ILLEGAL DUMPING AT CEMETARY DISHONORS DEAD

"Where's Odilon, Gilbert and Victor?

The campesino guerrillero, el congalero, and the vet?

All, all are sleeping by that hill (of trash)

And where's Lupe, Concha and Maria?

La Jefa, wife and daughter?

All, all are blasphemed by that trash."

By Juan Montoya

Every once in a while, when the kids tire of the Wii, Cartoon Network, or just lying around, we jump on the car and take a ride in the diminishing countryside around Brownsville.

I must confess that I regale them with tales of my childhood and adolescence before the Expressway was built, when FM 802 only had one name and it was two-lane country road, when a kid could jump on his bike, pedal to the port with his fishing reel and hook trout right off the wharf.

Alas, in these days of Homeland Security those days are gone.

It was during one of these forays that we saw the aging portal sign off Alton Gloor Road and decided to visit. What we found saddened us and made us mad.

After negotiating potholes and debris along the brush-choked canal, we came upon piles of household trash thrown by illegal dumpers. Within sight of the piles of trash was a sign in Spanish asking people to please throw no trash there.

As we walked among the graves we came upon one with a large cross decorated with teddy bears and flowers. A sing on the top said "El Guerrillero," the warrior. A black Farmworkers Union blocked eagle sat atop the cross. When I read the name – Odilon Garcia – I remembered that I met him once during a chicharroneada that the poor folks at Cameron Park had for the children during a wet, bleak Christmas many years ago. If this was the same man, he was an ardent champion of campesino rights and a champion of the poor at the colonia. I still remember him with a large wooden spoon stirring the cooking pig meat.

The teddy bears, I guessed, were probably presents from his grandchildren, some of whom, I probably saw running around the dirt streets back then.

Many of the graves, some kept and many not, had poignant mementos from the lives their owners lived during our brief journey through this earthly plane.

A small white stone, halfway submerged below the creeping grass, belongs to Victor La Chappelle, who served as a private in Vietnam. Whether this Hispanic warrior lies below the stone or under a large rectangular block of concrete is not clear. He did go on to survive the war and died years later. The small stone is his survivors' remembrance of this soldier.

On another head stone a little farther into the cemetery, an unopened bottle of beer and some loose change stand untouched where the donor left them. One can almost imagine him (Agustin) asking for "una bironga y una feriecita."

On another, a Rosary shares the grave's parapet with an empty glass and a cup filled with a liquid that has since blackened and caked at the bottom attest to some past Dia de Los Muertos gift left there by family members.
The kids were solemn at the last resting places of these Brownsville dead and asked me some pointed questions.

Who, they asked, would be able to come and dump their trash in a place where people bury their dead?

And, they said, it doesn't seem fair that some graves are so nice and kept up while some consist of just a simple wooden cross with handwriting on it.

Life, they concluded, isn't fair, and neither, apparently is death.

They are right.

We don't know whether La Palma is a private cemetery, a pauper's potter field, or if the cleanup of illegal dumping is any government entity's responsibility. But here's a thought for some of those idiots that use the cover of the night to dispose of their trash upon this hallowed ground: How would you like someone dumping their refuse on the place where your family dead lie resting? Surely we're a better people than this.