By Juan Montoya
In times gone by, when the summer sun beat unmercifully on South Texas communities and barrios, the people would load the whole family in their vehicle, usually and old car or pickup, and take off to Boca Chica to cool off.
There would be a favored place reserved for the abuela, las tias, and of course, los guercos. The bunch would put on cut off shorts, and the girls and ladies knee-length T-shirts to go into the water. Then they would go to the Four Corners, head right on Highway 4 and 23 miles later maneuver past the sandy entrance and hoped they wouldn't get stuck.
(Sometimes sharpies on 4 x 4's would tear up the entrance and sit by when cars got stuck and charge them a fee to pull them out.)
There was no fee to go onto the beach at Boca Chica. The boys and men would sometimes fish using fishing string rolled around soft-drink bottles using metal nuts as weights. They would walk out into the surf away from the swimmers and try their luck. Kids would go off into the dunes and play hide and seek.
At night and weekends, Boca Chica Beach was a favorite place for high school, underage bacchanals, and many couples enjoyed trysts without having to look over their shoulder. A gallon of gas cost 55 cents, and a six pack of Schlitz averaged $2.
To some of the people who went there, the entry fee charged on Padre Island beaches was a fortune that was better spent on gasoline and pollo for grilling at the beach. Some veterans their old military parachutes to fashion a tent to protect the ladies from the sun.
And besides, owners of the SPI hotels and condominiums treated the stretch of beach fronting their businesses as a private beach and frowned on the unwashed masses mingling with their paying guests.
Now, speaking with local attorneys with inside knowledge with the feds, it has become apparent that as things are going, Boca Chica will eventually be restricted to the public to protect endangered species like the sea turtles and piping plovers, among others.
Already, if the clean-up crews from Cameron County's Precinct 1 want to pick up trash from the beach, they are required to call the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife so that they can send a spotter ahead of the crews so they won't disturb potential nesting areas. Unless they can get the USFW personnel on the beach, they are prevented from picking up the trash on their own.
Attorneys say that USFW personnel decry the damage done to the beach by vehicular traffic and the disturbance of the dunes by people using four-wheelers or beach-goers walking among them. In May 2018, recreational vehicles were banned from the beach.Now, with the on-again, off-again "launches" of rockets (Hopper) by SpaceX, the beach has been closed continually for days and the public moved miles away from the site. It doesn't matter that they promised 12 launches a year starting in 2013. Now it's six years later and not one rocket has been launched, but the private space company retains the authority to close the beach.
The SpaceX narrative is not that the company will launch commercial satellites 12 times a year, but that Boca Chica will be the site where manned spacecraft will launch astronauts to Mars. This despite the fact that there is no running water to cool the spacecraft at launch.
The recent "testing" of a Hopper has closed the beach indefinitely, with Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino authorized to sing off on the closings when SpaceX pulls his chain.
This was the beach where local police and some office holders held their fishing tournaments as part of their campaigns. On a hot summer weekend, the sea of people would stretch from the mouth of the Rio Grande to the jetties across the channel from SPI.
If the SpaceX and USFW initiatives go through, the days of Boca Chica as the Poor People's Beach will be a thing of the past.
16 comments:
Bullshit - it's still there.. and you can access it every day, unless we're sending a rocket to outer space.
Isn't that awesome? !! who else can say - "oh wait, you cant go there because there's a rocket going to outer space?"
Juan - these are STEM jobs, I know you still want to work on the fields - we need a younger blogger, thats what we need. Your old ways are evolving bro and these are the jobs that come with the evolution.
Your incongruent - you want jobs, better jobs, good paying jobs, but don't want to work for it... you want the restaurants, cashiers, taqueros to make $50 an hour.. yeah right.
For once I agree with Juanito. It's all a scam. There will never be launches to outer space or tech jobs created. All they wanted was the site to use as a monitoring station for their launches from Florida.
Great job at preserving nesting sites!!!! This article is so biased and misinformed. How sad that protecting nature and bringing in STEM jobs is criticized instead of being praised.
Fake news!
Dear Roman,
"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!"
Your Dad,
Duardo
@April 3, 2019 at 9:45 AM
"unless we're sending a rocket to outer space", "WE" When did you purchase Space XYZ? PENDEJO I guess your daddy never took you to Boca Chica or are you one of those transplants from cockroach europe estupido...
Everything down here has changed since "back in the day". I don't like any of it, but nobody gives a shit what I think. This is just another chapter of the death of Cameron County as we once knew it. We can just fight the future so long, but it will win in the long run. Maybe something good will come of it. We will just have to wait and see.
I agree that Boca Chica Beach be left pristine and available to all. The problem is that every former cow field and orchard in South Texas has become more and more "developed" because of a population explosion and, to a lesser degree, baby boomer retirement. It would only a matter of time until Boca Chica Beach becomes overrun with condos and hotels. It is a question of the lesser evil: A once in a while "blast-off" with a protected zone around the base, closing the roads on occasion OR hotels and condos with restricted access. I think the animals and fishermen would prefer a "once-in-a-while" event as opposed to commercial development.
Brownsvillians will never see any of those high paying jobs. It was all a scam. Like always we opened up and let SpaceX in. Just like Titan Tire, just like that Italian tractor company, and just like every other business that comes to blow in our ear and never live up to their end of the deal.
What has SpaceX and Titan have in common!!! Both have taken Brownsville for millions and both of them are through the same Jackass Jason Hilts the credit card thief.
Here we go again this is the shell and pea game, how many people from Brownsville have been hired by SpaceX?, and how long has this project been going on for. Juan find out what cash and incentives have been paid to SpaceX, and how may direct jobs have been created, then do the mathematics and see who has made money from this. Start with Jason Hilts, and the ex state representative Oliveria, and this will tell you, it is All a scam, just smoke and mirrors and the lining of top pockets. Don't count the construction workers as they are temporary, actual Brownsville people that have been employed.
You can not build condos on the beach and you can not build them in the dunes and the land behind the dunes at Boca Chica Beach belongs to US Fish and Wildlife (with the exception of a few small in-holdings) so no development will take place there. For practical purposes, Boca Chica beach now belongs to SpaceX in that they now manage access. It is becoming increasingly clear that local decision makers (politicians and their minions) are not going to support the local population against the industrial establishment. If this is a valuable site for SpaceX they will accommodate the rights and the needs of the local people, such as access to the beach. If it is not a valuable site for them then they are just going to use us (and by us I mean the decision makers, elected and otherwise) until they don't need us anymore. If local decision makers really had any pride in the area and if they were long term thinkers and planers, they would stand up to industry and not accommodate private business over the benefits of the residents. They would insist that private industry accommodate us. Notice, I didn't say they should deny industrial development, I said they should insist that industry accommodate us rather then us accommodating industry. Soon I expect that Boca Chica beach will have its name changed to SpaceX beach or Elon Musk beach. As it is, the city of Brownsville should change its motto to "On the Border By the Factory".
I bet not twenty people in Brownsville have been hired the people who have jobs are the people brought in by SpaceX, just check how much they have received in money and incentives.
The sand in no time will turn black and just wait till one of those so call rocket (time bomb) explodes along with the chemical plant. It doesn't matter to them BECAUSE NONE OF THEM LIVE HERE.
The scumbag Rene Oliveria will be in jail before then or the Fed's will have got him to sing and get the lot of them.
Brownsville was real dumb to do business con el Ratero de Elon Musk and bullshit space ex. They need to sue him to get every penny back that was falsely invested. Any one who’s a good judge of character could see space ex as a waste of money that would be funding Musk’s playboy lifestyle and nothing more.
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