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Director resigns Alfonso Casso steps down after 4 years By GABRIELA A. TREVIÑO THE ZAPATA TIMES
Photo by Julián Aguilar | Texas Tribune
Texas Department of Public Safety officers patrol Anzalduas Park as part of Operation Strong Safety.
South Texas Food Bank Executive Director Alfonso Casso has resigned from his position. The board has named founding member, Erasmo Villarreal, as the interim. The organization was formed in 1989 by Villarreal, Odie Arambula and Galo Garcia to help alleviate the issue of hunger in the region, according
the South Texas Food Bank, Casso worked at Lowe’s for ten years, where he took on various management positions. Prior to working at Lowe’s, he worked in wholesale grocery for 30 years with the familyowned company, Casso Guerra. During Casso’s time as Executive Director, he said the organization was
Border surge could BOARD OF EDUCATION continue TEXTBOOKS NOT APPROVED CASSO
VILLARREAL
to southtexasfoodbacnk.org. Casso was the Execu-
tive Director for the past four years. Prior to his position at
See FOOD BANK PAGE 12A
Perry, Straus, Dewhurst agree on spending to protect border By JULIÁN AGUILAR TEXAS TRIBUNE
The surge of state law enforcement on Texas’ southern border will continue through August if a request made by the state’s top leaders is approved next month by budget writers. Gov. Rick Perry announced Tuesday that he, House Speaker Joe Straus and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst had reached an agreement that will cost about $86 million. If approved by the Legislative Budget Board, that spending will not need a green light from incoming lawmakers, who are set to gavel in in January. The state’s deployment began in June as a response to the crush of undocumented immigrants from Central America seeking illegal entry into Texas through the Rio Grande Valley. The state’s leadership said at the time that the law enforcement build-up — which including Department of Public Safety troopers, and later, the Texas National Guard — was to prevent transnational gangs and human smugglers from taking advantage of U.S. Border Patrol agents who were overwhelmed with the influx of immigrants and unable to concentrate on their duties. The latest proposal will extend the current border
security initiative beyond the Rio Grande Valley to other parts of the border. Perry spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said due to operational and security concerns, the governor’s office could not say where specifically the additional resources will go. But she added that various mobile units will be deployed wherever the need arises. The $86 million will go toward expanded shifts for Texas Department of Public Safety officers that will equal about 650 full-time positions. It will also go toward new technology and patrol boats, additional Texas National Guard troops, and Texas Parks and Wildlife agents. “Texas has proven beyond any doubt that this border can be secured, even if the federal government refuses to take the steps necessary to do so as required by the Constitution,” Perry said in a statement. “This agreement will ensure the hardworking men and women from DPS, the Texas National Guard and Texas Parks and Wildlife, who have been working with local and federal partners, have the resources they need to maintain a robust law enforcement presence along the border until the Legislature can act.”
See SURGE PAGE 12A
Photo by Eric Gay | AP
MerryLynn Gerstenschlager takes notes as she listens to testimony before the Texas Board of Education during a final public hearing raising objections to proposed history books Tuesday in Austin.
Many schools purchase books on their own By WILL WEISSERT
A final, potentially tense vote will now come Friday, with the board no closer to settling on books for Texas’ 5 million-plus public school students. Some academics and activists have for months worried that many of the books exaggerate the influence of Moses and other biblical figures on American democracy. Conservative groups, meanwhile, said many ignore connections between radical Islam and modern terrorism. However, more school districts and public char-
ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN — Amid charges of bias from the right and left, the Texas Board of Education has failed to grant preliminary approval for any of the around 100 new history and social studies textbooks up for use in classrooms statewide. The Republican-controlled board tried Tuesday night to pass all but two of the proposed books. But that effort failed 5-4, including four abstentions. One member was absent.
ter schools are utilizing a 2011 law allowing them to purchase books on their own with or without board approval — a measure that partially grew out of some lawmakers’ distaste for the board’s vetting process. Already the new purchasing option has become more prominent than the traditional method in which the state directly supplies approved textbooks to public schools. This school year, Texas districts spent $284 million getting both board-approved and non-approved materials independently
before seeking state reimbursement — 3.7 percent more than what the state spent on providing approved-only textbooks. “I think the gate has opened. I don’t think it’s wide open yet, but I think some are starting to walk through it,” said education board member Thomas Ratliff, a Mount Pleasant Republican. “I do see it happening more and more.” Determining the exact amount of non-approved books reaching classrooms
See TEXTBOOKS PAGE 12A
MISSING STUDENTS
Protests, riots spread across Mexico By JOSHUA PARTLOW THE WASHINGTON POST
AYOTZINAPA, Mexico — On the day that pipe-wielding rioters set fire to a government accounting office and ransacked the state congress building, Felipe de la Cruz stepped to the microphone in the floodlit plaza of his missing son’s school. The protests about his son and dozens of others abducted by police had been building for weeks. The next morning, caravans of buses would drive out of these wooded hills to spread their defiant message to far corners of Mex-
ico, as protesters in different states blocked highways, seized town squares, closed airports, and burned cars and buildings. "The parents are enraged by so much waiting and so few results," De la Cruz, who has emerged as a spokesman for the victims’ families, told the crowd last Wednesday. As of Monday, he said, "the flame of insurgency has been lit." In the seven weeks since police drove away with Cruz’s 19-year-old son, Angel, and 42 of his classmates at a teachers’ college in the rural state of Guerrero, the localized rage of
“
The parents are enraged by so much waiting and so few results." FELIPE DE LA CRUZ, SPOKESMAN
their relatives at the forced disappearances has flashed across the country and the world, drawing condemnations from everyone from President Barack Obama to Pope Francis. The crime has captured Mexico’s attention unlike nearly any other atrocity in the recent
years of brutal drug-war violence, and spawned a protest movement that has shown no signs of abating. President Enrique Peña Nieto, who returned this weekend from an extended trip abroad, is now facing the most acute crisis of his two years in office.
The demand to find the students and punish those responsible for their disappearance has broadened into a more diverse fury about corrupt politicians and their drug-trafficking cronies, the economic and education reforms pushed by Peña Nieto, and the enrichment of the political class as poverty persists in states such as Guerrero. The outrage reflects deep distrust of the new government, which has emphasized that security is improving, even as large swaths of the country remain under the control of drug cartels and more than 20,000 people are officially
counted as missing. "It is not violence to burn a government building that isn’t an institution, that’s a white elephant that doesn’t serve the interests of the people," said a protest leader who said his name was Carlos, wearing a skeleton mask and aviator sunglasses as he prepared to march through the Guerrero capital of Chilpancingo. "The real violence is the assassination of our comrades. And we will not give up this fight." The protests have spread far beyond the rural towns and villages where they
See PROTESTS PAGE 12A