TO BROWNSVILLE HERALD: THE PEOPLE, YES

By Juan Montoya
Imagine our surprise when we plunked down our 75 cents and picked up newsletter-thin edition of the Saturday Brownsville Herald and found stories about two (count them, two) Brownsville personages.
The front page features a story Dr. Tony Zavaleta, from the Texas Southmost College-University of Texas at Brownsville hybrid. He is to be honored with Mexico's Premio Ohtli for working to improve the quality of life for Mexican citizens living abroad.
The other story on the front page of the Sports Section was on Genaro Muñiz, identified as a basketball game clock operator at Porter High School. Genaro worked for 27 years with the City of Brownsville Parks and Recreation Department before he took a job with the attendance office at Porter, then later took up his current gig.
In Zavaleta's case, our thoughts went back to when we worked at the Brownsville Herald in the late 1970s. He is to be honored for his work on immigration, poverty, housing, health care and nutrition by the Mexican government and as far as we can remember he has been a tireless voice on these issues.
Tony Gray, assistant to perennial Texas Rep. Rene Oliveira, used to accompany Zavaleta on his jaunts to northern Mexico where the good doctor did research on faith healer El Niño Fidencio and his cult followers. Gray used to regale us with tales of their exploits in the arid Fidencista stronghold of Espinazo. We would listen somewhat skeptically as Tony waxed about the miracles he had witnessed.
We, of course, attributed his visions to other factors.
Nonetheless, Zavaleta became a very quotable source on these issues for us news types. When University of Texas at Austin student Mark J. Kilroy vanished in March 1989 on the streets of Matamoros, Zavaleta was often the main source for many stories exploring the murky depths of the Santeria religions and the occult. The "Satanistas" became a major story across the country and the world.
He was also the only one back in 1978 who was willing to be a source on a series of articles on the local health problems facing the poor in Brownsville. In a five-part series that ran in the Herald, Zavaleta blasted local health professionals and the city, state, and federal governments for not providing adequate health care, nutrition, and the education needed to attain a healthier community.
For that, he was censured and disparaged by physicians and members of the local health professions, some of them his own relatives. Nonetheless, he stuck to the findings of his research and did not retract any of the statements he gave the Herald. Partly as a result of his outspokenness, health-care became a priority and resources were funneled to our area.
As a result, the Brownsville newspaper was named by the Texas Public Health Association as its winner of the 1978 Public Health Award for Media Excellence (PHAME) in competition with newspapers of all sizes across Texas. It is safe to say that without Zavaleta's research findings, it is doubtful the series could have been written at all.
But just as Zavaleta's contributions increased the knowledge of local residents to the health-care needs of the poor, Genaro Muñiz's achievements, in their own way, also served as an example to others. His parents used to attend the same church mine did, and I still recall that during Sunday school competition he would be the only brother (at 12 or 13) who could recite all the books of the Bible (New and Old Testaments) from memory.
His father Brother Carmelito was a disciplinarian who kept his kids on the straight and narrow, He also worked as a maintenance man for the city and he would be seen wearing a pith helmet trimming the grass at downtown city property and watering the grass and plants.
While not a tall man, Genaro nonetheless made up for his size with hustle. I still remember watching him play for the Brownsville High School Golden Eagles in the school gym. He was tireless and fearless.
One of his older brothers succumbed to the lure of easy money and other temptations of the barrio, and their dad was going to make sure Genaro never did. He succeeded with Genaro. He has since left the housing project where he grew up and set about to help struggling students as an attendance officer.
We know he enjoys his work keeping clock for the next generation of athletes. After all those years, the juices still flow and he still gets excited about competitive sports.
Travis M. Whitehead may have gotten all the help he needed from the TSC-UTB public relations types to write his story on Zavaleta. That's fair enough. Roy Hess, on the other hand, may have written a "throwaway" feature on a timekeeper at Porter, but he hit a nerve with those of us who grew up knowing Genaro.