THE WIDE OPEN FACES OF NEED IN DOWNTOWN BROWNSVILLE

By Juan Montoya

The sight of vacant buildings in the downtown area is as common as the "for rent" signs on many of them. In this unusual shot of the old Anyer Second-Hand store at 952 Washington, one can see through the empty building and the pedestrian walking on 12th Street. 

At the end of the window in the far middle, one can make out the old federal building, now City Hall. (Anyer, but the way, is actually Reyna, in reverse, the name of the man who put up the second-hand clothing store many years ago.) The business has since moved to another location on Washington Street.

City leaders are hoping that the infusion of new money in upper-scale clubs by entrepreneurs will fuel a resurrection of the inner city, but the going has been painfully slow. 

Not only do second-hand stores and discount outlets predominate the inner city core, but so has a profusion of plasma centers who see in our neighbors across the river an untapped source of donors.

On any given day, hundreds of donors line up at the centers to make a few dollars for their blood donations. You can tell them apart from other folks because they wear a wrap around their left elbow where the blood is drawn.

Each morning, before the sun rises in the east, there is a long line forming on the CSL Plasma centers in downtown Brownsville.

The lines are composed of local people in need of cash, and with Mexican nationals who are enticed by the opportunity of making $200 a month once they are considered established donors at the center.

At the current exchange rate, that's $3,600 pesos, a nice figure that rivals the amount they would make in a job on the Mexican side of the border.

But that's just a trickle of cash compared to what these companies – and hospitals who sell plasma and blood products charge for it.

In 2013, Ben Bowman, CEO of General Blood, a national for-profit blood brokerage firm, said:
"It depends on where you live. In Miami-Dade/Broward (Florida) you're probably looking at about $200 for a pint whereas one of our associates just got back from Seattle and said parts of Seattle are paying $600 for the same pint," he explained.

The major plasma company in Brownsville is CSL Ltd., a biopharmaceutical company.
According to a financila website, it researches, develops, manufactures and markets vaccines and plasma protein biotherapies to treat and prevent human medical conditions. The company operates its business through two segments: CSL Behring and bioCSL.

The CSL Behring segment provides plasma-derived and recombinant products, and operates plasma collection networks through CSL Plasma. The bioCSL segment manufactures, sells and distributes vaccines, antivenoms and other pharmaceutical products in Australia and New Zealand; and also manufactures and markets in vitro diagnostic products through Immunohaematology.

It has manufacturing operations in Germany, Switzerland and the United States. The company was founded on November 2, 1961 and is headquartered in Parkville, Australia.
Last year, as of December, it reported $5.78 billions in profits and made several Forbes lists, including:

#818 of the most successful Global 2000
#1,448 in sales
#447 in profit

#272 in market value
#44 Innovative Companies (2013)
Asia's Fab 50 Companies (2013)

Brownsville's CSL Plasma is a subsidiary of CSL Behring (which itself is part of CSL Limited), collects donations of blood plasma across the US through about 60 donation centers in 25 states; it also has about 10 collection locations in Germany.

The company collects approximately 3 million liters of plasma each year. The plasma is used by the company's parent to manufacture therapies for bleeding disorders such as hemophilia, as well as blood clots, immune deficiencies, burns, shock, and other conditions. It also operates laboratory testing facilities and logistics centers.

To the donors from the Brownsville and Mexican sides of the Rio Grande selling their blood being in a few welcome dollars. But little do people realize that their arms are on the grassroots side of a multi-billion dollar empire that thrives on a poverty-stricken population.

The revitalization of the downtown area is going to be a slow process, but a start has been made by the arrival of a smattering of upper-scale eateries and clubs. 

The trick now is to attract tenants to the empty buildings and the construction of affordable housing in the empty second-story spaces so that students and local residents can establish a permanent presence and give downtown a lived-in look that will attract more businesses.