VIVA BROWNTOWN: MARIACHIS AND TAMALES, BUT NO MOOLAH

By Juan Montoya
It was mariachis, tamales, and beverages today as residents and elected officials of Brownsville gathered in Austin to celebrate Brownsville Day at the State Capitol.
As part of Brownsville Day, state Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, passed the perfunctory resolution honoring the city in the Senate, while state Rep. René Oliveira, D-Brownsville, did the same in the House.
This year, with a state budget deficit hovering near $25 billion, it was about all Mayor Pat Ahumada and his entourage including commissioner Rose Gowen, Arturo Farias, vice-chairman of the Brownsville Public Utilities Board, could hope to get from the tight-fisted legislature.
Ahumada made his pitch for more funding for law enforcement, I-69 (the Yellow Brick Road), and for continuing existing funding.
The legislators, he argued, should think twice about the border city before they "cut, cut, cut."
Gowen made the usual noises about people in Brownsville being fat, diabetic and eating junk food at every opportunity they got. She said the legislators would do well to shoot some bucks down our way to promote good health habits that in the long run will save muchos dollars.
“We happen to have about one out of three people in Brownsville that are diabetic, as opposed to the national average of one in ten. So we have huge rates of obesity related diseases, especially diabetes,” Gowen told the Rio Grande Guardian.
Farias, who is currently attempting to secure a steady job for himself, told the newspaper's reporter one of the PUB's projects is the desalinization of brackish water, one of his priorities.
“We have a tremendous opportunity with the desalinization project. For the last eight years, the state of Texas has invested in a patented project, and now we’re at a very important part, of seeking additional funding to have that project come on board. So for the state of Texas it’s a tremendous opportunity,” he said.
He forgot to add that the brackish water project is seeking more bucks because the contractor has consistently failed to produce water that doesn't register arsenic levels that could kill a small mammal, and that little improvement could be seen on the horizon that the situation would improve.
It is doubtful that the three-pronged attack by Ahumada, Farias and Gowen will influence the disbursement of dollars to Browntown, but there was, we're sure, a nice resolution to frame and bring back to wow the yokels back home.

WHEREAS, way back in the past, Brownsville was a part of Mexico, and the city was part of a 59-league land grant called the Espiritu Santo that was awarded to Salvador de la Garza in 1781; by the time Texas declared its independence from Mexico in 1836, a small community
developed later, and
WHEREAS, U.S. troops under General Zachary Taylor arrived in the area and illegally invaded a peaceful country and began constructing a defensive post that soon became known as Fort Brown, in honor of Major Jacob Brown, who foolishly wandered outside it during a bombardment and died, and
WHEREAS, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War in 1848, the Rio Grande became the recognized southern boundary of Texas, and that same year Charles Stillman stole the land, drove off the Mexicans and platted the town of Brownsville and created the Brownsville Town Company to promote it; and
WHEREAS, During the Civil War, Brownsville became the favored port of smugglers like Stillman, Yturria, King and others for the slave-loving Confederacy for shipping cotton to Europe in exchange for war provisions; and
WHEREAS, Brownsville is now the largest city in the lower Rio Grande Valley and the southernmost city in Texas; with an international economy encompassing electronics, industry; and used-clothing stores and tire repair shops, and
WHEREAS, it is now bordering a failed state in Mexico, is the leading edge of the U.S. government effort to keep out unwanted Mexicans and site of a multimillion Border Wall, has the highest unemployment rate in the state and is the envy of liberal centers like Austin with its plastic-bag ban, and is a sanctuary city for unwanted pets, and
BE IT RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives will probably reject the pleas from the fair residents of this border city and their worthless representatives and eat their food without leaving a tip.