RED ROBBER, RED ROBBER, LET MATA MAYOR COME OVER!

By Juan Montoya

Now that Matamoros Mayor Mario Alberto López has made it clear he doesn't want any of the potentially COVID-19-infected Brownsville amigos on his side of the Rio, how is he going to take care of his 25 pure-blood horses valued at more than $800,000?

For that matter, who is going to watch over his $1.5 million home and property in San Benito?

Isn't he afraid that his help at the estate located at 26742 Guelker Road might come into contact with the contagion-laden Americanos on this side of the Rio?

And despite the prohibition by immigration law that someone with a visitor's visa cannot own real estate on the U.S. side of the border, he placed the properties under a corporation (Grupo 5M) and under the name of his wife Marsella Huerta Sosa.

Just yesterday Lopez asked his Brownsville counterpart Myor Trey Mendez to pleasae tell his city's residents to stay out of Matamoros because of the 13 positive COVID-19 cases detected so far.

With screening processes dubious in their coverage of the existing cases, he fears that asymptomatic carriers will bring the disease to the crowded urban Matamoros area.

In this case, money doesn't talk, grita!

Lopez's snub of Brownsville residents followed the announcement by Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino and Mendez that the Customs and Border Patrol at the international bridges would keep out any Mexicans who were not crossing for essential services or emergencies.

The tit-for-tat announcements took everybody by surprise, and many point to a political motive for the initiative to keep U.S. crossers in Brownsville.

Just before the October Mexican presidential election, Lopez switched parties and threw in his lot with the Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador MORENA party and was carried by the AMLO wave into the palacio municipal as mayor of Matamoros.

But one wonders if the president-elect and his MORENA party would have welcomed him into the anti-corruption fold if the knew that a lowly accountant had such opulent properties and equine tastes in pure-blooded Spanish and Arab horses.

Lopez might have taken a page from the Tony Martinez playbook in Brownsville because just days after he assumed office, Matamoros Public Works crews initiated their paving program and the first street they paved was the street in front of his home and business in Matamoros, a street named, appropriately, Cantinflas Avenue, after Mexico's favorite jester.

Lopez acquired those properties, reports state, when he was the accountant for the Junta de Aguas y Drenaje (as the colonia is named) when he somehow ended up with the choice properties.

There is no question that the properties in San Benito and the race horses belong to the wayward MORENA mayor. Matamoros reporters who visited the locale found correspondence strewn about the rural mailbox with Lopez's name on it.

And a search of the Cameron County Appraisal District indicates that he owns the property and buildings plus improvements at the address.

Lopez is obviously preaching to his MORENA choir whose mantra of  "no robar, no mentir, no traicionar", that is "thy should not steal, thous shall not lie, and thous shall not betray" the people.

Come to think about it, maybe he's right. Why should Brownsville residents expose themselves to that corrupt administration by going across the  bridge? And are Brownsville and U.S. authorities are also correct in preventing this corrupt public servant to dally across the Rio to tend to the fruits of ill-gotten gains?

It just might be contagious.