Live From The Limo...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas | He's been dead less than a year, an ending to a life of music and blamed greed. Yes, you could say it was just an ordinary South Texas life, one born from poverty of the worst kind, yet one that bloomed in ways that only the Lord might understand.

Musician Paulino Bernal died last September.

His music, they say, lives on in the fingers of area accordion players to be found in the region's popular Tejano Sound. Bernal was Tejano before Tejano was cool, as some weepy, nostalgic Pachuco might say about here. And he would be right. Bernal played the Rio Grande Valley to the Max - in music and, later, in the unapologetic sale of broadcast Christianity.

Was he sincere in the latter, or was he simply out to make money?

Life, it is said, can most certainly be anything and everything after it is granted by the Savior and one finds himself/herself on this cold and cruel planet, all options on the table. Music opens up so many doors. Bernal was more than convinced it opened the Pearly Gates. But, really, who knows where he is in the afterlife. No one knows. Well, the only ONE who knows isn't saying. He never says.

In his musical world, Bernal was as popular as anyone ever was. his Conjunto Bernal drew fans like guacamole draws flies. Those 1960s Sunday tardeadas at Joe Vera's Blue Moon Ballroom in Pharr still hang hard to the memory walls of so many RGV Hispanics. His blaring accordion music served as perfect soundtrack for countless of blown out crinoline romances. The young women loved his band; the young men needed it as soundtrack to a ragged border version of love. It was the Era of Pachucos and those guys could be jealous as all get-out and they could take a guy's wink at his gal and crazily go to the chingasos mat.

Bernal offered a welcomed image of being a humble man. He'd grown up in Raymondville, son of a very poor family. That forced him into the sunbaked cottonfields at a very young age. In fact, he only made it to the seventh grade in school. A record producer in nearby Alice heard Bernal's music and signed them to a contract with fabled Ideal Records. Little by little, dance show after dance show, El Conjunto Bernal made its way into the then-emerging Baile Grande scene. The 60s decade came fast and furious for the group, with success birthing other enterprises for Bernal, including a Restaurant and, soon after, his own record label - Bernal Records.

Ironically, and we say that mainly because of what came later, one of his biggest songs was one titled "Mujer Paseada," in English "Much-Traveled Woman." It is a song about a man in love with a woman more than experienced in romance. Not quite the desired good and honest Mexican woman, in other words.

A ti te quiero mujer, no le hace que seas paseada

Te quiero porque te quiero

The big change in Bernal's life, and one that went against all that was rotgut love, came in 1972, when he devoted his full-attention to preaching the goodness of Christianity. As we said, Bernal was not an educated man. His knowledge of theology was likely zero up until the time he dedicated his life to spreading the word of God. In telling the story of finding God, Bernal credited a man he'd hired as chef for instructing him on the ways of the Lord.

What then followed would be a full life that requires more a book than a story here. That change in his life funneled Bernal into a whole other world, a new & different world that promised not only a better life but one that came, he always said, with riches only God could provide.

Critics soon surfaced, most saying Bernal was a hypocrite, that his discovery of preaching was nothing more than another way of making money. Small radio stations he had purchased across South Texas went full-gospel in their programing. Bernal's way in preachings swayed Hispanics who had grown up with his music. They knew him; they believed him.

A story is told of an elderly woman who called-in to one of his shows to say she wanted to give money, but had none. Bernal is said to asked her if she had a car. When the woman said yes, he reportedly told her to sell it and send him the cash.

Other stories chased him, some salacious and some simply following the thread of Bernal's calls for monetary contributions in exchange for personal prayers. His story is well-known in the Rio Grande Valley, and perhaps someone will someday tell it in its sordid entirety.

Was Paulino Bernal a good Christian, a two-note musician, or was he just another flawed South Texas character?

The man lived a full life.

He was 83 years old when he died in McAllen...

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