laredos - december 2011

A JOURNAL OF THE BORDERLANDS DECEMBER 2011

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Est. 1994 Vol. XVII No. 12 64 PAGES @lareDOSnews LareDOS Newspaper

Dalai Lama

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

Santa María Journal:Blessed rains,remembering 1980Luz Corral de Villaroad tripPage 9

Animal shelterdebate simmers4

Casa de Misericordiafundraiser to featureKathryn Stockett,author of ‘The Help’ Page 20

Gabriel Lopez onmilitary museum, raising awareness forCasa del VeteranoPage 22

Exploring an old Laredobarrio, ‘El Trece’ Page 35

Local last-minutegift guidePages 37 & 38

Farmers Marketends year on high notePage 45

INSIDE

2 I LareDOS I DECEMBER 2011 WWW.LAREDOSNEWS.COM

Laredo Community CollegeWest End Washington Street • 5500 South Zapata Hwy. • Laredo, TX

Get advised andenrolled now for Spring classes.

Why choose LCC?• Top-quality instruction• Affordable tuition and fees• Two convenient locations• Flexible distance learning• Transferable courses• Programs that prepare you for in-demand careers

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CLASSES BEGIN

January 17

Visit www.laredo.edu/spring2012registrationor learn more via your smartphone, ipad ormobile device.

956.721.5109 www.laredo.edu lccpalominos

SEVEN GOOD REASONS TO CHOOSE DR. RAFATI’SRADIOLOGY CLINIC OF LAREDORADIOLOGY CLINIC OF LAREDO

OUR PRICE LIST

Our philosophy at Radiology Clinics of Laredo is to practice medicine in a manner that involves complete disclosure of our opinion and our charges. In this spirit, I decided to publish my fee schedule, and I urge others to follow suit.

Δ MRI $400.00$400.00$400.00

Δ CAT SCAN CAT SCAN $250.00$250.00$250.00

Δ MAMMOGRAMS MAMMOGRAMS $125.00$125.00$125.00

Δ BONE DENSITY BONE DENSITY $125.00$125.00$125.00

Δ SONOGRAMS $150.00 TO $175.00TO $175.00TO $175.00

Δ STOMACH OR INTESTINE EXAMS $200.00STOMACH OR INTESTINE EXAMS $200.00STOMACH OR INTESTINE EXAMS $200.00

Δ SKULL AND SINUSES SKULL AND SINUSES $ 90.00$ 90.00$ 90.00

Δ BONES BONES $ 85.00$ 85.00$ 85.00

Δ CHEST X-RAYS CHEST X-RAYS $ 80.00$ 80.00$ 80.00

Δ DOPPLER EXAMS DOPPLER EXAMS $150.00$150.00$150.00

These prices include the x-ray, the interpreta-tion, and consultation with the patient on what his/her exam shows and what to do next.

You save time, money, and regrets. Call us for a price quote.

No appointment necessary. Just walk in at your convenience.

Immediate results. You walk out with com-plete knowledge of your exam results

You can always consult Dr. Rafati free of charge.

Second opinion is always free of charge.

Dr. Rafati has 35 years of experience, knowledge, and common sense. We saved

thousands of patients the horror of unnecessary surgery.

The last reason is very, very important. If your doctor tells you not to go to Dr. Rafati’s

clinic, you should immediately go to see Dr. Ra-fati and at the same time you should look for a

new doctor. Many doctors are mad at us be-cause we put our patients �irst. Remem-

ber, you have the right of choice.

RADIOLOGY CLINICS OF LAREDO5401 Springfield • (956) 718-0092

WWW.LAREDOSNEWS.COM LareDOS I DECEMBER 2011 I 3

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María Eugenia [email protected]

editor

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Read at www.laredosnews.com

Juan AlanisBebe FenstermakerSissy FenstermakerDenise FergusonNeo GutierrezJason HerreraGuillermo A. Jimenez

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BY MARÍA EugENIA guERRALareDOS Publisher

The cold, soaking rain, 3 inches as of the time I left the ranch Sunday night, never let up over the weekend. The mois-

ture was widespread and not spotty like the heartbreaking hit-and-miss showers that have fallen over the last years, teas-ing us with banks of thunderheads, high winds, and mata polvos while the good rains fell elsewhere in the distance.

It has been great weather for hearth fires, puttering, reading for long stretches, and for going in and out of our buildings to get tools or put them away. It was felt hat, boot, and fleece jacket weather. I finished the Christmas wreaths that my grand-daughter Emily and I have been working on, and I worked on the altar to the Virgen de Guadalupe that we keep on this ranch.

La virgencita is the namesake of the re-naming of the ranch after she reportedly appeared to my grandmother many de-cades ago while she milked a cow in the corrals. This story is one of the quirky enig-corrals. This story is one of the quirky enig-corrals. This story is one of the quirky enigmas about my grandmother that make me wish I had known her when I was at of age at which I might have asked her questions that would shade in some of the missing narrative in the Gutierrez family history.

My grandmother Doña María Dionisia was a powerhouse — a young widow who ran this ranch, another in Jim Hogg Coun-ty, and a farm on which she raised cotton and produced the vegetables and milk to feed seven children. In Hebbronville, she was known to win the prize for bringing in the season’s first bale of cotton.

In spirit I keep my grandmother near me on this land that she loved so dearly. She remains a presence in my life that dic-tates order and respect.

I’ve digressed down this well-traveled senderoof tender memo-ries, and I return now to the rainy-day weekend of hearth fires and reading.

A day earlier I had picked up from my bookcase my copy of Under the Fifth Sun, A Novel of Pancho Villa by Earl ShorVilla by Earl ShorVilla -ris, a book I had chanced upon at Whole Earth Pro-vision Company in Austin and had enjoyed reading for the first time at the end of August in 1980. It is one of the best books of anecdotal information about Villa, and it is artfully written. I enjoyed it then as I have enjoyed re-reading it now.

The book itself, that 30-year-old object of yellowed bound pages, bears its own story. I had taken it with me on a 1980 road trip from Austin to Chihuahua to meet Luz Corral de Villa, the wife of General Villa. Pancho Villa had a retinue of unofficial wives, but Luz Corral was the one he mar-

ried officially with a license and a priest.I had no appointment with Luz Cor-

ral de Villa. It was dumb luck that I had traversed hundreds of miles across Texas and the Chihuahuan desert to find her at the many-roomed Quinta Luz where she, Villa, and an army of his bodyguards had resided.

Most of the beautiful old structure, which Villa built for his wife in 1914, was in poor condition, save for the rooms in which she lived, rooms that bore on their

walls the faded elegance of a painted wainscot of urns and flow-of urns and flow-of urns and flowers, old photos of General Villa and scenes from the Mexican Revolu-tion, rifles and saddles, movie posters of films about Villa, a pic-ture of her and Anthony Quinn.

Mrs. Villa, 98 at the time of my visit in 1980, would die in 1981.

When I met her, she sat in a wheelchair on the sidewalk high above Calle Déci-

ma, a gray woolen shawl around her shoulders. She spoke with disdain of the Mexican government for its failure to honor Villa as a hero, for its failure to pay her a pension or to support the upkeep of the finca that was a museum that honored Villa’s life.

She looked at my copy of the Earl Shor-ris book and grumbled indignantly about all the money that had been made on books and movies about Pancho Villa and how she had received nothing in return.

Her eyes lingered at the depiction of her at the base of the spine of the book’s illus-trated cover.

She sold me a copy of her own book about the Mexican revolutionary, Pancho Villa en la Intimidad, the forward to the 1948 tome written by José Vasconelos. And then she surprised me, autographing both the Shorris book and the one she sold me.

I marveled at the grandeur and scale of the Quinta Luz, which at the time it had been built abutted land that would be cultivated and orchards yet to bear fruit.

Before and after my conversation with Luz Villa, I wandered the grounds of the courtyard, coming across a bronze bust of Villa and the rusted, bullet-riddled 1919 Dodge coupe of his 1923 ride into eternity. I walked up to an old, thin wom-an dwarfed by the high arches and balco-nies of the walled compound.

As the woman swept things I could not see, her thin arms and legs moved like an insect, and when I came close to her I saw that she wore a hairnet and old-fashioned aviator goggles with blue lens-es. I spoke to her, and when she answered something unintelligible, I saw that the inside of her mouth was filled with plant fiber the startling color of a canary.

I walked away, wondering what ex-I walked away, wondering what ex-I walked away, wondering what exactly I had seen, and I looked back at her, a tiny figure on a vast courtyard she would never finish sweeping on the big-would never finish sweeping on the big-would never finish sweeping on the bigger montage of the history of a man that would never finish being told. ◆

santa María Journal

Blessed rain, hearth fires, and a good book;remembering the 1980 Luz Corral de Villa road trip

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opinion

Plastic bags line Calle del Norte near Springfield Avenue.

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Editor’s note: This is where pub-lic figures get their measures of cacheteadas, snark, and satire for their public acts. On oc-

casion, if it is so deserved, we mete out praises.

SnarkA tree in an empty forestOur council members may be a bunch

of Democrats, but they aren’t progressives in the slightest, especially when it comes to quality of life (1000 parks are not the solution to quality of life).

That distaste for progressive ideas was reinforced yet again at the November 28 City Council meeting, where Occupy Laredo protesters found themselves up against a brick wall of close-mindedness.

“Don’t you think the media already got the message?” Councilman Alex Per-ez asked Occupy representatives.

Maybe the media got the message about the Occupy Wall Street move-ment, Councilman Perez, but appar-ently politicians have not.

And Councilman Mike Garza seemed to have an alternative idea for the Occupy movement: Instead of occupying 12 parks for 12 weekends, why not occupy El Met-ro Park & Ride?

Yes, the same El Metro Park & Ride way out there at the east end of Hillside Road, right by the airport.

BRILLIANT! Out of sight out of mind! If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Lo-cal Occupiers, meanwhile, re-main positive about the move, but isn’t getting more attention and support one of the main points of Occupying? Tree, forest, etc.

Safety at riskAs Laredoans enjoyed the beautiful floats at the Christmas parade for the city’s

Navidad Fest, we noticed something that put a bit of a damper on the festivities.

When we walked down Farias Street, a woman we passed was com-plaining to a police officer about the lack of barricades on the street. The city’s ill preparation was apparent in the long line of cars trying to get through to a nearby street. These cars whizzed

past children as young as tod-dlers.

Just when we thought we had seen the end of it, we witnessed a city truck loaded with bar-ricades trying to get through the

traffic on Farias Street. The parade had started at 6 p.m., but we saw this truck at around 7 or so. It’s always nice to see the city prepared for large events and also looking out for our children.

PraiseCity manager shares progressive idea

A recent informal meeting with city manager Carlos Villarreal illuminated the following forward-thinking environ-mental initiatives that are in the works:

• Reducing the eyesore of plastic bags on the cityscape. He called them “ugly tumbleweeds” and the bane of an urban landscape.

• Re-routing trucks carrying Eagle Ford Shale oilfield waste and drilling mud; enforcement for spills; creating PSAs for how to report a spill and PSAs apprising drivers that there are enforce-able ordinances on the books for con-taining loads and driving safely along designated routes.

• Selling millions of gallons of treat-ed wastewater effluent for oilfield use, thus creating for the city a viable rev-enue stream and reducing the amount of water pulled from aquifers, wells, and

That distaste for progres-sive ideas was reinforced

yet again at the City Council meeting, where Occupy Laredo protesters found themselves up against a brick wall of close-mindedness.


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Pat and Cristy Alexander of Laredo Pat and Cristy Alexander of Laredo Precently learned about the role they Precently learned about the role they Pcan play in shaping the policy that Pcan play in shaping the policy that Paffects this country’s farmers and Paffects this country’s farmers and Pranchers. They were among 28 young agri-cultural producers selected to attend the 2011 Farm Credit Young Leaders Program.

Member-borrowers of Capital Farm Cred-it, which is part of the Farm Credit System, the it, which is part of the Farm Credit System, the itcouple interacted with government, financial, and agricultural decision-makers, and got an inside look at how the system operates.

During the sixth annual event, sponsored by the Tenth District Farm Credit Council, participants traveled to New York City and Washington, D.C., while the 2012 Farm Bill was taking form. Each lending co-op in the district chose participants who have shown outstanding leadership and involvement in the agriculture industry.

Pat manages a welding supply store, and his family owns and operates a ranch in Webb

County. Cristy is the manager of her family partnership, which deals in real estate, min-partnership, which deals in real estate, min-partnership, which deals in real estate, mineral interests, and a 25,000-acre cattle compa-ny. Both graduates of Texas A&M University, they have three daughters, Gabriela, Anna Lee, and Karina.

A visit to the U.S. House Chamber dur-ing a vote capped off the four-day trip, which included meetings with agriculture industry representatives, Farm Credit Council officials, and congressional staff in Washington, D.C. The group also had a briefing at the Federal Farm Credit Banks Funding Corporation and toured a Wall Street brokerage firm in New York City.

The Tenth District Farm Credit Council is the trade association that represents the leg-the trade association that represents the leg-the trade association that represents the legislative and regulatory interests of the Farm Credit Bank of Texas and its affiliated institu-tions throughout Alabama, Louisiana, Missis-sippi, New Mexico, and Texas.

— Special to LareDOS

Capital Farm Credit Stockholders participate in Farm Credit Young Leaders programA five-question survey

Employee (s):

Sylvia J. Garza

Employer:

City of Laredo

Solid Waste Department

Position:

Recycling Program Coordinator

Start Date: August 2006

Q: What brought you to this job?A: The desire to improve the community.

Q: What part of yourself do you bring to the job everyday?A: I look forward to new challenges.

Q: Is there prestige or pride in your work?A: Yes, when I see the numeric results of people that are en-gaged in recycling and that Laredo is more aware of environ-mental programs.

Q: Tell us something about your job that would surprise people.A: The years that materials take to disintegrate when they are not recycled and the environmental impact.

Q: Are there new hires in your career ?A: The environmental field is growing and more opportunities are arising.

About WorkAbout WorkAbout Work News Brief


By MARIA EUGENIA GUERRALareDOS Staff

I am my own best doubter and second guesser in the moments in which I weigh the worth of what I write — does it have impact, will it make a

difference, or did I get lost on a dart down a rabbit trail?

I won a journalism prize last year for a story called “The Indian in the Road” that called out everyone who could have pro-tected — but did not — the antiquity of a 600-year-old Native American gravesite in San Ygnacio, a tomb of human remains that is a pronounced speed bump at the intersection of Washington and Treviño streets. On part of the roadway of High-way 83 Business that loops through town,

the burial is routinely driven over.Up to now I’ve had no tangible proof

that the story I wrote in 2010 had bearing.Now and again, affirmation comes

from other sources, such as news of a December 12 lawsuit that Zapata County has brought against contractor Reim Con-struction, who, while undertaking drain-age improvement work in San Ygnacio in 2009 and 2010, disturbed the known burial site and covered it with a 2-inch layer of asphalt.

The site, believed to hold the remains of a Coahuilatecan, was first identified in 1992 by archaeologist Jim Warren and again by Warren in 2008. According to the suit filed in the 49th District Court on behalf of Zapata County by the firm of Escamilla, Poneck, and Cruz, Reim Construction

knew of the location of the burial mound and failed to exercise “ordinary care in conducting its contractual obligation” by disturbing the site.

As a result of the disturbance, the Texas Histori-cal Commission (THC) has asked Zapata County to exhume the re-mains. The coun-ty’s suit against Reim in turn asks for damages of “expenses to exhume burial remains in ac-cordance to stan-dards required” by the THC. The suit asks for actual (liquidated) damages, compen-satory damages, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest, and court costs.

Prior to the 2009 commencement of the drainage improvement project, the THC and representatives of the River Pierce Foundation of San Ygnacio exerted consid-erable effort to work with Zapata County, its engineering firm for the project, and the contractor to make them aware not only of the burial site but also of the wealth of his-torical architecture in San Ygnacio.

Despite a 2008 Memorandum of Under-standing between former Zapata County Judge Rosalva Guerra and THC Preserva-tion Officer Lawrence Oaks, and despite very specific language in that MOU re-garding the Native American burial and other historic sites, all did not go well dur-ing Reim’s reconfiguration of the streets of San Ygnacio to heighten drainage in heavy rainfall.

After construction began, owners of historical properties reported cracks in their sandstone-block buildings and other damages because of Reim’s heavy equip-ment on the narrow streets of San Ygna-cio. A block-long bank of beautiful native

xeriscaping was ripped out along River Pierce property on Gutierrez Street, and in January 2010, in one of the most egregious of Reim’s actions, a layer of asphalt emulsi-fier was sprayed along the entire southern

wall of historic Fort Treviño, a National Historic Landmark, prop-erty also owned by the River Pierce Founda-tion.

Reim (Mier spelled back-wards) Con-struction is long gone from San

Ygnacio, but what a gash they ripped in the historic fabric of the town that holds — as Guerrero Viejo does — an inventory of some of the most significant historic Spanish colonial structures along the Río Grande.

18 orbits around the sunAt a time in which publishing a news

journal has become so tenuous a proposi-tion, I take heart that stories in LareDOS do have meaning and bearing, and I include among those stories the ones I’ve written about the J. L. Moss oilfield dumpsite in Zapata County. Though I haven’t been able to establish why, the gates to that facility are now closed. I would hope the attention we brought to the operation might have made changes in how they go about the business of handling the drilling waste of the Eagle Ford Shale.

A few months ago I came across a blog site that took a slap at us for not having a scandalous breaking news story in every single issue. The writer asked his readers to remember when such was the case. I wonder if his two years of history and his 200-word opinions have allowed him

From The Publisher

The Indian in the road redux; ‘LareDOS’ alignsitself for an 18th orbit around the sun

As we begin our 18th year in print,

I make the case for the sustainability of this small, locally owned news journal.

CONtINUED ON PAGE 53 44


Imaginarium to host tech, designcamps during winter break

The Imaginarium of South Tex-as is offering TechnoKool and Design Tech 101 camps over the winter break.

The two camps are structured to foster an interest in math and science, which make students more competitive in the workplace, according to an Imagi-narium spokesperson. Scheduled for December 19-22, the TechnoKool Camp is an engineering and technology camp based on the Lego WeDo Robotics plat-form, which allows students to explore robotics, animation, and circuitry.

The Design Tech 101 Camp is scheduled for December 26-29 and will provide activities to explore en-gineering in everyday fashion, room dècor, and more.

Both camps will be held in the Imagi-

narium of South Texas’ Dream Work-shop and will run from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. There is a limit of 12 participants aged 5-12 per camp. Registration fees are $120 for non-members and $100 for members per camp. For additional information, contact Jose Perez at (956) 728-0404 or by email at [email protected].

The Imaginarium of South Texas is a nonprofit informal science center and children’s museum dedicated to pro-viding creative learning experiences in an environment rich with hands-on exhibits and inquiry-based program-ming. It is located in Mall del Norte, next to Dillard’s, open Wednesday through Sunday to the public. Call (956) 728-0404 for more information or visit imaginari-umstx.org.


News Brief

By CRIStINA HERRERALareDOS Staff

We are celebrating our 18th year at LareDOS, and more personally, I’m reflecting on my

first year as editor of this publication.I have learned — sometimes the

hard way — several important les-sons during the year. I like to think that if you take the January issue and compare it with this issue, there would be noticeable improvements and changes, as I believe we can al-ways strive to become better, even if it’s little by little.

The hard times are apparent in every news publication in Laredo and the rest of the world. Every month I wonder how our small per-manent staff will be able to handle the load, especially as we write large investigative pieces that are vital to journalism and constantly being replaced by stories that are cheaper to produce. In journalism, time is certainly money, and investigative pieces can suck up a lot of time, but the work is worth it.

But every month we have pulled it off, and that makes me proud. And I have to hand it to my peers in Lare-do and around the nation — you guys do a good job on constantly slashed budgets.

I have learned more about the local environment in the span on one year than I have my whole life in Laredo. When friends come down to visit, I now know where to take them — down to the pulgas, downtown for shopping, food, and people-watching, all around Laredo to local coffee shops and “art spots” such as Scholars and Caffe Dolce, and more.

The beauty of the building and the rotating exhibits impresses every person I know who has visited the Laredo Center for the Arts.

There are wonderful places and people to see in Laredo, but the fact that we must constantly reinforce this idea means there is room for Laredoans to improve their own city. And at LareDOS, we’ll try to highlight those exciting changes and help people get involved with the in-formation we provide.

I have also learned that Laredo residents can be some of the most valuable reporters. We received reader tips about the commercial disposal sites in Zapata (July), the police chief’s absence (September), and the animal shelter story in this issue.

And that’s why you, our reader, is a key part of this paper and of journalism. Some publications and especially TV news, seem to forget that their readers and viewers are the most important aspect of their job. All our readers have my grati-tude for helping us tell stories, and for reading the stories we tell. We also depend on readers and our ad-vertisers to stay alive, so although LareDOS is a free press, please con-sider supporting us and buying a subscription at our soon-to-be re-vamped website, laredosnews.com.

I hope you enjoy this December issue of LareDOS, packed with fun stories, Q&As, investigative pieces, local and national opinion relevant to this area, and unique photos. Keep your criticisms and suggestions com-ing in, and we’ll keep trying to bring you great issues of LareDOS. E-mail me at [email protected], or call me directly at (956) 286-8706. ◆

A look back at 18th year of ‘LareDOS,’ coming back to my hometown

From the Editor’s Desk


In recent years the Laredo Animal Shelter and its parent nonprofit cor-poration, the Laredo Animal Pro-tective Society (LAPS), have battled

a notoriously poor image brought on by the increasing abandoned pet population, rampant disease in the streets, an unedu-cated community, and staffing concerns. Now that the city has agreed to take over the pound portion of the Laredo Animal Shelter — including euthanasia duties — LAPS and the city must now re-evaluate their futures.

“LAPS has never had to hide the fact that there have been on-going issues with our facility, funding, and resources,” said LAPS president Alejandra Landis in an e-mail to LareDOS. “The bottom line is that LAPS has had the sole responsibility for housing and caring for all of the un-

wanted animals in the City of Laredo and Webb County since 1967. This is an enor-mous task for one humane organization to handle, which is a big reason why we’ve decided to let the City operate the pound. Until the community, City and County take a more active role in helping with the pet overpopulation problem, the euthana-sia rates will continue to rise.”

As of June 1 of next year, LAPS will only handle the adoption and spay/neu-ter aspects of the shelter. The agreement for the city to take over the pound came in November, a few weeks after members from the animals rights group Speak for Me Now first posed allegations of abuse at the October 17 City Council meeting. Lan-dis said the decision was not a result of the City Council meeting, but rather years of LAPS board members telling the city that they needed more funding to keep up with the constantly increasing influx of animals to the shelter.

In response, city manager Carlos Vil-larreal said the city has increased the shelter’s budget in the last few years in response to the growing demand.

“We told [LAPS] we were ready to take over a few years ago, and the board came back and told us they would continue to handle the shelter,” Villarreal said.

LAPS board member Diana Farias confirmed the planned handover at a De-cember 7 meeting with Speak for Me Now members.

“We said, ‘We’re ready to hand it over.’ And they said, ‘OK, we’ll give you enough time. Then we met with consultants and they said, ‘You guys can still work at it,’ so we said we’re going to go forward.”

The group clashed with LAPS board members at the meeting after members again alleged animal mistreatment and inhumane euthanasia practices at the shelter.

The conversation started politely but became heated several times at the hour-and-a-half-long meeting, as both sides did not see eye to eye about the treatment of the animals or the board’s practices.

Speak For Me Now member Karla Cavazos took photos on her phone of the alleged conditions at the shelter right after the Thanksgiving holiday. Cavazos would not share the photos with the media be-cause she’s already working with City Council members to go over possible im-provements for the shelter. When the pho-tos were brought up at the meeting with LAPS, board president Landis warned the group that the photos, taken on private property, could not be sent to the media.

Cavazos confirmed that some of the photos depicted the lack of water at the shelter’s Cat Palace on the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday. The board said the staff had fed and watered the animals, and that they had timecard records to sub-stantiate this.

Cavazos and others also alleged that the board was not doing their job when it came to communicating with the media and the public about events and changes

at the shelter. She brought up the cold weather and the need for donations of warm bedding.

“It’s kind of the same thing every year. People know it’s cold and if they want to help, they go out and donate. But they have been advertising for this recently,” Landis said in reply. “We already prepared, but we could always use more.”

One of the most shocking allegations from Cavazos at the meeting was that she personally witnessed euthanized animals thrown in dumpsters while still breathing. The board immediately denied the claim.

In response to the abuse allegations, including the alleged illegal euthaniza-tion practices, shelter executive director Freddy Flores said none were true, and that the shelter is operating better than be-fore he took over.

Landis, along with other board mem-bers, posed one question repeatedly to the group:

“Do you think it’s fair to put the entire burden of Laredo’s animal population on LAPS?” Landis asked Speak for Me Now member Elizabeth Ochoa.

“Then who else?” Ochoa replied.“Exactly, who else? Who else is going

to do it?” Landis asked.Landis added that there weren’t people

lining up and waiting to volunteer at the shelter. She also placed the blame on the community for not taking more respon-sibility for the large population of aban-doned pets.

“With the economic times, we’ve had several people turn in their dogs because they cannot afford them,” Flores said. “I used to tell people three years ago that if you cannot pay $300 a year for pet mainte-nance, you shouldn’t have a pet. Now it’s probably more like $400-$450 a year.”

But Flores said he’s attempting to bring in low-cost alternatives to Laredoans, who are often deterred by the cost of spaying or neutering their pet, plus all the vaccines re-quired. One of these alternatives includes


News

‘Apathetic’ public, lack of funding plagues struggle to control pet population

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Zapata County passes Zapata Rising resolution

Jorge Montes, Avon Hatfield, José García of Graphitiks Advertising and Design, and Paco Mendoza are pictured after the Zapata County Com-missioners Court meeting at which a resolution was passed in support of Zapata Rising, a 2013 commemoration of the construction of the Falcon Reservoir, the displacement of 600 families, and the condemnation of 150,000 acres of farm and ranch land. Expected to be the world’s largest family reunion, Zapata Rising will try to reach survivors of the diaspora of the populations of Old Zapata and Guerrero Viejo. For more information on the event that marks the 60th anniversary of the dam’s construction, call García at (956) 723-4389.

required. One of these alternatives includes bringing in Dr. Amber Valinski from Rio Grande Valley Low Cost Spay/Neuter Clinic to conduct low-cost clin-ics.

LAPs board members asserted that an apathetic community doesn’t help either. Speak for Me Now members com-pared the shelter operations in Laredo with those in San Antonio, which is much more successful at adopting out animals.

“We’ve been the only shelter for years. Unfortunately we have a very apathetic community here. San Antonio — they are a much bigger city than Lare-do is, and they have a lot more people who spay and neuter their pets. Laredo — we’re light years behind them,” said board member Susie Druker.

Another concern is the shelter itself. Located on the other side of the train tracks at 2500 Gonzalez St., the facilities are hardly adequate for the large-scale

stray pet population in Laredo. The lo-cation is also inconvenient, according to many who visit the shelter.

“We’re going to be in that facility for the next couple of years at least,” said city manager Villarreal. “Is the public willing to have a tax on animals here so we can ultimately provide options for a new facility?”

Villarreal said the first aspect to con-centrate on is a short-term improvement plan for the facilities on Gonzalez Street. If the city finds that it needs to build an-other shelter, City Council would have to decide on that in the future, he said.

There is some room for positivity, though. Even though veterinarian Dr. John Spruiell recently retired from his practice, two new vets have taken his place. Dr. Sandra Leyendecker has also recruited a new vet to her staff.

“My god, this town should have 14 vets for the number of animals and peo-ple we have,” Flores concluded. “But that aspect is getting brighter.” ◆

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Community leader Castañeda leaves lifetime legacyafter spurring growth in city, Laredo Community College


Blas Castañeda — lifetime ed-ucator, former City Council member, and Laredo Com-munity College external af-

fairs and economic development offi-cer — retires at the end of December, leaving behind a legacy of dedicated service to his community and to the growth of the college.

His 35-year track record at LCC reads like the work of several men.

“I have worked with Blas on many projects since the 1980s, and his levels of energy and enthusiasm are still as high today as they were 30 years ago,” said LCC trustee Ed Sherwood.

Castañeda’s three-decade efforts at major capital facilities funding have changed the scope and breadth

of Laredo Community College. He has served on numerous boards

and commissions, including the South

Texas Workforce Solutions, the Fu-ture of the Region, Inc., AVANCE, the Texas Border Coalition, the Texas

Migrant Coun-cil, the Middle Río Grande Area Health Education Center, the North American Ad-vanced Manufac-turing Research and Education Initiative, and the National Coun-cil of La Raza. He is a member of many local civic initiatives that im-prove education and the welfare of children, includ-ing Laredo Under

Seven Flags Rotary.He has been recognized by LULAC

Council #12 as Tejano Achiever of the Year and by the Laredo-Webb County Bar Association with the Liberty Bell Award. He is also a Martin High School Tiger Legend.

LareDOS was lucky to catch up with Castañeda and pose a few questions to this bellwether individual. ◆

Profile

Q: How did you grow up? What is your educational background? Tell us about your family and how you raised your children.

A: I was born in Laredo in the Barrio Guadalupe, something I am very proud to say. I graduated from Martin High School in 1970 and from LJC in 1972. Upon graduat-ing from LJC, I started at Texas A&I in Laredo and graduated from what was then Laredo State University with a BBA in business. I went on to obtain my masters degree from Laredo State University with a minor in international trade. As for my family, my wife of 36 years is Elia Hilda Lopez Castañeda. My children are Andres Castañeda, Clarissa Castañeda Rivera, and Carlos Castañeda. Clarissa is married to my son-in law Gerardo Rivera, and they have blessed us with my beautiful grand-daughter Cassidy. My children have grown into the best children a father can have, and my wonderful wife has really dedicated her

life to providing them with the best guidance and support to achieve success in all they set out to accomplish. They are all very dedicated individuals with the highest regard for others in our community. I am very proud of them and for what they continue to accomplish as they develop their careers.

Q: How long have you been at LCC, what positions have you held and under how many presidents?

A: I have worked with LCC for 36 years starting in January 1975, serving under several presidents, including President Dr. Domingo Arechiga, Dr. Roger Worsley, Dr. Ramon Dovalina, and Dr. Juan Maldonado. My posi-tions at the college began in 1975 as a profes-sional technical instructor for business and doing split work as an instructor for the welding pro-gram, having had three years of welding experi-ence at Martin High School, where I was part of the state welding championship team with several colleagues. Completing my MBA work

allowed me many opportunities to continue to grow within the administration at the college where I received several promotions over the years. My promotions began with a position as department chair for the technical program and to the chair of the business programs that were continuously growing at a fast pace. It was at that time that President Roger Worsley appoint-ed me as the college’s assistant to the president for industrial development. My next promotion came when the president requested to the board that I become an executive officer, the Chief Development Officer. My last promotion came when the president assigned me as chief of external affairs/economic development.

Q: What are some of the most significant changes you have seen in the school’s growth? Talk about how the school has changed its focus to keep apace of demands in enroll-ment and in curriculum.

A: I believe the most significant changes

have been in our integration of technology into curriculum and the continuous effort to offer pro-grams at the most competitive level for students to succeed.

Q: Talk about the campus, how it is such a great blend of old and new and, what is being done to keep the architectural treasures intact.

A: First of all, the college sees, believes, and understands the importance of Fort McIntosh as our home base. Every year since I began at the college the president and trustees have ensured the college and facilities are well blended with our historic buildings. Great effort is made to ensure new buildings compliment the fort image while having the most modern technology within the walls of these facilities. Fort McIntosh is a symbol of past and present contributors to our community, whom we continue to cel-

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Blas Castañeda

“LCC is deeply indebted to Blas for his 35 years of advocacy on behalf of higher education in

Laredo and South Texas. He has been an integral part of the college’s success over the years in ensuring access, participation, and success in higher education, and he has worked tirelessly to create an exten-sive network of partnerships at all levels to enhance the economic growth and global competitiveness of Laredo and the South Texas region. I congratulate him on his re-tirement and wish him the best as he embarks on this new chap-ter in his life.”

-Dr. Juan Maldonado LCC President


ebrate and recognize for their dedication to our community.

Q: How do you see LCC stack-ing up against other community colleges?

A: The college is ranked as one of the best colleges in the country for student retention. The leadership of the college through the years has made and kept a commitment to secure critical funding for making the institution the best two-year col-lege, thus ensuring future student success when transferring to the university of their choice. Today the college is seen as a major community college in the state of Texas and among the Hispanic-serving institutions in the country. Student success is our goal.

Q: What do you consider your most significant contribution to education in Laredo?

A: My biggest contribution has been to provide and promote access to higher education for our students and to

provide major scholarship development which can open doors to so many of our students. Students, education, and busi-ness are what make up an equation that leads to success for all three. My entire career has taken me from the barrios to the corporate world to promote every part of that equation, continuously leading to such success. My second significant contribu-tion has been to raise the essential funding for our college and school system to pro-vide our teachers with the best classroom equipment and facilities to ensure our students have an optimal learning environ-ment, education and/or training necessary to join our workforce.

Q: What’s ahead for you? A: My intent is to launch a business

consultant enterprise offering professional services to cities, counties, colleges, uni-versities, school districts, and the private sector with a very specialized expertise of services in economic development, work-force development, governmental affairs, organizational design, and leadership. ◆

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LISD employees share the warmth

Several hundred LISD elementary school students received new coats and jackets from school district employees who raised funds for the Coat them with Love campaign. the coats were distributed December 12 at the Laredo Civic Center ballroom.

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By JESUS NAJARNational Trust for Historic Preservation

South Texas Field Office

O ur historic downtown is the heart of Laredo, but it is not in the heart of every Lare-doan. For many decades,

our hearts and economic activities have moved north, far away from our roots and our heritage. Many other success-ful cities have shown us that our past is our future. However, since the Mexican peso devaluation we have witnessed downtown Laredo dying, and few have shown interest and care to save it. A new direction is needed to change this condition.

Laredo’s downtown needs leadership. This became evident in recent times when two developers proposed to the City Council a vague, ill-conceived plan to use the Plaza Theatre for a proposed business venture. This proposal would have few, if any benefits for a unified downtown plan. The problem is they would be using a building that was acquired by the city with federal funds under the assumption that it would be used and enjoyed by the entire community as an art center.

Downtown Laredo was once a thriving cultural area, and the Plaza Theatre is one of the last built remnants of that era. We, as a community own this landmark; however, we have given up plans to further cultural needs for this city due to a lack of leadership. Only Councilman Charlie San Miguel urged the other members to “be even more careful using taxpayer money for private profit business,” suggesting opening proposals for the Plaza Theatre for the public to bid on. Nevertheless, what people at that council meeting failed to realize is that we do not need another bar to save downtown; we need a com-prehensive plan fostered by an informed,

hands-on leadership working with pub-lic input. We cannot negate the benefits of more hospitality establishments in our downtown area; however, they need to be part of a bigger plan.

Business owners, nonprofit organi-zations, and city departments work for their own respective agenda; therefore, it has been difficult to accomplish any transformative improvement. Moreover, current politics and general apathy has left our downtown community without direction.

As proven in revitalized communi-ties, informed public participation can be the foundation for a strong, vibrant downtown area. It will also act as an op-portunity to empower the downtown property and business owners to create immediate change with fewer govern-ment resources. In the long term, a viable downtown can help sustain the future economic growth of the city as a whole.

The solution is joint leadership be-tween the City of Laredo departments, business groups, and local economic de-velopment organizations, to make down-town Laredo our collective priority. We

need to create incentives to draw busi-nesses downtown. The city is still grow-ing and receiving new investment from Mexican businesses relocating to Laredo; where are they establishing their busi-

nesses? Are they proving to be as successful as they were in downtown Nuevo Laredo?

A real com-mitment from city government, the Chamber of Com-merce, and the Laredo Develop-ment Foundation is needed to provide clear information and economic in-centives for busi-ness owners to establish a down-town Business Improvement District. This type of zoning is widely utilized in many other cities in the U.S. to attract new businesses and fund revitalization projects. Thus, targeted investment in downtown can increase activity and visi-tation and have more impact through a defined district that tourists could find appealing, rather than looking for venues that are scattered throughout the city.

We can enforce historic preservation as old Laredo loses its character. We need to preserve our cherished historic urban landscape by regulating the image of downtown businesses in order to convey a friendlier image to neighbors, shoppers, and tourists. It is necessary that Historic District designations are extended to other historic areas of downtown, and more individual landmark designations are needed to protect more buildings. Leadership should encourage the reha-bilitation of old buildings so that busi-nesses and homeowners may establish themselves downtown.

Historic preservation creates jobs, while it provides businesses with unique, aesthetically appealing buildings that at-tract clients. Demolitions, parking lots, and casa de cambio “drive-thrus” destroy the area’s old character and pedestrian access to businesses. The city’s historic

preservation office should have more offi-cers to assist and inform applicants about how to fix their historic buildings, and the Historic/District Landmark Board should be comprised of qualified preser-vationists that can make better-informed decisions.

We need a clean environment. Simple, but necessary changes can dramatically transform the aspect of our streets. We need to power-wash dirty downtown areas, fix and expand sidewalks to make them universally accessible to comply with federal standards, scrub storefronts, get rid of the nuisances, install more trash cans with recycling options, open more public restrooms, plant trees, and hang baskets of plants and flowers from the light fixtures.

Vegetation enhances architectural images while regulating the hot tem-peratures of Laredo. The City of Laredo could use the Transportation Enhance-ment (TE) program, a competitive pro-gram that funds projects such as trails, streetscapes, landscaping, and other sce-nic beautification.

All roads should lead to downtown, and they should be properly signed. This city needs a comprehensive way-finding

Opinion

Leadership, progressive ideas could save downtown

Not even the areas around historic San Agustín Plaza have wide, unobstructed sidewalks that comply with ADA regulations. Nor do they have signage to tell the story of the historic charac-ter of buildings in the area.

The urban image of historic Hidalgo Street, looking west toward the railroad district.

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A new billboard on traffic-heavy Chihuahua Street proclaims, “Your partner’s past can effect your future!

Know your status. Get tested.” The text is accompanied by a watercolor paint-ing of a couple in bed and a half-nude group of people — a scene meant to im-pact Laredoans.

The billboard is a message to Lare-doans from city health department officials about A I D S / H I V awareness and testing. April Jimerson cre-ated the win-ning billboard art in the 1st Latino AIDS Awareness Day Art Contest. The bill-board will be displayed until the end of December.

“I was asking some friends around what would actually catch people’s at-tention, and when we thought of this, I thought it might be too risqué,” Jim-erson said. “But really I just thought it was a type of scene that would im-mediately impact you. You’d see it and remember later on.”

Jimerson is majoring in psychology with a minor in art at Texas A&M In-ternational University. After the topic of HIV/AIDS was introduced to one of her classes, Jimerson decided to enter

the contest.“When it’s small, you think, it looks

fine altogether, but now I can see every brush stroke that I made,” said Jimer-son, who worked with watercolors for the first time in creating the illustra-tion.

The announcement of Jimerson’s winning billboard coincided with World Aids Day on December 1. The city also held a candlelight vigil in the evening at the health department’s of-fices on Cedar Avenue.

“HIV/AIDS is deadly, and I think the city has been at the forefront to educate

the public about this d e a d l y disease,” said May-or Raul S a l i n a s , a d d i n g that the

city strives to receive its share of mon-ey to fight the disease.

Health department director Dr. Hec-tor Gonzalez said most people nowa-days don’t view AIDS/HIV as a serious issue because treatment is better and people do not have to die of AIDS. But this attitude is dangerous, Gonzales said.

“That’s the concern we have now — that people who don’t take it seriously are at risk, and those that do have HIV or AIDS may not continue to take their medication. Why? Because they feel safe,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez urged people to take pre-

ventative measures by educating them-selves, testing, and taking precautions with their sexual partners. He said that the HIV virus infects over 1 mil-lion Americans and half of them do not know it.

In Laredo, Gonzalez said that infectious diseases such as hepatitis and chronic diseases such as diabetes — which is high in Latino popula-tions — can exac-erbate AIDS.

This year marked the 23rd anniver-sary of World AIDS Day, and December 1 kicked off AIDS Awareness Month.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, more than 1.1 mil-lion Americans have HIV, and half of all new HIV infections in the U.S. are among young Americans under the age of 25.

The health department current-ly offers free, anonymous testing through its LETS Program. Results are available within 10 minutes. The city also offers evidence-based interventions, early intervention services, housing options for AIDS patients, and HIV care services. ◆


WHEN SECURITY IS YOUR CONCERN, USE THE BEST

401 MARKET STREET 956-722-0981

News

Billboard unveiling, vigil mark World AIDS Day

Call: (956) 795-4906 for more information

about HIV testing

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2 0 I LareDOS I DECEMBER 2011 WWW.LAREDOSNEWS.COM

program along with other tools for locals and visitors to know, visit, and enjoy downtown assets, businesses, events, and points of interests. Not many know how to maneuver through the streets of downtown. We need maps, banners on the light posts iden-tifying focus areas and plazas, updated websites with a list of attractions, sig-nage, and designated trails.

Downtown has sufficient parking facilities and off-street parking to cover future needs. However, clear, proper parking signage is required. City depart-ments such the Convention and Visitors Bureau could prioritize and emphasize downtown by actively promoting it and implementing a graphic identity (logo) that can be utilized in all marketing cam-paigns as well as on banners around our historic plazas.

We need to educate ourselves so that we can create awareness of key city points to enhance our hospitality. We can be the best promoters to educate the rest of the

U.S. about the riches of our 256-year-old city, and all that it has to offer to visitors. We are still not convinced that down-town Laredo is worth our efforts and that its rehabilitation is important for our own survival. We need to support the local or-ganizations working to achieve this goal, and we need to voice our opinion on how we envision a friendlier downtown.

Where can we find the money to fund revitalization projects? City of-ficials have proven adept at raising funds necessary to develop plans and construct establishments such as an arena, a golf course, and now a new baseball stadium. It is the responsi-bility of the citizens to demand simi-lar efforts to improve our downtown area. Several grants may cover these improvements. However, a Down-town Master Plan is necessary to ap-ply for many state and federal fund-ing opportunities. A revised version of the recently presented downtown master plan is an urgent matter in or-der for us to compete with other pro-gressive border towns. ◆


Kathryn Stockett, the best-sell-ing author of The Help, will be in Laredo on Thursday, March

1, in an appearance that benefits Casa de Misericordia. The dinner and silent auction is set for 7 p.m. at the IBC An-nex Building on Jacaman Road.

Stockett’s acclaimed novel, de-scribed in an Associated Press review as “pitch perfect,” is set in 1960s segre-gated Jackson, Miss, on the eve of civil rights and integration. Dignity, hope, and courage dance — sometimes with hilarity — with acts of hate and cruel intolerance on the pages of Stockett’s novel. The dénouement of this richly told story unfolds in measures of jus-tice and just desserts ladled from the kitchens staffed by Stockett’s inspir-ing, indefatigable female characters.

The board of Casa Misericordia is actively seeking sponsors for the event in the following designations, each named for a character in Stockett’s novel, a New York Times best seller.

An Aibileen Clark donor ($10,000) will receive two reserved tables for 10 in an exclusive location at the event and will be recognized on television and radio as a supporter for Casa de Misericordia. The company logo will be mentioned in print media as an Ai-bileen Clark sponsor of Casa de Mise-ricordia as well as on a banner during the event. Six guests will be invited to a private meeting with Stockett, and the company will receive one person-alized, autographed copy of The Help.

Minny Jackson donors ($5,000) will receive one reserved table for 10 in a premier location and will be rec-ognized on television and radio as a supporter for Casa de Misericordia. Four guests will be invited to a pri-

vate meeting with the author, and the company logo will be displayed on a banner during the event. The com-pany will receive one personalized, autographed copy of The Help.

Constantine Banks donors ($2,500) will receive one reserved table for 10. The company will be recognized on television and radio as a supporter for Casa de Misericordia, as well as on a banner during the event. Two guests will be invited to a private meeting with the author. The sponsor will re-ceive one personalized, autographed copy of The Help.

Treelore Clark sponsors ($1,500) will receive one reserved table for 10 in a prime location for the event. The company will receive one personal-ized, autographed copy of The Help.

Reserved tables for 10 are avail-able for $1,250.

For more information on the event and for sponsorship infor-mation, call Priya Vaswani at (956) 723-4700; Thelma Cuellar at (956) 645-6242; or Sister Rosemary Welsh at (956) 744-5312. ◆

News

Kathryn Stockett, author of ‘The Help,’to highlight women’s shelter fundraiser

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Quinceañeras presented

Pictured at the Zapata Coun-ty Historical Commission’s Quinceañera ball are (bot-tom row) Carina Cruz, Ash-ley Ortamond, Virginia Solis, Bianca Espinoza, Samamtha Garcia, and Amanda Es-quivel; (middle row) Alyssa Flores, Gabriella Montalvo, Christina Garza, Jessenia Garza, and Magdalena Sali-nas; and (back row) Krysta Lozano, Jazmine García, Amanda Gutierrez, Fa-ther Agustin, Valeria Gutier-rez, Celia Rathmell, and Cla-rissa Villarreal. Not pictured are Belen Padilla, Delayne Cooper, and Gabriella Guti-errez.


BY MARIA EUGENIA GUERRALareDOS Staff

Veteran Gabriel Lopez, pres-ident of the South Texas Afghanistan Iraq Veter-ans Association (STAIVA),

doesn’t lose focus on all the plates he’s got spinning in the air. With a successful Military Appreciation Day and Veterans Day commemorations behind him, he multi-tasks the details of getting the Juan Francisco Farias Military Museum construction off the ground while working on another project very close to his heart — La Casa del Veterano, a shelter for Laredo veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict who are homeless.

By comparison, the museum — already funded by the city and the county, and its architectural plans in its last refinements — will become a reality far sooner than the veterans’ shelter.

“We are ready to present the mu-seum plans to the public for approval, and to let them know that the mission of the museum will reflect the pur-pose and character of the veterans of Laredo,” said Lopez, president of the board that is overseeing the construc-tion of the museum.

The next step, he said, would be to start baring the interior walls of the historic Farias home and to make the building sound. He said that the mu-seum campus would make use of the entire property at the corner of Hidal-go Street and San Bernardo Avenue.

He said that as the museum is un-der construction, the effort to collect artifacts will also be underway.

“We will need a centralized loca-tion to deposit them and contracts to donate them or lease them to the mu-seum,” he said. “These are items that

will require special handling, and we have to be ready for that.”

Lopez said that the museum will display the memorabilia of veterans from all wars, including Bosnia, Gre-nada, and Panama.

It is La Casa del Veterano — a pro-posed residential facility in South Lare-do that will house men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan — that drives Lopez with empathy and purpose to raise $265,000 for matches from the Veterans Benefits Administra-tion and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Many returning veterans come home to unemployment, lack of Veter-ans Administration services, financial ruin, and divorce — all made worse with alcoholism and drug use, all of which contribute to homelessness,” Lo-pez said. “We can’t eradicate homeless-ness entirely, but we need a place for them while they get their services and put their lives back together.”

At the root of homelessness for Afghanistan and Iraq veterans is the shortage of soldiers in the armed forces and the effects of subsequent multiple deployments, he said.

“We’re constantly rotating troops, which is a burden on soldiers and their families,” Lopez added. “The war in Korea and Vietnam were one-tour drafts for service in-country. Never in the history of our country have we seen women in battle.”

Lopez called the number of home-less veterans in Laredo “very critical.”

He said that the fabric of family sup-port in Laredo helps a bit with some returning veterans being able to stay with relatives.

“We’re a little better off than other parts of the country. The census num-bers don’t really give us the numbers we need to assess homelessness, be-

cause as long as someone has an address, they are not home-less,” he said.

While the last census esti-mated that 9,000 veterans of all wars live in Laredo, Lopez said the figure is more likely to be upwards of 16,000.

The facility Lopez and his fel-low veterans envision is a 15-unit apartment complex that includes family units and apartments for female veterans.

“We want it to be a place that local agencies can come out to provide servic-es. I see a veteran-friendly atmosphere that will empower them to move for-ward with their lives,” he continued.

Lopez said that the needs of home-less veterans are inescapable to those who work to fund La Casa del Veterano.

“Most of our group have seen it firsthand. Some of us count ourselves among the success stories, lucky that we put our lives back together. But there are those who come back without hope, because they’ve lost their place at their jobs and in their families. Some are angry at life, for having seen and experienced some of the worst things a man or a woman can see. Some of them lost their hearts. We aren’t just helping them find jobs or a place to live. We’re trying to help them get their lives back. It’s a hard road,” Lopez said, adding, “Memory doesn’t erase the things you associate with your time in the war. For me it’s the smell of diesel. For

another guy it’s the smell coming from the grill in a restaurant that reminds him of the smell of burning flesh.”

Lopez, who spent most of 2005 in Iraq coordinating logistics for the remains of soldiers coming home in body bags, said there are two Americas — “the one that fought the wars and the one that shops at the mall.”

A 20-year Navy veteran who served in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Iraq, Af-ghanistan, and the United Arab Emir-ates, Lopez considers himself fortunate.

“I spent the last five years of service preparing for the transition back into ci-vilian life. I knew that I had to have self-

control and that I would need to find employ-ment to provide for my fam-ily. The military provides few resources — a week’s instruc-tion on how to re -acc l imate, how to survive culture shock, how to find a job, how to hold

onto your mental health,” Lopez said.He referred to the Department of

News

Veteran Gabriel Lopez on military museum, raising awareness for La Casa del Veterano

Lopez, who spent most of 2005 in Iraq

coordinating logistics for the remains of soldiers coming home in body bags, said there are two Americas — ‘the one that fought the wars and the one that shops at the mall.

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Defense’s Transition Assistance Pro-gram. “Most people waive it,” he said.“But what the military did do very well was train us,” Lopez said. “Employers don’t always value the skills we learned in the military — we have good leadership, organizational, management, inventory, people, and negotiating skills. We are good em-ployees.”

Lopez said that an additional goal of STAIVA is to build an out-processing station for veterans. “It’s a pre-boot camp. Soldiers get rushed through the system without knowing that there are resources for them. We want to address this before they even become veterans,” he said.

Lopez, retired from the military as Petty Officer First Class, is the regional coordinator for veterans affairs for the Texas Workforce Commission. He re-sides in Laredo with his wife Ana and his daughters Xochitl and Karina.

“We volunteered to go to war and to make our country better. It was worth it. I wish I could do more for my fellow veterans. I’m asking the community to have more under-standing and compassion for those who served,” he said. “We could all do more,” Lopez said, noting that the $35,000 he and the 130-plus members of STAIVA have thus far raised for La Casa del Veterano is a good start to reach the goal of $265,000. ◆

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This highly regarded three-year accreditation means that Doctors This highly regarded three-year accreditation means that Doctors Hospital has demonstrated its expertise and commitment to quality patient care by meeting or exceeding a wide range of stringent criteria, and completing on-site evaluations by a review team from the Society of Chest Pain Centers.

What does this mean to you? It means that when you choose the Heart and Vascular Center of Doctors Hospital, you’re choosing high quality care from an experienced multidisciplinary team of cardiologists, surgeons and nurses. It means that chest pain patients at the Heart and Vascular Center receive prompt and professional assessments, followed by expert diagnosis, management and treatment.

The future of heart careDoctors Hospital of Laredo receives Chest Pain Center Accreditation

from the Society of Chest Pain Centers (SCPC)

At Doctors Hospital of Laredo, we’re bringing you service excellence in heart care.

10700 McPherson Rd. • Laredo, TX 78045956-523-2000

www.Ichoosedoctorshospital.com

Physicians are on the medical staff of Doctors Hospital of Laredo, but, with limited exceptions, are independent practitioners who are not employees or agents of Doctors Hospital of Laredo. The hospital shall not be liable for actions or treatments provided by physicians. This hospital is co-owned with physician investors.


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- Enrique Ramon

- 200 San Agustin Ave. - Hannah Higgins

- Enrique Ramon

- 200 San Agustin Ave. - Hannah Higgins - 200 San Agustin Ave. - Hannah Higgins San Agustín Cathedral - 200 San Agustin Ave. - Hannah Higgins San Agustín Cathedral - 200 San Agustin Ave. - Hannah Higgins San Agustín Cathedral - 200 San Agustin Ave. - Hannah Higgins

1st

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El Meson de San Agustín908 Grant St. - Jessica L. Estevis



- Enrique Ramon - Enrique Ramon - Enrique Ramon


- Enrique Ramon


1415 Chihuahua Street - Enrique Ramon 1415 Chihuahua Street - Enrique Ramon 1415 Chihuahua Street

El Meson de San Agustín

1415 Chihuahua Street - Enrique Ramon 1415 Chihuahua Street - Enrique Ramon 1415 Chihuahua Street 1415 Chihuahua Street - Enrique Ramon 1415 Chihuahua Street - Enrique Ramon 1415 Chihuahua Street 1415 Chihuahua Street

El Meson de San Agustín

1415 Chihuahua Street 1415 Chihuahua Street

2nd

- 810 Zaragoza St.-


The Blame GameIn the blame game, a full body

contact sport in Laredo, it’s easy to make a lot of noise and heap re-sponsibility wherever it may fall. Why do we have an animal shelter that is in disarray, unable at times to keep up with animals that are taken off the streets?

1. Because irresponsible pet own-ers have turned loose or dumped their pets on the street.

2. Because irresponsible pet owners have not neutered or spayed their pets.

3. Because the shortsighted lead-ers of the City of Laredo and Webb

County have not taken on the seri-ousness of educational measures to encourage responsible pet owner-ship.

4. Because both entities, content to let the Laredo Animal Protec-tive Society wrestle with burgeon-ing stray populations and take the blame for the shelter’s inadequacies, have not stepped up to the plate to deal with a very real health hazard.

5. Because the current shelter site and its structures are inadequate and should long ago have been ad-dressed by both the city and the county in the interest of safeguard-ing human and animal health. ◆

— LareDOS Staff


Awards for improved scholarship

Nye Elementary first grader Heinz Landeck and second grader Emily Altgelt are pictured at recent award ceremonies in the school library. Pictured with them are proud grandparents Cecilia Garza and Michael Landeck and mother Edie Landeck.

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Owned by the City of Laredo, the old Southern Hotel on Matamoros Street is a hotel for pigeons and rats who enter through a myriad of broken windows. The condition of the historic structure speaks volumes for this city’s value for the history of downtown.

The remains of a cat are wedged in the fire escape chute of the Webb County Courthouse annex on Houston Street.

At Iturbide and Main are the ruins of what had once been the Laredo Casino Association, a social club chartered in 1886. Surrounded by litter and tires, the old building is in rapid decay. in rapid decay.

The Webb County Courthouse Annex, now sporting graffiti and open windows, is home to birds, rats, bats, and cats.

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Matamoros Street is a hotel for pigeons and rats who enter through a myriad of broken windows. The condition of the historic structure speaks volumes for this city’s value for the history of downtown.

Pigeons leave their hefty guano deposits on the ledges of the missing windows of the Webb County Courthouse annex.


Federal court order moves March 6 primary to April 3, 2012

News

At the ribbon-cutting for the Porter S. Garner Sr. Nutrition Center

Laredo Independent School District trustees Jesus Benavides and George Beckelhymer and Superintendent Marcus Nelson were part of the ribbon cutting ceremonies for the newly inaugurated Porter S. Garner Sr. Child Nutrition Center on Saunders Avenue Pictured with them are the center’s director Roberto Cuellar Jr., Jean Claire (Garner) Turcotte, Tricia (Turcotte) Hoffman, and William

LareDOS Staff

A December 16 order from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas has changed the

2012 primary election dates for Repub-lican and Democratic parties to April 3 for the primary election and June 5 for the primary runoff election.

Webb County elections administra-tor Oscar Villarreal said the ongoing changes have rendered the election process “in a state of limbo. It’s still fluid. There is no real definition as to what maps will be used for redistrict-ing.”

The new filing deadline for pri-mary candidates, independent candi-dates, and minor party candidates is now February 1 at 6 p.m. The new first day to file will be determined by the court at a later date.

Candidates who file in the first pe-riod will be permitted to withdraw or amend their applications with a new application during the second filing period. Other deadlines that have changed are deadlines to withdraw, ballot drawing, and canvassing.

According to the press release from Elizabeth Hanshaw Winn, interim director of elections for the Texas Sec-retary of State office, the deadline to change county-election precinct lines has been moved to January 31.

Notice requirements in Section 42.032 have been suspended. The De-cember 16 Federal Court Order pro-vides a new deadline for counties to send out voter registration certificates by mass mail-out as required by Sec-tion 14.001 of the Texas Election Code until or before February 13. Counties will be notified once the state redis-tricting lines are final.

The redistricting maps drawn up by the 82nd Legislature are being chal-

lenged on the basis of discrimination against minorities and violation of the Voting Rights Act. Lawsuits have been filed both in San Antonio and Wash-ington, D. C. Three federal judges in San Antonio drew new maps that are being challenged by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

The primary and filing postpone-ment is an attempt by both sides to give the Supreme Court a chance to make a decision on which redistricting map to use. Filing deadlines were extended to December 19, with potential voter-registration deadline delayed until le-gal district lines are decided.

Legislative updates from the As-sociation of Texas Professional Educa-tors further explain the situation and future plans, stating that the Supreme Court is scheduled to begin hearing the case in early January, with both sides presenting their case. If the court rules on the side of the San Antonio judges, the new map will be used to determine districts. If not, there will be another hearing concerning the case against the Legislature’s maps to determine if they were drawn up le-gally.

Although none of the maps have been declared illegal yet, none are currently in place to decide districts for the upcoming elections, according to Ross Ramsey of The Texas Tribune. Every 10 years the Texas Legislature is in charge of redistricting, in order to account for changes in populations recorded by the national census. These redistricting plans are often contested, usually by whichever po-litical group is in the minority at the time.

For further information please call the Webb County Elections Admin-istrations office at (956) 523-4050 or go to www.webbcounty.com/electionsad-ministration ◆

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Walking along the northern sections of San-ta María, Juárez, and Salinas avenues, I came across a charming barrio, El Trece

and Holy Redeemer. The name, El Trece, was de-rived from the city’s voting precinct in which the bar-rio was located, the 13th.

Laredo’s residential areas expanded north of the Texas Mexican railroad tracks during the great im-migration north by refugees of the Mexican Revolu-tion of 1910-1920. Workers lived in board-and-batten homes in close proximity to the brick factories and the Eagle Pass and Río Grande Railroad shops and passenger depot on Santa Rita Avenue.

A more defined barrio centered around Holy Re-deemer Church, built and dedicated in 1909. The church recently completed an exterior restoration and today features a new copper-roofed steeple and cross. The Fourth Ward School, established circa 1920, was situated to the south of the church, the

present site of C.M. MacDonell School. The most substantial homes were built along Juárez and Sali-nas Avenue. Here are still found very well preserved examples of Folk Victorian, and border vernacular ar-chitecture made of local brick. Surprisingly, this area has a good density of trees and plants, and most of the front yards are well kept.

In the 1900s, a small business district sprang up along Santa María Ave., which was later aug-mented by the trolley line that connected down-town to Park Street. The Alfredo Santos grocery store was located at 1900 Santa María Ave.. The old store was demolished in recent years to devel-op a Family Dollar store. In the early 1900s Santa María Ave. was known as the Austin Highway that connected Laredo to places north. In the 1920s the highway was shifted to San Bernardo Avenue, and in the mid-1970s to present I-35. You can still see the fading glory of Santa Maria in its bungalows

with big porticoes, and its commercial structures.Today, buildings in El Trece are, for the most

part, in good condition. Good architectural build-ing examples are ones that remain unmodified al-though they may be vacant and in disrepair. Never-theless, the context has not changed dramatically, and the neighborhood remains with low density and sparsely built since little new construction has occurred.

A conservation district could help to stimulate the rehabilitation of structures contributing to El Trece’s character and strengthen revitalization ef-forts through the establishment of demolition re-view and design standards for new construction.

Reference: “City of Laredo Historic Preservation Plan,” Laredo Historic/District Landmark Board, 1995. (Jesús Najar is the South Texas Field Officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He can be reached at [email protected]) ◆

a fascinating old Laredo barrioEl Trece

Holy Redeemer ChurchHoly Redeemer Church

Board & Batten Structure House on Benavides

Brick folkways Salinas and Benavides

Bungalows on Santa María Ave.Bungalows on Santa María Ave. House on Juarez

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The last-minute local

Guevara stitches these precious and unique works of art as a pastime, and first sold her postcards at the first Trinkets and Treasures bazaar at Laredo Center for the Arts. Though these postcards do have a price range, they are priceless because you realize that a real person worked lov-ingly for hours on each post-card.

Contact: (956) 763-6537

Fabric postcards and quiltsby Rebecca Guevara

Owner Cristina Alvarez makes beautiful jewelry with a luxurious look. AlvarezÕ s homegrown busi-ness also offers an assortment of other items, such as brightly colored hair ribbons and ador-able tutus. For those looking for a shiny gift you can’t find at any Kay Jewelers, check out TanyaÕ s Closet.

Contact: (956) 337-8778

Handmade jewelry and moreby Tanya’s Closet

Price range:

$3-$250

La India Packing Co.Õ s location on Mar-cella Avenue has become a popular lunch locale for friends and family to meet. The food served at La IndiaÕ s Tasting Room is spiced with the compa-nyÕ s own products, and what better way to surprise the cook in your family with a customized gift basket of spices to use in classic Mexican dishes? Choose from La IndiaÕ s wide selection of spices, and the company even prepares corpo-rate gifts with custom labels. La India truly is the flavor of Laredo.Visit: 1520 Marcella Ave.

Contact: (956) 723-3772

Custom-made gift basketsby La India Packing Company

Price range:Any price range; prices vary on what you choose to put in baskets

LareDOS has continued to bring you updates about NinfaÕ s delicious tortillas made from cacti, which are a healthy alternative to your average high-fat flour tortillas. Plus, they are green! Consider bringing these festively colored treats to the next holiday party, and enjoy your next tortilla without worrying about the calories.

Contact: (956) 949-8776

Tortillas de Nopalby Ninfa Carrizales

Price range:$3-$5

Handmade jewelry and more

Price range:

has continued to

they are green! Consider bringing

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Laredo Flower Market offers beautiful, classic flower arrangements designed by the ownerÕ s wife. Flowers are often considered a clichŽ gift reserved for ValentineÕ s Day, but they simply light up a room or add a special touch dur-ing any occasion. Consider a beautiful arrangement as a table setting or as a gift for someone

Contact: (956) 753-3722 or [email protected]: 2801 East Frost St.

Festive flower arrangementsBy Laredo Flower Market

Price range:$15-$20

Laredoans can pamper themselves with the soft scent of Lavender products gath-ered from locations around Texas. Take pride in buying local Ñ helping fellow Texans counts Ñ and relax with laven-der-scented pillows, body-care products, candles and lavender-colored purses with lavender sachets inside.

Contact: Maritza and LouieLozano at (956) 744-7643,(956) 645-7643 or [email protected]

Lavender goodiesby Sunshine *N* Lavender

Price range:$5-$50

I stumbled upon these amazing deco-rated pine cones at an art bazaar and the Farmers Market, where SimonÕ s Nursery also has a booth. SimonÕ s is a family-owned business, and cre-ativity seems to be one of their spe-cialties as they turn pine cones into glittery table settings or even teddy bears for a childÕ s shelf.

Price range: $5-$25Contact: Jimmy Rodriguez at (956) 220-5348

Uniquely decorated pine conesBy Simon’s Nursery

Price range:$5-$25

I first wrote about Rare Earth in the Oc-tober issue of LareDOS. Fantasy and multi-cultural stories are hard to find (be-sides American and Mexican) in this bus-tling city. Just stepping into Rare Earth’s store is an experience. You could spend an hour or so just browsing the selection. DonÕ t be afraid to experience something different and step outside your comfort zone.

Contact: (956) 220-3203or [email protected]

Fantasy, multi-cultural, and moreby Rare Earth

Price range:$5-& up

Laredo Flower Market offers beautiful, classic flower arrangements designed rated pine cones at an art bazaar and

the Farmers Market, where SimonÕ s Nursery also has a booth. SimonÕ s

Uniquely decorated pine cones

-. Fantasy and

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tling city. Just stepping into Rare Earth’s

We combed through the Farmers Market and local arts-and-craft bazaars for eight meaningful holiday gift ideas.

If you’re trying to shop local, consider some of these vendors.


At the Prairie Foundation luncheonMexican Consul Miguel Angel Isidro; Norbert Dickman and Linda James, members of the prairie foundation board; and gabriel Castillo of the Lare-do Center for the Arts are pictured at the luncheon announcing the recipi-ents of the annual prairie foundation awards to local nonprofits. this year’s awardees were the Mexican Cultural Institute of Laredo, the Sacred Heart Childrens Home, the Congregation of the Brothers of St. John, the Children’s Advocacy Center, and the Azteca Economic Development and preservation Corporation. La posada Hotel hosted the annual luncheon.

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Gateway Gatos

Group hosts annual Christmas Animal Posada, appeal made to become responsible pet owners

By RIChARD S. WILSONLareDOS Contributor

Gateway Gatos held its sec-ond annual Christmas Animal Posada on Sun-day, December 11 at St. Pe-

ter’s Plaza. Participants were dressed as animals or wearing animal masks, and brought their own pets along. Fa-ther Toribio “Toby” Guerrero of St. Pe-ter’s was on hand, and María Gámez played guitar and led the singing.

Laredo natives are undoubtedly familiar with the Posada, but the cus-tom may be unfamiliar to the many newcomers to this area (including this reporter).

Las Posadas is a Christmas celebra-tion that originated in Spain, but is now mainly celebrated in Mexico, Central America, and in the south-western United States. Posada is a Spanish word for “lodging” or “ac-commodations,” and the celebrations commemorate Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter in Bethle-hem.

In Mexico, Las Posadas has been cel-ebrated for over 400 years. Traditionally Las Posadas refers to a novenario, nine days of religious obser-vances, representing the nine months that Mary carried the baby Jesus. Participants called los pereginos (pilgrims) go from house to house, asking the “innkeep-ers” if there is room in that inn for the son of God to be born. After facing re-jection at three or four “inns,” Mary and Joseph are finally welcomed to stay in a stable.

Music and songs are a traditional part of Las Posadas. Other features of Las Posadas vary from place to place, but the purpose of Las Posadas is to cause the participants to reflect on whether there is “room at the inn” in their hearts for Jesus and his mes-sage.

When asked, “Why an animal pos-ada?” Father Toby Guerrero replied, “Who was there when the baby Jesus was born?”

An animal posada reminds us that while many humans turned Jo-seph and Mary away, the animals in the stable made them welcome.

TNR trainingGateway Gatos board members re-

cently visited San Antonio to attend a workshop and training session on Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR), the only method of controlling feral cats that is proven to work.

We were trained in methods that can safely and humanely reduce the

numbers of free-roaming cats in our community. In addi-tion to being the hu-mane alternative to a trap-and-kill policy, TNR is also far more cost-effective in re-ducing the feral cat population. Check out this column in the coming months for more information on the feral cat prob-lem in Laredo and

Trap-Neuter-Release.Recent news of impending chang-

es at Laredo Animal Protective Soci-ety (LAPS) indicate that the coming year will be politically important for friends of animals and proponents of a proper animal shelter in Laredo.

There seems to be widespread sup-port for changes at the shelter, but friends of animals need to make their voices heard to make sure that much-needed reforms will result in better treatment for the animals, not “more of the same.”

Gateway Gatos is asking animal lovers and fellow Laredoans to con-tact president Birdie Torres at (956) 286-7866 or [email protected] for the following:

• The group would like to meet and work with any other organizations in Laredo that seek humane treatment of animals and want to raise this issue with our city government. It recently came to our attention that there are many individuals and groups in Lare-do that are acting as dog and/or cat res-cue agencies informally and on their own. We salute these people, whether they rescue dogs, cats, horses, or other animals, because we share a common goal, and we would like to start a co-alition of animal lovers in Laredo. If

you rescue animals or belong to such a group, please contact Torres. In politics, numbers mean strength, and this issue will not be ignored if the many animal lovers in Laredo come together.

• We are also looking for an animal-loving attorney in the Laredo area who would consider working pro bono to help us get our federal 501c3 tax exempt status. If you are interested in helping us, please also contact Torres.

We are always seeking to meet oth-er Laredo cat lovers; but we also would like to meet dog lovers and friends of other animals who are interested in working together to make Laredo a better place by promoting humane treatment and care for all animals.

Meetings are held the first Tues-day of each month at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church (Room 1), 1700 San Francisco Ave., at 7 p.m., and are always open to anyone who shares our goal — to promote animal welfare and responsible pet ownership in Laredo. ◆

Attendees of the Christmas Animal Posada proceed down the side-walk at St. Peter’s Plaza while singing traditional Christmas songs.

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By JOSE ROBERTO JUAREZ, Ph.D. LareDOS Contributor

Editor’s note: This is the third in a se-ries of five narratives about the diocesan history of Laredo, from its founding in 1755 to the present.

The change in ecclesiastical jurisdictional control was achieved peacefully. San Agustín had been placed

under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Nuevo León from 1779 to 1850. The Right Reverend J. M. Odin was direct-ed by Rome to add the settlements on the north bank of the river after the Treaty of Guadalupe in 1848. Odin visited Laredo in June 1850 as bishop of Galveston. On this inspection tour he conducted confirmations, convali-dated marriages, and left Father José

Trinidad García as pastor (1832-1851), even authorizing him to resolve some marriage impediments usually re-served for the bishop.

Father García of San Agustín also served Nuevo Laredo under the Bish-op of Nuevo León. The last circular received from Monterrey was that of Oct. 19, 1852. In March 1853, Fathers Louis Claude Dumas and Louis Marie Planchet, seculars, were installed in the new parish under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Galveston. The priests at San Agustín continued to minister in Nuevo Laredo, officially founded on June 15, 1848, up to 1867.

Second permanent church 1872Father Alfonso Souchon, whose

name came to be synonymous with San Agustín Parish, arrived in De-cember 1857 and served for 45 years until his death in 1902. Like the other

French priests in Laredo, Souchon immediately His-panicized his name to Padre Alfonso. He began collecting funds for a new second stone church in 1866. He only had 16 pesos donated by Dr. Ste-phen, a Protestant who later converted to Catholicism and continued to be a generous contributor. Father Souchon was anxious to start building the foundation.

Father Pierre Yves Ker-alum was probably the de-signer and architect. It took six years, from 1866 to 1872, to build the church. Wages were very low and many workmen worked for free. Fa-ther Souchon himself worked as a common laborer. He himself placed the cross on the 141-foot tower completed later, steeple, and cross of the 50-by-110-foot Gothic church.

There were some 3,000 Catholics in Laredo when the church was blessed by Rev. Juan C. Neraz on Sunday, Dec. 22, 1872. The church, with a capacity of 700, was full for all four Masses. When the 1,500 Catholics from the 80 or so ranches in the surrounding area came to Christmas or Easter ser-vices, the church overflowed. Although the church was built for both English and Spanish-speaking parishioners, the sermons were always in Spanish on or-dinary Sundays and Holy Days. Father Claude Jaillet explained:

“Everyone around here understands Spanish; they have to learn the language to do business here, as at least ninety-five percent of the people in Laredo at the present time are Mexicans or part Mexicans.”

Sometime prior to 1896 an 8 a.m. Mass with the sermon preached in Eng-lish was initiated.

The French clergy at San Agustín

were very energetic. They visited San Ignacio, Los Ojuelos, and some 80 sur-rounding ranches. Continuing the tra-dition begun in 1783 of offering educa-tional opportunities, one of the priests always supervised a school for boys as his primary duty.

By 1869 Father Alfonso managed to finish constructing a convent school for girls started in the 1850s, allow-ing the Ursuline Sisters to begin their work. Three native Laredoans became members of the religious community between 1870 and 1878. 1) Dolores Paredes served from 1870 to January 1877, named Sister St. Augustine or Agustina. She died at age 22. 2) Marga-rita García entered the school in 1873 at the age of 18. She earned her Ursuline habit in 1875 as Sister St. Pierre. 3) Ni-colasa Moreno entered school in 1878, became an Ursuline Sister in 1880 as St. Agnes or Inés. Both lived long lives. ◆

Feature

Laredo under the third Diocese of Galveston, 1850-1874

“Padre” Alfonso M. Souchon was a French priest who arrived in Laredo in December 1857 and stayed until his death in 1902. Souchon himself helped build the second stone church of San Agustin starting in 1866 and completed in 1872.

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All the headlines concern-ing education proclaim that schools and more specifically, teachers, are not preparing

students for college, work, or world com-petition. National scores for SAT and other standardized tests drop while countries that spend less per student pass us by, so teachers must not be doing what we are told to do in order to teach. Meanwhile, education has become an ego-driven num-bers game in the minds of many.

Administrators check scores, pass/fail rates, and money headed their way. Par-ents don’t buy elementary kids books un-less they can count for Accelerated Read-ing points, and have even been known to bribe classmates into racking up points for Junior. It’s no wonder that, by the time some students make it to high school or beyond, they count success or failure by quantity, not quality. Here are one teach-er’s comments about our society, which mirrors the world we have created for our schoolchildren:

In our set-back, do-nothing, wait-for-someone-to-rescue-us society, we like to

blame governments for all our problems, when the blame rests solely on our own shoulders. Aldous Huxley, in his novel, A Brave New World, foretold a time when this lust for self-gratification would make us become a “trivial culture,” a culture that would ruin itself.

With a society that receives news from across the world in the blink of an eye, has the opportunity to talk to anybody anywhere, and has technology capable of pleasing oneself 24/7, we’ve become what Huxley feared, a society that has lost ap-preciation of the value of sacrificing for the great of good. He expressed the belief that the “truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” Huxley found that man has an almost infinite appetite for distractions. This is highlighted when we have top-selling books, television shows, and films devoted to petty nothingness.

This society’s main focus is on material things; we look at what we want and what others have, then forget to be grateful for what we have. Memories, emotions, and ideas are lost when one must have the lat-ideas are lost when one must have the lat-ideas are lost when one must have the latest cell phone, MP3 player, or new video

game. In his book Huxley said that human pleasures have the power to control people in this society. Today’s society has proven him correct by becoming so material-driven that we have forgotten our core values.

By buying huge houses with mortgages which could not reasonably be paid off on current salaries, people set themselves up for failure. Yet, when the going got rough, these same people turned to the govern-these same people turned to the govern-these same people turned to the government to rescue them. People become buried by their own greed, and when they can no longer ignore it, they try to shift the blame onto others. When pity is taken upon them, they are “reduced to passivity and egoism,” instead of helping themselves.

Our technology should make this so-ciety stronger and richer, but instead it is making us become lazier and weaker — and the economic situation has changed very little, as well. We lose the passion and drive to succeed when success is handed to us on a sliver platter.

“Huxley feared that there would be no reason to ban books for there would be no one to read them” and this is why technol-ogy can backfire; we’ve become so accus-

tomed to searching for a book synopsis on the Internet that we do not actually read it. We depend upon someone else to do it for us and trust some stranger to tell us what happened.

If society becomes totally involved in its toys then it will “undo its capacity to think.” It is human nature to find easy ways around tough things, but with too much convenience, we are not motivated to do anything. It is the sacrifices, the tough times, and the need to do without which builds character and develops a solid society.

While society is not doomed quite yet, it will take many years to re-instill the val-ues that once were. History has proven that when society faces some kind of ease, it soon will have a period of hardship. If we have lost our ability to work through hard-ships, how will we make it back to what we used to be? There are two ways that I see what will happen; one, we will rebound and start anew, or two, we will die off into oblivion and humans will never live again. Lust and gluttony were not named deadly sins without a reason. ◆

Blame for nation’s educational setbacks is on our own shoulders

The Anonymous TeacherThis column is written by various teachers around Laredo, many of them afraid to write for fear of retri-bution by employers or even losing their jobs. This provides an outlet

for them to be frank about educational issues. If you are a teacher and interested in writing for us, contact [email protected].


Over the past few months we have seen a rapid expansion of the scope and authority of our federal government

through the actions of leaders in Washing-ton, D.C.

In last month’s column I detailed a once-covert military program of targeted political assassinations aimed at American citizens. Chilling as that may be, it doesn’t end there. Since that time, the Senate has moved to pass a highly controversial piece of legislation that, if signed into law, will functionally repeal the 5th and 6th Amend-ments of our Constitution.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDA) has been passed annually in Congress for the last 48 years and is largely a budgetary bill dealing with the expenses of the Department of Defense. Since 2001, however, the bill has become a hotbed is-sue, as it has typically included stipulations within it that will specify how the “war on terror” is conducted in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, the Senate passed the NDA Act of 2012 (S 1867), and buried

deep within its pages are two provisions, Sections 1031 and 1032, which should alarm all but the staunchest proponents of military interventionism and “national defense.”

The first section in question (1031) re-news and in effect expands the 2001 Autho-rization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) which granted then President George W. Bush the authority to use “necessary and appropriate force” against those who “planned, authorized, committed or aid-ed” in the 9/11 attacks. The second (Section 1032) then stipulates how these undesirable persons are to be handled once captured.

The trouble with this bill is that the lan-guage is so broad — even vague at times — that it results in rendering many of the civil liberties Americans take for granted dangerously close to irrelevant. The new AUMF under the NDA Act allows for mili-tary force toward not only those who may have helped in carrying out 9/11, but any-one who “substantially supports” al-Qaeda and the Taliban, any of their “associated forces,” or engages in a “belligerent act” toward the U.S.

While it appears that the noticeably subtle word choice regarding al-Qaeda’s “supporters” or “associates” is likely meant to encompass groups like Al-Shabaab or al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) operating now in places like Somalia and Yemen, who did not exist in 2001 at the time of the original AUMF, it also opens to door to connections with countless others.

This particular language in the bill has raised the ire of the ACLU as well as lawyers for several detainees, including those within the Center for Constitutional Rights, who contend the wording casts such a large net that just about anyone could be dragged in. By defining the war in this way, ordinary Americans are at risk of being found guilty by very loose associa-tion — resulting in a twisted game of “Six degrees of Osama Bin Laden.”

Furthermore, this bill mandates that all such persons suspected of terroristic activi-ties, whether detained in a foreign land or within the United States, be managed out-side of the civilian court system. While the measure provides exclusion to this man-date for U.S. citizens and lawful resident aliens, it implicitly allows for their “deten-tion under the law of war without trial until the end of hostilities,” by the Armed Forces just the same. In other words, the military is not compelled to hold Americans “until the end of hostilities,” but it has the option, and evidently the intention, to do so.

As far as when exactly hostilities will end, your guess is as good as any.

Supporters of the NDA Act have argued that nothing in this piece of legislation re-ally changes much in an operational sense. Senate Armed Services Committee Chair-man Carl Levin (D-MI), who along with co-sponsor Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) wrote the questionable provisions of the bill regarding indefinite detention, has repeatedly said the NDA Act does not alter existing law.

Referring to the 2004 Supreme Court case, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Levin said “We think the law is clear in Hamdi that there is no bar to this nation holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant and we make clear whatever the law is, it is unaf-fected by this language in our bill.”

It should be noted, however, that the Hamdi decision was rather contentious, re-sulting in a plurality decision by the Court — and that Hamdi was captured in Af-ghanistan, not within the United States.

Others in defense of this bill may point out that the Obama administration has al-ready been interpreting the original 2001 Authorization of Military Force in the broadest possible terms.

In short, proponents of the NDA Act suggest the controversy surrounding the new law is much ado about nothing, since many of the actions it recommends are al-ready taking place. It seems then, that the best defense for this bill degenerates to what amounts to a comically lazy marriage proposal. “Look, we’re already doing it anyway; let’s just make this thing legal.”

As of this writing the bill is working its way through the House, and its sponsors have made it known they will work to-wards making concessions to the Admin-istration to avoid the possibility of the veto. The provisions regarding the indefinite detention of American citizens, however, remain unaffected.

Even if somehow derailed in the House, as unlikely as that may be, the dangers of this legislation are very real.

As Sen. Lindsey Graham suggests, this bill, once signed into law, will make it plain. The war without end is now every-where, includes everyone, and places us all under military jurisdiction governed by the “laws of war.” Goodbye habeas corpus and almost a thousand years of Western ju-risprudence; hello martial law. ◆

Traces of Reality



On the occasion of another diverse Farmers Market, one that showcased holi-day gifts, director Alli

Flores noted that while the core of the market has remained the same, much has changed.

“We’ve held on to our initial goal to provide local produce and local value-added foods like the nopal prod-ucts and olive oil, but we’ve grown in terms of vendors and in changing pub-lic perception about what the market is. We’ve added vendors who are now providing honey, Gulf shrimp, and grass-fed beef at the market,” Flores said.

She added that over the market’s 14-month history, it has become less challenging to get Laredoans downtown once a month to enjoy the market ambiance and to sample and buy from vendors directly connected to their products.

“Our vendors have become very creative, changing up what they do to meet seasonal changes or rising to what their customers tell them they want,” she said. “The array of Christmas gifts and baked goods at this last market was outstanding.”

The December market was staged a week early to avoid traffic congestion from the influx of paisanos traveling to Mexico. Undaunted by the nippy weath-er, Laredoans were able to enjoy a cup

of coffee and to sample some of the best and most uniquely prepared food and pastries in the area.

Flores said the direction set by the market’s board from the beginning has kept the Farmers Market from becom-ing a pulga, or a flea market.

“Hence all the rules and criteria for keeping things local and for allowing only arts and crafts that are garden or culinary inspired,” she said.

Herbs, plants, flowers, herbal prod-ucts, hand-made soaps, birdhouses, and bird feeders were among the gift ideas laid out by the vendors and quickly purchased by shoppers.

New at the market this month was the Mosaic of Faiths Trolley Tour host-

ed by Jesus Najar of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The tour included a look at the architecture of downtown churches and a synagogue.

“We’ve added live entertainment, and thanks to AEP [American Electric Power], we’ve got tables and chairs in the plaza,” Flores said, adding that the

market accepts SNAP (Supplemental Nutri-tion Assistance Pro-gram) cards.

She said that the Farmers Market has been able to flourish with help from the City of Laredo.

“They participate at every level — third party funding, the set-up and take-down crews from the Parks and Leisure depart-ment, and the welcome presence of Laredo po-lice officers. El Metro gives us a hand with downtown parking and now with trolley tours.”

Flores said the ven-dors are the heart and soul of the monthly market. A former produce vendor her-self, Flores became the market man-ager after a brief stint as a volunteer.

“Marketing is the largest part of what I do, including workshops and vendor presentations,” she said.

Sandra Rocha Taylor, the execu-tive director of Laredo Main Street, under whose umbrella the Farmers Market operates, said that the market “has been a great economic driver for downtown.”

“Many of the downtown mer-chants have told us that the market has brought them new customers,” Rocha Taylor said. “They have told us that they look forward to the market Saturdays because there will be more people downtown and more business. They leave flyers about their stores and specials for us to hand out at our

information table.”Rocha Taylor gives much credit to

Flores’ efforts in overseeing the mar-ket.

“Alli has done a great job in bringing in a variety of vendors and entertainment,” she said. “There are a lot of challenges to keeping the vendors coming back and getting new vendors. Anyone who is inter-ested in selling at the Farmers Mar-ket should contact us.”

Rocha Taylor said that trolley tours of the St. Peter’s Historic Dis-trict are in the works as well as oth-er collaborations with the recently formed St. Peter’s Property Owners Association.

For further information on the Farmers Market or Laredo Main Street, call (956) 523-8817 or go to jamboozie.org. ◆

Farmers Market ends year on high noteof new vendors, product diversity

News

Chris and Valerie Contreras of Café Dolce are pictured with Alli Flores, director of the Farmers Market. The market has offered Café Dolce an additional revenue stream for the Contreras’ premium baked goods.

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From left to right, Alli Flores, Olga Maldonado, AEP Tex-as external affairs manager, and Sandra Rocha Taylor, executive director of Laredo Main Street, are pictured with a certificate of appreciation for AEP’s donation of chairs and umbrella-covered tables for the market.

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Traces of Reality


Early this fall I was tempted to go to New York City and join the Occupy Wall Street movement at Zuccotti Park,

even if only for a weekend. I admired the protestors’ creative no-tech People’s Mic, their gritty idealism in the face of police in riot gear, their tents pitched in the midst of all that glass and finance, and their determination to change the national conversation despite rain and too few bathrooms. But when classes resumed at BU, I found myself occupied with other more immediate concerns.

They started small. In late August a colleague told me about Jing, a computer program for recording verbal comments to students about their papers rather than hand writing them. Even though I didn’t have time to download the program, fig-ure out how to use it, and arrange for stu-dents to submit their papers online rather than handing in hard copies, finding out about Jing made me rethink what I’d done for years. As a result, on a September night when I collected my composition students’ first essays, I asked them a simple ques-tion: “When I grade your papers, do you want me to write on them?”

They looked at me from behind their computer monitors, probably wondering what kind of English teacher asks such a question. When they realized I was serious and waiting for an answer, Kelly shook her head, her ponytail swinging behind her neck.

“No,” several of them said at once. “Why?” I asked. Ryan, a young man who sat in the front

row with his arms crossed, said, “When teachers write all over my essays, it’s frus-trating. And overwhelming. It feels like the teacher just wants to rewrite all my stuff.”

I thought about how I’d marked thousands of essays over the past 20

years — the marginal comments, brack-ets around clutter, circled misspellings, highlighted repetition, “frag” scrawled above the grammatically deficient and logically unfinished, arrows, and ques-tion marks. I suddenly felt foolish.

“How about I write a letter to each of you instead?” I asked. “I won’t write anything on your papers until you want me to.”

They nodded. Some even smiled.So I wrote 100 letters in which I told

each of them what he or she had done well and what could be done better. It took lon-ger than hunching over papers and mark-ing them at my kitchen table, but I actually looked forward to sitting by the window with the laptop on my thighs and my students’ essays on the stool beside me, because doing it this way felt more like writ-ing than grad-ing. And when I returned students’ papers, they quietly read my letter, their faces suggesting that they were grateful for more reaction than rejection, more conversation than condem-nation.

A couple weeks later when they were ready to turn in their second essay, I asked them again if they wanted me to write on their papers.

“Maybe just on one page,” they said. “And can you write a letter again?”

I said I could. And as the semester went on, I wrote more letters. Students gradu-ally asked me to mark more on their es-

says, and their reactions helped me decide on other changes, too. Everyone could choose to revise every essay, even those that earned an A- or B+. And instead of col-lecting revisions, which meant rereading them all again, I asked students to sign up for a conference, during which they would show me their revisions and explain why their new draft deserved a higher grade. This would put more responsibility on them and encourage them to talk specifi-cally about their writing and revising. At least that was the plan.

What I did these past 3 months — writ-ing over 235 letters to students and meeting

individually with almost 30 of them every week in addition to teaching my classes — may strike many as impractical. Teachers with more compli-cated family lives than mine might even consider it crazy. But this

small revolution in my teaching changed

the tenor and content of conversations with students, and even now at the end of this semester they still smile, still ask good questions, still seem mostly invested in the words they put on their pages.

Most nights by 11 p.m., I’m alone on the third floor of Bakeless Center. Eventually, I throw my briefcase over my shoulder so the strap hangs across my chest like a ban-doleer, pull my office door shut, and trudge down the stairs, out the door, and into the darkness on the edge of campus.

I cross the hospital parking lot and tramp down Gale Avenue’s long hill, through the dark S-curve where trash cans in front of students’ houses line Iron Street, along the shoulder of Millville Road, and up the long slope of Summit Avenue. I pass the moonlit hulk of a transmission and en-gine setting on the edge of the street, and the canopy of a blue tarp flutters over the front of a pickup, the hood leaning against the passenger door.

A small dog yips above me from the window of a dark house on the hillside, and on my neighbors’ lawn, two wire-framed reindeer glow with white lights. Even though the hour is late and my briefcase heavy with essays, I’m hap-py knowing that in the morning, my students and I will again be occupied with writing. ◆

Serving Sentences

A small writing revolutionchanges a whole semester

By randy koch

…when I returned students’ papers,

they quietly read my letter, their faces suggesting that they were grateful for more reaction than rejection, more conversation than condemnation.


By DENISE FERGUSONLareDOS Staff

The Laredo Tuesday Music & Literature Club recently pre-viewed its December 13 meet-viewed its December 13 meet-viewed its December 13 meeting during a dress rehearsal of

the Memorial Bells of the First United Methodist Church. Entitled “The Spirit of Christmas,” the program consisted of Christmas music, including such holiday standards as “Jingle Bells,” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Pat-A-Pan,” “The Friendly Beasts,” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” Members participated in a Ring-Sing-A-Long of classic Christ-in a Ring-Sing-A-Long of classic Christ-in a Ring-Sing-A-Long of classic Christmas carols such as “Silent Night, Holy Night,” and “Deck the Halls.”

Hortense Offerle accompanied the Memorial Bells on the piano for the Ring-Sing-A-Long part of the program. The hostesses, who provided festive decora-

tions and sumptuous holiday food, were Clementine Cuellar, Nancy Williams, and chair Nancy Black.

Memorial Bells ensemble members are Bill Chavez, Katy Chavez, Rolinda Lawrence, Angel Ortiz, Alejandra Ro-driguez, Kay Ward, and Delia Whitfield. Linda Mott is the director. Alejandra Rodriguez has been the organist for the FUMC for about 30 years and a Laredo teacher for approximately 40 years. She is well known in the Laredo entertainment community. Likewise, Delia Whitfield has been deeply involved in numerous entertainment productions for the plea-sure of TMLC members.

Rolinda Lawrence, an ensemble mem-ber since 2008, and her husband provided an initial investment for two octaves hand bells as the ensemble progressed in its technical ability.

“The group has played during mass [at

Our Lady of Guadalupe Church] and for such groups as Pan Amer-ican Round Table, Retama Nurs-ing Home, Cinco de Mayo, and together with the Laredo Philhar-monic in public ceremony at Mall del Norte,” Lawrence said. “The first performance this year took place at the Laredo Medical Aux-place at the Laredo Medical Aux-place at the Laredo Medical Auxiliary Christmas breakfast.”

Angel Ortiz studies clarinet at TAMIU and sang at Carnegie Hall in New York City under the auspices of MidAmerica Produc-tions. Ortiz has also sung with the Laredo Philharmonic Chorale and various professional maria-chi groups. Fellow Bells ensemble member Kay Ward, the retired owner of Kay’s Pets, played oboe and piano in high school.

Bells director Linda Mott was formerly a member of “Bells in Motion,” a group in the Illinois area that was ca-pable of handling six octaves of hand bells versus the lower range of two oc-taves. That group played six concerts in 12 days during a European musical tour. After moving to Laredo, Mott realized she missed that vocation and started the music ministry at FUMC in 2007.

During the business portion of the program, members were invited by the president to bring their pur-chased Our First Hundred Years TMLC history books to future meetings to be officially signed by the writer of this column, who also serves as club historian and author of the history book.◆

Club historian Denise Ferguson signs TMLC members’ copies of Our First One Hundred Years. Ferguson is the author of the book. From left to right are Betty Ball, Rolinda Lawrence, and TMLC president Linda Mott.

Tuesday Music and Literature Club

‘Spirit of Christmas’ alive at December meeting

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Special to LareDOS

As the fall 2011 semester comes to a close at LCC, now is the time for students to get ad-vised for the Spring 2012 Avised for the Spring 2012 A

semester before December 21 so they can register for classes.

While both the Fort McIntosh and South campuses will be closed from December 22 to January 6 for winter break, registra-tion will continue online through PASPort, LCC’s online student portal. Priority regis-tration ends Wednesday, December 21.

All students, whether new or return-ing, who plan to enroll in the spring 2012 semester must be advised to be able to register for classes. As self-advisement is no longer an option, students need to keep in mind that if they are not advised before

the holiday break, they will be unable to register through PASPort. Online registra-tion will continue throughout the holidays for those students who have been advised.

First-time students and students who are undecided about their major should report to the Student Success Center at the Fort McIntosh or South campuses. Advising is available Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Fri-day from 8 a.m. to noon. Advising is also available on Saturdays, excluding holi-days, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Memo-rial Hall, room 125, at the Fort McIntosh Campus.

Walk-ins are welcome, but students with appointments will be seen first.

For more information or to book an appointment, contact the Student Success Center at the Fort McIntosh Campus at

(956) 721-5135 or at the South Campus at (956) 794-4135.

Students who have declared a major can take advantage of advising now in the instructional department that cor-responds to their major. Students must first call the department of their major to schedule an appointment.

Students who register before Decem-ber 21 must pay their tuition and fees by that day no later than 6 p.m. in person at the LCC Bursar’s Office at either cam-pus; or by 11 p.m. by credit card via the PASPort system.

Students who are unable to get ad-vised before the break can come in for advising and late registration from January 9-13. Advisors will be on hand to assist students from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the Kazen College Center at the Fort

McIntosh Campus and in the Student Success Center and various depart-ments at the South Campus. The first day of classes for the Spring 2012 se-mester is January 17.

For more information on registra-tion, contact the LCC Enrollment and Registration Services Center at the Fort McIntosh Campus at (956) 721-5109 or at the South Campus at (956) 794-4109. ◆

Spring registration continues as college offers ‘healthy’ courses

Laredo Community College


By dr. neo gutierrez

Dr. Neo Gutierrez is a Ph.D. in Dance and Fine Arts, Meritorious

Award in Laredo Fine Arts recipient 2009 from Webb Co. Heritage Foundation, Laredo Sr. Int’l 2008, Laredo MHS Tiger Legend 2002, and Sr. Int’l de Beverly Hills, 1997.

Contact [email protected].

Notes from LaLa Land

Vicarious living has become more and more important to me, and it becomes extra spe-cial when I hear from friends

like ex-Laredoan Sara Puig Laas, who now lives near Austin and who traveled to Paris in October.

She wrote, “It was the kind of trip I love best — living like a local. No tour buses or schedules. I stayed with my niece, Marta Mueller-Guicciardini, and her two teenag-ers in their apartment on Rue de Univer-site.

“Marta is a senior financial analyst at the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank. Except for the weekend and a holiday, I explored Paris on my own.

“Under Marta’s guidance, I quickly learned it isn’t true that the French are rude and anti-American. They are delightfully friendly and helpful as long as you start any and all conversations with “Bonjour” — just as we were taught as children to al-ways say, “Buenos dias.”

“Marta’s apartment is centrally located in the lovely section of the city designed by architect Baron Georges-Eugene Hauss-mann between 1853 and 1870 under a com-mission from Napoleon III. It was Hauss-mann who gave Paris its wide boulevards, expansive parks, and lovely bridges across the Seine River. He also designed the adjoin-ing acres of six-story buildings that exude an air of serenity, with their metal mansard roofs, walls of stone, and massive wooden doors, even as their street-level shops teem with activity.

“The next four floors contain apart-ments with tall windows that make it great fun to watch people below go about their daily lives. The top floor provided small garrets — traditionally for use by servants, or by artists and writers who could afford only the cheapest rent. The pleasant vistas make it a joy to walk as much as possible in

Paris, checking out both the shops and the gardens as you go.

“And walk I did, 5 to 10 miles a day, although I rarely passed a boulangerie, or bakery, without popping in for a pain au chocolat.

“The centuries come together at the Louvre, aptly exemplified by the classic stone buildings with a central courtyard dominated by I.M. Pei’s classic pyramid. The museum’s trove of treasures spans the centuries, too, from ancient Greek sculp-tures to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, to contempo-rary modern art.

“Another day, I traipsed to the Eiffel Tower on ‘our side’ of the Seine. The process took two hours, but I decided to stick it out in memory of my grandparents, Laredoans Valentin and Bruna Ortiz Puig, who had also ascended the tower when they went to Paris, together with his brother and her sister, Baldomero and Emilia Ortiz Puig, for the Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) of 1900. My trip to the Eiffel Tower was 111 years later, on 11/1/11, so I decided not to ignore the line-up of numbers.

“On Saturday and again on Thursday, I tagged along with Maria as she shopped for fresh vegetables and meals at the open-air market. The portable stalls open at 7 a.m. and must be packed up and gone by 1 p.m., so we quickly chose from the incredibly fresh selections of salad greens, vegetables, fish, meals, mushrooms, cheeses, herbs, flowers and more.

“Saturday evening, we were off to the symphony to hear an orchestra from Leipzig, Germany, play works by Beethoven. On Tuesday, a ballet drew us to the Opera Garnier. Built in 1869, it’s both a wonderful venue and a trip back in time, as you wonder which notables may have sat in the gilded box seats, gazed at the chande-lier suitable for The Phantom of the Opera, and admired the huge circular mural by Marc

Chagall that surrounded the chandelier. The ballet costumes, by Parisian fashion designer Christian Lacroix, did not take a back seat to the ambience and were memo-rable in their beauty.

“On Halloween Day, my great-niece Ottavia was on fall break from school, so the two of us had a different kind of adven-ture. We took the subway — Le Metro, in Paris — to a costume shop in another part of town. We met a school friend there, and shared a hilarious hour as they tried on outfits for a party that night. Ottavia decid-ed to go as Wonder Woman, an appropri-ate costume in my view, since Ottavia and her brother are fluent in French, English, Italian, Turkish (after living three years in Istanbul), and Spanish. Marta speaks those five languages and Russian as well, as her work with the IFC often takes her to Moscow and the Republic of Georgia. In that state of mind, it made perfect sense to treat the teens to lunch at a Japanese bistro in the neighborhood.”

Her letter concluded, “You cannot go anywhere in the world these days without finding traces of Laredo; this trip reinforced that rule. Marta and I enjoyed an exhibit of photographs by ex-Laredoan George O. Jackson Jr., at France L’Amerique Latine Agency. The featured pictures came from his vast collection of photos of Mexican indigenous festivals, but I had not seen them at the Smithsonian or San Antonio Museum of Art exhibits. Beautiful and dra-matic work, as always, and I was delighted to introduce a fine example of Laredo’s cre-ative talent to my niece. So many places I didn’t go — Paris is a temptress, and will not show you everything in a week, which was the length of my stay. But even a peek at France’s City of Light brought pleasure to last a lifetime.”

Many thanks to dear friend Sarita for sharing with us that marvelous travelogue.

It’s time to go to knitting. In my train-ing as a teacher, I remember learning that repetitive activity was good for students. A Maryland woman has taken her to teach a weekly class in knitting in a prison for men. The demand for her class has soared. The reason is simple: the repetitiveness gives the prisoners a calming effect! Her program is proving to be an invaluable rehabilitative tool at the Maryland prison’s Pre-Release Unit in Jessup.

The teacher, Lynn Zwerling, is a retiree who believes in the effect on prisoners of the clicking needles and the repetitive motions. She started knitting after retiring from sell-ing cars, and she became an evangelist. And that’s how she got to try her idea. She wanted to teach men in jail how to knit. She believed in what knitting provides — set-ting goals, completing a project, and giving to someone else.

Let’s close the year with a great note from Laredo’s gift to Hollywood, Julia Vera, who just came back to Los Angeles after spending a month in Laredo. She writes, “There’s always something exciting going on. LULAC had its annual Tejano Achiev-ers Award, and Mrs. Estela Kramer was one of the honorees, and she invited me as her guest.

“My next highlight during my Lare-do visit was the Martin/Nixon game for the dedication of the new Shirley Field. It was truly impressive and inspiring when former football players paraded onto the field holding up the year they defended the goal.

“It was a great break for me, since I was in the area to build an RV park in Asherton. I loved the project. Hard work, but it was all worth it.”

And on that note, with great wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone, it’s time for, as Norma Adamo says, TAN TAN!. ◆

Sara Puig Laas’ travelogue finds traces of Laredo in Paris


South Texas Food Bank

Adopt-a-Family: Food bank program of ‘neighbors helping neighbors’

By salo otero

Salo Otero is the Marketing Director for the South Texas

Food Bank. He can be reached at sotero@

southexasfoodbank.org or by calling 956-726-3120.

A Laredo couple saw a fam-ily of four struggling to make ends meet during these difficult economic

times, especially when trying to put food on the table.

Moved by a charitable heart and the family’s situation, the wife said, “I want to give them $50 or $100 to help them buy food.”

The husband agreed, but offered an-other suggestion, “How about $120 to the South Texas Food Bank and place them in the Adopt-a-Family program?”

The Laredo couple went the Adopt-a-Family route, made their $120 annual donation, and now that needy family is receiving one box of groceries per month for one year.

The South Texas Food Bank’s Adopt-a-Family program started in 2004 “grass roots in nature,” said Miguel Zuniga, the food bank’s Adopt-a-Family coordi-nator.

“The program is local. It’s neighbors helping neighbors,” Zuniga said, add-ing, “It is a growing program, but not as much as we would like (it to grow).” He said that 982 families are being helped as 22,500 pounds of product is distributed monthly to Adopt-a-Family recipients.

But 490 families are on a waiting list, and Zuniga has been out in the field looking for sponsors.

“Our concern is to feed people,” he said.

Zuniga relayed a story. “I saw a man in a wheelchair in line at

one of our distribution sites. He seemed angry, and his head was down. I talked to him,” Zuniga said. “His voice started cracking. He was feeling embarrassed, but in the end he was thankful for the help and left a happier person.”

The Adopt-a-Family program contin-

ues to grow in need and funding, and the South Texas Food Bank is thankful to the Guadalupe and Lilia Martinez Foundation for their support of the pro-gram since 2007.

“We get new applicants daily,” Zu-niga said. “If there were people in need before the economic crisis, guess what’s happening now?”

Webb County and the other seven counties served by the STFB are ranked

among the poorest in the United States, with a poverty rate of 30-plus percent.

One startling figure is the increase in emergency bags that the South Tex-as Food Banks distributes monthly to families who walk into the STFB office at 1907 Freight Street in immediate need of food.

Last year, an average of 35 emer-gency bags were distributed monthly. This year, the average is 100 bags per

month. After the families receive an emergency box, a ma-jority of them apply for Adopt-a-Family, therefore keeping the waiting list long.

A $120 annual do-nation goes a long way. In fact, the STFB is offering donors a payment plan: a $30 initial payment and $30 for three consecu-tive months.

For information call the South Texas Food Bank (956) 726-3120 from Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m., or go to southtexasfoodbank.org.

Young Laredoan helps feed the hun-gry

Little 7-year-old Brianna Sotelo is do-ing her part for the food bank’s mission of feeding the hun-gry. Brianna’s mother, Anna Cantu Sotelo, says her daughter, a

second-grade student at Muller El-ementary School, was moved to help after attending religious education classes at Sagrado Corazon Catholic Mission in Peñitas.

“I want to help the sick,” Brianna told her mother.

After all, Brianna knows about be-ing sick.

“She is a miracle baby,” her mother Anna said. “At 29 days old she had an intestine operation in Corpus Christi. She was not expected to live.”

However, Mom explained to Bri-anna about the hungry and the food bank. And off she went. Brianna made a sign that read, “Help the Hungry” and placed it in front of the family home in the Indian Sunset subdivision off the Mines Road.

Her sister Sara, an eighth grader at Washington Middle School, helped the cause by creating a bigger sign. Brian-na was soon collecting food and money as neighborhood residents stopped to donate. After one week, Brianna, mom Anna, and sister Sara came by the food bank with a donation of $73.25 and 13 pounds of canned items.

Brianna said she will continue her project for the rest of the year. Pancho Farias, STFB’s food drive coordinator, lauded Brianna.

“It is inspiring that at such a young age she has already taken an interest in helping others and wants to make a difference in our society,” Farias said.

“It never ceases to amaze me how the very young often come to the un-derstanding that some people are in need and make decisions on their own to help others,” said STFB executive di-rector Alfonso Casso. “It is a wonder-ful thing Brianna has done and very inspiring.” ◆

The South Texas Food Bank was blessed over the holidays with these donations:

1. Diocese of Laredo Catholic Schools collected a minimum of $1 per student. The check was pre-sented to South Texas Food Bank representativesAlfonso Casso Jr. and Cindy Liendo Espinoza by a Catholic School entourage headed by Supt. Dr. Rosa Maria Vida and principals from St. Augustine(Sylvia Farias Cortez, Olga Gentry), Mary Help of Christians (Sister Marie Gannon), Blessed Sacrament (Esther Gutierrez), St. Peter (Dr. Linda Mitchell), and Our Lady of Guadalupe (Her-linda Martinez). Cortez’s St. Augustine elemen-tary and middle school have pledged to adopt one family per month during this school year. A STFB spokesperson challenged the United and Laredo Independent School District to a $1 per student contribution at each school.

2. Pizza Hut of Laredo contributed $5,928.

3. Petco collected 242 pounds of pet food during a drive at the two Laredo stores. The food was given to South Texas Food Bank clients with pets.

4. The STFB’s Hunters for the Hungry program re-ceived 14 deer harvested at the Callaghan Ranch, which is located 27 miles north of Laredo near Encinal.


Weather drove the year. It was dire. The hard freeze last February was as low as we’ve

gone in a long time. There were several days of living below freezing here in the land of encroaching desert. There were days in West Texas that did not get above 9 degrees and left a swath of damage.

Then there was the awful fire that tore through Ft. Davis, skipping some homes but taking many of the old ones we remember from our childhood. And how the wildlife and livestock suffered along with the folks depen-dent on them.

Kind Texans from all over the state sent out semi-loads of hay. As the drought deepened, fires raged, one as close as 2 miles from us. After watch-ing that sobering conflagration, we tiptoed up and down the ranch road

careful not to hit any dry plant.The summer drought was like a

white hammer that slammed down every day. No relief came until a rain in September, but it was too late to help grass make seed. Cattle and livestock went to market all over the state, prob-ably changing Texas from agrarian to quien sabe.

Meanwhile, out-of-staters poured in as if there are jobs and drinking water for all. I never have seen so many license plates from other states. In the grocery store new people said how glad they were to get here from Idaho/Ohio/Florida/Connecticut! Did they bring long hoses from their home state so that they could pro-vide themselves with water? Where are the jobs they’ve come for? Ask a Texan if he’s gotten one. Who profits from this surge of humanity? What got louder this year? Traffic, sure.

Human roar, yes — me, me, me. Discussion about who owns ground-

water is loud. Heritage ranchers’ whose good stewardship supports and stores groundwater watched their springs and wells go dry. Native trees died every-where. But carpet grass on urban sprawl lawns stayed green all summer long. Whether politicians want to deal with it or not, this issue is upon Texas. Com-plaints about summer heat got louder. I say put up with it or ship out; sorry, no quarter there.

So, what went well? After the few rains September to November, the na-tive plants rushed to grow a little and bloom a lot. How thankful I am for the color and the hope that those valiant beings display. There weren’t Monarch butterflies or, for that matter, butterflies at all but songbirds hunkered down and raised a few fledglings. We fed all tak-ers, and bird song was steady.

Working with the few longhorns left, we will register them and see them through the year. They ate hay and cake all summer long with no complaint be-cause that was all that “grew.” Finding hay continues to be a nightmare. There are weekly e-mail offers of longhorns for sale and these are the real, old-time kind. How many will remain after the drought is anybody’s guess. Out in the vegetable garden, one lone poblano sur-vived a waterless summer and its pep-pers brighten the breakfast egg.

Nature-deficit urbanization and hard-fisted weather added frustration to farm-ers’ and ranchers’ voices this year. Country people and town people, forever separate human species, are further apart every day. Clouds in the sky are critical to one; air conditioning vital to the other.

—Bebe Fenstermaker

Above, Cibolo Creek, which starts near Boerne, is a vital part of the Edwards Aquifer, which provides water to millions in Central Texas.

Maverick Ranch Notes

Weather, groundwater concerns dominate year at Maverick RanchBy BeBe & sissy

fenstermaker

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A few days after Thanksgiv-ing, my youngest sister and I drove out to West

Texas. It was my first time there since the terrible Rock House Wildfire last spring. We arrived after dark, so it wasn’t until the next morning when I looked out the kitchen window that I saw evi-dence of the fire and how close it had come to our cousin’s house. I stared at the west side of Dolores Mountain seeing just rock, soil, and a few charred yuccas — little else. The brush that always sur-rounded the big boulders on the mountainside was gone.

We drove up Limpia Canyon to Davis Mountains State Park and up the scenic drive. At the top, overlooking Indian Lodge, the area that had burned was brown and rocky with no grass. A little re-growth shrubbery had begun. Right next to this, pale yellow fall grasses covered the areas the fire had missed. Ashe junipers were a mixed bag — some survived the flames but were scorched and oth-ers were burned to a crisp.

Where we were standing at the top of the drive, there had been a 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) rock structure. It was in the fire’s direct path, so only the rock pillars remain. We took another branch of the scenic drive that overlooks the canyon leading into Ft. Davis National Historic Site. The fire completely missed that area, thank heavens.

We went to Alpine with friends for lunch and later visited a bak-ery a young woman has started

in her home. Inside, the aroma of baking bread laced with cinna-mon turned out to be her organic granola just out of the oven. The baker told us all about her organic grains and where she gets them. As a matter of fact all her ingredi-ents are organic, and she does her own milling. She stays up with the latest information, too. We left loaded — granola and three kinds of bread — and we plan to go back.

The Overland Trail Museum in Ft. Davis is not to be missed. Since the museum isn’t on the main street it is overlooked by visitors, and that’s a shame. Everything we grew up playing around in-side friends’ homes, back lots and barns is now in this museum. So many of the artifacts, dating from the early 1800s settlement (plus the mammoth bone and Indian artifacts) were valued long after they were no longer used, and that’s the bounty of the museum.

We had gone there to see the Rock House fire photograph col-lection, but before we got to it we dove into early photographs of the area — Ft. Davis military photos, Jeff Davis County photos, and those of the 1954 Centennial Cel-ebration of the old fort were won-derful and brought back many memories. The museum building is as incredible as the collections.

On our way home driving down Limpia Canyon, we had fire-ravaged ranchland to the left of us and untouched ranchland on our right. And the cottonwood trees were turning their beautiful yellow-golden color.

—Sissy Fenstermaker


the experience to break stories that require research and the reading of hundreds of pages of documents that tell a whole story. What I’d give to have his small operational overhead to try to keep this publication in print.

The last year presented an enormous challenge to being able to move forward. I’ve pared my staff down, become a mi-ser with electricity and gas, and done what we are all doing in our businesses e to not only remain afloat but to find new business.

Every month Cristina Herrera and I put our hearts into our work, making our best effort to tell good stories, all the while working on the launch of our new website, which re-alistically will not go up until Janu-ary. Our columnists and contributors likewise give us their best efforts to tell stories and offer diverse points of view about the economy, writing, ranching in time of drought, historic preservation, and politics.

As we begin our 18th year in print, I make the case for the sus-tainability of this small, locally owned news journal. If the stories you read in LareDOS have value for you as a news source or as a mir-ror of what this city is about, sup-port us — order a mail subscription for $36 a year (even if you are lucky enough to find a copy for free some-where.)

If you have products or services you need to sell, think of us as a vi-able venue. We’re not a vanity pub-lication or a throw-away. We are read by more than one member of a household, perhaps twice or three times. We have value.

We thank all of you who read LareDOS, and we thank our adver-tisers and our writers, some who have been with us since our very first issue in December of 1994.

For either a subscription or to adver-tise, you can call me at (956) 319-8001 or e-mail [email protected]. Have a safe holiday. ◆


The Volunteer Income Tax Assis-tance (VITA) is looking for 200 volunteers to staff this year’s effort

across the community and provide free income tax filing, according to volunteer coordinator David Morales. VITA is an asset-building program of the Laredo Eco-nomic Success Coalition.

“We are looking for individuals who are driven by a sense of service and a will-ingness to learn,” said Morales, who is in his third year as a VITA volunteer. “Since the returns are filed via the Internet, we are looking for volunteers who have com-puter skills.”

There are three levels of training for volunteers — a 4-hour course for intake staffers and greeters; a 16-hour certifica-tion course in basic tax law and Taxwise software; and an additional 9-hour course for more extensive training. VITA pro-gram coordinator Esperanza Sauceda and IRS agent Juan Carrizales will provide

IRS-certified training for volunteers who will begin providing income tax services at 12 locations across the city on January 23.

Training sessions, which began in No-vember, will continue in January. A five-day session begins January 9 and contin-ues through January 13, meeting Monday through Friday evening from 5:30 to 9 p.m. The second session is set for two Satur-days, January 14 and 21, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The sessions will be held at Goodwill Industries at 5901 San Dario Ave.

Volunteers are encouraged to register online at www.laredofesc.org or to call David Morales at (956) 320-0016 or (956) 284-0344.

VITA’s free income tax preparation ef-forts are targeted at Laredoans who earn less than $50,000 a year. Volunteers will assist with Schedule A and Schedule C re-turns and with earned income credit (EIC).

— LareDOS Staff

News Brief

VITA program seeks 200 volunteers


The record rainfall of 2.69” on December 10 was a welcome site in what otherwise has been a very dry year. Besides the

lack of rain, the year 2011 is likely to be remembered by many Texans as the year of heat and fire.

Thanks to a persistent dome of high pressure that parked itself over Texas for much of the summer, many cities across the state, including Austin, Houston, and Dallas broke records for the hottest summer ever, most 100˚ days ever, most consecutive 100˚ days ever, among other records.

Laredo was no exception to this heat. While the Gateway City is accustomed to being hot, several records were broken in 2011. According to Richard “Heatwave” Berler, chief meteorologist at KGNS-TV, new records include: most 100˚ days (122); most days over 90˚ (216); most midnights over 90˚ (12); most nighttime lows over 80˚ (29); and tied the record for warmest nighttime low temperature, 84 .̊

For Texas as a whole, once all data are calculated, the average temperature for July was 87.2 ,̊ breaking the old record of 86.5˚ set back in 1998.

The heat, combined with the state’s worst drought in recorded history, result-ed in the worst fire season ever. In Texas alone, 3 million acres were burned by wildfires, which also sent a smoky haze as far south as the Río Grande Valley and northern Mexico. And while the 2011 heat wave was a scorcher no doubt, it still does not top the infamous 1936 heat wave, still considered the nation’s worst.

Several factors caused the heat wave during the summer of 1936. First, several droughts in the Plains states prior to 1936 caused rainfall to be well below normal. The lack of rain parched the land and killed vegetation. This lack of vegetation

and thus lack of soil moisture, lead to the land acting as a “furnace.” This region be-came well known for dust storms across what was once lush farmland, and there-fore the 1930s were named the “Dust Bowl era.” Lastly, a very strong high pressure ridge parked itself over the west coast, funneling heat northward across the Up-per Midwest and Great Lakes region.

Just how hot was it in July 1936? Try over 115˚ by day and 80s and 90s by night…and it was not in Laredo or south-ern Texas, but instead way north.

According to the book Extreme Weather by Christopher Burt, all-time record highs were set for 15 states and still stand to this day, including 121˚ in North Dakota and Kansas and 120˚ in Oklahoma. In fact for many cities and states, July 1936 remains the hottest ever recorded.

Even the Canadian provinces of On-tario and Manitoba had temperatures of at least 110 .̊ According to archived data from Environment Canada’s Weather Of-fice, the town of Emerson, Manitoba re-corded 8 straight days of 100˚ plus heat in July 1936, including 112˚ on the 12th. Win-nipeg recorded 108˚ on the 11th.

South Texas got a brief taste of this heat wave in August 1936, as Laredo hit 113˚ on August 11, which remains the all-time record for the month of August. Though once averaged out, Laredo’s high temperatures were slightly below normal in both July and August of 1936, accord-ing to archived data from the National Weather Service.

Nighttime temperatures during the 1936 heat wave were also unbearable. On July 25, 1936, Lincoln, Neb., recorded a nighttime low of 91˚! The heat of the day and night made sleeping inside one’s own house unbearable.

In this era, most homes and buildings

did not have air conditioning, as this was just a developing technology. As a result, thousands of people would sleep outside in open fields or city parks. Others would use ice blocks and fans, while the few who were able to, stayed in the few hotels with

early types of air-conditioning systems. In all over 5,000 people died from this

heat wave, most from either heat stroke or heat exhaustion. What made this heat wave more ironic is that it followed what was the coldest winter ever. ◆

Keeping a Weather Eye

Record-breaking heat, drought give way to historic rainfall

By Juanalanis

Alanis, former of Laredo, is currently a meteorology student at Mississippi State University.

He is a member of the American Meteorology Society (AMS) and

Webb County Coordinator for the CoCoRaHS/National Weather Service rainfall observer program


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News Brief

KLRN Public Television for San Antonio is broadcasting at a level twice as powerful as its previous transmitter output.

The increase was in place shortly after a November 30 approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The increase will greatly expand the reach of the signal into distant viewing locations, and it will also increase the like-lihood that viewers with indoor antennas will be better able to receive and enjoy the station’s programming.

Viewers who have tried in the past to receive KLRN’s over‐the‐air signal are urged to try again. It will be necessary to re‐scan for digital channels on receivers for those who have not received the station in the past. Those who have received the signal but have seen digital breakups or in-

terference should try again. KLRN’s newly increased power will reduce the ‘over‐the‐

air’ reception problems.“This has been a process that has taken

two years to achieve. We are extremely pleased that some of our long-term viewers will now receive our ‘over‐the‐air’ signal with greater clarity. Not only does greater transmission power extend our signal, it helps the signal pass through buildings and other surface obstacles,” said William G. Moll, president and CEO of KLRN.

Even with the power increase, the best reception is enhanced by an all‐band an-tenna (VHF and UHF). An outdoor antenna will always perform better than an indoor antenna. Viewers can call (210) 270-9000 or e-mail [email protected] if they have installa-tion, re‐scan, or reception questions.


KLRN Public Television doubles transmitter power

Visit www.laredosnews.com

Keeping a Weather Eye

In time For ChristmasThe Catholic Diocese of Laredo schools — elementaries, St. Augustine Middle School and St. Augustine High School — donated more than $2,000 to the South Texas Food Bank. STFB representatives Salo Otero, Alfonso Casso Jr. and Cindy Liendo Espinoza accepted the donation from Diocese Supt. Dr. Rosa Maria Vida, school principals, and students. The schools collected $1 from each student.


Opinion

Tejanos and Mexicanos united: a story of kinshipBy JOSé ANtONIO LópEz

LareDOS Staff

Unified by genetic links of a DNA chain that stretches from Texas to the very heart of Mexico, Spanish

Mexicans and Native Americans of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands share a solid bond of kinship. Our pioneer ancestors’ inspiring story is one of faith, bravery, and determination. It is these Mexican roots that gave rise to the Tejano people, the first citizens of Texas.

Mexican families began settling Tex-as around 1699 or 1700. They first reached the newly opened San Juan Bautista Presidio and missions on the upper Río Grande. The site, (now Guerrero, Coa-huila, and Eagle Pass) became known as the “Gateway to Texas.”

In 1716, Spanish Mexicans nearly si-multaneously settled East Texas, San Antonio, and La Bahia (Goliad). Then, in 1747, they established the Villas del Norte along the lower Río Grande. Families from Monclova, Coahuila, Monterrey, Queretaro, Zacatecas, Ve-racruz, and places in between built the first communities “deep in the heart of Texas.”

There was never organized immi-gration of Spaniards (Españoles) di-rectly from Spain to Texas. The few Españoles (Peninsulares) in mid-1700s Texas came via Mexico and were never

slightly over 10 percent of the popula-tion. There were other nationalities in-cluded, such as Italians and Frenchmen who had sworn allegiance to Spain. The majority of our ancestors in early Texas settlements were Creoles (white Spanish born in America), mestizos of both Spanish and Mexican (Native American) blood, Native Americans (Indios), mulattoes, and blacks.

The Camino Real embraced the Mexican communities in the north (Texas) and those in the south. The Camino allowed families to commu-nicate with, trade, and support each other in the Texas frontera. Marriages, christenings, and baptisms supple-mented kinship. These unions fur-ther strengthened family bonds. The settlers became comadres, compadres, madrinas, and padrinos at a time when these endearing terms meant much more than they do today.

Suddenly, in 1848 their family life was turned upside down. It was then that the U.S. subsumed over half of Mexico’s sovereign territory. The Río Grande, then a local river settled on both sides by the same families, be-came a permanent Mason-Dixon Line, separating close-knit families.

The anti-Mexican campaign was instant. Discrimination and intoler-ance came quickly. Their lifeline, the Camino Real, was sliced in two. Families in Monclova, Monterrey, or

Saltillo could no longer freely get on the Camino Real to visit their kin in Texas. Because Tejanos looked like the enemy, spoke Spanish like the enemy, and worshipped as Catholics like the enemy, the arriving Anglos treated Tejanos like the enemy.

First, the Tejanos were physically abused and then ostracized. Finally, eth-nic cleansing drives pushed lots of them south. Some families found refuge on the northern side of the river. Still, many oth-ers were forced to cross the river to escape the brutality. Modern-day descendants of these displaced Tejano families now living in Mexico have not been repatriated back to Texas.

Today, far-right extremists have re-vived the old anti-Mexican campaign. Mexican-looking citizens are treated with suspicion because of their Native American brown skin. As such, many parents withhold discussing their Mexi-can origins with their children. Others are afraid to speak Spanish in public, hoping to gain acceptance in main-stream Anglo society.

As a young child growing up in Laredo, it was puzzling to me why some of our kin lived “en el otro lado,” or “the other side.”

We looked identical. Yet, they were often made uncomfortable by rude, aggressive customs agents at the bridge. My relatives’ only course was to yield. To do otherwise would lead to harsher treatment. What had they done, I often wondered, to be treated in such an undignified manner?

Little did I know then that all our ancestors in Texas had once come from Mexico. They deserved respect, but they rarely received even the most basic hu-man courtesy. The awkward situation has existed for generations. It is tolerated by families only because they want to maintain a shared heritage.

For example, Arturo Garza Uribe from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and I are cousins. That in itself is not un-usual until you consider that our fam-ilies have been divided by a political boundary since 1848. Nonetheless, at a recent family gathering we greeted each other as primos, with a firm hand-shake and a hearty Mexican “abrazo,” just as our ancestors have done for many generations. We didn’t say adios, but rather, “Hasta luego.”

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U.S. citizens of Mexican descent are by far the largest group under the Hispanic umbrella. They were once the majority in the Southwest and are poised to regain that distinction in a few years. Thus, contacts across the river will most certainly increase. An innate curiosity has put them in a quest to find their long-lost primos.

Ironically, the same ignorance re-garding Mexican influence in early Texas causes two opposite outcomes. First, it encourages hateful far-right extremists who haven’t realized that Texas and the Southwest are in Old Mexico (New Spain), not in New England. Secondly, many Mexican-descent citizens themselves are un-aware of their rich history in the U.S. Neither do they realize that learning of their roots will set them free from the long-standing injustice. After all, ignorance feeds intolerance; knowl-edge feeds understanding.

Simply put, I wrote this article to inspire U.S. citizens of Mexican-

descent, whether eighth-generation Tejano/Tejana or first or second gen-eration. Don’t be demoralized by far-right insults. Push back. Stand up for your rights. You descend from Spanish-Mexican pioneers with courage second to none. Don’t let the extremists use the illegal immigra-tion issue to attack our heritage on this side of the border. For example, my cousin Arturo and I refuse to let a political line affect our family ties. Nor are we intimidated by the threat of a Berlin Wall-type fence along the Texas border. Tejano-Mexican DNA strands across the Río Grande have withstood the ordeal of bigotry for 170 years and have not broken.

Finally, the Tejano Monument in Austin will soon serve as a perma-nent reminder that it was Spanish-Mexican pioneers who built this great place we call Texas. In short, their descendants in Texas and the Southwest still live here today. They never left. To sum it all: “¡Aquí to-davía estamos, y no nos vamos!” ◆




Laredo artist David Berrones delves into the macabre and surreal as he creates his unique mixed-media col-

lages. Influenced by eclectic artists, everybody from (in)famous graffiti artist Banksy to surrealist legend Sal-vador Dali, Berrones will bring his art to the Guerra Centre Reception Hall on Saturday, January 7, from 8 p.m. to midnight in an exhibit called “Parts & Labour.”

Berrones, who attended United High School, studied at Laredo Com-munity College and received a bach-elor’s degree in studio art at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He

moved back to Laredo in 2004.Now, mainly due to the birth of his

child, Berrones works less with poten-tially harmful materials and more with whatever he can find — pens, pencil, markers, etc. The pieces that will be displayed at the January 7 show are mainly mixed-media (using different materials to make one piece of art) col-lages.

“…This work questions the authority of pictures found in books, magazines, advertisements and the Internet by di-rectly intervening into their ordinary status,” according to Berrones’ artist statement, later adding, “The goal here is to integrate these appropriations with original elements in the form of collage and create a new Pop-inflected dialectic visual experience.”◆

Arts Culture

‘parts&Labour’

LareDOS sat down with Berrones to talk about his upcom-ing exhibit, growing up without many outlets for expres-sion, and how his art has evolved.

“Obstacle 1” 2010

“porch” 2010

Q: How long have you been creating art?

A: Since junior high. I guess I started drawing comic book strips and taking art classes in high school. Didn’t learn too much, so I went to LCC and A&M in Corpus. I did a lot of oil painting in college. Since I’m an art teacher, [and] I have a young son, I can’t really paint with fumes anymore.

Q: How does your artistic process work?

A: I’ll feel an attachment or connection to a song. I love to daydream or dream in general. I have stacks and stacks of books, magazines, and of course, the Internet. I’ll start referencing imagery that will work well for that piece. I will wake up in the middle of the night. I saw this in my head. It’s not really reality, it’s surreal.

Q: What experiences helped you devel-op this “fragmented and disjointed” view of the world or art?

A: Basically it’s just a narration of our society; the world around us; issues that people deal with; religious imagery. What I’m doing is called ‘appropriation art.’ It is taking imagery, removing it, and putting it in a new context — combining new images to create a story.

Q: Can you explain if it’s an optimistic, or pessimistic, or neutral?

A: A little bit of both. I watch a lot of TV, news, and so on — History Channel and all that. I don’t think we are going to be gone in the future, but I think our way of living is going to change. I think we’re going to go back to smaller communities and to being more self-sufficient. Right now if something catastrophic happens, we’re going to be in the dark ages. I think my outlook in life has changed since I’ve had a child.

Q: How do you think your art has changed since having a child?

A: I think the major influence has become more of an illustrator than a painter just be-cause I’m watching so many cartoons and reading children’s books. I would like to con-tinue this style on a canvas, which is a little more difficult. I was doing similar work with this, but it was all on one sheet. Working on

a negative space was hard. I’ve become very OCD. I noticed that when I had a son, and my wife is an RN. That has been my biggest struggle, where I’m very meticulous and, it kind of takes away from the ability to express yourself. Doing this style kind of suits me, because of my meticulousness. My left brain and right brain are always pitted against each other.

Q: Do you think technology has helped or hindered art?

A: I’m not anti-technology. In a way, it’s been good for an art because you have so much more exposure. It’s a global thing now. The only bad thing I think is it’s made people lazy and lose their skill. You can do this on Photoshop. As long as you have an idea, you can pretty much do it. But in a way, that’s hurting.

Working by hand is more roman-tic; I think people can also appreciate it more.

Q: You say you are inspired by artists such as Rauschenberg, War-hol, Banksy, and Dali. How do they show up in your work?

A: Rasuchenberg used a lot of im-agery like Kennedy in his artwork. He used recognizable imagery to ex-press himself…Warhol’s techniques and colors. He would splice that im-agery and create kind of a like a col-lage using different photographs John Stezaker. Banksy’s pop sensiblities.

Q: If no one bought your art or if you did not have shows like the upcoming show at Guerra Centre, would you continue doing your art?

A: Yes, it’s not a monetary game. It’s not to be famous. It’s just something that you have to do. I know it’s a cliché, but I think it was my god-given talent. Maybe I was put here for this. I want people to connect to [to my art], just like how people make connections to songs. I would like peo-ple to make their own interpretation. Art is very therapeutic, too. I’m a very poor speaker, so I do it visually. If you look at the titles to all the pieces, they are all referencing song titles. It’s pretty much my homage to them, or my visual interpretation.

Q: I noticed one particular piece of yours makes a reference to Picasso. It actu-ally says “Fuck Picasso” on it with images of the artist. What’s with that?

A: Picasso was the father of invention. He did everything. I’m not saying it in a deroga-tory way; I’m saying most artists strive to be him, but it’s kind of unattainable. Jackson Pollock was always drawing “F Picasso,” but he doesn’t mean it literally. He said, ‘I want to be that guy,’ and Pollock was pretty close. He was just an icon. Still to this day – there’s no one like him. He was true artist. If you could meet any three people, he would definitely be on the top of that list. Probably Picasso and Jesus.

Q: Have you had to censor or compro-mise any messages you may have wanted to include in your art?

A: I used do a lot of nudes and faculty was like ‘Uh, it’s not really a nude, it’s more hardcore.’ I actually had to censor my art-work with black bars. And when I did a bust of myself, I also painted black bars on the mouth and the eyes to protest censorship.

In a way, I do have to tone it down. People are more conservative and it’s too much of a shock factor than maybe in Austin, where it’s more liberal.

Q: So does religion have a lot of impact on your work?

A: I went to private school for 9 years, so it was drilled into my mind and ingrained. It made me somewhat who I am. It changes your outlook on life. Once I went to public school, it was like a culture shock. I kind of strayed from being religious. Established re-ligion is not what I feel it should be. I’m still spiritual, but I don’t buy into the way the church has become.

Q: When was the last time you exhibited your work?

A: I had a graduate show back in 2003, and I did a couple of coffee places. I kind of let it slip away for a while and got into other things. I was just like idling for a long time’ didn’t really have a definite style. A year and a half ago is when I started doing the mixed-media work. I’ve been sitting on this skill for such a long time; I was striving to find my own style. I think I found it. People think ev-erybody can do this, but they can’t, it’s layers and layers of imagery.

Q: Is your art for sale?A: I’m going to sell the originals; I’m mak-

ing Giclée plates. I’ll have posters for sale as well. I don’t want to isolate a certain demo-graphic. I think my demographic is prob-ably from 16 to 36, but I’ve had young kids who like my work, and a woman in her 80s bought a poster at one of my booths at the art bazaar.

Q: What advice would you give to young artists who may want to be successful?

A: I would say practice; hone in on your skills. Look at as many artists as you can and research. Find your style. You just need to be consistent and you need to keep going. You can’t be idle; you need to keep producing. The biggest one is research: Reference many artists. When I was in school, Internet was pretty much non-existent. All I had was my local library. In that sense, I think it’s a lot easier for artists nowadays… They have the Internet. ◆


“Big Empty” 2011


La Roca6102 McPherson Road

La Roca has always had a fascinat-ing array of unique foods on its menu, and you don’t have to wor-ry about bad service while you’re perusing the long list of delicious seafood and steaks. The waiters are usually courteous and effi-cient. The MC never noticed any waiters/waitresses who went the extra mile to make him feel com-pletely welcome, but they get the job done professionally.

Part of good customer service at a restaurant includes the most basic aspect: the food itself. Nowa-days you rarely get to see who is cooking your food, so it’s always a risk ordering food from the av-erage “family” restaurant. Who knows if it will be cooked correct-ly? Or maybe it’ll turn out bland. Not so at La Roca.

The MC ordered the Seafood Roll, a “fish fillet Au Gratin” filled

with creamy seafood, with garlic toast, a baked potato, buttery rice, and coleslaw. The presentation was marvelous — the MC almost did not want to touch the food because it looked so picture-perfect. But as the MC dug in, layers and layers of gooey cheese and creamy seafood almost brought tears of happiness to his eyes. Keep it up, La Roca!

T-Mobile5110 McPherson Road

Many thanks to Abran at T-Mo-bile for helping the MC make the mental leap for all the high-tech features of her new cell phone. His explanations were thorough, and he was patient about the data that flew over her head. “I just need it to ring and for someone to say hello,” she told him.

The Holiday RestaurantU.S. Hwy. 83Zapata, Texas

If you’re traveling on the south country fare on a cold, blustery morning, the Holiday is a great place to stop for breakfast and a good cup of coffee. Great service from friendly waiters and wait-resses, as always.

Dairy Queen4205 San Bernardo Ave.

It saddens the MC that the San Bernardo Dairy Queen in Laredo has such poor customer service. Yes, DQ is one of the things “I like about

Texas,” but this location has several problems, particularly with cleanli-ness and service.

Chick-fil-A1916 Bob Bullock Loop

Laredoans love Chick-fil-A, and the MC can say that with complete confidence after witnessing the fast food restaurant’s lunch rush. If you loved Chick-fil-A simply for their famously quick drive-thru service, the Loop location left me feeling warm and friendly after my server treated me with great. ◆

The Mystery Customer

La Roca’s food inspires repeated visits;great service at the Holiday in Zapata

ByByBtHe

mysteryCustomer

La Roca’s Seafood Roll

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It’s December, and while November began the holiday season off with a gluttonous bang, December shines as the month that food rules. From

savory roasts and stews to sweet cook-ies and cakes, December’s food allows people to enjoy great meals and snacks all month round without guilt; or at least with less guilt.

I love eating and I love cooking, but without people around me to enjoy the food, it means nothing to me. Accord-ingly, one of my favorite aspects of De-cember, besides being able to cook loads of food, is throwing a Christmas party. No gifts exchanges, no fuss. This year I’m throwing a small party with a few friends over for simple, but tasty finger foods. Finals are all that we can think about, so this party is supposed to be a stress reliever.

And that includes relief for the host, too. Don’t get me wrong, I love serving a meal that took three hours to cook, but I simply don’t have the time to do that for a party.

My rule to make this party as stress- free as possible is this: If it takes more than half an hour for me to prepare, for-get it. I could never forgive myself if my guests came over and the food was not ready for them, or if only half the food I expected to serve isn’t happening. So, any

shortcuts that are not instant — never in-stant — are welcome in my kitchen dur-ing party time. Here are a few tips that are sure to make your party endeavors run more smoothly.

Instead of trying to bake cakes from scratch, use a box mix. In fact, if that cake is a part of a more complex recipe, like a trifle, buy a ready-made cake. Speaking of store-bought items, if you want to make plain store-bought sugar cookies special, dip half of them in chocolate. Melt a few chips of semi-sweet chocolate in the micro-wave and either dip or brush the chocolate on the cookies. Little steps like these will make store-bought sweets home-assem-bled treats.

Cold cuts are used often for large-scale parties for a reason: They are a simple, ef-fective, and delicious way to feed your guests. Instead of buying an overpriced cold cut tray, I make my own by purchas-ing three to five packaged, thinly sliced deli meats. I arrange petals of meat on a nice tray and garnish with parsley. If you want a fancy tray, cube or crumble bits of cheese, and lace them in between the meat.

Another food tip I rely on while throwing a party is try to use fresh fruit as often as possible. They’re great for a light dessert, require little preparation, and are already festive colors. Perhaps one of my favorite recipes is surprisingly

Traditionally Modern Cooking

Forbidden Fruit treats

By Jason Herrera

Herrera is an English major at Oklahoma City University. He’s had a passion for cooking since he was 8 years old, when he started

teaching himself recipes and eventually, creating his own scrumptious meals. Herrera also enjoys gardening and horror movies.

Tips for a traditionally modern holiday party

Forbidden Fruit Salad• One cup of blueberries• Two cups of strawberries• One pomegranate• Two apples (preferably “Pink Lady”)• Two kiwis• 2 teaspoons of lemon/lime juice

Quarter the strawberries. Cut the apples into 1/2 inch cubes. Remove the seeds from the pomegranate by cutting it in half, and either holding it over a bowl and thwacking the sides of it with a rolling pin or placing the pomegran-ate in a bowl of water and running through the flesh with your hands. Get rid of the white waxy bits and drain the water. Use only the seeds. Cut the kiwi into small cubes. Toss all of the fruit together in a bowl with the lime juice. Chill until ready to serve.

Forbidden Fruit PieNow, I need to go the extra mile for a few of my party foods, and when

I’m feeling like I’m in need of a pie, I convert the fruit salad into my favorite Forbidden Fruit Pie.

• Forbidden Fruit Salad• 1 cooked pie crust (1/3 cups shortening, 1 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 4-6 tablespoons cold flour)• 1/2 cup sugar• 1 1/2 cup water• 3 tablespoons corn starch• 6-8 strawberries, crushed

Mix the sugar, water, corn starch, and strawberries together in a sauce-pan. Boil on medium until thickened. Toss the fruit salad into the pie crust. Strain and add the thickened liquid to the top of pie. Chill for at least 3 hours in the refrigerator.

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BY CRISTINA HERRERALareDOS Staff

Four years ago, Alberto “Beto” Gutierrez took on what might seem a daunting task to many: He became head chef of La Pos-

ada Hotel’s culinary team, in charge of creating new recipes and maintaining a staff specifically trained in fine dining. Gutierrez oversees catering, the Zarago-za Grill, the Tack Room, and anything food-related at the hotel.

We sat down with chef Gutierrez at the Zaragoza Grill, where the Z Express lunch menu offers delicious fine-dining twists on lunch favorites such as the BLT sandwich and the albacore tuna melt — all for for $9.

Q: What makes lunch at Zaragoza Grill different than other lunch lo-cales?

A: The ingredients are extremely fresh — cook-to-order. A lot of places will cook their food in advance, but we’re cook -to-order. It sounds like a cliché, but it’s true. That’s where a lot of freshness and flavor comes from — the fact that it’s not just sitting there from the day before or even hours before. That’s something we try to strive for on a daily basis.

Q: Where do your ingredients come from?

A: Big-name pur-veyors, but we try to get a lot of organic stuff in here [and] natural ingredients whenever possible. I’m not claiming that the entire menu is natural/organic, but we are moving toward that little by little. As far as din-ers are concerned, they are becoming a lot more savvy as to where their food comes from…I think organic and sus-tainable foods are going to become pret-

ty mainstream in the next few years.Q: You mentioned organic foods be-

ing a trend in the next few years. What are some of the other food trends you predict for 2012 and beyond?

A: As far as this year, I do see a move-ment to a lot of styles of eating. I think people want to share more; they want to make the whole experience kind of communal. So shared plates, like appe-tizers. I guess the term could be “por-table luxury.” I think society and the economy we’re in has become less of a materialistic-type viewpoint, and we’re going to be leaning more toward an ex-perience. People will spend money more on memories. Instead of saying, ‘Oh I should save up to get a flat-screen TV,’ the thinking now is, ‘I should save $2000 to go to Spain for a week.’ People are go-ing to be more experimental; more will-ing to try other things, which is great for chefs such as myself. We get to be more creative in the kitchen.

Q: What about diet trends? Espe-cially as the New Year is coming up and people are making their resolutions.

A: I’m really starting to not use the word ‘diet’ anymore. It’s more of a ‘nu-tritional program,’ because the word ‘diet’ connotates starving yourself and eating a bunch of bland food. That’s not

really what you should be doing. When you’re trying to eat something healthy or of nutritional val-ue, I think you should pull the word ‘diet’ out of it com-pletely. Focus on words like

‘healthy,’ ‘nutritional,’ [and] ‘wholesome.’ People are going to want to eat healthier. The same thing with people wanting to know where their food comes from

— they’ll also want to know how many calories are in their food. So I think it’s important for restau-rants to have options for people who have made a healthy life-style shift.

Q: How is Zara-goza Grill going to change or adapt as the year goes along?

A: We’ve been offering cooking classes. We’re go-ing to be starting some in January. It’s really about nutri-tional eating because basically when you want to eat, you also want to get the most of it that you can, whether it be getting vitamins or if you are on a program that cuts back on carbohy-drates. In fact we have many dishes on the menu now that cut back on carbs, like fishes, vegetables, and sauces that we have to get creative with so every-thing tastes good. With spring coming around the corner, that’s when I really like to experiment with vegetables.

Q: Where do your recipe ideas come from?

A: lot of it is what I like to eat. Some of it comes from other cities, of course. When I visit New York, San Francisco, etc. I try to do that inspired cuisine. I hate to use the word ‘fusion,’ but we try to combine French, Ital-ian, and other cuisines to create a new flavor. A lot of times recipes come from seasonal ingredients. A lot of times it’s just stuff in the kitchen. You run a special and put it to-

gether, and you’re constantly refining and refining.

Q: You oversee all of La Posada’s restaurants, but what is your favorite aspect about the Zaragoza Grill spe-cifically?

A: My favorite part about the Zara-goza Grill is the fact that we get to do a lot of different things. We do a brunch menu on Sundays. I love breakfast, so a lot of times we do a late breakfast. I get inspired to do brunch dishes. And of course we do a cool lunch special. That’s a great outlet for us to do a cool sandwich, pasta, cup of soup, etc. And we can also be really high-end, like with the lamb chops. I’m really doing several menus at the same time. ◆

— Z Express lunch menu —(11 a.m.-3 p.m.)

Monday: Croque madameTuesday: Classic chicken Caesar saladWednesday: Albacore tuna meltThursday: BLT sandwichFriday: Soup and sandwich combo

Feature

La Posada’s head chef shares 2012 food, diet trendsC

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laredos - december 2011

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