets things to turn her way.

After the recent “fracaso,” as the university president labeled the impending UTB/TSC divorce, Garcia went before a group of staff and faculty to put her best spin on the UT System’s stunning announcement that it was ending the partnership. In spite of the fracaso and border violence and looming state budget crisis, Garcia said, the UT System was making a commitment to Brownsville in seeking to build a four-year university, (without TSC).

Garcia compared UTB’s growth to what the University of Texas at El Paso and University of  Texas at Dallas went through, saying the local university is passing through a cocoon phase just like its UT System brethren. Maybe, but a community college that had been part of its community for nearly eight decades wasn’t thrown under the bus as UTEP and UTD blossomed into butterflies of higher education.

Garcia is understandably siding with the UT side of things even as she told her audience last week that “my loyalty is neither to UTB or TSC,” but to “its students.” No doubting her commitment to students is intended here, but one can easily see that whatever comes out of this fracaso will have Juliet Garcia at the helm, and that outcome will not be a product of happenstance.

So be it. There is no bringing back the smiling faces of 1991. The supporters of  TSC are right in believing that the locals would give up an inordinate share of the community college’s assets and heritage to the UT System under what the big boys want. Still, they have to strike a deal with the UT System and get what they can get.

In dueling op-ed columns in this newspaper, Garcia and Adela Garza well described the opposing sides. Garcia says Brownsville will benefit from the UT brand and leverage more state dollars through the muscle and influence of the university system. Garza says that as long as TSC has a taxing district the local board as the community’s representatives should not be shunned aside as mere advisory board members.

They’re both right – and wrong if they and other leaders don’t work toward some sort of agreement that keeps a reasonable partnership intact. Brownsville without TSC is unthinkable. It would be more than a fracaso to lose this treasured local institution, a fact that those who have UTB and TSC in their job titles should not accept as a mere inevitability.

R. Daniel Cavazos

At least Kika de la Garza knew when to get out.

That’s the thought that came to mind last week on Election Day when word came of Solomon Ortiz’s loss after nearly three decades of service as the only congressman District 27 has ever known. Ortiz was but one of five dozen political casualties of the Democratic Party variety who got swept out of office nationally by the Republican wave of 2010.

That Ortiz would be one of the roughly 60 Democrats who would lose their  U.S. House seats is especially noteworthy in South Texas, the last remaining vestige of what was once blue Democratic Texas. The red tide came this far south, though, all the way to Brownsville, replacing Ortiz with someone named Blake Farenthold, a rather goofy political candidate who I’m sure means well, but probably only found Brownsville on a map a few months ago.

None of this is said in praise of Ortiz. The Corpus Christi-based congressman should have followed the lead of his elder, the venerable Kika of Mission, who retired from his long-held House seat in 1996 after three decades of service. De la Garza got out gracefully, having the good sense that it’s better to leave on our own accord before voters get so tired of seeing your face and hearing your voice that they’ll vote for some guy named Blake that they never heard of before last week.

Ortiz instead pulled a Brett Favre, the greying NFL quarterback who should have retired a Packer but is now trying to hang on in foreign colors of Viking purple. Now past 70 years of age – and many moons after first occuping the 27th House seat in the early 1980s – Ortiz is wobbling around like an old Japanese soldier who refuses to believe that World War II is over and his side lost.

But he has lost unless he pulls off an LBJ and finds enough lost votes to make up a roughly 800-vote deficit to The Blake. Ortiz’s district to the north in Nueces and San Patricio counties is becoming older, whiter and more Republican. To the south, Cameron County, the part of it in the 27th, is still solidly majority Democratic but it has no emotional attachment to Ortiz, and it never has.

The congressman, of course, is paid homage by local government types who by obiligation have named schools and port facilities after him to flatter the politician and keep in his good graces. The regular people, though, what does Ortiz mean to them? Not much, really, other than being a name they’ve seen around for decades.

It’s a shame that Brownsville and Cameron County are lumped with Corpus Christi in a congressional district. The two areas have almost nothing in common anymore. Corpus Christi is a city in decline and devoid of much energy or growth. A new high school hasn’t been built in Corpus in over four decades, and the ones they have are losing enrollment, as seen by the fact that three of its five high schools are now sub-5A schools.

Ortiz is from the Corpus area, so is The Blakester. Our area has all the energy, all the growth and vitality, and we’re represented in Congress by politicians from a town going no where? And now, barring Ortiz finding an LBJ-like Box 13 in Robstown, a guy much more comfortable and familiar with Calallen than Brownsville is our congressman.

In the end,  Ortiz couldn’t even carry his home county, (Nueces). He also seemingly lacked the basic confidence to conduct a simple media interview, and instead had his media person write e-mail responses for him. Put it together and you have someone lacking a basic rationale for re-election other than having fellow elected officials sing his praises so he can go back to Washington and get funding for their cities.

Good luck, Rep-elect Blake. He ought to make his way to Four Corners in Brownsville, get a hot plate lunch, and start talking to some real people here while extending his circle of comfort beyond the afternoon Whataburger crowd in Calallen.  Meanwhile, Solomon Ortiz is poring over a map somewhere, looking for those 800 votes that will keep him in the game, pulling a Favre, wanting to believe.

The place where two great rivers meet – especially in the days before dams and all sorts of obstructions  – can be “wild and capricious, tearing through jungles like wounded animals, thrashing their banks and spitting white foam into the branches of overhanging trees.”

Those descriptions are surely of  bygone days and eras. In this case, we speak of the early 1900s where author Candice Millard wrote of Brazil’s Rio Negro meeting the mighty Amazon in the book “The River of Doubt,” in which the writer chronicles Theodore Roosevelt’s journey down an then-unknown Brazilian river in 1914.

The meeting of the nearly 1,400-mile long Rio Negro and the even larger Amazon, (4,000 miles in length), is described as a collision in Millard’s book,  in which she writes that “these two colossal rivers (meeting) looks black ink spilling over parchment paper…and the rivers do not fully blend until they have traveled dozens of miles.”  

We have nothing to compare to the collision of those great South American rivers, but all of the recent Hurricane Alex-begot rains over northeastern Mexico watersheds are a reminder of what the mighty forces of nature can do. So much rain fell over three of the major Mexican tributaries feeding the Rio Grande that a new lake has formed in a giant bottleneck on the Rio Salado southwest of Laredo.

Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman describes it as “a new body of water that satellite images showed to be larger in surface area than the approximately 84,000-acre Falcon Lake toward which it (Rio Salado), was traveling.”

Little wonder, then, that floodways in the Rio Grande Valley – along with Arroyo Colorado – are all packed with vast amounts of water that have been released from the mighty dams upriver on the Rio Grande. The reservoirs are full up – to record levels in some cases – since Hurricane Alex and a followup tropical depression swept through the Mexican watersheds on back-to-back weeks in late June and early July.

Northeast Mexico has many tributaries and streams feeding into the Rio Grande.  The Texas side of the river has relatively few such feeder rivers and streams flowing into the big river.  Alex was a meterological phenemona in that it dumped heavy rains over three of the major Mexican basins flowing into the Rio Grande.

As Sherman pointed out in his AP story: “Alex and the tropical depression forced water managers to release large amounts of water after the storms flooded three of the Rio Grande system’s four river basins simultaneously.”

One noted weather expert, Gordon Wells, of the Space Research at the University of  Texas at Austin, said in Sherman’s story that he had not seen another storm event that “triggered high-magnitude floods in all three basins.”

Wells said it was hard to imagine that any storm could do what Alex did in filling up so many Mexican reservoirs, streams and rivers in so many places. It did all of that – and more – creating a new and vast lake on the Rio Salado as it winds toward the Rio Grande and the Falcon Reservoir.

The Rio Salado became so abundant with floodwaters that it burst its banks and formed a new lake that in size has eclipsed Falcon Lake.  Officials with the International Water and Boundary Commission are amazed such a thing has occurred – and they’re thankful it did. Sally Spener, an IWBC spokeswoman, told the Valley Morning Star that the new and temporary lake is containing some of the floodwaters that would have otherwise gone to an already overflowing Falcon Lake.

“Had it not done that, we would have been getting much higher inflows into Falcon,” Spener said in a recent Morning Star story.

All of which would have meant more water in the Rio Grande and the arroyo, not to mention the region’s floodway system, which is already bank-to-bank with water.  For all of the technological and engineering firepower when it comes to regulating and monitoring dams and reservoirs, we all got a massive luck of the draw courtesy of the natural world.

The natural terrain of the Rio Salado and the surrounding area contributed to the forming of a new lake that saved the Valley from even worse flooding problems. Roosevelt had his river of doubt. We have our lake of doubt. The IBWC’s Spener said the new lake is an unpredictable phenomenon, suggesting the experts are still not sure what to make of it, or what its longterm impact may be to one of the water basins flowing into the Rio Grande.

In these first days of August, with the busiest parts of the hurricance season still in front of us, we can only hope for time and luck. Time in giving the reservoirs and floodways the days and weeks needed to drain and subside. Luck in hoping Alex is the last we see of major tropical weather come our way over the next two months.

The lake of doubt has helped us this time. We may not be so lucky next time.

- R. Daniel Cavazos

Seeing the floodwaters bank-to-bank on the floodway going through Mercedes is a visual remainder of  the wide swath left behind by hurricanes.

Even when a big storm doesn’t hit your region directly, its network of rain and tropical moisture leaves a wide footprint that can extend for hundreds of miles. Hurricane Alex of late June 2010 was one of those storms, coming ashore less than 100 miles south of Brownsville and then rumbling through northeast Mexico.

The heavy rains over Mexico would feed rivers and streams flowing into the Rio Grande, putting the floodways to the test. Brownsville is lucky. The city sits east of the floodways and dams that divert and control floodwaters. The volume of excess waters that inevitably flow downstream is greatly diminished by the time it reaches Brownsville – thanks mainly to the floodways and the Arroyo Colorado.

A city like Laredo is not so fortunate. The river running through Laredo absorbs the swollen waterways flowing in from Mexico after a hurricanes has rumbled through. There are no arroyos or floodways to save Laredo, so hence, the visuals of last week of the Rio Grande lapping up to the city’s international bridges.

Falcon Lake will absorb some of the great volumes of water, but Roma and Rio Grande City still have to sweat it out downstream from the big lake because of Mexican rivers flowing into the Rio Grande south of Falcon.  Once the swollen river hits Mission, there’s Anzalduas Dam, two floodways and the Arroyo Colorado ready to divert the excess waters to its ultimate destination, the Laguna Madre.

The Rio Grande Valley’s main floodway comes out of Anzalduas, heading east and south of McAllen, Pharr-San Juan-Alamo and Weslaco before meeting up with the Arroyo Colorado south of Mercedes. This is a critical juncture in the Valley’s floodway system – and where a catastrophic failure occurred during 1967″s Hurricane Beulah.

Beulah, a category 4 storm that made a direct Valley hit, dumping over 15 inches in much of the region. The region’s floodway system was far inferior to what exists today, and could not remotely handle the awesome volume of river water heading east toward the heart of the Valley.  A perilous decision had to be made. Divert much of the floodwaters to the floodway and risk inundating much of the region – or let more of it go down the arroyo.

The powers-that-be of the day, (and debate still rages on who they really were), opted for the arroyo. This would mean that Harlingen – to its bitter lament – became the Valley’s unintended floodwater reservoir in the aftermath of Beulah.

We can hope to avoid such a momentous decision in the current era with the tens of millions of dollars spent on floodway improvements since the crisis of 1967. Still, there are no floodway improvements that can shield considerable pockets of Valley residential developments from too much rain.

We see it every time when big rains hit here. The TV people will wade into flooded neighborhoods with their chic boots.  The residents will cry out for government help and say it always floods when it rains in buckets. In many cases, these are areas where it has historically flooded going way back, with county governments inadequately funded to invest the several millions needed to provide additional drainage.

There are precious few guarantees, really, when it rains 15-to-20 inches over an area in a day or two.  The canals are cleared, the floodways are at the ready, and you hope for the best. Driving over the floodway at Mercedes – water bank-to-bank – you hope the system holds up and will be up to the test when a bigger one inevitably hits.

- R. Daniel Cavazos

Enduring a June hurricane – or at least feeling the outer edges of such a storm – may seem bad enough, but let’s hope it’s not 1933 all over again.

In 1933, two major hurricanes came ashore in the Rio Grande Valley, and only about a month apart. The first, a category 2 storm with 90 mph winds hit the tip of Texas before heading westward into Mexico. The second, and larger storm, came ashore a direct hit to the region with 125 winds.

Hurricanes in those days were not given names. The first storm, dubbed Hurricane 5, came across southern Florida, and then rode the length of the Gulf of Mexico tub to hit the very tip where Texas and Tamaulipas meet in the first days of August, 1933. Storm number two, Hurricane 11, grazed the top of Cuba and then developed into a category 3 storm in striking the Valley, a direct hit in early September, 1993.

Mind you, this was in the early years of the Great Depression. To be going through that and then two major hurricanes a month apart must have really tested the resiliency of Valley people back then.  Those two storms were part of an extraordinary hurricane season. In all, in 1933, there were 18 hurricanes and 20 tropical storms, including a rare storm, dubbed the Potomac Hurricane, that made a direct hit on Virginia before sweeping through the nation’s capital.

Last week’s Hurricance Alex was indeed a rare June storm, but there have been a few others. In late June 1954, Hurricane Alice came ashore just south of Brownsville as a Category 1 storm, and rode up along the Rio Grande to the Big Bend area. Along the way, it helped to fill up a brand new Falcon Lake reservoir. There was also Tropical Storm Arlene in mid-June 1993, which left hefty amounts of rain throughout the Valley as it hit King Ranch country.

 It’s logical to speculate that a Category 2 storm like last week’s Alex may be a prelude to an active 2010 hurricane season.  The experts have spoken and predicted such a season weeks ago.  It’s impossible, of course, to predict such things with absolute accuracy, as shown by the different trend lines and history of hurricanes in our area.

The Valley went nearly 20 years without a hurricane strike – from 1980s’s Allen to Bret in 1999 – but since 2005 has had three significant storms make direct hits or came ashore just south of the river. We had Hurricane Dolly in July 2008, a direct hit to South Padre Island, which was preceded by three years by Hurricane Emily, a powerful category 3 storm that came ashore just 75 miles south of Brownsville.

And, then, we had Hurricane Alex last week, making landfall in the same area of northeast Mexico where Emily came ashore five years ago.  Frequency of storms is one thing, and then there’s the really big ones you suffer through. In modern Valley history, the mother of all big ones is 1967′s Hurricane Beulah, a September storm that came ashore at the mouth of the river, with its eye going up the Port of Brownsville before going on a two-day rampage through the heart of the region.

A category 3 storm when it came ashore, (although experts today believe Beulah was likely a 4 storm), the 1967 hurricane was a mighty rainmaker of the likes never seen since then, (thankfully). Rain totals of 15-plus inches were reported across the Valley, and even well inland in Falfurrias and the brush country.  Severe flooding ensued, especially in Harlingen, where the Arroyo Colorado swollen with diverted waters from the river jumped its banks.

A Hurricane Beulah today – in region with well over twice the population it had in 1967 – would be absolute misery. It was beyond that over 40 years ago. As a small child in the Rio Grande Valley of those days, I recall days and weeks of terrible flooding, no power for several days, and a ruined family home that forced us to live in a series of places before making it back home.

Beulah would be followed by 1980′s Hurricane Allen and 1988′s Hurricane Gilbert, two of the strongest hurricances ever recorded in modern times. Allen clocked in at 190 mph as it made its way through the Caribbean in early August 1980. Even just 200 miles from Brownsville, it was still a 5 storm, before unexpectedly losing strength as it stalled offshore before hitting South Padre Island as a 3 storm.

An equally big storm came in September 1988 with Gilbert, which closely mirrored the path taken by Allen eight years before. Gilbert was also a 5 storm with peak sustained winds of 185 mph. Thankfully, very thankfully for South Texas,  Gilbert, veered enough south of us as a 4 storm, (hitting about where Alex struck last week), sparing the region of Beulah-like destruction.

It’s just early July, so we can only guess how many more storms, be they direct hits or close calls like last week’s Alex, will give us worry this hurricane season.  We know hurricanes here and we’ve seen three so big and bad that their names – Beulah, Allen and Gilbert – have been retired by the National Hurricane Center.

With a late June hurricance already behind us, let’s hope we can avoid a 1933-like season nearly eight decades later, and if we do see more tropical action, let’s hope for an Alex and not a Beulah.

- R.D. Cavazos

In today’s culture wars where some Americans feel threatened by a rising Latino population, here’s the shortcut to knowing if the United States is becoming too Mexican.

It’s called the Wal-Mart effect.  If your average/everyday American walks into a Wal-Mart in a place like Fremont, Neb., and hears someone speaking Spanish, it’s time to freak. If you’re an average/everyday delegate to the Texas Republican convention and you walk into a Wal-Mart and see signs in Spanish, it’s time to freak and pass party resolutions saying Hispanic kids born in the U.S. aren’t really Americans – and while we’re at it – let’s end bilingual education tomorrow.

Fremont, a little town in Nebraska not far from Omaha, is the latest village in the middle of nowhere USA to panic about the country becoming too Hispanic. Now, mind you, Hispanics make up less than 10 percent of the population in little Fremont, but that’s apparently a few too many for some in the Nebraska town of 25,000 residents.

Fremont residents voted on Monday to impose a ban on hiring or renting property to illegal immigrants, but the measure will likely never see the light of day due to the expected court challenges that have derailed similar measures elsewhere. 

In a New York Times story last week, residents and city leaders in the small Nebraska town couldn’t point to anything tangible or specific in saying such an ordinance is needed. Unemployment is less than 5 percent in Fremont, which is well below the national average. There are no crime statistics or anything of the sort to indicate that Hispanics in the small town are having an adverse effect on Fremont.

What’s apparently bugging the people of Fremont – or at least the 57 percent who voted for the Hispanic ban this week – is hearing people speak Spanish at the local Wal-Mart. The Times story says locals in Fremont are grumbling about “a shift in the (town’s) culture.”

The biggie: “Some complain about shoppers speaking Spanish at the Wal-Mart.”

This sounds much like what a Texas GOP state delegate recently told the San Antonio Express-News at the party’s recent convention in Dallas. In reviewing his party’s usual spate of anti-immigrant rhetoric and the Hispanic bashing found in the Texas GOP platform, the delegate, Stuart Mayer of Houston, said, “I don’t like going into  Wal-Mart and seeing Spanish.”

This whole Wal-Mart fixation by Republican Party’s culture and language police is rather odd given that the world’s largest retailer has such egalitarian core beliefs that are heavy on inclusivness, and giving consumers from all walks of life the blessings of lower prices.

You can check your politics and ethnicity at the door. Wal-Mart doesn’t care. It wants to make sure its greeters give you a warm smile and that you know Wal-Mart has the cheapest prices on the planet for bananas - which the company’s current CEO has said is a key indicator in gauging if product is moving fast enough.

“Wal Mart has mastered market capitalism brilliantly,” writes Charles Fishman in his 2006 book, The Wal-Mart Effect.  “Its obsessive focus on price, its urelenting discipline on itself and its suppliers, has powered its growth.”

Wal-Mart, Fishman writes, “isn’t subject to the market forces because it is creating them.”

And it all started with a single idea from its founder Sam Walton, who as Fishman puts it, believed this: “Sell stuff that people need everyday just a little cheaper than everyone else, sell it at that low price all the time, and customers will flock to you.”

Sam Walton, a simple and unpretentious man despite all his riches, could probably have never imagined that his stores would become a cultural measuring stick for some Americans who dread changing demographics in their country and devise ad hoc immigration laws as a shield for their fears.

In 1987, as a then young reporter for this newspaper, I was dispatched to the old Wal-Mart on Boca Chica after we got a call of a Sam Walton sighting at the store. Sure enough, there he was, the man himself, short sleeve white shirt, plain blue tie, with a clip board in his hand, and taking inventory as if he was just another employee. He was kind, but no, he didn’t want to talk.

Let me take a guess in saying that Sam Walton probably heard some of his customers in Brownsville, Tx., speak Spanish that day while he worked quietly, and he probably heard the same many other times since the Wal-Mart founder was known to walk into his stores unannounced and talk to folks plain as could be.

 I doubt if the language or race of his customers mattered much to him. What Sam Walton wanted to know was where his stores selling stuff people wanted and at cheaper prices than anyone else.  Capitalism is largely blind to misgivings about culture or race, and oblivious to definitions of nationalism other than how it can adapt to such things to make more money.

Too bad that Sam Walton isn’t around today so he could visit his stores in Nebraska and say, “You can try to restrict immigration if you’d like, but you’re not going to restrict my business or customers. English or Spanish, our job is to get products at lower prices to our customers.”

I’m taking a guess Mr. Walton would say such a thing, the man I saw that afternoon in 1987 working the floor at his Wal-Mart in Brownsville, Tx., just as happy and comfortable as he could be on the border,  as if he was toiling away in the middle of no where, like say, Fremont, Neb.

- R.D. Cavazos

The great recession has put many cities and states on the financial brink with sales tax revenues plunging and the loss of property taxes from the waves of housing foreclosures.

The city of McAllen must not be suffering that bad, though, judging from what must be an pricey marketing campaign it has launched to remind locals that McAllen is still where it’s at when it comes to retailing.  Other U.S. cities are just hoping to make payroll. McAllen is spending big bucks to tout its retail offerings. It must be nice.

“Explore McAllen,” is the apparent theme, as if the city is some sort of wilderness area to pack up for in anticipation of days of new discoveries. Truth be told, there’s not much wild green in McAllen, but there is plenty of green of another kind – the dollars spent in a city that is no longer the be-all/end-all of retailing and shopping in the Rio Grande Valley.

It took McAllen officialdom a few years to concede the fact – reluctantly – and hence, the current marketing campaign on television and billboards to remind area consumers to head east for the former Mecca of Valley retailing. The city, to be sure, is still bustling with retail and the capitalistic urges to spend too much money on name brands.

But here’s the thing. In 2010, there are now other Valley cities offering hot retail zones of the like that use to belong almost exclusively to McAllen.  The 2010 Census will reveal a whole host of fresh figures and trends, but no need to await all of the official numbers in viewing the obvious facts that population growth has been so widespread in this region that various cities here are now enjoying the spoils of creature comforts.

Mercedes has an outlet mall that is stuffed full of the sort of Mexican shoppers that use to hang exclusively at McAllen’s full-of-itself La Plaza Mall. Edinburg has its own mall. Mission seems to open a new store every few months along the expressway to accommodate all the ritzy people moving to Sharyland. And compared to a decade ago, Brownsville has almost all-new retailing, hotels and restaurants in the hot zone between FM 802/Ruben Torres and Gloor Road.

It’s a rather novel thing to see McAllen officialdom sufficiently humbled that they have to spend a fortune on billboards saying what a cool city they’ve built. In 1999, when I was getting ready to leave the great city of Hidalgo County as my days as the editor of The Monitor waned, some of the McAllen types looked at me as if I was Magellan sailing to the edge of the world in moving to work in Brownsville.

McAllen elites, you see, never come to Brownsville unless they have to for some sort of government meeting or foo-foo social event. In fact, McAllen elites could barely stand the surrounding humble abodes of Pharr, Edinburg, Mission, and the like, only passing through them on their way to somewhere better, like say, San Antonio.

What an irony, then, that McAllen is now asking us to spend money in their city. Uh, we’ll think about it after we eat at the food court at Sunrise Mall and see what’s up at the outlet mall. No bitterness here, just a chuckle, in seeing how the worm has turned a couple of times since 1999. Really, it was all quite inevitable, you know, Edinburg getting a mall, Brownsville getting lots of new stuff, and Weslaco getting a life and a new JC Penney.

McAllen use to be a place run by a few chosen people who often reminded themselves how great they were. Now, everyone has a hand in the city’s business and political life. McAllen use to be the place with all of the stuff, but now Mercedes has Brooks Brothers and Brownsville offers fancy sandwiches for $8, and Edinburg has a fancy golf course with pretty grass next to the shut-down water park, a relic to the past when that city was desperate to compete with McAllen.

No need to do stupid things like that anymore. Just let it be, Mary mother will come to thee, Valley shopper and enjoyer of American capitalism, with no great need to exit on 10th Street/McAllen. Of course, if you want to, more power to you. We’re coming out of a recession. Spend more money where you can and help the U.S. economy continue its recovery.

I’m too old now to join the hipsters on McAllen’s 17th Street,  which in my growing up days in Edinburg was the Mexican side of downtown where my Dad would take his kids to eat pan dulce. These days, aging hipsters with little pony tails are opening cool bars on 17th, where happening 20-somethings hang in between updating their friends on Facebook.

They call it McAllen’s “entertainment district.” OK, whatever, if it makes the city feel good. Yea, sure, an entertainment district, uh-huh. Go with it, McAllen. I’m not exploring it. I think instead I’ll explore a good hamburger on Spanky’s on Palm Boulevard in Brownsville, on the edge of this side of the world.

- R. D. Cavazos

Breaking news from the world of movies: Buzz Lightyear goes bilingual in the upcoming “Toy Story 3.”

Early reviews indicate that Buzz, thank goodness, spends only a small portion of the upcoming blockbuster, (movie opens this Friday), speaking Spanish before banging into a television and returning to speaking American, (English). Still, we’re talking Toy Story here, one of the biggest and most beloved animation movie series ever created by the entertainment industry.

To have one of the main characters in Toy Story, Buzz the space cowboy, speak in Spanish before hundreds of millions of moviegoers at a time when the American nation is under assault by immigrants  who are building houses, cleaning hotel rooms, and cooking restaurant meals, is sure to only encourage more law breaking.

The anti-diversity police are sure to get on this one – pronto. No word yet if Arizona Republicans are rushing legislation through its state government to pressure Pixar, the movie’s creators, to turn Buzz back into a full-time American and drop the Spanish dialogue. One can’t say for sure what Pixar was thinking when it turned Buzz into Javier, (the actor’s first name who voices “Spanish Buzz”), and in the process, likely spur more illegal immigration into the U.S.

Pixar apparenty didn’t get the memo that one state in the union, (Arizona, I think), is doing all it can to exclude, stigmatize, and raise suspicions about Hispanics, and that one of the nation’s two major political parties is going with the flow on that strategy. Perhaps Pixar was just looking for a bit of an entertainment twist, or maybe it’s all shrewd marketing.

Just barely a week before the debut of Toy Story 3, a flurry of stories across the news media spectrum reported, as the Associated Press did on June 10, that a “multiracial U.S. is becoming even more diverse.”  The AP and other news media organizations picked up on early information coming from the U.S. Census Bureau on its 2010 Census.

The 2010 Census, the AP reported, will show that the Hispanic population has grown to about 50 million U.S. residents, which is up 40 percent over 2000 population figures. The Hispanic population is growing  four times faster than the general U.S. population.  Among Latinos, there are now roughly nine births for every one death, which compares to a roughly one-to-one ratio for the white population.

With so many Hispanic kids in America today, having Buzz Lightyear say a few words in Spanish is sure to bring some delight among the nation’s fastest-growing population segment. What’s the harm, right? Plenty, if you ask your average Republican state delegate of the sort filling up meeting halls this summer.

Just this past weekend in Dallas, state GOPers met and passed a raft of anti-Hispanic measures to reaffirm, again, that the party has little use for a segment of a population that within 10 years could be the state’s majority. The typical Republican vibe was stated by a delegate, Stuart Mayper of Houston, who told the San Antonio Express-News, “I don’t like going into Wal-Mart and seeing Spanish.”

First, as a Republican, Mayper should appreciate the decision-making of the marketplace. Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer and one of the greatest global business success stories of the last 50 years. If Wal-Mart is advertising in Spanish, or has signage in its stores in that language, then it must be doing so for sound business reasons, like, say, believing that doing so will improve the company’s profitability.

Wal-Mart, unlike today’s Republican Party, does not practice cultural and racial exclusion, nor does it have a visceral dislike for people of color. The world’s largest retailer sees opportunity in diversity, and is working assiduously to attract and keep a wide net of customers, no matter their racial or ethnic backgrounds, or what language they happen to speak.

The vast U.S. marketplace of private industry in its many shapes and forms decided long ago that it must follow American demographic trends in order to survive and grow. How ironic, and sad, then, that a political party that purports to be a voice for entrepreneurship and the private sector, has chosen to shut itself off from a population group growing four times faster than the overall American population.

That population group, an American group as engaged in U.S. pop culture as any other, will fill up movie megaplexes this weekend, watching the latest and final version of the enduring Toy Story series. When Buzz Lightyear breaks into Spanish for a few moments, there are sure to be chuckles, laughs, some smiles, and then the movie will move on, just like the country as a whole.

To infinity and beyond – mainly in English with some Spanish – with Javier subbing for Buzz, as needed.

- R.D. Cavazos