BROWNSVILLE, TX. NOW KNOWN AS : PLANET OF THE TAPES

By Juan Montoya

Even as the dust settles from the bombshell delivered upon the political panorama by the anonymous release of a four-hour long recording of City of Brownsville Commissioner Cesar De Leon at a private gathering in a ranch belonging to a local district judge where he uttered the "N" word and disparaged political figures across the local spectrum, rumors of the existence of even more surreptitious recordings are surfacing.

There are rumors that the tapes deal with the operations of the Brownsville Fire Department involving not only De Leon, but also commissioner Jessica Tetreau, former fire chief Carlos Elizondo firing Capt. Margarito Gracia, and other well-known political figures.

The Brownsville Herald carried an editorial today where it blandly states that "De Leon has learned a hard lesson about modern-day politics: Don't assume that all private actions and statements will stay private. Nowadays, almost everybody carries a mobile phone that can capture conversations and video images. Such devices can gather memories – or evidence – and one never knows when the record button has been pressed."

Others in social media say Elizondo – whose pending demotion at the time he recorded De Leon at 357th District Judge Juan Magallanes' ranch is mentioned as being the motive for recording the compromising remarks to stave off his firing – is literally loaded for bear with recording devices.


"He is outfitted with electronic devices like a military listening post," commented one wag.

(Another quipped that "at the recent reelection fundraiser for Magallanes at the same place where the recordings were made, visitors were stripped of recording devices as a requisite for getting on the premises. A sweep of the ranch for electronic recording devices was done before starting event. Anyone seen recording was to be shot on the spot"...That, of course, was not true.)

A commenter on Facebook who knows Elizondon and his wife well accused him of carrying not only his cell phone, but also recorders disguised as a pen, a cross pendant, and even the ubiquitous dark shades that they say can record audio and video.

Sources close to the events that transpired last week say that Elizondo recorded the De Leon rant on one of these devices and used his cell phone several times during the four-hour period. They says that apart from Elizondo, De Leon and Armando Magallanes, there was another person there, a local resident named Joe Barrientes, who used to work in local banking.


But aside from De Leon and Elizondo, there is little uttered by Magallanes or Barrientes. As we have heard it, Magallanes was asked by Elizondo to set up the meeting with De Leon at the ranch so they could discuss matters related to his employment as chief of the fire department and how they could work out an arrangement using his vote on the BISD as a bargaining chip.

In other words, Elizondo was bargaining with De Leon to protect his city job in exchange for his vote on the BISD on a number of issues.

This is exactly the reason why the city's personnel policy manual prohibits its employees from holding elective public office with another entity that lies within the jurisdiction of the city. Still, the city commission – and City Manager Charlie Cabler – have failed to implement it and give Elizondo the ultimatum to either stay with the BISD or keep their city jobs.

The release of the first snippets from the total recording focused on the racist utterances by De Leon disparaging the intransigence of two black Asst. DAs in refusing to negotiate plea bargains with his clients and insisting on jail sentences instead. Then the following snippets dealt with the unflattering characterization of  his colleagues on the city commission, the BISD board, other lawyers and judges, and some local residents. All of them were meant to embarrass De Leon and no one else could be heard in them. These were professionally-done recordings on MP3 format that not just any kid on a PC can produce.

But then someone (no one knows who) heard other things concerning individuals with whom they had an ax to grind and decided – probably without Elizondo's knowledge or approval – that the full tape should be released. We understand that these individuals wanted to focus on a $40,000 referral payment made by local attorney Louis Sorola to Mark Sossi while the latter was with the Willette-Guerra law firm. Sossi would eventually be made city attorney but had reached a settlement in court to repay Willette et al $167,000 in fees that he deposited in his own account instead of in the company's.

The people who released one of the tapes wanted listeners to think that Sorola had done something illegal. Sorola has said that they had it wrong. He and his legal associates actually paid Sossi (and Willette) $75,000 for the referral, not $40,000, in the normal course of doing business.

Regardless, the genie was out of the bottle and what was revealed was a seamy underside of Brownsville politics that many of us only suspected. Were there jobs for favors handed out of the city manager's office, favored firms vying for contracts with the Brownsville Public Utility Board (Armando Magallanes is a member, having being appointed by De Leon), and undue political influence being applied on the various entities affecting the outcome of public policy?

Of course there were, as the substance of the recordings attest. God only knows what the other tapes lurking out there will reveal.

The Herald editorial sanctimoniously observes that "...officials, and those who aspire to be, must recognize that their actions and statements are matters of public interest. Unexpected recordings might create grief for some politicians, but if they help voters make better-informed decisions on Election Day, they can serve the greater good."


Now that the messenger has been duly chastised, let's turn to the message. Children and drunks, the Mexican dicho says, always tell the truth. We have a golden opportunity to hold these leads up to the light of truth and see if the worst of our suspicions were true. And if they were, let the processes of justice be brought to bear on them and extirpate this cancer from our governmental entities.

(All the while, Elizondo's local and cyber sycophants continue to work the race card to divert attention from these obvious and  egregious abuses of official power.)

The silver lining to all this is that it has set the investigative hormones flowing in journalism sleuth Emma Perez-Treviño, who – like the old milk-wagon horse – has heard the clanging of squalor and corruption as it slouches through the political landscape and is champing at the bit to chain the rascals to the pillory. If anyone can, Emma – pictured here putting a novillo through its paces – can.