BHA UNLEASHES MEDIA ONSLAUGHT: A TRAGEDY, THEN A FARCE

By Juan Montoya

The media onslaught by the Brownsville Historical Society is on full-court press.

Reading today's edition of the Brownsville Herald, one would think that the BHA had bought controlling stock in the AIM Media, the daily's parent company.

No less than a front-page story about a movie-poster exhibit of Mexican movie idol Maria Felix titled “Bonita Maria Felix in Cinema” and another Page 2 article introducing Dave Parsons, new BHA education and membership coordinator, on an article about the city's historical City Cemetery.

Apparently, Parsons – who joined the BHA only three years ago – is replacing Gene Fernandez, whose family here dates back to the 1890s and who did the seminal work on the tenants of the old city cemetery, including his own ancestors.

Fernandez, who has an ongoing legal dispute with the board of the BHA and its director Tara Putegnat, has threatened legal  action claiming that his after-hours postings on his Facebook page supporting a mayoral candidate not supported by the likes of board members Harry McNair and architect Calvin Walker resulted in his ouster.

He claims he has text messages sent to him in the wee-morning hours to prove his charges and says he has retained and attorney – Ernesto Gamez – to press his claim.

The BHA has also come under withering criticism in social media for its lackadaisical managerial performance, its disdain for local historical collections and acquisitions, and a board that has lost sight of its mission to preserve local history. The spate of favorable news stories, critics say, is merely a strategy to counter that criticism.

Aubrey Nielsen, the BHA's collections manager, said that the Maria Felix poster exhibit came about as a way to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month.

That's kind of strange, though, considering that Hispanic Heritage Month spans from Sept. 15-Oct. 15, which leaves a scant eight days to "celebrate" a month.

The posters, she said, belong to a McAllen man who started collecting them in 1980. They are from places like Argentina, Russia, Germany, Mexico, France, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, among more places.

But some art and historical artifacts connoisseurs say that the BHA has scores of Mexican movie posters in the troves among the acquisitions yet to be cataloged in the safes at the Market Square Resource Center. And the John Hunter Rare Books Collection they received from Texas Southmost College lies stacked in Peter Goodman's old office where the Marquez Texas Cafe was housed. Why doesn't the general public have access to that, too?

The Feliz movie posters are fine as far as curiosity goes. But Nielsen isn't saying that the BHA had accepted the donation of numerous posters of Mexican Golden Era films, mementos, actual movie projectors, and other cinematic equipment used in Brownsville in the Ruenes family cinemas, including a drive-in which showed Mexican movies since the 1946.

An agreement with the BHA indicates that the group had agreed to exhibit the materials in the second story of Market Square as soon as the space was renovated. After years of waiting, he wanted to retrieve a framed autographed picture that Mexican heartthrob Pedro Infante – Maria Felix's co-star in Tizoc – had dedicated to his father Ramon.

His father Ramon was Infante's compadre since he had baptized Rick (in photo at right with Infante at the theater) – and frequently came to the El Teatro Victoria to perform before the sold-out audiences there.

He contacted the BHA and said he wanted to look through the items to find the framed picture. Imagine his surprise when he walked into the Market Square Resource Center and found that the photo was gone.

Despite the protests of the director and BHS board members that the photo wasn't included in the donation, Ruenes persisted and eventually found the frame – minus the Infante autographed photo – among the collection he donated. Included in the donation were sombreros worn by Infante, Miguel Aceves Mejia, and Fernando Casanova.

"I walked into the dark vault at Market Square seven or eight years after I donated the collection only to find the sombreros in a dark vault," he said. "I could have had them at my house or sold them online. But I wanted people to see them. They are part of our city's history, the people's history."

Preserving the past is an integral part of the BHA's stated mission. But actions like by some of its members like McNair make some wonder whether it has lost its way.

Just a few months ago, the McNair family – through a handful of straw men acolytes – managed to convince City of Brownsville commissioners to change the name of El Fronton Street with its rich heritage of riverfront commerce and the city's African-American population ties with the railroad to the McNair Family Drive.

To add insult to injury, the McNairs (Harry and Reba) do not pay one penny in city, port, or TSC property taxes on their residence ($350,000) and two warehouses ($218,796 and $114,459), with an aggregate value of $683,783, owned by the family.

McNair's "mission" – and those of Putegnat and Nielsen, it appears – is to "preserve" their employment and continue disdaining local Hispanic's history in favor of stroking the egos of self-proclaimed Anglo historical icons the likes of the McNairs.