A TALE OF TWO: BROWNSVILLE CITY AND CAMERON COUNTY

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

There were a Mayor with a large jaw and a bicycle-riding commissioner with a plain face, on the throne of Browntown and; there were a county judge with a large jaw and a county clerk with a so-so face, on the throne of Cameron County.
In both it was clearer than crystal to the political overlords of the regional preserves of fees and taxes, that things in general were settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord two thousand and fifteen. La Santa Muerte and revelations were conceded to Tamaulipas and El Valle at that favoured period, as at this. Herminia Becerra  had recently attained her five-and-eightieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic deputy in the Pct. 2 Constables had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of Las Prietas and El Ranchito by a Browntown annexation.
Even El Niño Fidencio's ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages to curandeos starting with Tony Zavaleta, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs.
Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the commissioners court, from a cabal of political schemers seeking to gain the judge's bench in Browntown, and which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the local raza than any communications yet received through any of the Virgin Mothers images scorched on burnt flour tortillas.
Browntown, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the Triple C, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, issuing COs aplenty, and spending them. Under the guidance of her Catholic acolyte the High Priest Martinez, she reveled in entertainment as trying to set a world record for zumba dancing and rebranding itself as it sank beneath the flood waters of seasonal rains, because what it could not achieve with deeds, it sought to enhance with superficial adornment.
It is likely enough that, rooted in the hinterlands of La Feria and the upscale neighborhoods of Calle

Jacaranda  there were growing movements to fashion new and electronic means to put the body politic to death, already marked by the elections administrator, Remi, to remake a certain movable cyber framework with an oval and a shade, terrible in history since the days of King Ray.
It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to El Ranchito in the Kingdom of Cameron , there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude placards, bespattered with rustic slogans, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by gallos de pelea, which the Pretender, Sanchez, had already set apart to be his garlands of victory after his Revolution.
But that Elector and Farmer Dan, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, for as much as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.
In Cameron, too, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much county boasting. Omar the Lucio publicly cautioned the rural folk not to go out of town without removing their furniture to rental storage warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a Border Patrol agent in the light, and, being recognized and challenged by his fellows whom he stopped in his character of "El Señor," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the bank receipts from the Tax Office was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard hired by James I Escobedo's American Surveillance shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:" after which the receipts were robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the County Judge Sepulveda, was made to stand and deliver the receipts of his $230,000 pound reward on the steps of Rancho Viejo, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners at Rucker-Carrizales fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of Reyna and Leinart's guards fired teargas and rubber bullets in among them; clerks at the JP offices snipped off their cut from the top of the fine baskets, and rouge policemen went into Cameron Park to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on them, and they fired back on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way.
In the midst of them, Luis, the District Attorney, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, processing petty and miscellaneous criminals through his production line; now, hounding a city commissioner on Saturday who had been charged on Tuesday; now, indicting people  in the dark hollows of the courts, and now issuing pamphlets of his glory in all the media that would bear them as he sought to stay in the people's good graces; today, taking the freedom of a drunk wife beater, and tomorrow hounding an old lady who indulged in the immoral and venal pursuit of hitting it big on a game of chance in some dark, clandestine salon with las maquinitas.

All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year two thousand and fifteen, while the Elector and the Pretender worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the so-so and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand.
Thus did the year two thousand and fifteen conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures (the residents of this fair land) along the roads that lay before them.