Reporting on the Rio Grande

By Raul Garcia Jr.

The Edcouch-Elsa football program has a long tradition of wining championships as they dominated the last decade defending their district title from 2003-2008 and giving  them a total of 46 district titles all time.




But it is their close community ties as a team and coaching leadership that has helped La Maquina Amarilla excel.
Coach Joe Solis leaves nothing on the field as he enters his ninth season.

Since then he and his team has played together, lost together and eat together literally.

A devout Christian; you will never see Solis or his team miss a game day breakfast or mass hosted by the ladies of the Catholic Church in Elsa.

The team has been rolling past opponents and are the clear favorite to win the 32-4A District Title.

During their contest with Rio Hondo the Jackets were able to control the game and even get away with trick plays. The entire team had their game face and were having fun as they cruised their way to a 34-13 win.

The Yellowjackets remained their stadium to Benny Layton, Sr. Memorial Stadium and have gone undefeated there this season. They could very well go undefeated at home unless they are upset before hosting Mission Veterans on Nov. 4.

They are coming off a 8-4 overall season record in 2010 winning their last four games of 2010 and making a playoff appearance. They return this year with 26 letterman nine starters.

 

 By Nick Aldridge

Jobs are our problem.  We need more jobs.  Jobs will solve our Social Security crisis.  Jobs will solve our deficit crisis.  Jobs will solve all of our economic woes.  What baffles me is that the solution isn’t complicated.  It seems we just lack to political will to do what needs to be done.

The energy sector is just waiting to produce an abundance of jobs.  If the government were to open up new areas for exploration and fast-track all environmental challenges, oil companies would be hiring thousands of workers for jobs paying well over $40,000/year.  The oil industry is booming now in areas west of Laredo and up in North Dakota due to advancing technologies in oil extraction.  Given more areas they can explore, many more jobs would be created.

Coal-to-oil technology is an untapped job producer in the US.  Germany turned coal into oil during World War 2, and both China and South Africa are doing it today.  This would not only produce thousands of jobs in coal mining, petroleum refining and transportation, it creates a cleaner fuel from coal than what we get from crude oil today.  Private investors are reluctant to invest in this technology because of price fluctuations caused by OPEC.  However if the government entered into a ten-year contract to purchase the oil at a guaranteed price, investors would be willing to invest.


There is a danger however in putting all our eggs in one basket.  Should the price of oil drop dramatically, an oil-based economy would plummet into a recession.  Nuclear energy is another industry waiting to produce jobs.  The recent disaster in Japan has made many nervous about the technology but in reality much of that is caused by the sensationalism in the media used to drive up ratings.  There have been no deaths reported yet from the Japanese disaster and only 31 deaths were caused by Chernobyl disaster in 1986.  Most of those deaths were caused by mismanagement in reacting to the disaster.

     Nuclear energy is not only able to produce jobs in power generation but can also be combined with desalination.  Salt can be removed from seawater and pumped hundreds of miles inland to irrigation. Such a plant can produce as much as 137 acre-feet of fresh water per day.  There are several locations here in Texas and in California where these plants would create irrigated lands to employ farm workers, distribution centers and transportation jobs.

     We have the answers.  We know how to get the economy up and going.  What we lack is the political will to do it.  The government needs to partner with private industry by tapping the energy sector, which will produce thousands of high-paying jobs.

By Raul Garcia Jr.

The Mercedes Tigers took a big hit at home as the La Feria Lions took control of the game early with two quick scores. The Tigers rallied with a touchdown pass in the first quarter but proved to be no match for the Lions losing 42-20. The Tigers move to 0-2 in non district play as they move into district play as the dark horse in 32-4A and facing Roma, East, Mission and Edcouch in September.




On the other side of the levee Weslaco East’s fast offense proved to be to slow for the San Benito Greyhounds as they clawed their away to a 28-16 loss.



After trailing most of the game the La Villa Cardinals came to life in the fourth quarter pushing themselves closer to a  Sugar Bowl XXIV win.

La Villa scored two touchdowns in easy fashion as the fourth quarter was winding down.

After a Ricky Cantu TD and A.J. Garza two point conversion La Villa came within four (24-20) with two minutes left in regulation.

Next they dissected the Warrior offense and went to work only to meltdown  twenty yards from a winning score.

By Raul Garcia Jr.

J.R. Cantu fought at the Texas Amature Sports Karate Tournament held at the Rio Grande Valley Stock Show Grounds in Mercedes on Saturday August 20.



“He loves karate, he comes to practice, he hits the bag, he does the boxing and he is really into it and it’s helped him out a lot,” Cantu’s coach, Armando Saldana said.

Cantu fought in the handicap division and was a first place finisher. He has lived with Down Syndrome  and has not let the disability stop him from doing what he loves and wants to do.
“To see kids like Cantu out in the community, doing things, winning competitions and being successful is just incredible,” said Behavior Analyst,  Laura Saldana. “It also shows the rest of the community and world that our kids can contribute so much to our society.”

The Gaylord Kajukenbo and Little Kenpo Karate School of Mercedes hosted the event.

Students from around the RGV and Texas participated in the event.

By Raul Garcia Jr.

The Mercedes Chamber of Commerce and the City of Mercedes hosted the Texas Street Festival, on Labor Day weekend, in beautiful downtown Mercedes.








The festival featured music, food, art and entertainment for the entire family. This one day event on Saturday, September 3, 2011 was Free to the public. Historic downtown Mercedes was open at 9am with non-stop entertainment until 1am. Enjoy great art exhibits, street vendors, street performers, and great food and beverages. This family-oriented event will feature array of musical artist, a section designated solely to the local community featured live performing arts by local school organizations and universities as well as rides for children of all ages.




The Texas Street Festival will featured a culturally diverse line-up of music and unique renditions from local artists all on one day and all Free to the public.

By Raul Garcia


A bid request by the Mercedes Independent School District was sent out through the mainstream media notifying the public that MISD is ready to tear down John F. Kennedy Elementary.

 MISD first shut the doors to Kennedy Elementary School in 2007 when it found its new design had engineering deficiencies.
The school housed over 700 students and 50 teachers day-to-day. They were re-located to another location in 2007 at a cost of 230 thousand dollars.



As of now the district reported to Channel 4 News that its been paying 5,000 dollars monthly for the maintenance of the school.
No information has been reported as to what will be done with the property or if another school will be built so that students can return to class at Kennedy.

The district’s lawyer reported that the district received 3 million in settlement fees.

By: Juan Montoya

From the beginning strains of the National Anthem played by local accordion virtuoso Juan Antonio Tapia and the rendition of “America the Beautiful” by Antonio Briseño to the finale by a half-dozen accordionists to close the show, the first annual South Texas Conjunto Association’s memorial to Brownsville legend Freddie Gomez was an unqualified success.

“We’re happy so many people came out today,” said Timo Ruedas, the president of the STCA’s Brownsville chapter. “It was hot there in the beginning, but as the evening wore on, the conjunto lovers came out in force. We’re overjoyed at the turnout.”
From the outset, Tapi’s rendition of the national anthem was singularly striking. It is doubtful that anyone had ever heard a rendition of the anthem norteño style. The stilled crowed watched in awe as Tapia squeezed out the familiar tune as VFW commander Luis Lucio and an assistant saluted the U.S. and Texas flags.

The local VFW post 2035 donated the use of the chairs and tables for the event. Lucio said many of the members of the conjunto association, including Ruedas, are veterans.
“Freddie Gomez has a special place in the hearts of Hispanic veterans,” he said. “We used to sing the ‘Soldado Razo’ as we went off to fight for our country and left our families and sweethearts behind. Some of us were lucky to make it back but a lot of us didn’t. That song brings a lump to my throat.”
In fact, right after the presentation of the colors, accordionist Mike Garza of Los Paisanos and Juan Tovar, of Los Pobres launched a stunning rendition of the war classic, drawing energetic applause from the appreciative crowd. Tovar had played with Gomez recorded the song with “El Ciclon del Valle.”

The symbolism didn’t stop there.

Gomez died in 2005, and with MC Mariano Ayala, STCA president Lupe Saenz and conjunto accordionist Fruity Villarreal participating, the names of those conjunto musicians who passed away were read as the drummer struck a single beat on the cymbal.

One person who thanked the group for honoring him for his lifelong contribution to teaching conjunto music to local musicians, Luis Rosas, said it himself.

“Thank you for honoring me while I’m still here and before I go to a better place,” Rosas quipped.

While Mayor Tony Martinez did not attend, the city commission did issue a proclamation to the memory of Gomez and for his contribution to conjunto music.

As the evening wore on, the closed off section between 12th adn 13th Streets on Adams was filled with dancing couples. Vendors did a brisk business selling everything from hot dogs to kebobs, and brews. Joe Kinney, Brownsville favorite Irishman, plied the crowd with cold grog and traded jokes with barfly Dr. G.F. McHale-Scully while Marco Longoria and his cronies tended the firefighters’ mobile grill.

Musicians drifted in and out of various groups on stage as dancers competed in a marathon that ended at the very end of the event. Gilberto Perez, Sr., for example, joined his son Gilbert Jr. for three classic numbers.

By Juan Montoya
rrunrrun.blogspot.com

Even as many are crowing up the rehabilitation of downtown Brownsville, the state and federal governments continue to raze historic sites that hearken back to the origins of Cameron County and actually predate this city “On the Border by the Sea,” as the chamber of commerce boys like to call it.
A prime example of this is the historic cemetery built by Doña Estefana Goseasocochea de Cavazos de Cortinas, one of the first settlers to the area.

She was born in Camargo, Mexico, in 1782 (the Rio Grande wasn’t a border then) and died on 1867 on her El Carmen ranch at 85.
P. G. Cavazos, her great-great grandson, from San Pedro, was instrumental in getting the Texas Historical Commission to erect a marker on Doña Estefana’s family cemetery off Military Highway where she and her family once operated her ranching empire.

Hers was one of the first ranches established in Cameron County. El Carmen Ranch was named after Doña Estefana’s daughter. Rancho Viejo was established by her father in 1770 and the King of Spain gave Salvador de La Garza the royal grant in 1781.

Think about it. That was only five years after the United States came into existence, and eight years before the French Revolution.

Texas didn’t even exist (1836), much less Brownsville (1848).
Until the settlers came from Mexico, the land was inhabited by wandering nomads who neither cultivated the land nor developed it. With the coming of Salvador de la Garza (her father and grantee of the Espiritu Santo Land Grant), all that changed.

If you stop to read the historical marker off Military Highway just north of the river levee and now topped by the Border Wall, you will learn that vandalism, weather, the construction of the river levee and now the wall, have obliterated what once was one of the first cemeteries in Cameron County.

The cemetery, unfortunately, was in the way of progress.
When the levee was built to stave off the annual flodding from the river, it was covered by tons of dirt and a small part of it remained on the other side.

Today, with the Border Wall topping the levee, whatever may have remained is off limits to anyone by the landowners who now grow sorghum on what was then Doña Estefana’s final resting place.
One of her sons (Jose Maria) went on to become a tax-assessor collector for the eventual Cameron County and another (Sabas) would become a wealthy and successful rancher and livestock grower dominating the local agrarian economy.

Sabas lies buried in another historical cemetery in San Pedro a few miles upriver.

According Cavazos, “the cemetery, established by Doña Estéfana prior to 1867 for her use, is said to be the oldest of the ranch cemeteries on the river road.

“The site probably sustained some damage during the hurricanes of October 6, 1867 and September 4-5, 1933, which devastated he Valley. The devastation caused severe flooding of the area and prompted the U. S. International Boundary Water Commission to build a levee along the Rio Grande.

“The construction of the levee, however, left the cemetery site on the south side of the levee and completely obscured it from view and made it practically inaccessible. It remained unnoticed for decades. Locals hardly recall burials at this site after the construction of the levee and the hurricane and, if there were any burials, they were few and unnoticed.

“Her cemetery is located on what was once her property, Rancho El Carmen (El Carmen Ranch) in Cameron County, Texas, within what is known as the Espíritu Santo Grant. Part of that grant was her allotted portion of the grant. The site is in Precinct 2 in Rancho El Carmen, a community established and settled by Doña Estéfana in early 1840’s about four miles west of Brownsville on the Old Historic Military Telegraph Road (US Hwy.281).

“The cemetery, which once was a large dedicated cemetery, is all but gone. A single headstone still standing, is obviously endangered, as the top has been chipped off. Mr. Guadalupe Becerra, whose father’s headstone is the only one standing, remembers the very, very old cemetery in the early 1950s.

“He recalls 15 to 20 graves still visible at the site, and some graves had markers. His father, Erasmo Becerra, died in 1924. Headstones and markers were torn or pulled away from the graves and scattered away from the site. Larger ones, as the one recovered (no markings) from the water canal, were pushed away from the graves apparently with heavy equipment and piled into the canal. Smaller pieces of markers lay about the graves.”

Only through the efforts of Cavazos and members of the Cameron County Historical Society did it become possible to erect the historical marker on the south side of U.S. Highway 281 where it is overshadowed by the Border Wall which not only effectively bar visitors to the original site and stand like an obstacle to knowing our true local history.

By Juan Montoya

The TSC board just recently transferred more than $50 million to Juliet Garcia’s UTB as part of their “partnership” agreement. If you average that transfer for the past 20 years at, say, $40 million per year, it means that the oil-and-gas rich statewide system has been the recipient of more than $800 million in local resources taken from the poorest of the poor to subsidize it being here.

Only after the former TSC boards and the likes of Stet Rep. Rene Oliveira and Texas Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. agreed to this supine position for local taxpayers would UT deign to come down to the mouth of the Rio Grande and provide the education opportunities for the most underserved people in the state.
Over the last 20 years these two – along with former boards – have held down the victim while the aggressor has his way with her while they cheered on. Hook ‘em Horns, indeed.

If you take into account the bond indebtedness that our district’s residents have incurred to subsidize the UT System, it easily totals more than $1 billion that the system has raked in from our poor little community.

Garcia and her cohorts will celebrate the chronic abuse of our residents.

But what is there to celebrate?
Is it the 17 percent graduation rate over six years that placed TSC-UTB so far down the rankings that a survey of colleges and universities from across the nation that it declined to rank it even among the lowest of the low?

Or perhaps it was the less than 50 percent freshman retention rate that we can gloat about. Or maybe we can shout to the winds that even though the UT System has milked the local residents for more than $1 billion of their scant resources, its tuition rates and user fees are the highest in the state, if not the county, effectively placing the illusion of a higher education beyond the reach of most local students. Tantalus had it better. At least he hadn’t paid for the food and water that was held just out of his reach.

Let’s face it. Our local schools have not been preparing our students to enter the fine life of higher education. What was happening was that these students entered UTB-TSC, were diverted to remedial classes, spent their Pell Grants and other student loans, and left a few years later saddled with debt and nothing to show for it. Many were penalized after failing and were prevented from entering either TSC or UTB. They not only were not prepared to join the workforce, but also had a huge debt they had to repay.

How long could this charade continue?
No, there’s got to be a better reason to celebrate.
Might it not be the $336,000 salary that Juliet Garcia has awarded herself with the help of the yearly transfers from little TSC? Or perhaps it is the salary of Alan Artibise, Juliet’s head of the Office of the Provost Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs who nets some of this loot when he draws his $230,000 salary, as does Michael Putegnat, at the Office of VPAA Director and his own creation, the Institute for Public Service, drawing a cool $102,665.

Another Garcia henchman, Wayne Moore, ostensibly a professor in English, also cries all the way to the bank on his measly $108,742.

Peter Gawenda, with the Office of the Provost Special Assistant to the Provost for Bachelor Completion Programs charges the public only $118,000 for his invaluable services.
United Brownsville’s darling Irvine Downing, at the Office of VPED&CS vice president for Economic Development and Community Service nets $121,150, a mite more than he made as a banker in the private sector.

In fact, the UT System, which recently announced a huge increase in profits from oil and gas leases managed by the Permanent University Fund from which neither UTB nor UT-Pan Am receive any funds as do the other 13 UT System and A & M campuses, continues to renege on paying TSC some $10 million in back rent.
The four trustees who defended the district from these gang of facilitators – Rene Torres, Adela Garza, Trey Mendez and Kiko Rendon – endured public abuse, threats and marches led by a renegade priest, and banishment from the society of the exalted local power elite.

They are well on the road to heal our district from the abusive relationship it had been subjected to for the past two decades. We have a new president and are getting about to lower tuition rates and lighten the loads on our local taxpayers.
These are positive steps that can only benefit our residents. After 2015, UT System will no longer have a cash cow in the TSC district.

Then we can let the celebration begin.

There is a few simple steps to downloading the Valleywood Magazine News app for Android phones.


Step 1: Install File Manager
Android does not natively come with any method of browsing the data on your SD card, so you will need to install a file manager from a market. There are a large variety of file managers available on Android, but my personal favourite is ASTRO File Manager.

Astro File Manager

Step 2: Copy .apk file to SD card
Once you have ASTRO File Manager installed, connect your Android device to your PC using your USB cable. Mount the SD card and copy over the .apk file you would like to install.


Step 3: Install .apk
On your Android device, navigate to the .apk file using ASTRO File Manager and select it.
This will open a dialog box allowing you to install the app. Select “Open App Manager“.
On the next two pages, select “Install” and “Install” again to install the .apk.


Last but not least  follow the ling below to download Valleywood Magazine News mobile app for Android to your PC or SD card with the link below:

Valleywood Magazine News Android mobile app

By Raul Garcia Jr.

By Raul Garcia Jr.