SUCKING BLOOD ONE DROP AT A TIME: LOCATION! LOCATION!

By Juan Montoya
Business in booming in downtown Brownsville.

Or shall we say pulsating?

Every day, hundreds of people  cross the Gateway Bridge and line up at huge warehouse-looking buildings - one of them the refurbished historical Three Sisters store at the corner of 10th Street and Elizabeth - to do business. A few are Brownsville residents, but the majority, after talking to the in line, are from Mexico.

They're not lining up at discount or second-hand stores. And there are no Walmarts or Target stores for their shopping convenience. And the pawn shops don't get their wares.

But business is business and the economy around these structures is booming. In fact, these centers - except for a few upscale bars and lounges around the Market Square - have been the scant few that have opened for business in the downtown area.

These businesses hire hundreds of workers clad in blue scrubs who herd the clients inside and make them comfortable in soft, padded easy chairs. Plasma-screen color televisions provide them with entertainment as they sit.

But they are not there to buy anything. In fact, they are there to "donate" their blood to the busy plasma centers. There are two GSL Plasma centers downtown and the new one - GCAM Plasma - is now open for business. GSL has another center off Price Road and the US 77-83 expressway.

When they emerge from the centers downtown near the bridge, many head straight for the HEB grocery store on Elizabeth past shuttered and boarded up stores and the homeless sleeping in doorways, make a few purchases totaling at least $5 of groceries, and pay with their newly-issued  debit cards.

And since many of them are from Matamoros, HEB pays them the balance of their cards (between $30 to $45) in cash and saves them the trouble of cashing in their cards at local banks that require U.S. identification.

The planners of the new GCAM Plasma center got it right. They remodeled the Three Sisters store located directly across the street from the HEB thus saving their clients - some still a bit dizzy from their donation - the four-block walk to the store from the GSL center.

You can tell who has donated plasma because the workers at the centers wrap their arm with brown cotton bands to stanch the bleeding after the needles have been removed. You see them at the cash registers at the HEB making their token purchases to cash their cards.

And so, carrying their 10-pound bag of chicken quarters or other small purchases, they head back across the river. For people whose only access to income could consist of a job at the maquiladoras averaging $10 a day, the $40 per weekly donation are a welcome addition to the household finances.

"No hay mas, carnal," they shrug.

Local managers of the plasma centers will not talk on the record, but instead refer you to an 800 number answered by a recording giving a vague message of the social and lifesaving benefits of donating blood.

It's in a sense, location! Location! Location!

GSL for example, has seven centers along the Rio Grande all the way to McAllen to make it convenient for Mexico residents to walk across the bridges and plug right in.

After a good day of harvesting the lifeblood from the needy, the companies load up their daily take in trucks to haul off to their distribution centers. Another day, another pint of plasma.

Business is booming downtown!