FOR PETRICIOLI, HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED

By Juan Montoya

Reading the news that a woman had been killed in a hit-and-run in Isabel was bad enough.
What was even more astounding was that the Port Isabel man who left the scene of the deadly accident and was later charged with intoxicated manslaughter was none other than Alejandro Bernal Petricioli.
When I met Alejandro, he was married to one of Jose Carretero's daughters and was doing business out of the same office where I edited the English version of El Bravo's El Valle de Texas section. That's right. At one time, El Bravo wanted to capture a section of the Brownsville English-speaking market and the local section was published in English and inserted in the Spanish-language daily.
Alejandro wasn't an easy person to ignore despite his small stature. He was loud, brusque, and sometimes downright rude with people. Those of us in the newspaper section of the office were annoyed when he spoke on the phone. "Me urge! Me urge!" (It's urgent) he would shout into the mouthpiece.
That was our nickname for Alejandro, Me Urge. We used to say, "Here comes Me Urge. Watch out."
Because he spoke to impress, we learned from his phone conversations and his name-dropping that he was a nephew of a very important man in Mexican politics at the time.
His uncle, Gustavo Petriocioli, was a high-ranking government official in the 1980's who was later Ambassador to the United States from January 1989 to January 1993 during the Administration of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
President Miguel de la Madrid appointed Petricioli as the Treasury Secretary in June 1986. At that time, Mexico's foreign debt was near $100 billion, largely as a result of the collapse of oil prices at the start of the decade.
He also served during the time that Mexico began negotiations with the United States and Canada on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into operation on Jan. 1, 1994.
Alejandro never stopped exploiting his high Mexican government connections in his commercial ventures (tranzas) on the U.S. side of the border.
Alejandro's side of the family had huge transport concessions from the Mexican government and they made the most of it. At one time he was buying fabrics in the United States and selling them wholesale to interior decorators in Mexico City.
Pompous, filled with an exaggerated sense of self-importance, and displaying the worst habits of Mexico's ruling class, Alejandro let no one forget his family and government connections. Era un influyente and wouldn't let an opportunity to emphasize it.
The next time I ran into Alejandro, he had found religion. He had become the minister of an evangelical group and wanted to set up a revival tent in the city temporarily until God answered the congregations prayers and provided the funds to build a permanent structure. He wanted to set up God's shop on a vacant field off San Marcelo, in the Brownsville Country Club.
My friend David Handleman, who lived there, received the notice from the City of Brownsville saying that Pastor Alejandro Petriocioli was appealing the denial of his permit for the tent by the Planning and Zoning Commission and would have a hearing before the city commission. Handleman, a sport writer from the days I worked at the Herald asked me and Tony Gray to come along. Tony had also worked with me at El Valle de Texas and knew Alejandro.
We showed up and sat through the meeting and, predictably, the city commissioners denied Alejandro the permit.
He was livid.
As people streamed out of the commission chambers after the meeting, Alejandro's wife (I won't mention her name, poor dear), saw me and said hello. She was a natural blonde but had colored her hair black, and we hadn't recognized her.
I reached over to give her the perfunctory peck on the cheek when Pastor Alejandro raced back from the stairs and pointed his index finger at me and screamed that if I ever kissed his wife he would do unspeakable things to my mother.
Everyone stood in shocked silence as he stalked away and his wife quietly walked down the stairs after him.
It's obvious that Alejandro's fortunes have changed. He is charged with intoxicated manslaughter and with failing to stop and render aid to Reyna Hernandez Garcia, who died as a result of the hit-and-run.
No one wishes anyone to be in that position. He can only hope that his religious convictions were sincere and that God may help him and the family of the victim.