LareDOS March 2014

Locally Owned

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. — Mark Twain A JOURNAL OF THE BORDERLANDS march 2014

Est. 1994

Vol. XIX No. 3 64 PAGES

Meet Pete Pedro I. Saenz Jr. to announce mayoral bid Saenz says he wants to bring substance and leadership to the office of the mayor with a focus on job creation, a trained workforce, trategic planning, economic development, and finding a secondary water source.

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Taking the Polar Plunge Members of the Texas A&M International University College of Education along with others in the community participated in the Special Olympics Polar Plunge on Friday, March 7 at the Inner City Pool. TAMIU students surpassed their fundraising goal of $2,000 which benefits the Special Olympics of Laredo.

publisher

María Eugenia Guerra meg@laredosnews.com Editorial Assistant

Mariela Rodriguez Staff Writers

Mariela Rodriguez Sales

Contributors

María Eugenia Guerra design@laredosnews.com

Raul Casso

Henri Kahn

Circulation, Billing &

Bebe Fenstermaker

Randy Koch

Subscriptions meg@laredosnews.com

Sissy Fenstermaker

Salo Otero

Neo Gutierrez

Jennie Reed

Steve Harmon

Itiel Valdez

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www.laredosnews.com 1812 Houston Street Laredo, TX 78040 Tel: (956) 791-9950 • Fax: (956) 791-4737 Copyright © 2014 by LareDOS

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María Eugenia López (far right) was honored as Woman of the Year at the International Women’s Day Commemoration at Laredo Community College. The RACE ( Revolutionary Arts and Cultural Empowerment) Club hosted the event. López chose to share the honor with 14 other Laredo women. She is pictured with author Raquel Valle Senties, San Juanita Martinez, LCC English instructor and RACE sponsor Mary Sue Galindo, and López.

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Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Maria Eugenia Guerra/LareDOS

Woman of the Year

Volunteers for Habitat for Humanity Alisa Ignat, Cordney Reddy, and Carissa Vyhonsky were among the Collegiate Challenge volunteers who worked on Habitat for Humanity homes at Tierra Prometida from March 10 through March 14.

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Webb County Heritage Foundation board members Martha Fenstermaker and Dale Zuck, accompanied by Sally Zuck, are pictured on Thursday, March 6 at the opening reception for Visiones del Anáhuac by renowned Mexican landscape painter José María Velasco.

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Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

WCHF Velasco exhibit

Spring Break fishing at Casa Blanca Texas Parks and Wildlife hosted various family activities, including fishing, during Spring Break at Lake Casa Blanca. Park ranger Holly Reinhard is pictured assisting children with their fishing skills.

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Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Students observe national awareness for HIV/AIDS National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day was observed at the AHEC Health and Careers Camp at the UT Health Science Center Laredo Regional Campus on Monday, March 10.

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Greens Party convenes JP 4 candidate Lakshmana “Vish” Vishwanath addressed attendees of the Webb County Green Party convention on Saturday, March 15 at Caffé Dolce and thanked them for their continued support. He said he is eager for the November 2014 elections.

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Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Grand Champion turkey

Family time at the Monster Jam Pit Party

David Cruz is pictured with the Grand Champion turkey he raised on Saturday, March 1 at the 51st annual Laredo International Fair and Exposition.

Salvador, Melba, Willy, and Andrea Castillo were at the Laredo Energy Arena on Saturday, March 8 for the Monster Jam truck series.

Photo ops with the drivers was one of the activities prior to the show.

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Mailbox L

News

Eco Fest marks RGISC’s 20th year

etters to the publisher

My Dear Ms. M. E. Guerra: Thank you once again for another excellent (February 2014) issue and for spotlighting the issue of hunger with Mariela Rodriguez’s article “The New Faces of Hunger.” The people at Bethany House, Veterans Serving The Need, the South Texas Food Bank, and all food pantries across the land are truly doing God’s work.

As VSTN director Gigi Ramos says “salaries are too low.” Echoing this, Salo Otero comments: “...people must stand up to urge employers to pay living wages.” Our government NEEDS to raise the minimum wage. Don’t believe the lies they tell against raising it. These are the jobs they can’t export, prices are going to go up anyway, and if it was damaging to our economy we would all be living in mud huts by now because of all the times they have raised it in the past. I know too many people (including myself) who work very hard, but their checks are too small...because they can be. And don’t believe the lie they tell about the food stamp slacker. If someone on food stamps is not working, they are either disabled

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or mentally ill. There is just not any money in not working these days.

We are so far behind all the other industrialized nations in being fair to our workers that it causes the rest of the world to look at our nation in horror and amazement. But never underestimate the potential of human greed. Jesus didn›t that›s why he said the things he did. My favorite is the one about the rich man and the eye of the needle. Look it up. Our wonderful and kind new Pope Francis has also spoken out against human greed. Oh and readers, if you think a health problem or a job loss because of economic depression (human greed again!) or NAFTA (and more human greed!) can›t happen to you just wait till you get old. I hope you have a lot of money saved (and nobody steals it). Donate to your local food bank today while you have a chance (just as I used to) because the way things are going, tomorrow you will probably be standing at their door.

Sincerely, Jorge George Paez PS. Meg, love the Mystery Shopper. I live vicariously through it!

By MARIELA RODRIGUEZ LareDOS Staff

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reparations are underway for the Rio Grande International Study Center’s (RGISC) 2014 Laredo Eco Festival, which is slated for Saturday, April 12 at the Alexander Crossing — located off of McPherson Road and University Blvd.

The Eco Festival will include various kids’ activities, educational booths, informative speakers, music, food, and vendors selling handcrafted items, fresh produce, plants/herbs, and other Earthfriendly products.

The festival commemorates RGISC’s 20th anniversary with a day of outdoor activities.

“This event is being organized to help celebrate our organization’s 20 years of existence in Laredo,” RGISC executive director Tricia Cortez said, adding, “RGISC has worked hard to protect and preserve our only source of drinking water, the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo, and local green spaces.”

Eco-friendly demonstrations are also

on the agenda for the day to inform the community on how to live a greener, more environmentally friendly life.

Admission is only $2 per adult, and children under the age of 10 enter for free.

Volunteers are needed for this event, and Cortez promises that they will have an opportunity to earn valuable community service hours and be part of a meaningful community event.

An Essay and Poster Contest for local high school and college students will be held. The top three winners will receive a $250 scholarship award, and their work will be featured at the Eco Festival.

RGISC’s 20th Anniversary Steering Committee organized the 2014 Laredo Eco Festival. Sponsors thus far include D&J Alexander Management, Pepsi, 2 Step Entertainment, James Archer, Fr. Bill Davis, and the office of Constable Harold DeVally.

“We’re excited to host this exciting community event and hope that you’ll join us,” said Cortez.

For further information contact the RGISC office at (956) 718-1063 

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Feature

Roberta Ramirez: setting the pace to implement standards for LISD curriculum

By MARIELA RODRIGUEZ LareDOS Staff “There are many opportunities in Laredo to impact the education of our kids, even if not directly in the classrooms. I believe that each of us is responsible for improving the educational system,” said Roberta Ramirez, Laredo Independent School District (LISD) executive director of curriculum and instruction.” She added, “Mentoring, volunteering, becoming involved in local school districts to both understand and offer support are a few ways to be involved.”

Setting the pace and substance of the district’s curriculum has rested squarely on Ramirez’s shoulders since she took the position in March 2013.

“I work directly with principals to ensure implementation of district scope and sequence, effective utilization of resources, monitoring of instruction, and intervention initiatives,” she said.

According to Ramirez, “Part of the department’s responsibilities is to ensure that LISD offers a quality rigorous curriculum, aligned staff development that builds teacher knowledge and skills, and guides effective campus interventions for improved student success. We are a resource for all LISD campuses.”

About the process of developing curriculum Ramirez said, “There has to be a deep understanding of the required standards and student expectations (TEKS).

Analyzing data and trends, identifying areas of strength and weaknesses, and using the resources available are equally important.”

She added, “When preparing for curriculum development, it is imperative to look at all the factors and begin the alignment process to ensure that all TEKS are included. We use a collaborative process with curriculum deans, campus instructional specialists, and master teachers to develop our curriculum.”

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This year the district has worked on refining the curriculum by preparing guides by six-week content that includes TEKS, STAAR correlations, college and career readiness skills, as well as authentic literacy.

Born in Austin, Ramirez has lived in Knoxville, Baton Rouge, Los Angeles, and Zapata, where she grew up.

Ramirez earned a BA in finance from Southwest Texas University (Texas State) in San Marcos and a Masters in educational administration from St. Mary’s University.

She worked briefly at South Texas National Bank before returning to school to obtain a teaching certificate.

“I was a part of the Texas Alternative Certification Program at Laredo State University and began my teaching career with Zapata County Independent School District (ZCISD) at A.L. Benavides Elementary in San Ygnacio,” she said.

She moved to San Antonio and worked as an elementary bilingual teacher with the Southwest Independent School District for seven years, two years as an elementary school teacher in Lytle, and then became the campus instructional coordinator at Edison High School in San Antonio.

Ramirez became the assistant principal at United Middle School and in 2009 was promoted to principal.

“I worked there for four years before moving to LISD in my current capacity,” she added.

Ramirez said that as a young girl she aspired to become a lawyer. She intended to enter law school after earning her BA, but it was her work in the banking industry that prompted the realization that a law career wasn’t the right fit for her.

“I needed to be engaged in a career in which I capitalized on my creativity,” she said.

Her mother, then was an educator and assistant superintendent of human

resources with ZCISD, advised Ramirez of the alternative certification program, which led her to jump on the opportunity to become a teacher.

“It was the best decision I ever made.

I have been in the field for 24 years, and while I have encountered many challenges, the reward of working with students, particularly at-risk kids, has been priceless,” she said.

Ramirez observed that the accountability system Texas has been implementing over the last 30 years has had both positive and negative effects on teaching and on students.

“The Texas Educational System has made great strides to improve the education of students. I believe that because we deal with the human element — which is impacted by societal trends and environmental factors — it is extremely difficult to pin point with 100% accuracy how to best service students,” Ramirez said, adding, “As we continue to move forward towards higher accountability and standards, it is important that we not allow politics to make our children pawns.”

Educational reform continues to be a hot button in terms of closing the educational gap with other countries, according to Ramirez. “I continue to be perplexed with these facts because this country has so many resources and capabilities to ensure that students are prepared,” she said.

“HB5, which was recently approved, included recommendations to drop algebra II from graduation requirements as well as removing high stakes testing from sciences. Many teachers coming into the profession are not content area experts,” said Ramirez, adding, “This may contribute to the lack of performance in science and math.”

She elaborated on the need to revisit teacher certification qualifications.

“While I don’t have control overall on

the country’s education system, I can certainly have an impact on what happens locally in LISD,” she said.

Ramirez remains committed to ensuring through her department that the students are prepared to pursue higher education and a meaningful career.

LISD services 24,611 students, 99 percent of whom are Hispanic and 97 percent economically disadvantaged students.

Ramirez called STARR’s accountability “a part of life.”

She said, “STARR is intended to be used as a measuring tool and as a means to provide support to students and schools who are struggling. With respect to students who are identified as English Language Learners or Special Education students, the move towards increased accountability has sharpened the focus on these student groups to ensure that indeed ‘no child is left behind.’” She added, “The challenge, or one of the challenges, is being able to balance the demands of state accountability with teaching students to be functionally literate, critical thinkers, problem solvers, team players, and to also create life-long learners prepared for the demands of a global economy.”

Ramirez currently is a member of the executive board of United Way as well as a board member for the Children’s Advocacy Center.

“These two organizations are ones that I hold dear to my heart. I believe wholeheartedly in giving back to the community and helping those in need.

I believe in servant leadership, in being grateful for the blessing I have been given and sharing, and ‘paying forward’ those blessings. I believe in teaching and learning and not just the cliché that ‘all students can learn.’ I truly believe that all students can learn with the right tools and in the right environment,” she said. 

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News

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Operation Crackdown Project underway to the impact this program will have on our neighborhoods, and on our city in the long run.”

It is estimated that 83% of abandoned or open buildings show signs of drug abuse, prostitution or criminal activity; and that crime rates are twice as high on blocks with abandoned or open buildings than on controlled buildings blocks; and that millions of dollars are spent each year to mitigate and abate the problem.

According to a study conducted by the University of Michigan, investing $3.5 million over three years results in an increase in surrounding property value of more than $112.5 million.

During the next two months, the City of Laredo will be working closely with the National Guard to finalize

the paperwork, and other necessary requirements to prepare for Operation Crackdown.

“This combined initiative will deny a place for drugs and criminals to make a ‘home’ in our neighborhoods. This program protects one of our most vulnerable population in our city: our children,” said assistant police chief Jesus R. Torres.

The Texas National Guard Counterdrug Program began Operation Crackdown in 1993 in San Antonio. Since then, approximately 1,347 houses have been demolished in Corpus Christi, Dallas, Harlingen, and Kingsville.

Those who would like for a property to be considered for demolition for Operation Crackdown, contact the CDD at (956) 795-2675.

— LareDOS Staff

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

he City of Laredo and the Border Patrol collectively have idenU.S. Border Patrol have tified 77 structures, of which 28 are partnered with the Texas slated to be demolished in May 2014.

National Guard on their Property owners will be notified proposed Operation Crackdown and consent must be given by these Project, which will demolish aban- owners to have the properties demoldoned homes where suspected drug ished at no cost. Clearance from the and other criminal activity occurs. state’s historical commission must be Operation Crackdown provides received and asbestos testing must be engineer assets to assist municipali- completed, as well as other documenties in reclaiming control of known tation required by the Texas National drug trafficking areas and demolish- Guard. ing the structures. This mission helps There are costs incurred by the rid neighborhoods of gangs, drugs, municipality involved in the proand associated violent activity and gram, including: asbestos testing, allows for community revitalization, asbestos abatement prior to demoliaccording to city representatives. tion, 40-yard dump trucks, and land“The Laredo Police Department fill costs. along with the U.S. Border Patrol, On March 17, the Laredo City have long identified areas of drug Council approved for the City of and crime activity taking place in old Laredo to participate and authorized and abandoned homes around Lar- City Manager Carlos Villarreal to apedo,” said Mayor Raul Salinas, add- prove any hard costs associated with ing, “Through this program, we will participating in the program — inrid our city of criminal activity, while cluding haul-off fees, permits, and beautifying these neighborhoods. landfill costs.

It’s a win-win for the community.”

Council Member Cindy Liendo The City of Laredo Community said, “This program is too important Development Department (CDD) to not to participate in.” A majority has followed a rigorous investigation of the structures slated to be demolprocess of the properties flagged for a ished are located in Liendo’s district. possible drug nexus. LPD, CDD, and “These costs are minimal compared

In the Irish spirit Andrew and Alexis Diaz spent their Friday afternoon on March 14 at the Laredo Public Library celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with arts and crafts activities.

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News

have fashions presented that are representative of that country,” said Kahn.

The clients of Border Region will be presenting a dance to the music, “Coming to America” by Neil Diamond. Under the direction of art instructor Patricia Orduña, clients will also showcase replicas of great works of art from around the world.

“From Van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, to Diego Rivera the students worked diligently on their replicas in hopes of capturing some of the essence of the originals,” said Orduña.

The luncheon will commence at 11:30 a.m. and general seating is available for $65 or $650 for a special reserved table for 10. An HEB gift card will be raffled at the event. The VSC is looking for a sponsor to underwrite the cost of the gift card.

Proceeds from the event will assist Border Region with its 2014 programs: the Spring Easter picnic, CAPS Easter 2014, 4th of July celebration, CAPS Back to School 2014, the Art in Healthcare and Art Exhibit, Harvest Festival, and the CAPS Harvest Festival.

“We are just a handful of ladies but we get things done,” said Kahn.

Officers include board president Cassia Jantz, vice president Marilyn De Llano, treasurer Ardith Epstein, secretary Roxanna Guerra, publicity chair Jo-Ann Kahn, communications officer Adriana S. Ramos, and honorary member Sallie Bargo.

For tickets of table reservations, call Ardith Epstein at (956) 723-8950 or Laura Kim at (956) 794-3130 — LareDOS Staff

Can’t find a hard copy?

Go to www.laredosnews.com

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Commissioners invited to fundraising event Jo-Ann Kahn at Webb County Commissioners Court asked for support for the Volunteer Service Council's upcoming events

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he Volunteer Services Council for the Border Region Behavioral Health Center (BRBHC) will host the 22nd Annual Administrative Professionals Luncheon and Style Show on Wednesday, April 23 at the Laredo Country Club.

“Our group puts our hearts and souls into this special show and fundraiser because the money we raise funds all the events that are planned for the clients here at Border Region Behavioral Health Center. We receive the requests and provide the funds needed,” said board member Jo-Ann Kahn.

The theme of this year’s show is “Masters of Art, Music, and Style” and will pay tribute to the music, art, and fashion from various countries. The pieces that will be modeled on the runway will be from Stein Mart and Polly Adams The program will kick off with a tribute to the late board president, and longtime member, Molly Martinez.

Entertainment for the evening will consist of Melissa Barrera Gonzalez singing I Ain’t Down Yet by Molly Brown; Margaret Medellin accompanied by accordionist Rolando Ramirez performing Chason D’Armour; and a dance performance to Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy from “The Nutcracker.”

Joe Arciniega will also perform “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?” from My Fair Lady.

“There will also be music from Mexico and Italy, which has not been programmed yet. Each country will

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

22nd annual luncheon, style show set for April 23

Fun for all UISD executive director of secondary education David R. Canales is pictured assisting a student at the UISD Young Athletes Program on Thursday, March 20 at the UISD Student Activity Complex.

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Feature

Society of Renaissance Women focuses on change, community

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he Society of Renaissance Women (SRW) established in 2012 seeks to instill an appreciation for education, literature and the arts, reminiscent of the Renaissance era, into the everyday lives of its members.

The organization was founded

by Diana Martinez, Patricia Montemayor, Velma Luna, Irma Lopez, and Maricela Guardiola.

“During this era, the role of women began to change as their voices and opinions became more expressive. The Renaissance Women seek to inspire a new generation to continually pursue their aspirations through education,” said board member Amy Castillo Casares.

SRW court members who are presented annually, are taught the importance of contributing and giving back to the community.

Castillo Casares said, “Debu-

tantes and their escorts participate in various community service projects, including assisting local charities such as Bethany House, senior citizen retirement homes, and other service projects.”

SRW board president Martinez said, “The Society of Renaissance Women’s board of directors and its members are committed and determined to provide new experiences that help individuals grow into a mature, well-rounded individual who is prepared to become an active member of the community.”

The 2014-2015 board of directors includes president Martinez, vice president Paty Montemayor, secretary Irma Lopez, treasurers Velma Luna and Mary Soler, historian Rita Rodriguez, mistress of wardrobe Ana Hernandez, reporter Amy Castillo Casares, and sergeant-at-arms Maricela Guardiola.

— LareDOS Staff

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Good weather, good buys at the Northside Market First in showmanship Andrea Cavazos, a United High School sophomore, is pictured with Diamond, her entry in the annual L.I.F.E. youth livestock show. Cavazos and Diamond took first for Champion Showmanship.

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Blanca Davila Mendiola of Vella Naturale Skincare is pictured discussing natural products with a customer at the Laredo Northside Market on Saturday, March 1 at North Central Park. This vendor can also be spotted every third week of the month at the Laredo Farmers Market at Jarvis Plaza.

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News Brief

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he Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts awarded Laredo Community College, one of 18 community colleges and technical institutes, with the Jobs and Education for Texans (JET) grant of $332,500 to benefit their welding program.

The JET grant was created in 2009 to ensure high quality training for students training in manufacturing, healthcare, mechanics, or an oil and gas program. Since its inception JET has awarded $16 million to high demand areas.

The grant was secured through the LCC’s Office of the Vice President for Resource Department and grant writer Gabriel Lozano.

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Lozano said, “This grant will help expand the LCC welding program and attract new students. Our welding program has steadily grown, and this grant will support the industry demands within our community.”

The grant will be used to purchase state of the art welding equipment including mobile gas welders, welding technology learning systems, and arc welding devices.

“We are very excited to be able to provide high tech, state of the art welding machinery to our students and our community,” Lozano added.

For more information contact the LCC Marketing and Public Relations Office at (956) 721-5140.

— LareDOS Staff

Courtesy Photo

LCC receives grant for welding program

Holi marks Spring's arrival Students at Texas A&M International University kicked off Spring with the traditional Hindu celebration — Holi, the festival of colors, on Thursday, March 20 on the Senator Judith Zaffirini Success Center front lawn.

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Feature

Violinist Uhe shares his expertise on music and teaching

By MARIELA RODRIGUEZ LareDOS Staff

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aredo Community College (LCC) upper string instructor Andrew Uhe teaches courses of applied violin, viola lessons, chamber music and orchestra, music theory and aural skills, music appreciation, and American music (History of Rock and Roll).

“My favorite is definitely applied violin because that is my specialty, but I also love teaching music theory. The History of Rock and Roll has been an interesting challenge, as I knew very little about the subject before teaching it for the first time last semester. I have learned a lot since then.

Uhe a native of West Michigan, relocated to Laredo in August 2013.

He earned a BA in music from Grand Valley State University, a Masters of Music in violin performance from Ohio University, and is currently working on a doctorate of music arts in violin performance from the University of Iowa.

“My primary instrument is violin. I play some viola and studied piano in my youth through a couple years of college, but I am certainly no pianist in the sense that I am a violinist,” Uhe said.

He said he first felt a connection with music at the age of 13. “My parents decided I was interested in music long before I realized it! The career decision was really last minute,” he said, adding, “My family had already decided on the university I would attend, and I wanted to study actuarial science. Since that program wasn’t an option, I decided it was a good time to follow some

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other interests. The violin won top priority.”

Uhe spends his spare time practicing to prepare for solo recitals and chamber music. He has on-going collaborative relationships with several musicians.

“I try to perform with certain pianists and other instrumentalists with whom I have had uniquely fruitful performing experiences.

Right now I am working to schedule some chamber music performance engagements for the upcoming 2014-2015 season including a trio concert (violin, clarinet, and piano) and some new music with a larger chamber ensemble lead by a gifted conductor I know from Taiwan, Chun-Ming Chen,” he said.

Uhe explained that in the classical world, “new music” is a loose term that generally refers to composers who are still living or have written music within the last few decades.

He hopes to bring both of these programs Andrew Uhe to Laredo. “I have also made some connections with local musicians including the works,” he added.

LCC’s instructor of lower strings, Among his favorite composers of Guillermo Teniente, and the profes- modern work is Hans Werner Hensor of strings at Texas A&M- Kings- ze, a man whose strong opinions ville, Veronica Salinas. We have a and beliefs reflect his own. few fun chamber music projects in “His music aims first of all to

express human emotions — a priority many modern composers seem to have neglected.

His music is strongly connected to dramatic expression and the theater and clearly shows that he is aware of the sonorities he is asking for,” he said, adding, “Sometimes I wonder if composers really know what sounds they are asking us performers to produce, or if they are just writing so the way it looks on the page is interesting.”

In Uhe’s opinion Mozart has produced some of the most amazing music in all time. “He is really my all-time favorite,” he said.

Uhe’s first year of teaching at LCC has been challenging and filled with new opportunities and experiences.

“Through the various classes I am teaching, I constantly gain new insights into how my own musicianship was cultivated during my early training. The inner workings of a music department and the relationship between our institution and the public education systems here in the region have really expanded my perspective on how a musical culture grows Continued on page 19

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Opinion

So say and so do

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he December 2013 edition of LareDOS contained several articles related to law. This piece also concerns law and lawyers but from a different perspective, that of how a lawyers’ religion/ faith/philosophy impacts their practice of law. The subjects briefly addressed here were part of a 30-question survey of one hundred Quaker lawyers which formed a chapter in this writer’s larger work, published in 2011.

These lawyers, members of the Religious Society of Friends (“Quakers” or “Friends”), were asked about their practice of law and their faith. Four survey questions and some of the lawyers’ answers follow.

George Fox founded the Society of Friends in mid-seventeenth century England, and it spread to the American colonies shortly afterwards. One of Fox’s best-known sayings was “So say and so do,” what a person says and does should be a congruent melding of speech and action. This is why the practice of their faith is important to Friends. Fox, who took speech quite literally, believed that English law should state clearly what was meant. He complained that a document which commanded one to appear in court actually meant that an attorney must be present although the word “attorney” was never mentioned.

Fox disliked the laws and legal practices of his time; for instance, because pleadings contained exaggerated claims and allegations they were not truthful. He wrote that lawyers often placed a small fact in the midst of a “whole sea of their obnoxious terms …”

Besides truthfulness, other essential Quaker beliefs (“testimonies”) are: harmony or peace (Friends are pacifists who refuse to fight in war; with its English counterpart, the American Friends W W W.L A R ED OSN E WS.COM

Service Committee was awarded the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize for its peace work); simplicity (many Friends try to acquire material goods only in proportion to their needs); equality, (Friends aim to respect everyone without regard to racial, class, or hierarchical distinctions; for example, early Friends refused to take off their hats even to the king, only doing so when praying to God), and community (Friends’ concern for others’ welfare not only encompasses other friends and neighbors but their brothers and sisters throughout the world).

The lawyer-respondents were asked their reasons for becoming lawyers, and could choose from among “prestige, money, altruism, family pressure, family connection, intellectual interest, or other,” The most frequently cited reason was “altruism” followed by “prestige” and “intellectual interest.” One wrote, “I wanted to change the world for the better. I thought lawyers did that.” Another wrote that she wanted “to help, especially battered women and other women frustrated with the legal system.” One became a lawyer partly because she had been a plaintiff in a contentious case ultimately heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, and had become unacceptable in her former field.

One who chose prestige wrote that, to her, that meant dignity and respect.

The respondents were asked if their being Quaker influenced the way they practiced law “a lot, somewhat, a little, or not at all?” Since Friends try to live and practice their testimonies, it was not surprising that over half answered that being Quaker influenced their practice of law a lot. Several attributed their ability to listen to Quaker influence. One wrote “I … am willing to listen to what the other party says and to attempt to make sure my client listens to the other party’s position,” a view consistent with Friends’ testimony of harmony/peace.

Another wrote that being Quaker influenced his law practice a lot, that he tries to help parties “find a solution that fits both, rather than trying to ensure that my client gets his way.” In this respect, he acts like a mediator. Many respondents did favor mediation as a more gentle and peaceful way of resolving disputes.

Asked if they performed pro bono work, more than three-fourths answered yes. Of that number, threefourths believed that their Quaker faith influenced this choice. Some reasons for their pro bono work were: “a concern for equal access to the law,” “the Quaker testimony of equality,” “a sense of community responsibility,”, and “the urge to fight for those who would otherwise be voiceless.” One wrote that volunteering for the public good should be manda-

tory for all lawyers.

An important question was whether respondents felt a tension/conflict between the Quaker testimonies and their practice of law. Almost two-thirds wrote yes. This indicated that they had thought about the distinction between their preferred behavior in practicing their beliefs and the behavior expected of lawyers in American society today.

According to one respondent, the crux of Friends’ belief is to “speak truthfully and plainly.” This can produce tension if one tries to practice such truthful speaking and also adhere to the behavior expected of contemporary American lawyers. Several respondents had left the legal field due to the difficulty inherent in practicing “so say and so do.”

However, most carry on, trying to balance their faith and their profession. 

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By NANCY BLACK LareDOS Contributor

World TB Day City of Laredo Health Department Hector Gonzalez, Juan Cruz, Imelda Martinez, Norma Ruiz, Jessica Rodriguez, Waldo Lopez, Emma Garza, Veronica Dominguez, and Nelda Smith commemorated World Tuberculosis Day on March 24. They were on hand to discuss their bi-national efforts to eliminate TB.

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Mexico’s most revered artist commemorated Competitor at LIFE competition Karla Calvillo and her goat Bruce are pictured at the 51st Laredo International Fair and Exposition on Saturday, March 1 at the LIFE grounds.

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Continued FROM page 16

and develops,” Uhe said.

It is a great responsibility to be entrusted with the education of aspiring musicians, he said, adding that he, along with the rest of the LCC music staff, work around the clock to ensure that LCC students get the education they deserve.

He said, “At times, I feel like I don’t know where the energy is going to come from, but thinking about the students really helps. It is their future that keeps us motivated. Seeing them get excited about making music is a thrill that keeps me looking for new ways to open their perspectives about the possibilities of music.”

Uhe feels fortunate to be a part of the LCC music department. “The atmosphere is positive and supportive. My colleagues are friendly and personable, and the facilities provide all the space and resources I need to do what I am here to do. The W W W.L A R ED OSN E WS.COM

faculty members are well-trained, accomplished musicians, and the students are fortunate to have access to such experienced instructors,” he added.

To students who are interested in pursuing music or any other art form as their concentration of study, Uhe advises them not to hold back.

“If you have the ambition and desire to pursue an artistic career, go for it. There are always practical challenges, so do not be an idealist waiting for the right moment. Being an artist is hard work, and success only comes if you keep growing — even when, especially when, things are not going your way,” he said, adding, “If you are serious and committed to sharing your experiences as an artist and as a human being, seek advice from the people who inspire you and push your limits. Find out what is possible, and, if something seems impossible, do not give up. Figure it out. No one else can do it for you.” 

The Consulate General of Mexico, the Mexican Cultural Institute of Laredo, and the Webb County Heritage Foundation hosted an exhibit illustrating contemporary panoramas of Mexican life by José María Velasco on Thursday, March 6 at the Villa Antigua Border Heritage Museum.

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Feature

Webb County VSO assists veterans, spouses, and survivors

By MARIELA RODRIGUEZ LareDOS Staff

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stablished in the late 1970s, The Webb County Veterans Service Office (WCVSO) informs and assists veterans, spouses, and survivors in obtaining their state and federal benefits.

Under the direction of veteran service officer David Garza since May 2013, the veterans service office also works diligently to commemorate the efforts and sacrifices of all veterans.

This month World War II veterans were honored with a ceremony.

“Our WWII event was an extreme success. Our veterans are getting older and need to be recognized. The event was free to the honorees and their families. It was a way to honor them and give them the opportunity to get together and share stories. For these gentlemen, it’s not so easy to get together like this,” said Garza.

Currently the WCVSO has seven employees and one volunteer that assists with daily operations and services to countless veterans.

Garza oversees the office’s $300,000 budget of which $75,000 provides direct assistance to Webb County veterans.

“That money is used for direct assistance to veterans with their electric bill, rent, water, or transportation. It is managed through the Laredo Veterans Coalition, but my office oversees how monies are spent,” Garza said, adding, “The Laredo Veterans Coalition has done an excellent job distributing that money. I ensure that monies are not mishandled or misused. That is very important to me, I want to make sure that the money is spent on our veterans properly.”

Other monies managed through the veterans service office is used for grave markers for deceased veterans and their

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surviving spouses.

Veterans receive assistance with compensation, appeals, the Texas Veterans Land Board, rehabilitation benefits, obtaining military records, burial benefits, home loan certificates, non-service connected pensions, VA medical benefits, education benefits, debt waivers, widows benefits, and Department of Veterans Affairs insurance claims.

The WCVSO also makes referals to the Veterans Serving the Need (VSTN) food pantry.

“We work closely with Gigi Ramos of VSTN and with Juan Vargas, executive director of the Community Action Agency. Mr. Vargas sets aside two days a month to meet with our veterans to assist them with their electric bills should they be in need,” Garza said.

The WCVSO received a grant in June 2013 from the Texas Veterans Commission Fund for Veterans’ Assistance to initiate the Veterans Transportation Program.

Garza said, “This was the first grant this office has applied for and received.

When I took office, one of the things I did was ask veterans, ‘What do you need?

How else can I help you?’ Transportation

seemed to come up a lot, especially with our elderly population.”

The program has been a success thus far and continues to grow, according to Garza. A handicap accessible van provides veterans with rides throughout the county whenever they need it.

“We want to continue this program even after the grant ends. We want to renew the grant or hopefully have the county assist with the costs,” he said, adding, “In turn, this program helped to create two new jobs for local veterans.”

Another initiative spearheaded by the WCVSO was bringing the Family Endeavors program to the county.

“The nonprofit provides an array of programs and services in support of children, families, veterans, and those struggling with disabilities. They have assisted 20-plus veterans to find housing, fill out paperwork, with their first month’s rent and deposit — for those in need. This program did not exist in Laredo.” said Garza.

Eligibility is based on income and representatives are available for consultation once a month at the veterans services office.

He added, “They have the same pas-

sion that I have for helping out veterans. It is a blessing to have them with us. They might open an office in Webb County next year and that would create more jobs for our veterans.”

The WCVSO works closely with and aided in establishing the Webb County Veterans Commission (WCVC) which consists of the community’s veteran leaders, including Garza, who meet quarterly to determine what the needs of the veterans are.

“We do outreach. We go out into the community to see how we can help. We are running out of space in our cemetery for our veterans. When I meet with the WCVC, I’m going to bring it up as the possible next project,” he said.

He credited the Webb County commissioners court for their continued support for the expansion of services available for veterans in the community.

“The office is not about me. It is about everyone that works here. It is a team effort. We all work together to make our local veterans lives better in any way possible,” said Garza.

Garza hopes to present an expansion proposal to the commissioners court in the near future in hopes of expanding the veterans service office to accommodate the growing workforce.

“My main goal is to make this office — within the next five years — the best veterans service office in the state. I want Webb County to have that recognition given that we are the sixth largest county in the state,” he said.

Garza urges veterans who have any questions or need assistance to contact his office.

Office hours are Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 1110 Victoria, Suite 108.

For more information call the Webb County Veterans Service Office at (956) 523-4399.  W W W.L A R ED OSN E WS.COM

Feature

Justice Alvarez honoree at LJC Women’s History celebration

By MARIELA RODRIGUEZ LareDOS Staff

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arch is National Women’s History month and Laredo Job Corps commemorated the occasion with a presentation by Fourth Court of Appeals Justice Patricia O. Alvarez on Wednesday, March 19.

Alvarez shared her life story — its struggles and triumphs — with a room filled with students and staff.

“We all have a story. I’m going to share my story with you so you can be encouraged to share yours with others.

We have to let our stories be known. We have a responsibility as women, not only to preserve, but to teach the younger generations how to do so as well,” she said.

She said that her first life lessons were learned at an early age as she pur-

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sued horseback riding training.

“There was a particular obstacle I could not jump. I would try to jump it, fall, get back up, and try it again,” Alvarez said, adding, “My riding instructor taught me that in life you will have a lot of obstacles, but if you have determination, you can conquer anything. I knew I was going to fall, but I also knew I was going to get up and do it again as many times needed to conquer it.”

Alvarez married at 18, but quickly was disillusioned at the prospect of settling on being a housewife. “I always envisioned myself as an important figure, but instead I was washing diapers at home. I love my son more than anything, but I knew I wanted more,” she shared.

Alvarez divorced and began to work toward a brighter future for herself and her son.

“I saw a commercial once that had

a seesaw, with a voice describing it and cautioning not to spend your life seesawing back and forth — to do something about it,” she said. “I was 25 when I had this moment of enlightenment. I realized I didn’t want to be 70 and looking back at what I should have done, and how things could have been,” Alvarez added.

Alvarez advised her audience not to be disillusioned by their initial struggles.

She said that starting off, she worked a restaurant job, lived in a one-bedroom apartment with little to no furniture, and when applying for school, she was rejected several times and referred to as “not college material.”

“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done with the same level of dedication, and I have never given up,” she said.

Alvarez was elected to Place 3 on the Fourth Court of Appeals in 2012.

Prior to becoming a judge, Alvarez

practiced law for 26 years in state and federal courts in South Texas. She earned a BA from the University of Texas at San Antonio and a Juris Doctor from the University of Texas School of Law. Justice Alvarez is a member of the UTSA Alumni board of directors, Laredo Rotary Club, Leadership Texas (Class of 2008), and the advisory board of Texas Migrant Council—Safe Haven of Laredo.

“The problem is we don’t tell our stories enough. I was raised not to talk about myself. However, if you can inspire even just one woman with your story, to share hers with someone of the next generation, we’ve made a difference. All of you are starting your stories, which will in turn inspire those around you.

She added. “In order to succeed, you need to work hard, be dedicated, be passionate, and set goals — while doing all that don’t forget to enjoy it. Live in the present.” 

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News

Service: a way of life for Greitens

By MARIELA RODRIGUEZ LareDOS Staff “In the military it is really easy to understand what a frontline is.

You understand that a frontline is place where you encounter the enemy. The frontline is a place of hardship. It is a place of pain. It is a place of fear. It is a place of suffering,” said Eric Greitens, adding, “Frontlines are also where battles are won.

Everyone has their own frontlines — a place in their life where they encounter fear, pain, or challenges.”

Author and former Navy SEAL Greitens presented his lecture “Why it Takes the Heart and the Fist” as part of the 2014 A. R. Sanchez, Sr. Distinguished Lecture Series, on Thursday, March 20 at Texas A&M International University.

Born and raised in Missouri, Greitens studied ethics, philosophy, and public policy at Duke University. He was selected as a Rhodes and Truman Scholar and attended the University of Oxford for his Master’s and Ph.D. His doctoral thesis, “Children First,” investigated how international humanitarian organizations can best serve war-affected children. Greitens has worked as a humanitarian volunteer, documentary photographer, and researcher in Rwanda, Cambodia, Albania, Mexico, India, Bosnia, and Bolivia.

He served as the Commander of a Mark V Special Operations Craft Detachment, Commander of a Joint Special Operations Task Unit, and as Commander of an Al Qaeda targeting cell.

In 2007, Grietens founded the nonprofit the Mission Continues after returning home and visiting wounded Marines at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. The Mis-

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Eric Greitens sion Continues assists veterans to continue serving through nonprofit organizations in their communities.

He recalled, “Without exception, each Marine expressed an unwavering desire to continue serving his country, even if he could no longer do so in the military. A young Marine said he lost his legs — that is all. He had lost the desire to serve.”

Greitens used his combat pay and that of two friends who pitched in their military disability to begin The Mission Continues. More than 680 post 9/11 veterans serve in communities throughout the United States, leading nearly 800 service projects, and engaging 35,000-plus volunteers.

He saw a need to empower returning veterans and aided them to adjust to life as a civilian while ‘sharing their legacy of action and

service,’ said Greitens.

“When they come back home and they are on this new frontline, many of them are ove r wh e l me d.

Our first message to them is you have done this before. I ask them to remember when they joined the military that in those few hours, they confronted their fears. In those first few days, they were reminded they had to move through pain.

In those first few weeks, they are reminded that they will suffer,” he said, adding, “By repeatedly confronting their fear, they actually build courage. By experiencing pain, they gained wisdom, and through suffering they become stronger. With that courage, wisdom, and strength they can continue to serve.”

Greitens cautioned his audience to step outside of their mundane routines and choose to change, to live a purposeful life, and to serve their communities.

“When you begin to walk a different path you find you end up in

a completely different place. This is a really easy thing to say but a very difficult thing to do. By slightly altering the direction of your path, and following that new path over time you will actually change who you are and change the way you can be of service to the people around you,” he said.

Greitens was selected by TIME Magazine in 2013 as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

“The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL,” his latest book was a The New York Times’ bestseller.

His military awards include the Navy Achievement Medal, Joint Service Achievement Medal, Navy Commendation Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, Purple Heart, and the Bronze Star.

The Manhattan Institute for Social Entrepreneurship listed Greitens among America’s most effective leaders, and Goldman Sachs recognized his innovative entrepreneurship.

“You have to make a decision of how you are going to change your course by just a couple of degrees.

You walk that new path with courage and perseverance. You make sure that you have a family and team to support you all around you.

Most of all, you have to always remember that there is a purpose that is greater than yourself,” Greitens said.

For more information on The Mission Continues visit www.missioncontinues.org 

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Go to www.laredosnews.com

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Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Guests at the Cherish Center

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

United High School alumni Tino and Norma Serna attended the World Down Syndrome Day awareness celebration on Friday, March at the United High School Cherish Center, located at the 9th Grade campus.

The center was established to serve high school special needs students through alternative vocational or career curriculum.

Green Party convention Green Party candidate for Webb County Pct. 4 commissioner Luis F. Decker spoke at the Webb County Green Party convention on Saturday, March 15 at CaffÊ Dolce. He welcomed Green Party members’ support in campaigning for the November election.

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The Arts

Slamming at Gallery 201

By MARIELA RODRIGUEZ LareDOS Staff

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ince August 2010, the Laredo Border Slam (LBS) has served as a competitive outlet for eager poets.

The art of slam is defined as a free, liberating communication of ideas.

Originally under the direction of slam master and organizer Chibbi Orduña, it is now under the purview of his sister, Julia.

“Everyone is always saying, ‘There is nothing to do in Laredo!’ It is either the movies, the mall, or a bar — if you are of age. So the main purpose of slam poetry was to bring not only something to do, but a creative connection with it as well,” said Julia Orduña.

LBS began hosting slams weekly at Cuadro Café and soon had 30 to 40 people frequenting. Currently the slams are hosted every second and fourth Thursday of the month at downtown’s Gallery 201. Each poet is given three minutes to perform.

“We have several poets that have been with us since Laredo Border Slam’s initiation, like Miss B and Eli,” she said, adding, “I am grateful to our regular poets who have kept supporting the slam and step up to the plate when I need help running the show.”

LBS has encountered a few struggles throughout the years. According to Orduña there have been nights when only the poets have shown up.

“On those nights we hold an open mic night in celebration of our art instead,” she said, adding, “Recently, we have been seeing a lot of new faces on the stage and in the crowd. This season we’ve had 42 different poets grace our stage. I’m pretty sure that’s an LBS record.”

A crowd is essential to the slam as the audience acts as judges for each performance. Orduña added, “We thrive

Julia Orduña on the energy of the room, and we love having newcomers and old faces join us.”

When asked what some of the fundamental differences between spoken and written poetry are, Orduña responded, “What the reader can focus on and absorb are the words and the construction of the poem on the page. In slam poetry, you are not only listening to words, but seeing a performance. The movement, the inflections, the speed, the tone — the whole performance of a piece is vital to the connection with the audience. Each has positive attributes that make it unique and essential. It depends more on the audience member and their taste in art.”

LBS occasionally brings touring poets and welcomes them with open arms.

“We have had poets from all over the nation. We actually have featured international poets. The Australian National

Champion came in 2012. We bring in features to show Laredo what other poets sound like and the potential that we all have within us,” Orduña said.

LBS members continue to work to enhance the local art scene by organizing monthly writing workshops to nurture the art of writing and not just slamming.

LBS poets Chibbi, AXL, Miss B, Crystal, and Orduña competed in the 2012 Southwest Shootout in Tulsa against teams that have won at the national level. Miss B also represented the LBS in the 2013 Texas Grand Slam competition.

“She was able to make it to the Final Stage after placing within the top six in her preliminary and semi-final bout,” she said, adding, “We were ecstatic to have her showing poets from all over the nation that Laredo has what it takes to get to finals.”

Orduña will compete at the Wom-

en of the World Poetry Competition in Austin against 72 women over the course of four days.

“I am anxious and excited. I think it will be harder than any competition I’ve seen because in most competitions, there is a process of elimination and you are competing against those in your same bout. Here, there are many variables. One person may be competing in a very hard bout with some really good poets and get low scores. Or maybe the judges in one bout are giving scores of nines and 10s when other judges are only giving sevens and eights as high scores,” Orduña said, adding, “This all affects the final score, and it will be a challenge to make that cut. I am honored to be competing with such fine ladies. I recognize some names on the roster and am blown away to be on stage with them. I’m also so stoked to be able to represent Laredo Border Slam at our first national competition.”

Orduña returned to Laredo after graduating from Texas A&M University in College Station, where she was first introduced to the world of slam poetry. She will be releasing her first personal chapbook, a collection of all her works.

“Slam Poetry allows like-minded people to come together and bring a more intellectual aspect to the word ‘art’. The power of words is one that most people overlook because we use words every day in meaningless forms.

However, there can be one phrase that touches someone and sparks something incredible in them. I know I’ve felt that before,” she added.

Two-dollar donations at the door at Gallery 201 get participants into a raffle.

All donations go towards prizes, inviting out of town poets, and keeping the slam running. Doors open at 9 p.m. and the event is BYOB. For more information visit the Laredo Border Slam Facebook page. 

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Jumper takes third in L.I.F.E. show Janelle Aeollo, a junior at United South High School and a member of the FFA, is pictured at L.I.F.E. with her lamb Jumper, which took third place in the youth livestock show. Her parents Javier and Alma Zamora are pictured with her.

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News

UISD student to compete at UIL state competition

By MARIELA RODRIGUEZ LareDOS Staff

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lexander High School (AHS) 11th grader Alexa M. Ramirez advances to the UIL State Competition for her work in theatrical design in May 2014 at the University of Texas at Austin.

The UIL Theatrical Design Contest provides students with a selection of literature and in turn they must do extensive research on the time period surrounding the play and base their designs on their findings.

Ramirez based her designs on the French theatrical comedy Tartuffe

by Molière. She said, “Tartuffe means imposter.

The play is about a man who is a con artist and goes around trying to get as much as he can from all these different characters in the play.”

She focused her designs based on three characters — Madame Pernelle, Tartuffe, and Orgon.

“Madame Pernell was the mother figure, a confident woman. My design for her was a purple colored dress, because purple represents pride and confidence. I also intertwined animalistic forms,” Ramirez said, added, “I added peacock feathers to the bottom of her dress and toward the side of the picture. I also added a shadow

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of a peacock to represent who she really is on the inside.”

She chose a wolf and sheep to represent Tartuffe. She said the sheep represents an exterior as a religious good-natured man. “His shadow was a wolf, which represented how sly and sneaky he was. He would try to take as much as he possibly could from the people that trusted him,” said Ramirez.

Their costumes were very elaborate, and they used masks.”

All of Ramirez’s characters wore masks to represent their dual personalities.

AHS teacher and UIL sponsor Carol Rosales said, “Alexa’s ability to create exactly what she sketched was the most impressive part. For the peacock dress, we couldn’t find what it was suppose to look like so we found

An emu represented Orgon, the main character in the play. She said, “The emu is seen as a gullible unintelligent animal. Orgon is not unintelligent necessarily, but Tartuffe found a way to manipulated him into taking his riches. Orgon’s coat has emu feathers and I used a lot of golds and blues to represent personality traits that fit the characters.”

According to Ramirez she evoked the old Italian form of theatre, Comedia del Arte. “Actors performed on the streets and did abstract physical gestures because they mainly performed for tourists who didn’t speak Italian.

a light green material and she used tie-dye paint to create a grading effect. The painting on the materials was perfect it was exactly like her design on her illustration.”

Rosales was impressed with Ramirez’s ability to portray the essence of all her characters. “Her designs are very intricate and she understands a lot about color combinations and the symbolism of the colors.”

Ramirez thoroughly researched the time period in which Tartuffe was written to better grasp how her characters silhouettes should look and

then come up with her designs.

Rosales added, “Alexa had a full understanding of how to bring out the facial features of the characters and their poses showed her creativity because they went along with the animals she chose. The shadows she created to bring out the animal characteristics were very dramatic, theatrical.”

Ramirez has been involved with theater since her freshman year, and began acting in one act the following year. She has previously competed in UIL competitions in prose and one act.

“I’ve always liked designing and art in general mixing the two together it seemed like the right thing to do. I’m excited. I need to do more research. In general I was happy this was my first time competing in theatrical design and that I made it to state that makes it so much better. I didn’t expect it,” she said.

After graduation Ramirez plans to attend college and to pursue a degree in creative writing, English, or theater.

The UIL theater design competition is intended to foster appreciation for theatrical design, to increase the number of schools to adapt technical theatre into school curricula, and to promote a competitive artistic spirit among schools. 

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News

Meet Pete: Pedro I. Saenz Jr. to announce mayoral bid

By MARIA EUGENIA GUERRA LareDOS Publisher

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benefits will go a long way to help families better educate their children. “We need more than minimum wage jobs.

When you are just getting by, when you have two jobs, and when you struggle to feed your family, it’s hard to find time to spend with your children,” Saenz said.

“Those children are the future.”

Building such a workforce, he said, needs to be a collaborative effort between the city, its two school districts, LCC, and TAMIU. “Planning gives us a road map and a means to set goals. We need to be ready for any opportunity that presents itself and for any issue we take on as a city,” he said.

According to Saenz, his 13-year tenure as a trustee for Laredo Community College refined his skills as a strategic planner, particularly in the development

of the school’s South Campus and in the plans for new buildings and renovations of the historic structures at the Fort Mac campus. “There were two things we never lost sight of — the first was that the education of students was at the forefront, and the second was that we were responsible to the taxpayer,” said Saenz.

He said that that the Río Grande, in addition to providing drinking water to cities along the border, is one of Laredo’s most valuable assets, both as an ecosystem and for recreational venues that have yet to be explored.

Saenz is a proponent of downtown revitalization through economic development. “There should be a business plan in place for every initiative the City undertakes,” he said.

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ete Saenz is a private sector pragmatist and not a politician.

What you hear in his voice is passion and compassion, and that he believes in what he says. No sound bytes here for a better tomorrow.

He is erudite, not glib.

He says his decision to run for mayor is rooted in a calling to service and to giving back to the community that educated him, formed his character, and allowed him a career that provided well for his family.

The native Laredoan, a successful oil and gas attorney, wants to bring substance and leadership to the office of the mayor with a focus on job creation, a trained workforce, strategic planning,

economic development, and finding a secondary water source.

“Leadership and strategic planning will carry the city forward. I’ll follow every lead that helps us create a qualified, prepared workforce to answer the demands of international trade, the oil and gas industry, and businesses that want to establish themselves in Laredo,” he said.

“How will we meet the challenges of a city that demographers tell us will double in size in 14 or 15 years? How will we capitalize on that growth and sustain it, and how do we include those who weren’t dealt the card of good fortune? Everyone who lives and works here is a stakeholder in the future of our city,” he said.

Saenz believes that a qualified workforce earning better living wages with

The Saenz family - left to right, seated, are Olivia Vigil, Jake Saenz, Minerva Saenz, Stella Rose Vigil, Pete Saenz, Jr., Monica Saenz-Vigil, and Chase Saenz. Behind them are Bobby Saenz, Anna Saenz, Pete Saenz III, Gabriella Saenz, Jeff Vigil, and Brooklyn Vigil.

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Continued FROM page 28

The son of rancher Pedro I. Saenz Sr. and the late María del Refugio (Cuquita) Saenz, he is married to Minerva Cadena Saenz. They are the parents of Pedro Saenz III, Monica Saenz-Vigil, and Roberto Saenz and the grandparents of five.

“My parents were hard working people who instilled in us the value of an education and personal responsibility. That is how we raised our own children,” he said.

He characterized his education by the Marist Brothers at St. Joseph’s Academy as “demanding and character-building.”

Saenz earned an undergraduate degree in animal science and a Masters in range and wildlife management at Texas A&I University in Kingsville.

“A career in law was an afterthought,” he said. “I worked with the USDA for five years and was about to be transferred far from home. I applied to the school of law at St. Mary’s University, finished in two-and-a-half years, and

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passed the bar on the first try. The law was my ticket back home.”

He considers attorney George Person a mentor and spent seven years with the firm of Person, Whitworth, Borchers, and Morales, L.L.P. as an associate and another 10 as partner. He established his own firm in January 1999.

Saenz manages Las Blancas Ranch on Highway 359, which his parents purchased in 1950. “There were many lessons learned on that ranch, many of them about conservation and stewardship,” he said.

Campaign manager, daughter Monica Saenz-Vigil, said the candidate will announce formally on April 10.

“I listen. I am reasonable and accommodating. I set goals for what I want to accomplish, and I plan,” Pete Saenz said, summing up his work ethic. “When I am problem solving, I want to be informed with good data, and I want input.”

Of his desire to serve his community, he said, “It’s about decency, goodness, service, and the best possible outcome for the greater good.” 

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

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SCAN at AHEC Health Careers Camp Linda De La Rosa, Joyce Roque, and Brenda Rodriguez represented SCAN at the AHEC Health Careers Camp on Monday, March 10 at the UT Health Science Center Laredo Regional Campus. Staff provided students with information on National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

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Opinion

Phantom Webb County employees, free rides in shiny new trucks

By MARIA EUGENIA GUERRA LareDOS Publisher

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ould it not be less disappointing if newly elected public officials might state plainly for the record as an amen to their oath of office what Kurt Vonnegut pronounced in the Book of Bokonon in Cat’s Cradle: “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.”

You know the story. It’s what you’ve always known — that this city and county are fertile ground for the rise and prosperity of sin verguenzas elected to public office.

For every sin verguenza who falls from grace, there are replacements waiting in the wings, some not even born yet.

In Laredo, the law can be bent to the horizon, flattened out, and trampled. Some may witness the spectacle, but few will raise their voices to the betrayal of the public trust.

Incredibly, the law bender/trampler might be re-elected to the office he or she just violated, or to a new one.

Don’t get me started on how public figures outed and disgraced for theft or ineptitude get recycled and elected to school boards (forging the future of our children!), or how the entire current Webb County Commissioners Court and its judge looked away from Johnny Amaya’s (now an LISD trustee) life-threatening negligence in Rio Bravo and El Cenizo because Amaya had value as a vote harvester, fund raiser, and a conduit for regalitos allegedly paid to court members by an unaudited contractor who does business with Webb County.

The now indicted Pct. 1 Commis-

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sioner Mike Montemayor was the replacement for the disgraced and admitted sexual predator Commissioner Frank Sciaraffa.

I spoke to Mike Montemayor just after his election to congratulate him and to tell him many of us had high expectations for his role in making Webb County government more honest and more accountable.

I told him I hoped he would move forward with a county ethics commission.

Clearly, or so it now seems, he had no use for the encouragement and advice of well-wishers who expected more of him.

It’s as though in Laredo, election to public office comes with a sense of entitlement to your trust, to your tax dollars, and to the use of public office as leverage for material goods like cash, electronics and a new F-150.

The March 19, 2014 Department of Justice press release on Montemayor’s arrest — a day after a federal grand jury indicted him on two counts of bribery — reminds us that Montemayor is presumed innocent until proven otherwise. The indictment was announced by acting assistant U.S. Attorney General Mythili Raman of the Department of Justice Criminal Division. Raman, a two-decade prosecutor for the DOJ, is best known for oversight of some of Wall Street’s most egregious fraud cases.

The indictment alleges that Montemayor solicited and accepted bribes that gave him the use of a 2012 Ford F-150 truck valued at about $37,000 in return for Webb County jobs for the owner of the truck and his wife. The indictment further alleges that Montemayor ac-

cepted $11,000 in cash and $2,700 in electronic equipment in return for official action to promote the interests of a businessman who was also an undercover agent.

Stories abound as to how the feds got Montemayor and what will happen next. It is speculated that Montemayor was an easy pluck for the feds — ripe, low hanging fruit, a November orange.

Some feigned surprise at the indictment, and others say that it probably brought on a great deal of sphincter contraction in certain

SIDEBAR

There’s no shortage of stories about theft and public corruption in Webb County and Laredo city government — some by employees and administrators, and some by elected officials.

And certainly we know of the years in which the patrón system was in overdrive at City Hall before Rhode Islander Aldo Tatangelo became mayor in the firestorm that followed the searing 1978 pencil audit of the City Street Department by activist Lawrence Berry.

Among Berry’s findings in the year in which 2,500 City blocks were unpaved: 50 to 75 phantom employees drew paychecks (including a bank vice-president) in the City’s Street Department; for the Street Department’s 85 vehicles, 950 car batteries were purchased over 15 months (11 batteries per vehicle); there were $40,000 in radiator repairs for the same period for those vehicles; 15,000 gallons of gasoline were purchased per month for those vehicles (175 gallons per month per vehicle).

This didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened in broad daylight, with colluding and corrupt private sector com-

circles, especially those who might have made the acquaintance of the electronics salesman.

A former Webb County employee who did not wish to be named, said, “When we heard a commissioner was about to be arrested, we thought for sure it was one of the others.”

What does that say about the public’s perception of members of the Commissioners Court?

While some anticipate the indictment and prosecution of other memContinued on page 32

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panies all too willing to do business with the City to cut themselves in for dinner at the public trough.

The patrón system would eventually migrate to the Laredo Independent School District, its heyday in the mid 1990s for outrageous travel and dining expenditures, property acquisitions in the St. Peter’s Historic District and the remodeling and landscaping of those old buildings for its fine arts magnet school.

The patrón system would frappé around a bit, resting its sorry old ass from time to time in city government or the school districts and then finding a good home in Webb County where in the late 1990s the Community Action Agency used federally funded air conditioners, heaters, and utility bill pays as a means to encourage and reward voter participation — much like the more recent CAA gifts of weatherization, home makeovers, and bill pays ordered by elected officials for county employees and faithful campaign workers instead of the homes of the elderly, ill, and indigent for whom those services were by law intended.

— MEG

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Continued FROM page 31

bers of the Webb County commissioners court will follow Montemayor’s, others speculate not much else will happen because the federal focus in Laredo is and has long been drug interdiction (in the War for Drugs) and not political corruption — a shame because the trees of the tangled huerta of Webb County politics are heavy with ripened fruit.

According to outspoken activist and political watchdog Gerry García, Montemayor’s indictment and arrest are a disgrace not only to the commissioner himself, “But also to the good people of Precinct 1, and he wasn’t even really from Precinct 1.”

“When Mike filed as a candidate, he listed an address at a ranch at 7736 Mangana Hein Road in Precinct 1 when he really lived in North Laredo,” García said. “The ranch belonged to a man named Humberto Benavides.”

García said that Montemayor’s choices to fill county personnel positions were “questionable,” the most blatant of which was hiring Wendy Romo, the sister of his common-law wife as his administrative assistant.” Romo was hired the day after Montemayor took office and earns an annual salary of $46,499.

Others hires followed, García said. “Look no further than the alleged owner of the F-150 and his wife. You have had a phantom employee at the Río Bravo Community Center in Precinct 1. It is not his immediate supervisor at that center who has signed off on his time sheets. Rather it is his own wife — who oversees all the community centers of Precinct 1 — signing off on and turning in his time sheets.”

“The Precinct 1 employee roster narrows down the husband and wife team,” García said, adding that Humberto Benavides was hired in March 2013 as a county “recreation specialist” who earned $26,607 per year. His wife Rosa was hired January 31, 2013.

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Humberto Benavides left county employment on March 19, 2014, the day after Montemayor’s indictment.

Montemayor’s signature appears on Benavides’ separation document, which indicates he left his job for “reason unknown.”

Rosa Benavides continues in the County’s employment at $45,553 per year.

Phantom employees and trickedout gift trucks are not endemic to Pct. 1. The black King Ranch model truck (LIC. # CDB 0702) driven by Webb County Facilities Department director Gilberto Garza is registered to Humberto Benavides, whose brother Hugo Benavides resigned on March 20, 2014 from employment in the Facilities Department.

Reportedly a fulltime security guard for the Laredo Independent School District, Hugo Benavides also held a fulltime job with the County, allegedly working nights and weekends at $11.89 an hour or about $25,000 a year. He was hired August 2, 2013.

“We don’t have a night shift,” pointed out a Facilities Department employee who did not wish to be named.

It’s hard to imagine that these trucks-for-jobs schemes were not known to some members of the Commissioners Court and county administrators. What is dumfounding is that no one spoke up, except tenacious followers of county business like Gerry García and county employees who have had enough of struggling to make a living while others get a free ride.

If any of the commissioners knew about such exchanges, should they not as stewards of the public trust have reported their knowledge of public acts leveraged for private enrichment? Have they not spoken up because they, too, have used their public office for illicit gains?

And why are we, the taxpaying citizenry, so complacent when we should be outraged, screaming our way to the polling booth? 

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Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Monster Jam at the LEA On March 8, Esperanza Cavazos, Alicen Sanchez, Daniel Cavazos, Ericka Sanchez, and Aaron Sanchez were at the Laredo Energy Arena for the Monster Jam truck series.

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St. Patrick’s Day at the library Liana Lozano, Linda Lozano, and Kaytlin Warren were at the Laredo Public Library on Friday, March 14. The library hosted Spring Break family activities March 11 to March 14 that culminated with a St. Patrick’s Day celebration.

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Santa María Journal

By María Eugenia guerra

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he cool, moist days will soon give way to the blistering temperatures we’re used to, but for now Spring weather on the ranch is luxuriant, pollen and blossom laden, something to be well enjoyed.

The gold of the flowering huisache and pale beauty of chaparro prieto have transformed the countryside, as have wildflowers and the bright green of the pasture grasses.

The mesquite trees, a bit hesitant at first, have now committed themselves to the riot of beauty.

Showy stands of fiery Indian blanket and prickly poppy mallow in pink and stark white are testimony to the benefit of the winter rains and the more recent slow soaking moisture we’ve had.

As springs go, this verdant one is a welcome sight to eyes and hearts that have weathered devastating cycles of drought. Even in this moment of showy glory it’s clear the land hasn’t recovered and may not ever in my lifetime.

Despite the sad state of ranching as an enterprise and despite

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Land, livestock look like a million bucks; same cannot be said for the ranchers the changes in predictable rainfall, for now the land and its fourlegged occupants look like a million bucks.

I can’t say the same for the ranchers who have clung for dear life to the land and stock they care for.

These have been great days for cleaning up the grounds and for making small repairs to gates and pens. The work will soon enough go to mowing.

On a recent day after the paper’s deadline, I spent a few hours in the metal roofed tack

and tool room to putter to my heart’s content to the backdrop of Rufus Wainwright belting out accounts of love lost and lessons learned.

Been there, done it, Rufus.

I sorted through boxes of wood screws and nails and returned hammers, saws, and wrenches to their place on the weathered cedar wall. The little piles of tools on the floor speak to the last projects worked on, the materials and tools left hurriedly under cover but not put away — the sta-

ples and hammer of a fence repair, the hacksaw and PVC of a plumbing repair.

This beautiful room of assorted paned windows and old French doors is my dominion. I like to hang out here, to take in the sight of vintage American-made tools that were my father’s and my grandfather’s, to look at objects found nearby and in the pastures — lots of ancient horseshoes and copper cowbells, graceful configurations of falcete wire, handforged chain links, and a beautiful little metal pulley crowned with a fleur de lis.

Old tools have a heft and a feel to them, not just about their quality, but also as though hands before mine left weighted imprints as testimony to utility.

Part inner sanctum, part museum, this is a place of memory for all the good things that have transpired on this land, for all the sadnesses that were lost to sweat and hard work under punishing summer suns, and for the joy of new hands and new voices now at my side. 

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News Brief

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sion for learning and creative group activities.

Alvarado, the daughter of Yesenia and José Alvarado, is an honors student at Harmony, which she has attended for the last three years.

She was encouraged to apply for the Summer Institute by her English teacher Angela Rangel and vice-principal Vanessa Porter.

Alvarado, an avid reader of fiction and one who enjoys astronomy, said she is looking forward to her time in Cambridge.

— LareDOS Staff

Casino night at Center for the Arts St. Augustine School hosted its 2nd Annual Vegas Knights Casino Night on Saturday, March 22 at the Laredo Center for the Arts.

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armony Academy eighth grader Rebecca Nicole Alvarado has been selected to attend the Summer Institute for the Gifted (SIG) 2014 at Harvard University.

The two-week institute brings together likeminded students for a program specifically designed to lead its participants on a rewarding academic, social, and cultural journey.

The institute’s diverse coursework has been developed to stimulate critical thinking for students from around the world who share a common pas-

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Harmony student Rebecca Alvarado to attend Harvard summer institute

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News

LIFE auction donors help South Texas Food Bank feed the hungry

By Salo Otero LareDOS Contributor

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the year. Robert Laurel and friends were processing cost donors last year. STFB board member Tano Tijerina, Webb County Judge-elect, is chairman of Ranchers for the Hungry. During the auction, LIFE vice president Oscar Martinez Jr. and LIFE Rancher of the Year Jim Walker were recognized for their support by the STFB. Farias added that South Texas hunters and ranch owners donated almost 50 deer this season. David Jenkins at the Cerrito Prieto Ranch in northern Webb County is among the new donors. Other deer came from the Colorado Ranch and the

Callaghan Ranch. Farias recognized the J.W. Nixon High School meat processing class and Robert Ruiz Custom Meats for their contribution.

“The 30,000 families per month served supplemental food by the STFB are blessed to have support from Ranchers for the Hungry. We certainly could not continue this monumental mission without community advocates. And we need more of them,” STFB executive director Alfonso Casso said. The STFB is located at 1907 Freight in west Laredo. They can be reached at (956) 726-3120 or at southtexasfoodbank. org 

Courtesy Photo

he South Texas Food Bank (STFB) mission of feeding the hungry received a huge boost at the recent Laredo International Fair and Exposition (LIFE) through its Ranchers for the Hungry program.

The STFB will wind up with thousands of pounds to meat product from the LIFE auction to be distributed to the needy.

Pancho Farias, STFB coordinator for Ranchers for the Hungry, reported LIFE donations of seven steer, 10

pigs, 14 goats and 22 sheep – all an increase over last year.

Farias noted, “The steer will bring about 3,000 pounds of finished product. These are prize-winning, quality animals. On behalf of our thousands of clients, we say thank you.”

The Ranchers for the Hungry program started six years ago with a deer harvest coordinated by Robert Laurel and Oscar Laurel at their ranch in Zapata County. It has grown, and two years ago was recognized at a Feeding America National Conference for food banks as the food resourcing program of

Jim Walker, LIFE Rancher of the Year The Walker family donated several auction animals to the South Texas Food Bank Ranchers for the Hungry program this year, continuing their tradition helping the STFB mission of feeding the hungry.

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Feature

Senties’ The Ones Santa Anna Sold to be released April 15

By MARIA EUGENIA GUERRA LareDOS Publisher

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oet, playwright, and painter Raquel Valle Senties anxiously awaits the release of her new volume of poetry, The Ones Santa Anna Sold (Los Que Vendio Santa Anna). The collection of 51 poems published by Floricanto Press, the volume will be available April 15.

A poem of the same title is an homage to Mexican immigrants and their own centuries-in-the-making conquest of the vast lands ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 — about half of Mexico’s national territory — in exchange for $15 million and a forgiveness of Mexican debt.

She writes, “We are the wetbacks that cross the Río Bravo, the brave ones that cross the desert, that drown, that die of thirst, that are killed by vigilantes, border guards or coyotes; those who passively conquer the most powerful nation in the world, taking back what once belonged to Mexico.”

Senties — a native Laredoan educated at Holy Redeemer School, St. Peter’s, and Ursuline Academy — is the author of an earlier volume of poetry, Soy como soy y qué and plays including La Mala Onda de Johnny Rivera, Alcanzando un Sueño, Path of Marigolds, and a host of one act plays. She credits Sister Teresa at Holy Redeemer for starting her “on the path to read everything.”

She has won numerous accolades for her plays and has enjoyed the publication of her poetry in various literary anthologies and magazines, including an anthology of poetry edited by Lori Carlson Hijuelos and

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Raquel Senties published by The New York Press.

“Soy como soy y que” has had a long life in high school and college textbooks throughout the country.

Senties came to writing late in life, taking an initial literature class at Laredo Community College (LCC) in 1988. She has since authored a significant body of literature.

She said one of her most important teachers was the chicano playwright Carlos Morton. His instruction fomented Alcanzando un Sueño, a play would take third place in a competition at the University of California at Irvine.

After high school graduation, Senties studied art at Texas State Women’s College, married in 1956, and moved to Veracruz. She wouldn’t paint again until her return to Laredo two decades later.

She established an equipment and tool rental business in 1979, a business she operated successfully for 17 years until she sold it to her sons Juan Manuel and Rodolfo Senties.

Eventually she found herself in art again, taking instruction with

accomplished local artists like LCC art instructor Martha Fenstermaker and watercolorist Mary Quiros. She said portraiture, her favorite form of expression, has drawn her to capture the essences of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Frida Kahlo, Sor Juana, and Denise Chavez, to name just a few.

“When I write, I don’t lose myself. When I paint, I do,” she said, adding that writing keeps her on edge. She noted that New England portrait artist John Singer Sargent is her favorite artist.

Senties paints in a home studio, a place that captures the northern light and presents no distractions.

“Art helps the writing, and writing helps the art,” she said vaguely, as though the formula for that symbiosis might be proprietary.

A fusion of the two disciplines comes to life on the cover of The Ones Santa Anna Sold, which features numerous portraits, including those of her mother Raquel García Valle, her aunt Rebecca García, Denise Chavez, Carmen Tafoya, Norma Cantu, and granddaughter Gabriella Senties.

The mother of sons Daniel, Juan Manuel, Jorge, Rogelio, and Rodolfo,

Senties has eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She said she is happy that her work has inspired her grandchildren Gabriella, Rodolfito, and Ale to find themselves in creative efforts.

She said she is pleased that TAMIU student Malena Charur will present a paper on the poet’s literary works this summer in Oviedo, Spain.

“This is late in life, 78. It’s not like I have many years ahead of me.

When I heard Floricanto wanted to publish my work, it was so quick, such a good moment. I thought a hundred years from now someone may read about this woman who wrote in Laredo. That is immortality,” she said. 

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Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Collegiate Challenge Carlow University students from Pittsburgh lend a helping hand to Habitat for Humanity as part of Habitat’s annual Collegiate Challenge.

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Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Laredoans involved in Governor’s race Mario Sanchez, Luis Casares, Stephanie Diaz, and Juan Idrogo showed their support for Senator Wendy Davis by volunteering to conduct campaign calls to voters to discuss the upcoming election on Sunday, March 23 at Embassy Suites.

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Courtesy Photo

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Traveling exhibit commemorates Velasco’s 100th anniversary Among attendees of the José María Velasco Visiones del Anáhuac exhibit were Graciela García, Roma García, Tomás García, and Patricia Isidro on Thursday, March 6 at the Villa Antigua Border Heritage Museum.

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All you can eat pancake supper First United Methodist Church hosted its pre-Lenten all you can eat pancake supper on Tuesday, March 4. Families gathered at the church’s Fellowship Hall and enjoyed a hearty serving of tasty pancakes. The event was open to the public and church staff was on hand accepting donations.

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Opinion

César Chávez: history is made one step at a time

By JAMES C. HARRINGTON Texas Civil Rights Project

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From the Dolores Huerta Foundation

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imed for release on the anniversary of César Chávez’ birthday and the holiday named for him, the movie César Chávez: History Is Made One Step at a Time will be showing in theaters around the country. It premiered at the SXSW film festival in Austin earlier this month, attended

by Dolores Huerta, César’s indomitable organizing colleague, still active at age 83.

Also, being released on his birthday is a documentary by the University of Texas at San Antonio on his organizing efforts among Texas farm workers. Its first showing will be at the United Farm Workers hall in San Juan.

César was born in 1927 and passed away in 1993. He was one of the country’s preeminent farm labor organizers, and an outstanding Mexican American leader. He dedicated his life to improving the wages and working conditions of one of the country’s poorest and most exploited groups of workers, a large number of whom live in Texas.

César lead the historic non-violent movement for farm worker rights. He motivated thousands of people, who never worked in agriculture, to commit themselves to social, economic, and environmental justice and civil rights. And he helped grow leadership in the Hispanic community to throw off centuries of discrimination. He did indeed make history, one step at a time.

César’s impact is reflected in the holiday designated for him in 11

César Chávez and Dolores Huerta states and in the parks, cultural centers, libraries, schools, and streets carry his name in cities across Texas and the United States. In Texas, his birthday is an optional state holiday.

César knew the hard life of farm laborers firsthand. He had to drop out of school after eighth grade to work in the fields as a migrant to help support his family. After serving in the U.S. Navy, César coordinated voter registration drives and campaigns against racial and economic discrimination. In 1962, he helped found the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers of

America.

César led the first successful farm workers union in U.S. history and won industry-wide labor contracts in American agriculture. The union helped achieve dignity, respect, fair wages, medical coverage, pension benefits, humane working conditions, and other protections for hundreds of thousands of farm laborers.

César believed in the peaceful

tactics of Mohandas Gandhi and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: fasts, boycotts, and strikes. People felt the justice of his cause. When he died, more than 50,000 people of all walks of life marched in his funeral procession under the hot Delano, California sun.

César’s influence on Texans extended far beyond the thousands of Texas farm laborers who worked as migrants in California. His efforts to open the doors of colleges and universities to the Hispanic community reached deep into Texas, and, in turn, opened to doors to economic and political opportunity.

We do not measure César’s life in material terms, but rather as that of a person who stood, and worked, for equality, justice, and dignity for all Americans, and who inspired many others to do the same. And the movie is worth seeing for that reason.

César’s birthday should not be just a day on which we honor his legacy, but a day on which we tell his narrative and re-commit ourselves one day at a time to the struggle to make our communities and our country a better place for our children and grandchildren. That’s how we make the history we want to live in.

(Harrington is the founder and Director of Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit foundation that promotes civil rights and economic and racial justice throughout Texas. He worked with César Chávez in Texas for 18 years.) 

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Feature

Lime, gangsters and the yellow dragon From Frontera NorteSur

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he tangy lime is essential to Mexican cuisine. An ingredient of flavored water, the fruit is also squeezed into soups, dabbed on fish, sprinkled on tacos al pastor and utilized in countless other recipes. A cold Corona or Tecate or a shot of tequila without a dash of lime is almost like a root beer float minus its foamy head.

Lime is the juicy salt of the Mexican diet.

It’s no small wonder, then, that Mexicans are gasping in disbelief at the astronomical cost of limes. In recent weeks, the retail cost of the product has gone through the roof, jumping by 800 percent or more in some regions of the country. An item that once sold for seven or eight pesos per kilo now fetches a record 64 pesos a kilo in the state of Tabasco and even as much as 80 pesos in parts of Mexico City.

In the northern border state of Tamaulipas, where more than 12,000 acres of lime produce an estimated 20,000 tons of produce every year for a mainly export market, the retail kilo cost stands at 60 pesos for limes shipped in from other parts of Mexico.

Nowadays, restaurant diners might notice less limes on their plate, or the substitution of the favored small limes with the bigger, less tasty ones. In 2014, lime is treated practically like gold.

What is behind the price spike?

The answers vary, depending on the source. But considered as a whole, the convergence of different climate, market structure and public security forces could well be whipping up the perfect lime storm.

Widespread reports blame the lime crisis on the law-and-order melt-down in the state of Michoacan, which is one of the country’s largest lime produc-

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ers with more than 75,000 acres of the crop.

According to accounts dating back to last year, higher lime prices were connected to the practice of the Knights Templar cartel in not only forcing lime growers to pay a protection fee, but in regulating the quantity of production and the timing of the harvest.

Writing last summer, analyst Ilan Semo noted that lime prices set off alarm bells in international financial circles of over heating inflation in Mexico, with messages to that effect conveyed to the Bank of Mexico and the Peña Nieto administration. As a result, Semo speculated that a pact had been reached with the underworld after an initial federal security thrust into Michoacan, temporarily lowering prices.

The squeeze on lime producers-and spiraling prices-commenced after the 2011 election of Michoacan Governor Fausto Vallejo, Semo wrote.

Most recently, reports have circulated that the civilian self-defense groups which arose to expel the Knights Templar from Michoacan have begun collecting a tax from lime growers to fund their own security operations.

Alfonso Arenaza Cortes, economist for the Caseem firm of Ciudad Juarez, attributed a February price surge to difficulties in bringing in the Michoacan harvest precisely because of insecurity, as well as the loss of crops in other states due to inclement weather.

Mexican government officials deny that the Michoacan crisis is the cause of lime inflation.

Instead, officials from a host of agencies place the blame on lingering crop damage from last year’s hurricanes Ingrid and Manuel, subsequent bouts of bad weather and the HLB pest infestation, popularly known as the yellow dragon disease, an ailment which saps lime trees of their productive capacity before death settles in.

The yellow dragon disease has been a particular problem in Colima, a state neighboring Michoacan that is also known as a hotbed of organized crime. In 2013, Texas state and federal agricultural authorities quarantined a property in Texas’ Lower Rio Grande Valley after discovering the presence of the yellow dragon disease, which is often referred to as citrus greening in the United States.

Ernesto de Lucas Palacios, Aguascalientes state delegate for the federal Secretariat of Agriculture and Livestock, defined yellow dragon as a viral disease spread by insects.

Mexico’s National Sanitary, Quarantine and Agro-Food Quality Service considers the yellow dragon menace as the “most destructive disease” in the global citrus industry. According to the government agency, the outbreak jeopardizes more than 1,000,000 acres of Mexican citrus crops in 23 states.

Lorena Martinez, head of the Federal Attorney General for Consumer Protection (Profeco), pointed the finger at a combination of adverse weather and plant disease. Martinez, however, acknowledged that highway robberies of lime shipments had affected the production and marketing of the coveted crop.

To counter price gouging, Profeco launched a verification campaign this month. Although the federal agency has no power to set or curtail prices, Profeco announced that it had temporarily suspended the operations of 14 business establishments in Mexico City for not posting lime prices or documenting the reason for the increased costs, as stipulated by federal consumer law.

In a volatile market such as the current one for limes, structural forces come into play.

Like other Mexican agricultural products, limes are transported to

market by middlemen, or “coyotes,” who profit from controlling purchases and deliveries, which in turn are becoming more costly because of the monthly fuel price increases mandated by the federal government.

From the farmer to the consumer, limes pass through the hands of racket collectors, transporters, wholesalers, retailers, processors, and even hijackers.

With limes commanding sky high prices, the fruit is now an attractive target for highwaymen.

In some instances, criminals are reportedly going straight to the source. Jorge Lara Plaisant, Tabasco lime producer, said orchard heists by lime thieves have upped the prices for the zesty product. In response to the thefts, Lara said local lime producers have organized their own self-defense force, deploying patrols to guard their crops.

Profeco’s Martinez predicted that lime prices would drop sharply by the end of the month. In the meantime, she said, consumers could switch from limes to other citrus fruit like oranges.

Additional sources: El Universal, March 11, 2014. Article by Karla Mora.

Norte, March 8, 2014. Article by Article

by Nancy Gonzalez Soto. Radioformula. com.mx, March 6, 2014. Article by Ricardo Rocha. Milenio.com, March 3, 2014.

Article by Luis Moreno.

La Jornada ( Michoacan edition), March 5, 2014. Article by Adriana Florian. La Jornada, July 20, 2013; March 4, 5, 10, 11, 2014. Articles by Ilan Semo, Julio Reyna Quiroz, Carlos Alfonso Lopez, Martin Sanchez Trevino, and editorial staff.

(Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies; New Mexico State University; Las Cruces, New Mexico.) 

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BY THE mystery Customer

Pizza Patron: fresh toppings, good service; Office Max copy center: ask for Mario Consistently good, thorough, and very fast service (less than 20 minutes) got the MC on her way out of town for a back roads venture to Austin.

Kirkland’s 5300 San Dario The staff at this home furnishings shop was very helpful. The MC was pleased with the service she received in finding all of the items on her shopping list.

Cinemark Movies 12 5412 San Bernardo The MC enjoyed an afternoon of cinema at this establishment on a Sunday.

Despite the crowds of moviegoers, the staff was in great spirits and made the experience a pleasant one.

Office Max 5408 San Bernardo Ave. At Office Max, Mario at the copy/

print desk was extremely helpful and courteous to the MC. He has great people skills.

Neel Title Company 1202 Welby Court Incredibly helpful was Rosie Rendon when the MC was searching for a survey that accompanied a 1997 real estate closing. The company’s digitized records are no doubt of immense help to buyers and sellers of real estate, property owners, attorneys, oil and gas land men, and those who have historic interest in old properties.

Yard Art 2517 E. Del Mar Blvd.

There are very helpful, attentive employees at this nursery. It’s a really pretty place to wander about if you like foliage and blossoms — huge inventory, but not like a big box store. 

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

encyclopedia of horticulture, weather trends, and plant lore. He knows his stuff.

Pizza Patron 4311 Clark Blvd This establishment not only offers speedy service but also fresh topping pizzas The MC tried for the first time their Spinach Classico, a pizza topped with Alfredo sauce, baby spinach, and cheese. It was quite delectable.

Caffé Dolce 1708 Victoria St. For the best soups in town, the MC recommends this café. Their organically grown vegetables make for perfectly succulent soups and appetizing entrees.

The tomato bisque is never disappointing.

Jiffy Lube 1307 E. Del Mar Blvd.

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Fish-O-Roll 4220 McPherson For fresh, affordable sushi there is no better place in town. The calamari was cooked to perfection and gave Olive Garden a run for their money. The MC was not pleased with the overall service, however, as the waitress was not attentive to her or her party of four.

María Bonita 4615 San Bernando Rich with Mexican accouterment, the ambiance of this establishment can’t be beat. The MC ordered the Tiroz Huahuache, a burrito that was tasty and spicy. The meat was tender and nicely flavored, and the service was quite good.

Gil’s Nursery Meadow @ Locust St. Gil Sr. has been at the business of growing plants for so long that he is an

The Mystery Customer

Taking a break from building

Smile Dentistry at Laredo Public Library

Hannah Tajuddin, Angela Hay, Justin Harshbarger, and Liz Smith spent their Spring Break building homes for Habitat for Humanity. The Carlow University students are pictured on March 13 at the Tierra Prometida subdivision.

Veronica Dartez of Smile Magic Dentistry along with the mascot was at the Laredo Public Library on Friday, March 14. They provided families with details on the importance of oral hygiene and what their dental practice has to offer.

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Letter from the Village

Weary of gale-force winds and tidal surges; spring is coming, though we don’t know when

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appy St. Piran’s Day to you all. He’s one of the Irish saints who came to Cornwall to save us from ourselves and today is his birthday.

It’s been a hairy old winter for all of us on both sides of the Atlantic and in many other places, too.

First, my sincere condolences to those of you trapped in the upper Midwest, the East Coast and parts of the south. Believe me when I say I know what it is to be sick and tired of snow, and I would cheerfully join you in a giant melting party if such a thing were possible.

Over here we have had tidal surges and floods of Biblical proportions.

A good part of Somerset has been under water since Christmas and is expected to remain flooded well into the summer. As for the rest of us, we’re recovering from tides and floods. Cornwall’s rail link to the rest of the country has been cut off since early Feb. and will probably remain so until some time in April.

Tides have robbed out beaches of sand, in some cases revealing ancient petrified forests, lost villages, wrecked ships, and huge amount of ordinance left over from the two world wars.

At Newquay some 20 miles down the coast, 20 or so unexploded bombs have surfaced. Meanwhile, down at Mounts Bay at the tip of Cornwall, a petrified forest that once may have been the lost kingdom of Lyonesse has been exposed. Sorry to say it won’t be there for long, but it looks lovely.

Yesterday we had the highest waves in the entire world. Boy, was that

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fun. Earlier in February we had hurricane winds that left many of us without electricity or heat. Fortunately, we in the village escaped most of that. Roads did flood and several people stalled out and flooded their engines and totaled their cars. We are all well tired of rain, gales, and cloudy days; but the weather people tell us we will have two sunny days ahead so we can all get out and gossip, garden, and wash cars.

As for me, I have spent the winter recovering from an ankle replacement.

I had surgery on 14 January and spent some time in the hospital then came home to pass six weeks in a cast. I cannot begin to tell you how I hate being in a cast. It is a scratchy, itchy, thoroughly nasty experience that I wish never to repeat. Now, however, I can walk, albeit with crutches and I have the coolest mobility scooter ever, a Sporster SE that does 10 mph with a 25 mile range. I am free at last to roam the village, snoop to my heart’s content and frighten chickens wherever I find them.

Since I am still on crutches, I am trying to think of useful things to do with them. So far I have arrived at: 1. They can be quite helpful dragging things to you that wandered too far away.

2.

They get you a better place in line at the pharmacy 3. People tend to get out of your way in a crowd.

4. They are a really useful way to smite your enemies when needed.

If you can think of other uses, please let me know. I want to make this a positive experience.

And I do find them. A handsome banty rooster has taken up residence on Haven Road, one block away. No one knows where he came

from. He just struts around and crows when the spirit moves him.

He has fancy black and red feathers that even cover his legs so he looks a bit like a little major or something military. There are all kinds of jokes circulating about whose pot he will wind up in. My money is on the fox. I think that little fellow is too clever for the rest of us and I know for a fact that the woman who feeds him has threatened mayhem to whoever messes with him.

We were in New Zealand for Christmas, on the North Island at Waimarama Bay and then on to Auckland.

While there, I ran across a fascinating piece in The New Zealand Herald.

A television station had been inves-

tigated for violating broadcasting standards when some of its newscasters used the phrase, “as welcome as a wet fart in a wedding dress,” on their show. The agency investigating had concluded that while the statement was inappropriate for a news show, it did not violate standards.

That left all of us wondering what, exactly, it would take to violate standards? Anyway, it became the phrase of the trip and we could all get hysterical anytime anyone said it.

And on that thought I will leave you.

As always, we’d love to hear from you so please drop us a line when you have time. Remember, spring is coming….we just don’t know when. 

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

By IDA SWEARINGEN LareDOS Contributor

AHEC hosts Health Careers Camp for students Local high school students spent their Spring Break at the Area Health Education Center's free Health Careers Camp at the UT Health Science Center Laredo Regional Campus. The goal of the two-day camp was to introduce students to career choices in the medical field.

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Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Prepping for final chess tournament

Cynthia Gonzalez, Teressa Perez, and Nadia Gonzalez of Bruni enjoyed the March 1 activities at the Laredo International Fair and Exposition, which included agricultural exhibits, rides, and the youth livestock show.

Farias Elementary second graders Samantha Nevarez and Natalia Mussot are pictured practicing before the final chess tournament of the year, which was hosted by the LISD Advanced Academic Program Chess Club on March 1 at the Laredo Civic Center Ballroom.

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Enjoying the fair

Observing World Down Syndrome Awareness Day United High School lead teacher Lucy Gutierrez; student David Perez; Laredo Down Syndrome Association Support Group members Ruby Galvez, Joanna Sarasuda, Christian Alvarado, Priscilla GarcĂ­a, and Judy NuĂąez; and UISD executive director for special education Martha M. Moke were at the Cherish Center on March 21.

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LAPS

To our beloved Laredo community, You can imagine how we feel at LAPS when we receive letters or messages via our social media such as this one; “The efforts of your organization have increased protection, responsibility, and adoption awareness to levels not seen before in our community.”

Or this; “People like you — Michelle and all the LAPS Board — are absolute inspirations. True selfless love is what you all are spreading.

“Estos animalitos” are our lifeline, allowing us to transcend our selfishness. They are an example of unconditional love.”

Comments such as these lift us up. It is great to have the love and support of our community, but the fact of the matter is that we are struggling to raise money to keep our shelter operational.

In addition to keeping our ‘NoKill’ Shelter up and running, we are, true to our mission statement, also educating our community by visiting and teaching elementary school students. Our adoption events and lowcost spay/neuter/vaccination clinics are well-attended. Children are learning about commitment to community service through their training as LAPS volunteers.

We never miss an opportunity to inform our community about the Laredo Pet Ordinance that includes among other requirements, humane treatment, proper housing and micro-chipping one’s pets. We are working hand in hand with the City of Laredo and Webb County in these efforts.

Through social media, we do our

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best to reunite lost pets with their owners and have been successful in many, many cases. We are never happier than when we help reunite a pet with its desperate owner or when one of our own shelter pets has been adopted. All pets adopted from LAPS are vaccinated, micro-chipped and spay/neutered before adoption.

It’s well known that Laredo has a serious pet-overpopulation crisis.

Our small core of advocates is working very hard to slow down the outof-control multiplication numbers.

We recently hosted our second successful “Spaygetti No Meatballs” dinner at La Reserva Bar and Grill, observing National Spay Day. We believe fervently that the work we are doing is raising awareness of this crisis and its solutions but we need help paying our basic expenses so that we can continue sponsoring the low-cost spay/neuter clinics that make it possible for more pet owners to take advantage of the opportunity to limit the numbers of litters the pets they love will have. The looks of gratitude these pet owners give us are worth the effort it takes to make these clinics happen.

To this end, we are reaching out to those whom we believe will stand with us. Won’t you who read this column help us by making an ongoing substantial monetary investment to assure that LAPS can continue its mission?

We invite you to come and visit our shelter for the first time or on a repeat visit, to see what changes have been, and are being made, to make it the best temporary home possible for our guests.

Many Thanks, The Laredo Animal Protective Society: “Providing Unwanted Pets a Pathway to a Second Chance” 

Kazen reopening The newly renovated Kazen Student Center at the Laredo Community College Fort McIntosh Campus had a grand reopening on Friday, March 21. Cathy Kazen, Abraham “Chick” Kazen III, David Kazen, Norma Kazen, Kathy Rye, and Sydney Rye were present for the tour and celebration of the grand reopening.

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

By JENNIE L. REED LAPS Board Member

Courtesy Photo

LAPS needs your support to keep no-kill mission viable

Special education students compete in special games UISD hosted its annual Young Athletes Program for all early childhood special education students, parents, and administrators at the UISD Student Activity Complex on Thursday, March 20. Students with special needs competed in an array of physical activities and obstacle courses.

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Notes from La La Land

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 neodance@aol.com.

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The subjects of the portraits provide an insider’s view into President Bush’s unique relationship with other world leaders. Mr. Bush, by the way, took up painting after he left the White House.

Reports indicate that Mr. Bush accomplished his artistic feat with the help of a Texas art teacher named Bonnie Flood, from whom he learned the craft by painting dogs, then moving on to painting still life and landscape.

Mr. Bush told The Dallas Morning News that with his new hobby, he takes great delight in busting stereotypes. “People are surprised I can do art work; of course, some people are surprised I can even read,” he said.

Mr. Bush signs his paintings not with his name, but with “43.”

The Bush Presidential Library and Museum has 207,000 square feet of space, and it is the second-largest presidential library.

Let’s jump now to what someone called “The Ballet of Construction Trucks in L.A.,” which occurred the day after Valentine’s Day. For 26 hours on local television we kept seeing the world’s largest concrete pour, which will provide the base for the new Wilshire Grand Hotel, a 73-story building set to open in 2017.

It will be the tallest building in L.A., and the eighth tallest in the US. The concrete base will assure that the tower can withstand the seismic and wind forces of California.

It took 2,100 truck-loads of concrete to accomplish the feat. The entire site covers three acres, and the concrete foundation is about the size of a football field. Each truck took about 10 minutes to dump its 6,000 lb. load of concrete.

The developer of the hotel — the South Korean shipping and airline giant, the Hanjin Group — is spending $1.1

billion. The building will be the tallest building west of the Mississippi.

Hanjin has $36 billion in assets, including Korean Air Lines, and employs about 1,000 full-time workers in Southern California. It will employ an additional 1,750 employees once the new hotel is ready. Construction workers at the hotel will total 11,500 over the course of the construction. This gives us a good idea about who is spending the big bucks hiring workers in America.

To close, a note on the Oscars. The Best Actor Oscar was won by Matthew McConaughey of Austin for his work in The Dallas Buyers Club, in which he portrays an AIDS victim. Now, a math question. An Oscar weighs 7.5 pounds.

Matt lost the equivalent of the weight of how many Oscars, to play the role?

In Las Vegas they call it the lucky 7!

And on that note it’s time for — as Norma Adamo says — TAN TAN! 

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

t is said that everyone in the world is an artist, whether or not they choose to express themselves through visual or performance art. Former President George W. Bush has chosen to express himself through visual art, specifically portraiture. His first art exhibit opens in April at the presidential library and museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

“The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy” is the name of the exhibit, which consists of more than two dozen never seen portraits painted by President Bush. Included with the portraits will be artifacts, photographs, and personal reflections that help explain the stories of relationships formed on the world stage.

So now we know what the President has been doing during a relatively quiet retirement.

Meet George W. Bush, the artist

Law Enforcement raises money for Special Olympics U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents Mucia Dovalina, José Urribe, Alberto Renteria, Reymundo Vidaurri, and Roberto De Hoyos participated in the Polar Plunge to raise funds for the Special Olympics.

The are pictured on March 7 at the Inner City Pool.

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Maverick Ranch Notes

News Brief

Big change in a little room

Ruiz: why Latino history matters

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he construction was worth documenting, so I photographed the first day change and sent it to Carol to see if she could guess the photograph’s location. After several emails she has not guessed it yet.

The photograph shows a hideous brownish-yellow wall, a blue floor in front, and in back near the wall there is a noticeable lack of floor.

That is where the shower was, but it never had an actual floor. The rigging that was the “floor” was something not to linger thinking about.

We are fixing the Kitchen House bathroom shower at last. In the early 1960s we thought that shower was a big improvement. It was. In the 1930s Grandma’s sister had a bathroom added onto the Kitchen House. That was a large improvement over the outhouse down the hill. But instead of making the bathroom large enough for a normal tub, she kept the room tiny and put in a sitz tub.

She did manage to make the bathroom on two levels. The sitz tub was fine for children; you sit in a sitz tub with your legs crossed and splash water all over the floor.

But for adults, it is ridiculous because there is no room for the water except to overflow. Everyone was glad to see that contraption go and the shower created in its place.

Created is the word because its “floor” was a sight to behold from

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D

r. Vicki Ruiz, a distinguished professor of history and Chicano/Latin studies at the University of California, Irvine, was a guest lecturer at TAMIU on Friday, March 21.

Ruiz’s presentation entitled “Why Latino History matters to U.S. history?” focused on the U.S. Mexican War of 1848, the Filipino Cuban Spanish American War of 1898, and the Latino G.I. generation of 1948.

Ruiz emphasized how these historic moments were pivotal to the reimagining of an American narrative with Latinos at the forefront.

She also stressed that contrary to media depictions of Latinos, there is a rich layering of nationalities throughout generations.

“Latinos represent the largest minority population in the United

States. They have diverse backgrounds. A recent national council study predicts that by 2030 one quarter of all Americans will be of Latin descent,” Ruiz said.

Over the course of three decades, she has published over 50 essays and one dozen books. An award-winning scholar, she is the author of Cannery Women, Cannery Lives, and From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth- Century America.

Since 2007 she has served on the advisory board for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. An elected fellow of the Society of American Historians, she was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

— LareDOS Staff

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

By bebe & sissy fenstermaker

below. Yes, the bathroom is two stories. You can visit its underneath and see all the pipes and odds and ends of 107 years of Maverick occupation that made their way down there. There was a lot of insulation down there, too, because those pipes froze once too often. I stuffed insulation around any exposed pipe and tacked it onto the window (yes, a window down there) and the door.

When I first took the new plumber down to view the underneath, the insulation burst into our faces. He is a tactful person.

Back to the shower “floor.” Can I say a cowboy put it in? He was a country person who would tackle just about anything. He took out the floor the sitz tub rested on. Then with the odd pipe and piece of angle iron and some chicken wire he somehow got some cement to stay up long enough to dry into a “floor”.

And he did put an inch pipe at the back near the wall so most of the water would leave the shower and go outside. The shower walls were early pasteboard and lasted almost as long as the floor.

We have lived with this for many years but the sag and bounciness due to rotten wood underneath had gotten to the ‘not funny’ stage. The plumber was game and has a carpenter friend, so that is what we’ve been doing since Wednesday. They have built a floor on which to install a shower module, and 4 x 4 beams on concrete pads support the floor.

Nothing moves.

I’m waiting for Carol to stop guessing it’s a photograph of a closet. She knows this house has no closets.

— Bebe Fenstermaker

John Dean, Monica Muñoz, guest lecturer Dr. Vicki Ruiz, Dr. Roberto Aredia, and Dr. Deborah Blackwell at TAMIU on March 21.

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By salo Otero Salo Otero is the director of marketing for the South Texas Food Bank. He can be reached at sotero@ southexasfoodbank.org or by calling 956-726-3120.

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Galo elected STFB board president vides. She is married to John Galo, Webb County Commissioner Pct. 3. The couple has a young son, John Roman, age 8, a student at United Day School.

The Benavides family, longtime advocates of the STFB, sponsored the first Kids Cafés at the Benavides Boys and Girls Club, Rio Bravo and El Cenizo in 2006.

Arturo N. Benavides Sr. was named the first honoree of the STFB Empty Bowls seven years ago. The initial Kids Cafes were named for his grandchildren, John Roman and Zoe Zelin.

Galo graduated from St. Augustine High School in 1983 and earned a degree from St. Mary’s University (San Antonio). She taught school for three years before joining the family ranching and investment business fulltime.

“The STFB has always been close and dear to the heart of my family,” Galo said. “We will continue to support this extremely important mission of feeding the hungry and get others to help.”

Other officers elected were Pete Saenz Jr., president-elect; Erasmo Villarreal, secretary; Roberto Diaz, treasurer; and Aide Brooks, historian.

The board has recognized outgoing president Dodier for her service as president and also welcomed new board members, attorney John R. Solis and Bruni-Hebbronville area business woman Leslie G. Benavides of VP Lone Star Industries.

The STFB serves Bruni and Hebbronville.

In his monthly report, executive director Alfonso Casso noted an all-time record 324 emergency walk-in bags were distributed in January. The previous high was 202. Casso explained the increase, “With SNAP (formerly food stamps) and unemployment benefits cut, our clients feel the pinch and need more immediate assistance.”

Berg, based in Washington, D.C. and New York, was in Laredo March 17 and 18 to address Texas A&M International University students on campus and other Laredo media outlets. He is an expert media spokesman on domestic hunger, food insecurity, obesity, poverty, foodrelated economic development, national service, and volunteerism.

The executivedirector of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Berg is the author of All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?, the definitive and most well-reviewed book on American hunger is the last decade.

Berg is director of the AmeriCorps VISTA program called Anti-Hunger Opportunity Corps, which brought Sarah Lamm to the STFB for an internship that ends in July.

The STFB city-wide food drive from February 14 to March 14 collected thousands of pounds to distribute to the needy.

A record number of almost 200 volunteers from TAMIU are expected on March 29 to sort product.

The STFB, located at 1907 Freight at Riverside in west Laredo, can be reached at (956) 726-3120 and website www.southtexasfoodbank.org, The STFB distributes supplemental food to the unemployed, underemployed, and fixed income families.

The other programs besides emergency walk-in are adopt-a-family, Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP for 7,000 elderly), Kids Café and SNAP outreach. The food bank distributed 646,559 pounds in January— bringing the four-month fiscal year total to 2.913 million pounds. 

Courtesy Photo

aredo business woman and civic leader Anna Benavides Galo has been elected president of the STFB board, taking the reins from Annie Dodier.

The STFB celebrates its silver jubilee (25th anniversary) this year. The STFB opened in December 1989 as the LaredoWebb County Food Bank.

Olga Maldonado was the first woman to head the board; Dodier, the second.

Galo presided at her first meeting on March 19, ushering in a flurry of March activities, including a visit to Laredo from the highly-regarded international hunger advocate Joel Berg and a Laredo city-wide food drive that ended with a sort-a-thon during Spring Break.

Galo is the daughter of Arturo N. Benavides Sr. and Gloria Casso Bena-

South Texas Food Bank

Tano Tijerina and STFB Ranchers for the Hungry coordinator Pancho Farias are pictured at LIFE’s youth livestock show.

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Serving Sentences

By randy koch

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ednesday afternoon when I finished conferencing with students around 3:45, I grabbed the paperback Another Bullshit Night in Suck City from my desk, tugged on my coat, and closed the office door behind me. I trudged down three flights of stairs, past the English Department office, and to the front door. Pushing my hands in my gloves, I threw my hip against the crash bar, stepped out of the Bakeless Center for the Humanities, and hunched into the March wind. Flurries, cigarette butts, and brown oak leaves swirled around my feet, and several inches of snow blanketed the Quad in the center of campus. Another cold frikkin’ day at Bloom U. I zipped up my coat to my chin.

The sidewalk slopes west from Bakeless, past Navy Hall, and down steps toward concrete arteries bending left and right to dormitories filled with freshmen. Far below me, the long hill eventually reaches the east end of Bloomsburg’s Main Street, but halfway down, Kehr Union was imagined into the hill, its north wall of dark glass facing a frozen gray patio mushroomed with cold metal tables and empty benches. I went to the main door, pulled it open, and inside pocketed my gloves and unzipped my coat. I followed the long carpeted hallway to the end. On the right a door stood open, a wedge of gray wood jammed under it. The space inside yawned broad and wide under fluorescent lights. Yards of empty carpet surrounded a table facing five long rows of mostly vacant chairs with an aisle cut through the middle from back to front. I pulled off my coat and sat on the right side.

During the next few minutes, students filled most of the chairs, and at 4:00 English professor Jerry Wemple walked in with Nick Flynn. They

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Out and in like Flynn stood at the end of the table and chatted inaudibly; then, Jerry thanked us for coming, read Nick’s bio, led some scattered applause, and sat two chairs to my left. When Nick handed students at the far end of the rows a clump of papers, they each took one and passed the rest to the right, like collection plates in church. On one side was printed “all living things have shoulders” an excerpt from The Ticking Is the Bomb and on the other side “the piss of god,” from Nick’s memoir Another Bullshit Night. About a year ago I’d read it, flew through it, in fact, pulled along by his sometimes funny and often painful portrait of estrangement between father and son, of years lost to prison and instability, of his fear that “[i]f I let him inside I would become him.”

Nick stood next to the table with his right boot on the seat of a chair, X-ed his arms over his knee, and leaned toward the paper in his right hand, the same one we all had. Spears of dark hair arced over his forehead and hung across his jean jacket collar. His thin lined face, lace-up work boots, and black T-shirt and jeans made me think of a young Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones. He said he didn’t have anything prepared, so in hopes of stirring up some discussion, he read “the piss of god,” three prose-poetic paragraphs about where his father and other homeless men slept at night.

Then, when he asked us for questions, most concerned Being Flynn, the movie adaptation of Another Bullshit Night with Robert De Niro as Nick’s father Jonathan, Julianne Moore as his mother Jody, and Paul Dano as Nick.

He smiled as he recalled working with De Niro and how unimpressed his father was when meeting him, how Jonathan always insisted that only he could play himself in a movie. Or

maybe Dustin Hoffman.

I suspect we all felt a bit of glamour, sniffed a little rarefied air just knowing that it was only two degrees of separation from us to De Niro and Julianne Moore. I’ve always liked De Niro’s acting, but I like writing and books, including Nick’s, better. That’s why I was here. That’s what I hoped he’d talk about.

And gradually he did. When asked about some of the ambiguous imagery in “the piss of god,” he pointed to “the power of the indeterminate image” to force readers to participate. When asked about writing in other genres, he explained that he dislikes the freedom of fiction because, he said, “I like to have limits.” When someone wondered about the difficulty and danger

of memoir, especially portraying family members with serious flaws and dire histories, he said he tries to “write toward compassion.” And when asked if his actual memories were distorted as a result of writing the book, then bending events to fit the movie, and seeing others dramatize his life on screen, he simply accepted the impossibility of getting the past right. “Honor the instability of memory,” he said.

That’s what I remember about Wednesday when I climbed the hill back up to Bakeless, what I choose to remember, maybe what I need to remember as I go back into the classroom, push students into their work, and excavate my own memories by writing out of the present and into a past steadily drifting further away. 

Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Randy Koch earned his MFA at the University of Wyoming and teaches writing at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

Southern rock group at AJs The band Saving Abel took center stage to an eager crowd of fans at Average Joe’s over spring break on Wednesday, March 12 .

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Laredo Community College

Scholarship honors memory of Jane Marie Heidt

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n April 2013, the Laredo Community College family lost one of its own with the sudden passing of Jane Heidt, an instructional coordinator with LCC’s Adult Education Department.

In honor of her commitment to education and to her students, Heidt’s sister Ann Heidt Flick and brother-in-law Gary Flick have established the Jane Marie Heidt Memorial Scholarship.

“This scholarship is being established in Jane’s memory to recognize her dedication, support and commitment to her adult, non-traditional students in having them reach their goals of obtaining a higher education,” said Flick.

Originally from Erie, Pennsylvania, Heidt joined the LCC family in 2003 as an instructional coordinator, and she also taught English as a Second Language classes.

A world-traveler, Heidt was a graduate of Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, where she studied international business and economics, as well as Spanish.

She traveled extensively, living in Mexico City for a time before settling in Laredo.

In addition to her work with LCC, Heidt was actively involved in the community. She shared an affinity for animals, and over the years rescued several dogs she trained as therapy dogs.

“She always went the extra mile in everything she did, and especially with her students while she was here at LCC,” said LCC Director of Donor

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Relations and Special Projects Millie Slaughter, who added that it did not surprise her when her family let the college know that it had been their sister’s wish to establish a scholarship.

“It is a wonderful way to honor her memory,” said Slaughter.

Flick, who traveled to Laredo in June 2013 to attend a memorial service in honor of her sister, was moved by the reflections shared by her sister’s coworkers, friends, and students.

“Jane clearly made a difference in the students’ lives as they sought to pursue their dreams of obtaining a higher education, oftentimes under adverse circumstances,” said Flick.

According to Flick, Heidt’s wish was for the scholarship to assist those students who could not otherwise afford a higher education.

As first-generation college students who relied on financial aid to help them fund their educations, both sisters understood that lack of funding can derail an education.

Thus, the Jane Marie Heidt Memorial Scholarship is open to female, non-traditional students, aged 25 or older, who are currently in their second or higher year of study.

Students must be in good standing and be currently enrolled at LCC with a minimum of six credit hours and a GPA of 2.5 or higher.

The student also must be a U.S. citizen, naturalized citizen, or a permanent resident Flick hopes that this scholarship will help these students improve their quality of life so that they become self-sufficient.

Students can receive up to $500

per semester for a maximum of four semesters, and the funds will cover tuition, fees, and books.

“In today’s world, people need more than a high school diploma to find a job. If someone has the potential, costs should not be a deterrent in pursuing a higher education. Jane made a difference with her short life.

By having established this scholarship fund, her legacy will continue to live on,” said Flick.

Qualified students who wish to apply for the scholarship can contact the Adult Education Department at (956) 721-5436 or visit their office in the Eloy Garcia Building, room 111, at the Fort McIntosh Campus. 

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By MONICA McGETTRICK WALTERS LareDOS Contributor

Cherish Center staff United Independent School District special education instructors Sanjuanita M. Avalos, Geraldine E. Botello, Abraham R. De la Garza, and Vanessa Salido were recognized on Friday, March 21 at the Cherish Center’s World Down Syndrome awareness day ceremony.

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Philosophy to go

TAMIU

TAMIU enrollment grows

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tudent enrollment this Spring term at TAMIU is growing at a healthy pace, with 6,833 students attending, a 3.15% increase over last Spring’s 6,624 headcount.

More importantly, semester credit hours (SCH), upon which State funding is calculated, are up 4.26% from 66,782 to 69,163.

TAMIU President Dr. Ray Keck said one factor in the enrollment increase has been the University’s move to dynamic scheduling, which offers students flexible class scheduling and the ability to compress and shorten some undergraduate and graduate courses.

“This term, 9.5% of students selected dynamic schedule classes. These are courses offered in mini-mesters of five weeks and flex-terms of 7 and 12 weeks with different entry points and times. The availability of these options, individually and combined, provides students with greater flexibility in how they schedule their courses, plan degree program progress and arrange their load. This helped increase our graduate student enrollment by about 4%. We also expanded our online course inventory, which continues to be an area of growing student interest,” Dr. Keck said.

This term’s student population includes 4,000 women and 2,833 men.

This term the University’s most popular programs are: Criminal Justice, Business Administration, Nursing, Psychology, and Biology.

The average undergraduate age is 22, while the graduate age is 31.

The College with the highest enrollment is the College of Arts and Sciences with 4,133 students, followed by the A. R. Sanchez, Jr. School of Business with 1,109.

Spring Commencement exercises are scheduled May 17.

Summer Sessions will begin June 9.

Students take Plunge, Net First at benefit

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A group of TAMIU students took a chilling plunge this month that was freezin’ for a reason.

They were participants in the Special Olympics Polar Plunge March 7 at the Inner City Pool. The event was a fundraiser for Special Olympics Texas-Laredo and monies raised will provide year-round sports training and competitions for 1,409 Special Olympics athletes here.

The students, lead by Dr. Randel Brown, TAMIU associate professor and chair, department of professional programs, raised $3,166.15, repeating for the third time their first place prize for most money raised in the annual event.

Students and team members included Marla Alanis, Celina Benavides, Nydia Benavides, José Castillo, Fernanda Chavez, Sandra Domínquez, Leonel Garza, Carolina Gomez, José González, Wayo González, Briana Gutíerrez, Marlene Gutíerrez, Paola Herrera, Trevor Liddle, Dallas López, Marleen Mar, Carlos Mar, Nora Patricia Ruiz, Yahaira Salazar-Maldonado, Priscilla Salazar, Robert Stockett, and Elizabeth Soto.

Dr. Brown is a long-time Special Olympics volunteer who annually encourages TAMIU students in efforts supporting Special Olympics. To see a video of the “Plunge,” visit: https://www. facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152278930 085730&set=vb.167398330729&type=2&t heater Brown’s group is now working to line up 200 TAMIU volunteers to work at the upcoming Special Olympics Spring games taking place April 29, 30, and May 1.

Sponsors and TAMIU students wanting to join the effort can contact Dr. Brown at brown@tamiu.edu Information about the Special Olympic Spring Games can be secured by contacting Maribel Santoya-Maciel at msantoya-maciel@sotx.org or by calling (956) 712-2144. 

All the world’s a gesture

By RAUL CASSO LareDOS Contributor

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ou can’t have form a shape without something. Before a form comes along, that is, before anything assumes a recognizable shape, there must be something in existence even though it doesn’t have a shape with a name. Whatever that underlying something is, any object with an identifiable form depends on it for existence because it is out of that something that form takes shape. What is this raw material that can take the form of something or anything? Aristotle refers to it as raw matter. But what is it?

Well, whatever it is, it’s not conceptual in nature. A mental concept forms in our consciousness only after our senses perceive enough of this “something” and transmit the data to our brain where it is processed for conscious understanding.

The presence of raw matter precedes any conceptual understanding that we may form about it and then only after enough of this raw matter is recognized by our subconscious minds to assign a shape to it. Only then, in a temporal sequence, do we consciously identify whatever it is we do.

As the human brain evolved, our ability to consciously recognize shapes became more efficient. With the development of language, man gave names to the objects perceived according to shape and form. Who knows how many millions of years this evolutionary process took. Today, we experience it as an automatic conscious occurrence — we don’t even think about it. Even though an element of time passes between the recognition of an object by its shape or form and the recalling of its name, we don’t consciously experience that temporal step. We just see and recognize an object by name. Curiously, according to the Bible, God gave this name giving business to Adam. The Bible tells us that, “…out of the ground…God formed every beast…

and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them…and Adam gave names to all…” (Gen. 2:19-20, KJV).

How pastoral. I didn’t know Adam was into name-calling; did you?

However long ago the naming of nature occurred in our evolutionary process, what we recognize as an individual object is fashioned of raw, formless matter and then only a small fraction of that raw matter. I say a “small” part, because how much of it we perceive is confined to what our senses are able to pick up.

Our five senses cannot grasp the material world in its infinite entirety, but only a very limited aspect of it — a subset of it.

That perceived, however, although limited in quantity as being only a relatively small batch of data, somehow makes itself known to us in a sort of material gesture.

The raw matter, in constant flux, changing as it ceaselessly does over time, presents a combination, or pattern of data, as though beckoning to us, such that our senses pick it up. When we focus on our immediate surroundings it seems that the flow of matter behaves in deference to us, stopping long enough for us to “see” it as in the childhood game, “1-2-3-STOP,”or, as though signaling —gesturing — so that we might understand it.

It’s not, however, that the raw matter was trying to communicate with us in a language it thinks we’ll understand; rather, the flow of data “freezes” upon our perception of it. Our senses scan the data searching for combinations that our subconscious may discern and from there make a selection. Until we spot enough of the data to identify it with a conceptual form in our conscious minds, it remains a meaningless flow of matter unknown and unknowable to us.

Although raw matter may be perceived and measured scientifically and known in that way, as a matter of normal, conscious perception, it is beyond us: we are ignorant of it as it is ignorant of us. 

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VMT pre-Spring Break concert Students at the Vidal M. Trevi単o School of Communications and Fine Arts enjoyed a pre-Spring Break karaoke contest on Friday, March 7, courtesy of the staff members.

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Commentary

Sam Houston took over a work in progress

By José ANTONIO López LareDOS Contributor

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arch 2 nd is celebrated as a state holiday honoring Texas Independence Day (March 2, 1836). On that date, newly arrived Anglo immigrants from the U.S. severed ties with the Republic of Mexico and declared independence. However, today more than ever, many Texans question its significance for two main reasons — (l) Texas was independent for only nine years, since in 1845 the Anglos traded their independence to join the U.S. as a slave state; and (2) Texas previously had declared independence years before. What’s going on here?

Sometimes when you rinse the exterior of a celebrated event, pesky details that weaken it quickly bubble up to the surface. In chronological order, the March 2, 1836 incident was indeed the second time Texas declared independence. Factually, on April 6, 1813 José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara Uribe, first Texas President, wrote and signed the first Texas Declaration of Independence; then read its contents to jubilant Texans outside the Spanish Governors Palace.

To be sure, the year 2013 had very special significance. First, in April, U.S. Representative Eddie Rodriguez sponsored a Proclamation (approved by the State Legislature) honoring the 200 th Anniversary of the first Texas Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Then, on August 18th, we honored the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Medina.

As an eighth-generation Texan, it’s rewarding to me that many nonTejanos are embracing long ignored early Texas history. They are learning the truth — Texas Independence was already well in motion before

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Sam Houston arrived in Texas seeking to start life afresh in Mexico.

Honestly, the newcomer Sam Houston first joined Tejanos in their ongoing federalist movement.

What exactly was the federalist movement in Mexico? In brief, the first citizens of Texas, as other communities were doing elsewhere in Mexico, were asking for more independence. In particular, the 18101813 patriots longed for equality with the aristocracy and wished to keep more of what they produced.

Details below summarize the true events. (l) The drive for Texas independence began with Gutiérrez de Lara answering Father Miguel Hidalgo’s call (Grito). After organizing the Mexican Army of the North (1st Texas Army) from scratch, Don Bernardo led his men in five decisive battles (1812-1813) against the far superior Spanish Army. In 1813, Don Bernardo became the first President of Texas. He wrote and signed a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution, both signaling to the world that native-born residents of the independent Provincia de Tejas had credentials to seek autonomy.

(2) Alas, the Army of the North, under another commander, was defeated on August 18, 1813. Over 800 Tejano patriots died for freedom that day. The Texas State Historical Association honors the Battle of Medina as the largest, bloodiest battle ever fought on Texas soil.

(3) In 1821, Mexico gained its independence. Soon after, civil war spread across the Republic of Mexico (from Sonora to Texas to Yucatán) demanding relaxed management from Mexico City. As such, the old 1810-1813 struggle for self-rule in Texas reignited. It was in reaction to this part of the civil war raging in Mexico that General Santa Anna

came to Texas in 1836.

So, Sam Houston in union with recent slave-owning U.S. expatriates walked into a very volatile political situation when they arrived in Texas. All was fine with the Anglos joining the federalists until it came to the issue of slaves. Mexico was the first country in America to abolish slavery (1829). Slave-owning whites, unwilling to free their slaves, betrayed their Tejano allies and pointed the federalist cause in a different direction. As immigrants in Mexico, they could not legally claim independence. None of the Anglos were native-born Texans.

As President of Mexico, General Santa Anna had every legal right to take military action. He was not the intruder in Texas; the Anglos were.

As he had done as a lieutenant at the 1813 Battle of Medina, he came to fight the federalists. Plus, he wished to rid his country of armed men from the U.S. Regardless, Texas independence lasted for only nine years.

In 1845 the Anglos traded their independence to join the U.S. as a slave state; causing the U.S.-Mexico War of 1846-48.

Because it doesn’t fit the Sam Houston model, Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara’s full-fledged First Texas Revolution has long been diminished by mainstream historians who call it an expedition. That is unfair.

Hopefully, present and future generations of Texans will learn about a whole slate of new heroic and true Texas independence founders, such as Father Miguel Hidalgo, Doña Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez, Juan Aldama, Ignacio Allende, José Mariano Jimenez, Captain Juan Bautista de las Casas, Col. Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, Col. José Menchaca, and many others.

Because they are unaware of their rich history, many Mexican-descent Texans avoid the Texas history topic altogether and accept the Anglicized version without question. The only tool we can use to learn more is knowledge. Don’t wait another day.

If your family originated in Texas or Northern Mexico, start your inspirational journey in search of the Spanish Mexican roots of Texas. Visit the Tejano Monument in Austin. I guarantee it will uplift you!

Learn how our ancestors set up the first towns “deep in the heart of Texas.” Find out about the centralists versus federalists (Tejanos) struggle in pre-1836 Texas. Truly, our Spanish Mexican ancestors’ love of freedom and independence is second to none. There’s much more.

Indeed, revitalizing early Texas history will prove once and for all that after more than 150 years, it’s time to give credit where credit is due in the founding of this great place we call Texas. 

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Movie Review

The Lego Movie: follow the rules

By MARIELA RODRIGUEZ LareDOS Staff

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arner Brothers released the first-ever theatrical LEGO movie. This animated action adventure The LEGO Movie was directed and cowritten by Phil Lord and Christopher Miler.

The witty well-crafted film delivered a great message to moviegoers on balancing creativity with following rules. The voice cast was charming, and gags make this a must see.

This animated story follows Emmet (Chris Pratt), an ordinary, ruleabiding LEGO minifigure, who is mistakenly identified as “The Special,” the most extraordinary person in the world — the key to saving the world.

He partners up with edgy heroine Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and Batman (Will Arnett) to go on an epic quest to stop the evil tyrant President Business (Will Ferrell). It becomes obvious rather quickly that Emmet is hilariously underprepared for the quest.

The 3D technology makes the film visually spectacular. Everything from turbulent sea waves and roaring fires looks as though constructed of Legos.

Emmet and his crew travel from

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one Lego fantasyland to another, meeting a wide range of strange yet intriguing characters like Bad Cop/ Good Cop (Liam Neeson) and Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman).

Soon it is revealed that this fantasy world stems from the mind of a wideeyed young boy, Finn (Jadon Sand), seeking to express his creativity free from his father’s (Will Ferrell) oppression.

There were too many zingers on various pop culture icons in the film — I’m sure I missed a couple. The film challenges individuals to break away from the norms (don’t always follow instructions, which ironically is what you must do with Legos), use your imagination, and be unafraid of taking chances and standing out.

Kudos to the animators and designers who built this make-believe world out of more than 15 million Legos, before it was computer-generated.

Fun for all ages, this surprisingly thoughtful story takes a hard look at the individual roles everyone plays in society. Following the everyday mundane routine could cause you to skate unnoticed by your peers as opposed to standing out.

Parents, beware. No doubt the children will beg for some Legos after the film. 

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Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Family fishing at Lake Casa Blanca Giovanni Gonzalez, Jose (accent on e) Gonzalez, and Rolando Mata had a good morning fishing at Lake Casa Blanca on Thursday, March 13.

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Meet and greet with the drivers Paola and Gael Cano are pictured with Monster Jam truck driver Devin Jones on Saturday, March 8 at the Laredo Energy Arena for the Monster Jam Pit Party.

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Among the members of the Revolutionary Arts and Cultural Empowerment (RACE) Club at LCC South who worked hard to make a success of the March 7 commemoration of International Women’s Day were Dulce Reyes, Graciela Ramirez, Karen Rodriguez, and Rene Bernardini.

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Mariela Rodriguez/LareDOS

Maria Eugenia Guerra/LareDOS

RACE Club hosts International Women’s Day commemoration

Five-round Swiss style chess Third graders Kaithan Guerra of K. Tarver Elementary and Diego García of Alma Pierce Elementary were among competitors of the fiveround Swiss style tournament on March 1. The tournament was open to students from kinder through 12th grade from both school districts.

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