SHOULD VETERANS HAVE HIRED POLITIQUERAS TO GET OUT THE VOTE?

By Dan Reyna

Looking over the election totals on Tuesday's election on the 11 state propositions, I find it discouraging to see that only 6,914 voters in Cameron County turned out to cast their ballots.

Taking into consideration that we have 168,970 registered voters in the county, one can easily see that the voters stayed away in droves. In fact, only 3.57 percent of the voters showed up and that's including early voting and election day.

Being a Korean veteran with a combat-related disability, the proposition that interested me was Proposition 8, which calls for the state to work with the federal government to build a veterans' hospital in the Rio Grande Valley.

That proposition gained 5,452 votes, or 2.98 percent of the total votes cast.

Cameron County Veterans' Service Officer Salvador Salinas said that there are 26,000 veterans registered in the county. When one takes this into consideration, it is easy to see that despite the efforts of some veterans groups to rally the vote, the response from the veterans themselves was underwhelming, to say the least.

"Just because the proposition passed it doesn't mean that we are automatically going to get a hospital built," he said. "There's still a lot of work to be done for that to become a reality."

Salinas also pointed out that not all the 5,452 who voted for the proposition in Cameron County were veterans. Included in that number may be people who may have never have served in the military and who may have relatives or friends who have relatives of veterans.

"When Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson or John Cornyn come to meetings, all we get is a few veterans groups to show up," Salinas said. "The halls where we meet don't even fill up. That says a lot about who they listen to."

It has become plainly clear that our current congressman Salomon Ortiz is not going to provide the effective representation veterans need to make this hospital a reality. Likewise, the Port of Brownsville is not going to be his first priority being how he has to attend to the needs of the ports in Corpus Christi and Ingleside. We have waited more than 26 years for Salomon to bring veterans something from Washington.

Each year he perfunctorily submits a bill for a hospital in Washington only to see it buried in other legislation and forgotten until the next term's election cycle begins anew.

The new census will undoubtedly gain us a congressional seat in the Rio Grande Valley. We should make sure that new seat is filled by someone who takes veterans issues seriously. We should also make sure that we mobilize our veterans and make them proactive in their own interest.

To that end, I suggest that whoever is organizing the effort take into consideration recruiting a cadre of seasoned politiqueras and politiqueros to rally the vote in our favor.

Hey, every politician out there is doing it, from dogcatchers to Solomon himself. Let's get serious about this.

Imagine Brownsville has no component on veteran needs, homeless veterans, a veterans' hospital or a veterans' cemetery.

We already have a historical battlefield (Palo Alto). Why not dedicate an area out there for a veterans' cemetery? After all, the bones of Mexican and U.S. dead are already under the mesquite and cactus dating back to that first encounter. What's wrong with letting their brothers join them in eternal rest?

There could also be a veterans service center where local veterans could find information on the benefits they and their dependents can receive.

Some of us are getting along in years and probably won't be around to see any of this happen. There is, therefore, an urgency in attaining some of these proposals. But don't take too long, guys. The clock is ticking.