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ZAPATA COUNTY FIRE DEPARTMENT
Emergency service positions available EMT, firefighter and paramedic jobs vacant By César G. Rodriguez LAREDO MORNING TIME S Carolyn Kaster / AP
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky speaks during a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. President Donald Trump blasted congressional Democrats and "a few Republicans" over the collapse of the GOP effort to rewrite the Obama health care law.
The Zapata County Fire Department announced recently they are looking for people to serve the community. On Saturday, officials said
they will be accepting applications for the following positions: EMT, EMT-I, paramedic, EMT firefighter, EMT-I firefighter and paramedic firefighter. Those interested in applying can pick up an application with Nellie Treviño at the Zapata
County Courthouse. “The primary mission of the department is to provide emergency services within the County of Zapata and to respond to other incidents as required; the protection of life within Zapata County, and to establish a public
safety education program for the children and elderly residents of Zapata County while working in conjunction with other county departments to provide a better place for the residents of Zapata County,” the department’s website states.
SAN YGNACIO, TEXAS
Donald Trump: Let Obamacare fail By Erica Werner and Alan Fram A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump declared Tuesday it’s time to “let Obamacare fail” after the latest GOP health care plan crashed and burned in the Senate, a stunning failure for the president, Republican leader Mitch McConnell and a party that has vowed for years to abolish the law. In a head-spinning series of developments, rank-and-file Republican senators turned on McConnell and Trump for the third time in a row, denying the votes to move forward with a plan for a straight-up repeal of “Obamacare.” This time, it was three GOP women — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia — who delivered the death blow. All had been shut out of McConnell’s initial all-male working group on health care. McConnell, who could afford to lose only two votes in the narrowly divided Senate, had turned to the repeal-only bill after his earlier repeal-andreplace measure was rejected on Monday. That had followed the failure of an earlier version of the bill last month. The successive defeats made clear that despite seven years of promises to repeal former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Republicans apparently cannot deliver. Nonetheless, McConnell insisted he would move forward with a vote on his measure to repeal the law, effective in two years, with a promise to work — along with Democrats — to replace it in the meantime. The vote could come as soon as Wednesday. It appears doomed to fail, but GOP leaders want to put lawmakers on record on the issue and move on. At the White House, Trump appeared to recognize defeat, at least for the moment, while insisting he bore none of the blame. “I think we’re probably in that position where we’ll just let Obamacare fail,” the president said. “We’re not going to own it. I’m not going to own it. I can tell you that the Republicans are not going to own it. We’ll let Obamacare fail and then the Fail continues on A11
Danny Zaragoza / Laredo Morning Times
This June 27 file photo shows an exterior view of Meg Guerra's ranch home in San Ygnacio, Texas.
MEG GUERRA’S CALLING The ranch is where she goes to get work done By Julia Wallace LAREDO MORNING TIME S
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n a June morning at her ranch outside San Ygnacio, Meg Guerra makes a pot of coffee but doesn’t drink it. She’s sitting where she will sometimes work, on a bench at a folding table she has set up in her freestanding porch, looking out on screenedin 360-degree views. There’s the main house with the blue trim and the yellow hearth, the books and the wall of photos depicting her family through the years at this ranch. There’s the casita where her grandchildren sleep when they visit, with peaceful Guerra white walls. There’s the horse, and there’s the monte, and there’s the entrance to Santa Maria Ranch. This is where Guerra likes to write, but it’s also where she likes to work with her hands. “The ranch has always been a place where you just got to work out whatever it was that was in your heart or on your conscience,” she said. Guerra, by the way, is impossibly eloquent. She says things like this off the cuff: “There’s something about working in silence. And I’m
Danny Zaragoza / Laredo Morning Times
This photo shows the interior view of Meg Guerra's ranch home in San Ygnacio, Texas on June 27.
talking about being outside, doing physical work, fixing a fence, tending to an animal, painting a gate. Whatever it is, there’s this inner dialogue, this unwinding of the thing you’re being beset with. And it’s the birdsong, it’s the coyotes in the evening. Whatever it is, there’s a way that this place just works on you and tries to make you whole.” This unwinding at Santa Maria takes place in Guerra’s writing too. This ranch is where she wrote much of LareDOS, the infamous alternative newspaper that served Laredo for 20 years, from 1994 to 2014. LareDOS was a monthly publication best known for taking on the city’s political and
environmental foibles with biting humor and unrestrained reporting. Guerra’s stories almost always graced the front page, though less prominently once she got more contributors on board. Her headline on LareDOS’ first issue was “Drugs, Lies & Videotape in Zapata,” the story of how former County Judge Jose Luis Guevara was brought down by the FBI and DEA. Guevara was caught redhanded facilitating a cocaine transport through Zapata’s airport, and even filled up the plane’s gas tank himself, Guerra said. The county sheriff and county clerk were arrested as well. Guerra tackled a wide range
of topics over the years, from LISD’s questionable spending habits (“Splendid LISD expenditures may forge policy change,” June 1995) to numerous instances of negligence or malevolence regarding the local environment (“Enjoy Lake Casa Blanca before development degrades this eco-treasure,” September 2004). But there were also human interest stories, and articles about volunteer groups or artists or soldiers doing good things for their community. “We used cartoons for years to kind of roast people. If they were being pompous, we showed them as such. And of course we recognized good people too. We weren’t just about slapping people around,” Guerra said. Wanda Garner Cash, former associate director at the UT School of Journalism and past president of the Texas Press Association, grew up with Guerra in Laredo and roomed with her while they were both attending the University of Texas. They remain lifelong friends, and have both written prolifically along the way. Cash was actually the editor of their high school newspaper, The Pony Express, the year after Guerra’s editorship. Guerra said that as children the two were “the most ‘traviesas’ people ... we were skunks.” Meg continues on A11