By Juan Montoya
While the Mexican consulate in Brownsville trips over itself to extend a Bienvenido a Brownsville greeting to the Mr. Amigo Association and the city's rustic-looking Mayor Tony Martinez to announce the Mariana Seoane García as their 2013 Mr. Amigo, it performed markedly different in the performance of a a more serious duty.
Just ask the family of Leonel Canales Gonzalez, a Mexican national who died in Brownsville and whose family wanted transported to his native Tamaulipas. There were no diplomatic delegation to meet his family and to perform this seemingly simple administrative task. There was no gala greeting for them.
Instead, even with the paperwork put together for them by Treviño Funeral Home, the family was kept waiting for the better part of seven hours before the consulate personnel under the direction of Rodolfo Quilantan deigned to attend them and issue the required permits.
The issuance of the consulate documents is a simple task that could have been performed in minutes. But the consulate personnel in Brownsville have limited the window of time when Mexican naitonals can apply for that service. The consulate will not perform the duty, they informed the Canales family, after 1 p.m. Unless they complied with that in-house rule, their loved one's body had to remain at the funeral home.
No amount of pleasing for consideration from the family in their time of grief could convince the consulate to reconsider. Across the Rio Grande, the grief-stricken family had to wait until the consulate found time in their busy schedule to provide the service they are required under Article 65 of Mexico's Reglamento de la Ley del Servicio Exterior.
The consulate personnel is required to look out for the interests of Mexicans on foreign soil and to provide assistance and the full protection of the office. Someone should tell Quilantan and his staff that arrogance and common humanity should dictate their actions, and not the arrogant and inhumane policies they have sought to adopt.
This is just the latest in a string of acts that have cast a dark shadow on the Quilantan regime in the past three years of his administration. The problems and tribulations of the common people, the foreigner in a strange land, apparently mater very little to them. They would rather put on their Tamaulipas regional outfits and pretend like they like being here during Charro Days.
This family had no reason to be treated as supplicants in their greatest hour od need as they sought to carry their loved one back home and provide him with a decent burial. Instead they had to suffer the indignity of begging the office to perform a duty that is inherently their obligation under the law and profession which they sought.
How long can this type of treatment by one of their own can the Mexican people along the border tolerate form the likes of Quilantan and his staff?
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