MARRIAGE OR FUNERAL: A LA NOCHE HAY ENTIERRO

By Juan Montoya
A purely Mexican-American trait has emerged from the news coverage Emma Perez-Treviño has produced on the allegations of Cameron County Clerk Carlos Cascos has filed with the Texas ethics Commission  against County Clerk Joe Rivera.
Cascos has charged Rivera with a number of alleged violations of the Texas Election Code. On the way to documenting these, Cascos and his campaign workers came across in combing through Rivera's campaign expenditure reports where he states that on May 2013, he spent $216 for gift/marriage license for unnamed recipients.

Rivera told Emma that he had made gifts of the marriage licenses granted by his office to people only if theyr were his friends. He likened it to sending flowers to people who had funerals or celebrating 50 years of marriage.
In the bad old days of Cameron County when Ray Ramon took over the county judge's office, he instituted a system where his secretaries (Sofia Benavides was one of them if we remember correctly) would peruse the obituaries of county newspapers and send them a condolence card on behalf of the county judge.
Ray would have his staff keep a Rolodex with the names and addresses of the people to whom he his office had sent the cards.
It was, as Ramon would admit, good politics. When people are in a state of mourning they appreciate the gesture. Now, in Ramon's case there was not much protests that they were doing it on county time for political purposes.
Things have changed.
Joe admitted outright that "it's something I do to promote my campaigns, to help my friends."
Whether he keeps a list of the beneficiaries for election time, we don't know.
Political gestures being a two-edged sword, we're sure that Cameron County aligns more or less to the rest of the county as far as the number of marriages that end up in divorce or family court. In that case, remembering that some public official had contributed to your misery might not be the most desirable thing for a political candidate to be remembered by.
We're sure that the issues raised by Cascos against Rivera might eventually be resolved by the TEC with a mild rebuke and a "don't do it again" warning. But for now, Emma's probing – always focused ind informative – indicate that politicking by elected officials is a year-round affair. In Joe's case, his signature uprears on almost every document of a person's life cycle in the county. His name is there on a birth certificate, on a marriage license, on a property transfer, an application for DBA, a death, etc.,
Talk about name recognition built into a position.
A friend of ours pointed out that in a marriage, the local wags point out that "a la noche hay entierro," the same as in a funeral.
They get you coming, and they get you going.