Bonfire Of The Vanities...

 

Letty Perez-Garzoria

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas | Once, they were the official spokespeople of local rage and ruin. All of them candidates for office, all arriving full of dreams, dreams that largely failed to materialize. They're still in town, only now they no longer front the political fight.

We shine a small Klieg light on them here today. No important reason; just a looksee at what once was.

Our stars today are Letty Perez-Garzoria, shown in cool photo above, Charlie Atkinson, Frankie Olivo, Ben Neece and Pat Ahumada. There will be others in future postings. Here, then, we capsulize their time in the city's Ring of Action -

LETTY PEREZ-GARZORIA: She was en fuego back when she ran for a seat on the Brownsville City Commission, her voice loud and proud. If ever there was a local candidate who seemed ready to topple the status quo, it was Miss Perez-Garzoria. Big change would come hard and quick to City Hall, she pledged. And there are those pundits who still say she would have done what she said she'd do. But the voters said "No" to her campaign. And there ended a nouveau politician's rise...

CHARLIE ATKINSON: He did get a seat on the City Commission and was something of a bellicose dude. We can't think of a single signature issue that he chased or accomplished. But Charlie remained an active voice in city doings via his busy Facebook page. These days, that page's contents have been tamped down and Charlie posts mostly photos of his fishing outings. Perhaps his sister Sylvia going to prison for taking a healthy bribe while a schoolboard trustee had something to do with it. But there was a time Charlie Atkinson, shown smiling in photo at right, played to the local political mobs, soothing some and angering many...

FRANKIE OLIVO: This young'un burst into the scene with a bang most politicians can only dread. Days into his campaign, word surfaced that Olivo had been sending photos and videos of his penis to a co-worker at the County Courthouse. Bloggers went nuts, with even pro-Mexicans blogger Juan Montoya unfurling court documents showing graphic evidence of the charge. Olivo, shown in photo at left below in glasses, never denied it, but he said he'd learned his lesson and had moved on. We looked for him on Facebook, but he seems to have disappeared from that platform, one he used extensively while a candidate for the Brownsville Independent School District Board of Trustees. Olivo lost that race. There was a reference on his mother's Facebook page telling of Olivo now working at an insurance agency...

BEN NEECE: Downtown was at last to be transformed into something spectacular when Neece won election to the Brownsville City Commission. It never happened. Neece played that card for four long years in which his main bent was to accomplish his goal. He got the city to approve spending some $245,000 on security cameras for Elizabeth Street, Brownsville's Main Street. Not much is said about what great benefit the cameras delivered, but Neece held hard to his belief that they altered the hustle & flow of drugs in his downtown district. Who knows? The police department never said as much. Neece was beaten in his reelection bid. A wild video flashed in town recently showed Neece seated at a downtown pub, seated there watching a galpal take a swing at another galpal, Neece, shown in photo below at right, not rising to stop the fight but merely interested in sitting back and crossing his leg. Perhaps that says something...

PAT AHUMADA: This former mayor still wants in on the tumbling at City Hall. Like Miss Perez-Garzoria, Ahumada is a born fighter. A silly city ordinance kept him off the mayoral ballot this last election, but Pat had convincingly lost a bid for a city commission seat (District 2) in the previous election. Who knows where he goes from here? Perhaps the county judge's job will tickle him, or maybe a shot at laidback Congressman Vicente Gonzalez. Ahumada, shown in front of his campaign sign in photo below, is not that old of dude. We noticed he now owns and runs a dog grooming business and lists himself as being "single" on his Facebook page. It wasn't that long ago that Brownsville voters saw him forever in the company of his petite, blondie wife...

There is, it should also be said about here, a long silly string of others who have hit the city's bright political spotlight on cue, and we will be revisiting their participation. If anything can be said about locals in the political arena it is that they are, well, interesting, unlike the more-controlled, better-behaved candidates to be found in the Rio Grande Valley's other two large cities, McAllen and Harlingen.

Yeah, you could say that all of the Brownsvillians listed above were some semblances of the sparkler.

You could say it on this Fourth of July, yes...

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