HERALD ADS FUEL TO THE FIRE WITH DAGO'S HATE RANTS

By Juan Montoya
Long time ago, when the United Farmworkers were organizing in South Texas for better wages and water and bathrooms in the fields, the Brownsville Herald ran a story where an elderly Mexican-American farm hand was interviewed.
The reporter wrote the man criticized the organizers for striking for better conditions and said that they were a bunch of lazy communists who should get to work on the fields and stop complaining.
This was as biased and one-sided as any coverage could get, I though at the time; using an illiterate old man to push the conservative line.
Well, the Herald has outdone itself in allowing a letter by local loony and Republican zealot Dagoberto Barrera in its editorial page columns to spew so much hatred and vitriol against the unaccompanied children and women from Central America who have shown up at this country's doorstep.
Barrera, who makes a cameo every time a municipal budget is passed decrying the giveaway of the taxpayers' money to bureaucrats for higher salaries and benefits, is often seen draped in the stars and stripes at intersections along U.S. 77-83 frontage road to preach his message.
As supporters of the First Amendment, we have no quarrel with him expressing his opinion.
But when his speech (or writings) cross the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" thresh hold, we, in tun, feel we must speak out against his intolerance.
That is exactly what the Herald allowed Barrera to do when he was allowed to pen these lines:
"Americans get your guns end rifles before it's too late," and;
"Lock your doors and keep a gun on your side, because if you don't, your name will be in the obituary section of our newspaper."
"The word is out among sickly, poor and ignorant people with small children who will crowd our schools, welfare offices, housing, barrios and clinics, panhandling with diseases, etc."
"These South American illegals should stay in Mexico, Mexico has Pemex, the third largest oil-producing nation in the world, behind only Venezuela and the Arab nations. Why come to America?"
Barrera obviously didn't teach geography in the public schools from which he retired with a nice pension. South America has nothing to do with the current humanitarian crisis. It's basically three countries – Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras – all in Central America on the north side of the Panama Canal.
He even goes as far as to accuse the Border Patrol of "finding shelter for these lawbreakers," ignoring the fact that these men and women took an oath to uphold the laws that govern their mission.
If he would do his research he would learn that it was a law passed in 2008 – during Republican president George W. Bush's administration – that led to this current crisis. The Obama administration merely continued it. So why isn't Barrera protesting in front of his party's headquarters?
The shibboleth of contagious diseases has been a creation of the right-wing militias to justify the dehumanization of these unfortunates. New reports by mainstream media indicate there are no such widespread plagues or contagions that have erupted as a result of the current crisis.
If the international human-smuggling syndicates have discovered a loophole in U.S. law that allowed them to game the system for so long – remember that this has gone on at least since October 2013 – it is up to the Congress to close it if that is the consensus of the people. Unless the syndicates could demonstrate to the parents of these children that U.S. law would insure that once in this country their offspring would be transported safely to their relatives already here, what responsible parent would agree to place the lives of their children in the hands of just any stranger?
But it is probably more fun and satisfying for Barrera to spew his venom and cultural self-loathing at defenseless children and women than to call his government's actions to question. And it's even more despicable that the local daily has given an ethnocentric, senile chauvinist the soapbox on which to do it.