KEEP THE CHANGE...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas | The busy people who count heads for the U.S. government say there are a few more than 1,370,000 people in the entire Rio Grande Valley. Yeah, just a chunk over one million friends and neighbors. Well, who knows about friends, but neighbors, yes.

And, sure, there is a lot of Life down here that meshes well between the many cities and towns from McAllen to Brownsville some 60 miles downriver. The flea markets all look pretty much the same, as do the smiles and the frowns you'll see in pit stops on any given trip up and down the main expressway.

McAllen is located on the western end, its place in the RGV in many ways that of an outlier. It is, by most accounts, the residential and economic jewel of the valley. Harlingen rests (and we mean that) almost in the geographic center, some 30 miles from both McAllen and Brownsville. That Brownsville holds the eastern end of the bar, as curvy meseras say in cantina booze.

In between, you'll find a literal gumball machine of much smaller towns. According to the government's 2020 census, a whopping 94.2% of the RGV's population is Hispanic.

That would seem to make getting along a lot easier.

But does it?

Can you find agreement from one end of the valley to the other in politics? No, not in politics. That, more and more, is a mangrove swamp. In food, yes. Try finding one Hispanic (mostly Mexican-Americans here, btw) who does not like chicken tacos or grilled fajitas. The sweet language of Spanish romance is one also easily shared, one accompanied by the soulful sounds of Tejano, conjunto, Tex-Mex rock music that has more similarities than outsiders may think. You date or marry into a Hispanic family and that family will fill most of your Life's activities, not that there is anything wrong with that. It is, however, one more outright, upfront example of the region's strong Mexican culture.

So, then, without making this more than it deserves, do Valley residents get along?

Yes, the answer is yes.

It is in the quirky realm of the word "agreement" that things deviate from anything that could be called harmony. Residents have found action in the world of politics, local, state and national. You could likely credit the bombastic Donald Trump for some of it (those Trump Trains full of excitable young Mexicans in Trump flag-adorned pickups), although Hispanics have been front-center in local politics for a good five decades. Where once they were ruled by old guard Anglos such as former strong-willed Mayor Othal Brand of McAllen and to a lesser degree in Harlingen and Brownsville, today you'll find mostly Mexicans in all high posts at City Hall.

That is general knowledge here.

Mexican-American mayors and county judges have come steadily. Have they brought a better Valley? Not really, although they have maintained a however-slow pace of progress. Law enforcement is far & away the home of brown-skinned cops these days. Both the sheriffs of Hidalgo County here and Cameron County next door are Mexican-American.

So, okay, back to our original question: Do Valleyites get along?

The easy, generalized answer is: Yes, they do.

There are moments when they do not, however. Friday nights finds many against each other, but only in defense of their local high school football teams. Everyone is seemingly in on keeping the valley as it is, even as the Republican Party has made inroads in area politics. Yet, even there you'll find younger Mexican-Americans eager to "party" Republican while their parents and grandparents hold hard to being what they've always been - Democrats.

We've looked for, but have not seen much in the way of protests to do with current white-hot national issues, such as the LBGQT hand-to-hand combat seen in major cities across the country. Yes, same for immigration and abortion as hot-button issues. They're not playing here in a heavily Catholic region. Not yet anyway. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next year.

The psyche of the Mexican-American, it says here, is such that nothing is a problem or a worry until it comes knocking on your door. In some quarters that is referred to as a "fatalistic" approach to Life; the one thought there being that Mexican-Americans always walk with a sense of impending doom, even when things are going well. Who really ever knows about that?

Observations can be damned shallow. You as a wandering amateur socio-scientist fully believe that one scene equals many more of the same in this part of Texas. Ethnically, it has been homogenized. Overly, I'd say.

Still, it's okay to go looking.

Short of walking into a blazing gunfight or a bloody street brawl, one wants to believe that people of the Rio Grande Valley do get along. The isolated incident to do with crime and bad manners does surface; this is calm and collected but not Utopia by any means.

Indeed, sometimes residents and the local news media make a big stink about something small just because it is a rare occurrence. That may be nothing more than human nature reacting to a bit of local drama.

The people of the RGV will keep doing their Life Impulse...

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