QUINTALAN AN UNORTHODOX, INEFFECTIVE MEXICAN CONSUL

By Juan Montoya

It's bad enough that testimony in the Marc Rosenthal racketeering and corruption trial brought out the fact that personnel in the Mexican consulate in Brownsville under consul Rodolfo Quintalan Arenas were "running" Mexican cases for favored local attorneys for money, but a cursory glance at his style of operating that office reveals a serious lack of professionalism.

Mexico’s consular network is the largest and most extensive of any foreign government in the U.S. Composed of 50 consulates across the U.S., these consular offices are well known for providing services to 

Mexican citizens who live in the U.S., such as the issuance of official Mexican documents and the provision of  legal services, community advocacy and legal representation before local law enforcement agencies. The 

consular offices are strategically located in many cities in the U.S., including the one in Brownsville.

The community-based actions of the consulates vary widely.

There are, for example, the Community Plazas Program in the CIBOLA Prison (New Mexico), the Breakfast for Farmworkers (Calexico, Calif.), the Financial Education Workshop for Children (Anchorage, Alaska), a Garden City Community College/Consulate Partnership (Kansas City, Mo.), a Leadership Development Program (Sacramento, Calif.), and even a Mixtec Language project (Oxnard, Calif.) and a Leadership Development Program (Sacramento, Calif.).

Given the distaste with which Quintalan has treated a Huichol holy man who was visiting Brownsville, it is difficult to think that Mexican native issues and cultures are high on his priority. Can you name one that comes quickly to mind besides the now-common scenes of the consul and his wife hobnobbing with local business leaders at the Chamber of Commerce?

There are other serious shortcomings in the operations of the local consulate. Among the top issues that discredit the local consulate is its very locations. The consulate is enclosed in the ITEC Building operated by the University of Texas at Brownsville in the old Amigoland Mall.

That a consulate be housed in a building under the control of others where access to it is subject to their say-so is a serious drawback to making its services available to Mexican citizens in need of emergency assistance.

The fact that the consulate operates in facilities that are funded by a public entity (the university) is itself highly questionable. How would it look, for example, for the U.S. consulate in Matamoros to be housed in a facility operated by the Universidad Autonoma de Tamaulipas and under its security regulations? Just imagine if a Mexican national required emergency assistance after closing hours. He or she would have to get clearance from UTB security and dodge the Border Patrol stationed along the river. And while we're at it, according to the Vienna Conventions that guide consular activities betwen both countries, where does the sovereignty of  Mexican territory start and end at the site? Is it in the parking lot, or in the hallways of the old mall? Or where?

And what if students had to dodge protesters – or worse – terrorist attacks against the Mexican consulate for the policies of the mother country? It's not as far-fetched as one may think. A Mexican consulate in Miami was the target of a bombing by anti-Castro protesters after Mexico sided with Cuba against the United States policies of embargo. And how about our own consulates being bombed in Africa and attacked across the Middle East?
Is it too much to believe that some cocaine-fueled thug could possibly seek reprisals against the Mexican consul here for that government's prosecution of the cartels in Northern Mexico?

This is one of the main objections against sharing space with an educational facility. Yet, we have grown inured to that very thing happening here for years.

As the separation between UTB and TSC goes forward, will the landlord change for the Mexican consulate? Will it really serve the needs of the people it was meant to, or will that mission continue to get short shrift at the hands of Quintalan?