B'TOWN-MATA SISTER CITIES: IF ESTRANGED, TRY, TRY AGAIN

By Juan Montoya
After 20 years of a less-than-blissful partnership, the mayors of the cities of Brownsville and Matamoros are reaffirming their vows to be sisters.
It is a ceremony many months in the offing, Mayor Tony Martinez and Matamoros Mayor Leticia Salazar will reaffirm their vows in a ceremony to be held at 11 a.m. at the Alonso Building before a select crowd of dignitaries who will be treated to a fine dinner afterwards.
But why they're doing this has left many scratching their heads.
A former city commissioner said he had been present when the original sister-city resolution was passed on October 17, 1995 and wonders what the motivation for the "re-establishment" of the relationship means.
"Does it mean there had been a divorce and we have been living in sin?" he asked.
In fact, no one knows why the ceremony is being held in the first place. Brownsville and Matamoros have been linked since Brownsville was established in 1848. And the relationship is affirmed each year during the Charro Days Hands Across the River ceremony. If cultural and historical motives are not the reason, then that leaves only the political, and that might be the ticket here.
"Mayor Martinez has not visited Matamoros in the five years he's been in office," said a Matamoros official. "Why re-establish the sister-city designation after all that time?"
(We have heard that Martinez has told anyone who will listen that he has a letter prohibiting him from visiting Matamoros due to security considerations. No one has actually seen it, and no one will say who sent it to him. For all we know it may be the perfunctory U.S. Dept. of State Travel Warning.)
The only reason might be the fact that the reestablishment of the designation may have been at the continued urging of Salazar, the female mayor of our, ahem, sister city, who is contemplating a run at the Tamaulipas governorship and needs the reestablishment of the relationship as a feather in her cap when she makes her run.
Another force behind the movement is none other than Brownsville Mexican Consul Rodolfo Quilantan, an individual little-liked in Matamoros who has been urging the move for the past year.
"They tried last September and had to cancel," said a Brownsville City Hall staffer. "A ceremony at the B and M Bridge (the old bridge) last March was also cancelled due to security considerations. Now they're trying it again. It doesn't appear that the security considerations have improved that much.

This week, the Excelsion newspaper published a blurb where Salazar is said to deny her involvement in the murder of three U.S. citizens by her paramilitary group Hercules in October 2014. Their vehicle was impounded in a lot belonging to her secretary of Social Development Luis Biasi. Since then, she and her administration have become the focus of the homicide investigation.
In fact, there is some credibility to the rumor that the lack of publicity for the "reestablishment" ceremony at the Alonso Building may have been toned down in part from preventing the victims' relatives to mar the occasion with protests as they did when Salazar rode in the Charro Days parade.
"There is really no need for this ceremony except for the political needs of Lety," said the City Hall source. We've always known we're sister cities. This is just something done to further her political career. Why is Brownsville Mayor Martinez lending his office to this?"