EMILIANO, MOUSTACHE TRIMMED, DISARMED, IS A CHARRO

By Juan Montoya
Something happened to Emiliano Zapata on the way to his unveiling as Mr. Charro.
The 13-foot, 1,300-pound bronze statue acquired a rolled up lariat and a large fiberglass sombrero (glazed over with metallic paint) before this morning's ceremony attended by a sparse crowd of city administrators and the Mexican consul Rodolfo Quilantan.
The statue, which was made in Saltillo, Coahuila by Mexican sculptor L. Enrique Cepeda, was supposed to have been presented on Feb. 24 at the same time that Mr. Amigo 2015 Itati Cantoral was presented with her star at the Mr. Amigo Association's Walk of Fame.
That was postponed after engineers deemed the pedestal where the massive statue was to be perched as unsuitable to bear the weight.
Instead, this morning a small group gathered to unveil the statue.
But instead of the Mexican revolutionary, the residents of the city will see a much chastened Zapata, with his bandoleers ground off, and razor nicks on his face where the grinding blade slipped and sliced into his right lower cheek.
Instead of his trademark bulging mustache visible in the original statue, the one unveiled this morning shows it has been smoothed lower on the sides and doen't bulge over his uppe lip. And if one looks where his bandoleers used to be, one can still see their imprint where they were removed.
"Someone just used a grinder to remove them," said one of our readers who sent us some photos. "If you look at his right shoulder, they are clearly visible. In fact, if you look at the picture of that you posted on the original statue and compare, they are one and the same."
Well, not quite.
In the new sanitized version of the revolutionary, three buttons were added to the vest that were not there before. Additionally, the sombrero shows that the reformers were a bit sloppy when they made it to fit the statue. At the base where the crown meets the band, there are gaps visible that were not completely sealed.
"If you look closely, you can see that holes still show in the fiberglass fabric (see graphic) and where the paint dripped," she said. "This was a rush job just to get it put up and get this embarrassment over with."
At this point, the Mr. Amigo Association, the City of Brownsville, and Mexican consulate representatives were probably just glad the charro statue episode is over. Before, when news that the group intended to erect the statue of Emiliano Zapata as it was originally brought to Brownsville (bottom right graphic) was announced, a group of local veterans had said they would protest its installation.
With the alterations (albeit sloppy), perhaps this will appease the protesters and put the issue behind the city. Then again, maybe it will resurface when the first stiff wind or hurricane batters Emiliano and the sombrero flies off or he loses his rope.