FRESH FROM SKINNING US FOR $140,000, NOW IT'S FAJITAS

By Juan Montoya

Just a week after Ronnie Oliveira – State Rep. Rene Oliverira's cuz – was successful at selling a majority on the City of Brownsville Commission a "branding" program to change its image, he is the emcee and poised to turn in another sizzling performance at the Buda Fajita Fiesta.

The Buda Area Chamber of Commerce hosts its 2nd Annual Fajita Fiesta in Buda’s City Park September 25 and 26, 2015.
The chamber claims that the Fajita Fiesta attracts people and competitive cookers from across the Great State of Texas.
We wonder what terms of endearment Ronnie will conjure up to endear himself with his listeners there.
While he was in Brownsville selling his "Igniting the Future of Texas" logo and marketing program, he regaled the likes of Mayor Tony Martinez, and the rest of the commissioners with his Brownsville roots climaxing in a folksy story about how his father "worked here in this very courtroom."
It didn't matter that an online poll showed that an overwhelming majority (82 percent) were underwhelmed with his "Ignite Texas" logo, or that there were suggestions that a high school art student could have come up with a better one, Ronnie didn't skip a beat at the negative feedback to his firm's work product.
"My father and his brother always talked to us about giving back to the community," he deadpanned, ingratiating himself to his listeners.
However, at the end of the selling job, Oliveria walked away with a $140,000 check. So much to going back to your community and "giving back."
 In Buda, Texas, he'll probably regale the rubes with his accounts of how he drove pat the town back in the days of yore when he was in school in Austin and wondered what there was in Buda and promised hisself he would one day visit and "b'gosh folks, here I is."
If anything, Oliveira has been able to adapt himself to circumstances to come out on the positive side of things. But how he'll be able to stomach some of the "facts" that the Buda Chamber put in its Fajita Fiesta website may turn out to be even too much for his cast-iron constitution. We all know that fajitas were discovered (and consumed) in the Rio Grande Valley way before they were known in the Rest of the United States, Buda included. But, hey, hucksters were never ones to let facts get in the way of a good yarn.
Here are a few, for example:

"The word fajita is not known to have appeared in print until 1971, according to the Oxford English Dictionary." You mean that we've been speaking and writing words that didn't exist before then?

"The origin of what we today call fajitas, goes back to the 1930s to the Texas ranch lands of the Rio Grande Valley. During cattle roundups, beef were often butchered to feed the hands. Throwaway items such as the hide, the head, the entrails, and meat trimmings such as skirt were given to the Mexican vaqueros (cowboys) as part of their pay." Wellll, maybe, but not really. It's creative, though.

"Fajitas appear to have made their way from campfire and backyard grills to commercial sales in 1969. Sonny Falcon, an Austin meat market manager at Guajardo’s Cash Grocery, is believed to have operated the first commercial fajita taco concession stand September of 1969 at a Dies Y Seis celebration in Kyle, Texas." Damn, you mean that now Kyle is the Home of the Fajita? It's bad enough its former mayor Mike Gonzalez is fleecing us for $200,000 annually for his United Brownsville. Now the town where he was mayor has taken over our fajita lore, too.

(Now, here's a whopper.)

"Did You Know that General George Washington and his American Revolution soldiers more than likely ate Fajitas from Texas cattle?" Why not add barbacoa de cabeza and mollejas, too, while you're at it? Did George like the eyes or el cachete? 

We don't know how Ron will fare in Buda, but judging by his performance in Brownsville and his absconding with $140,000 of public cash for his defense of his ho-hum logo, he'll probably do alright and amaze the peasants with the "sonorous timbre of his voice and his twinkling eyes."