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ZAPATA COUNTY
PRIMARY ELECTIONS
Formal charges Mexican man indicted for harboring immigrants By CÉSAR G. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES
A Mexican citizen arrested in Zapata County for harboring 10 illegal immigrants has been indicted in a Laredo federal court, records show. Eduardo Salinas-Gonzalez was charged March 1
with conspiracy to conceal, harbor or shield undocumented people and conceal, harbor or shield undocumented people for financial gain. U.S. Border Patrol said that on Feb. 4, they responded to suspicious activity near Falcon Lake in Zapata County. Agents
tracked down footprints that headed toward U.S. 83, court documents state. Agents said they later discovered footprints leading to a trailer house on U.S. 83, states the criminal complaint filed Feb. 8. Authorities allegedly observed Salinas-Gonzalez on the east side of the trailer
washing a Chevrolet Silverado. He allegedly allowed agents to search the premises and the vehicle. Agents said they discovered six people inside the trailer and four more under the bed cover of the Sil-
See INDICTED PAGE 11A
LA GLORIA, TEXAS
BLOODLESS BULLFIGHTING
Photo by Ron Jenkins | Getty
Voters line up to cast their ballots on Super Tuesday, March 1, in Fort Worth, Texas.
Voter turnout low in Texas Among 12 states that have held primaries, Texas is second to last By JOLIE MCCULLOUGH TEXAS TRIBUNE
Texas saw record turnout numbers in last week’s presidential primaries, but it still had one of the lowest voting-age participation rates of the states that have held primaries so far.
More than 4.2 million Texans voted in the presidential primary race, the most in state history, according to the Secretary of State. However, among the 12 states that already have held primaries, Texas
See ELECTIONS PAGE 11A
WASHINGTON, DC
Photo by Jerry Lara | San Antonio Express-News
Karla Santoya, 23, of Aguascalientes, Mexico, teases a bull during a bloodless bullfight at the Santa Maria Bullring in Santa Elena, Texas, Feb. 28. It was the fourth and last of the 2016 Winter Season. The event draws a large crowd of Winter Texans and area residents. Don Fred Rank owns the ring. His son, David Renk, known as "El Texano," was the first North American matador not from Mexico. The event featured four bullfights with two bullfighters from Mexico that also included Guillermo Ibarra, 52, of Monterrey, Mexico.
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks during a campaign rally at Central Baptist Church in Kannapolis, N.C., Tuesday.
Cruz’s prospects rising, somewhat
Bringing art to sport
Republican candidate having trouble courting party colleagues in Senate
By AARON NELSEN SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
LA GLORIA — It was mere moments after the fighting bull entered the ring that it knocked Karla Santoyo, 23, to the ground. Suddenly lying there bloodied, the aspiring matador was staring down 1,000 pounds of horned fury. “In the ring it’s you and the bull,” Santoyo had said hours before. Every bull is a puzzle to be solved, she explained. “He doesn’t know what he needs to do; you teach him with the cape.” But some fighting bulls are not so easily solved. Over a few winter afternoons, since 2000, the drama and flair of bullfighting, minus the bloodletting, comes to South Texas. Nestled in the ranchlands of Starr County, about 70 miles east of Zapata, a handful of matadors bring their art to a ring that seats about 1,000 people. Far from the roaring af-
Photo by Gerry Broome | AP
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER NEW YORK TIMES
Photo by Jerry Lara | San Antonio Express-News
Guillermo Ibarra, 52, of Monterrey, Mexico works a bull during a bloodless bullfight at the Santa Maria Bullring in Santa Elena, Texas, Feb. 28. It was the fourth and last of the 2016 Winter Season. The event draws a large crowd of Winter Texans and area residents. Don Fred Rank owns the ring. His son, David Renk, known as "El Texano," was the first North American matador not from Mexico. The event featured four bullfights with two bullfighters from Mexico that also included Karla Santoya, 23, of Aguascalientes, Mexico. icionados who fill substantially larger rings in Mexico and Spain, these matadors perform mostly for uninitiated retirees who understand little about style, but for whom the sight of an adrenalinefueled bull is raw. Anyone expecting a sanitized version of bullfighting was quickly disabused of the idea. “It’s twice as dangerous,” Fred Renk, 79, an amateur bullfighter turned water treatment man-
ager, said of the American version of bullfighting. “The matadors who come here to perform know it, and a lot of them have felt it.” Unlike the traditional spectacle in which a bull is weakened with lance and barb, then killed with the thrust of a sword between its shoulder blades and through the heart, the so-called bloodless variety spares the animal, relying on a series of passes with a cape to wear it
down. La Gloria is one of the few places to catch a bullfight in the country; there’s another in California. This unlikely venue, in a country where traditional bullfighting is banned, is Renk’s creation. The Santa Maria ring is a shrine to aspiring bullfighters, quite literally. The ashes of a few valiant men and women have
See BULLFIGHTING PAGE 11A
WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas hopes his presidential fortunes are rising as he approaches a cluster of Republican primaries. But his prospects seem pretty flat among his party colleagues. Interviews with a dozen Republican senators on Tuesday morning failed to yield a single endorsement for Cruz, even though his fellow freshman, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, has a dozen or so colleagues backing him. Even Donald Trump, whom many Republicans have gone out of their way to dismiss as unfit for office, has the support of a fellow immigration hawk, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Some senators simply said they would support whoever wins the nomination. Other smiled wanly, as if wishing they had su-
perpowers that could remove them from the scene. “It’s, uh, well, look at the alternatives,” said Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, when asked if his party could rally around Cruz at some juncture. Cruz has been gaining on Trump over the last week and lags him by fewer than 100 delegates, while a new poll shows Trump’s popularity may be flagging after a wave of new attacks ads. “I am crestfallen that my candidate, Jeb Bush, is out of the running,” said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who added that she would endorse no one. Perhaps she was just being self-interested: Collins joked that she and Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., having recently been named the two most bipartisan senators by a policy think tank, were planning to run on their own
See CRUZ PAGE 11A