The Brownsville Beacon

By Diego Garcia III ★ Editor of The Brownsville Beacon One of the problems with the Texas Constitution is the sheer length of the document. Texas lawmakers often choose to add to the Constitution rather than amend and streamline the document. Coming in at just a few words shy of 87,000, the Texas Constitution is the second longest state constitution in the county. Among some of the laws still on the Texas books include gems prohibiting the milking of your neighbor's cow or it being illegal to shoot a buffalo from the second story of a hotel.  The Texas Constitution and a rash of antiquated laws need to be revamped and updated. The same can be said about Brownsville's city charter. While it may not be the phone book sized behemoth the Texas Constitution is, current city administrators and their actions are making Brownsvillians take a longer look into what is effectively the city's Constitution. Two of the main issues currently revolve around the massive tax bre...

By Diego Garcia III  ★ Editor of The Brownsville Beacon One of the first things I do when I wake up in the morning is peruse the local blogs. My daily routine starts with visits to The McHale Report , The Brownsville Observer , and El Rrun Rrun . On a side note, I'm glad to see Jim Barton is feeling better and publishing articles regularly. I wish him good health and I hope he's doing well. One fine morning, I saw a picture of Brownsville Navigation District Commissioner John Wood on The McHale Report . Underneath was a caption that asked if Wood was considering another run for a term as a port commissioner. In all my infinite wisdom, my addled brain conjured up a half-formed thought, and I took to Facebook to post a quick, witty quip. Wasn't John Wood the city commissioner who once referred to Brownsville taxis as "taco wagons?" I was quickly set straight by a friend who messaged me privately. John Wood wasn't the commissioner who made the disparaging remark....

By Diego Garcia III ★ Editor of The Brownsville Beacon Ask Jessica Tetreau who the most popular commissioner ever to serve on the Brownsville city council is and she'll shoot you straight. Jessica Tetreau will tell you Jessica Tetreau is the best, most popular city commissioner in Brownsville's 173-year history. The only person to ever be elected via write-in vote, she defeated an incumbent commissioner and has served District 2 since 2011. She won reelection by a razor thin margin in 2015, but was able to soundly defeat her opponents, a former Brownsville mayor and a former school board member to secure her third term. Tetreau fancies herself the Franklin Delano Roosevelt of Brownsville. Her third, and final, term as commissioner is set to expire in 2023. Tetreau will no longer be allowed to run for a fourth term. Her office, along with all the other city commission seats, is now term-limited. In the last election, Brownsville voters overwhelmingly approved a chan...

By Diego Garcia III  ★ Editor of The Brownsville Beacon Take a trip with me, if you please, to Brownsville, Texas in early August, 1961. it was hot, but there was some wind blowing in cooling things down a bit. Skies were also partly cloudy. City Goings-On:  Boca Chica was being expanded from a two-lane road to a four lane road from Military Highway to International Boulevard (Four Corners), and a proposal was being introduced to secure state funds to expand Boca Chica from two to four lanes from International to the Y split with Billy Mitchell. Police Chief Gus Krausse was defending the city's thin, 12 inch tall road medians (called "cattle chutes" that had been installed on Boca Chica and Palm Boulevard. Chief Krausse said they were primarily installed as safety measures to prevent cars from meandering from one lane to another. It's interesting to see road issues persist on Boca Chica Boulevard some 60 years later. A woman didn't want to wait for a train stalled...

By Diego Garcia III  ★ Editor of The Brownsville Beacon If you visit the Cameron County website, you'll find a section dedicated to press releases. Among the disheartening information about the rising COVID cases is the proposed raise in compensation for 26 county administrators. The county judge and the four county commissioners are proposed to receive an 11,000 dollar pay bump, while the other 21 administrators are in line to receive 5,000 dollar pay bumps. Along with the commissioners and the county judge, the list includes the county and district clerks, the tax assessor/collector, the county attorney, the county treasurer, the justices of the peace, the constables, and the sheriff. The questions that beg to be asked are: Is this the right time for the top county administrators to be asking for a raise?  Have these top officials made Cameron County a better place? Does their performance merit a significant increase in compensation? With the county in the grip of a cripplin...

By Diego Garcia III ★ Editor if The Brownsville Beacon Of all the things the Romans could have cared about, they would much rather cram themselves into the Coliseo Romano  and cheer the lions on as they tore the Christians to shreds. Instead of worrying about public sanitation and outside invaders, they would much rather scream with delight as gladiators fought to the death with broadswords and maces. If the mob was busy being distracted with violence and destruction, they wouldn't care about the problems Caesar and the Senate weren't solving. Bread and circuses. Almost two thousand years later, it is apparent certain members of the Brownsville Independent School District's board of trustees are taking a page straight out of the Roman Empire's playbook. Rather than focusing on things that matter, some trustees are busy concocting stories, manipulating the narrative, and participating in petty revenge schemes designed to make other board members look bad. An ...

By Diego Garcia III  ★ Editor of The Brownsville Beacon I am not a fan of Elon Musk, SpaceX, or any of his exploding trashcans, flying grain silos, or any of the shenanigans he has going on out at Boca Chica Beach (I refuse to call the beach or the area he's trying to colonize after his Spacely Sprockets' name). I hope I'm 100% wrong. I hope he delivers everything he has promised to Brownsville, Cameron County, the rest of the Rio Grande Valley, and South Texas. I hope he brings Brownsville all the economic development and tourist dollars he promised.  So far, he has failed to deliver on all his lofty promises — except for one brief moment when Musk and SpaceX helped the local restaurateurs stay afloat during the pandemic. In an article written by Steve Clark and published in The Brownsville Herald , SpaceX supported local restaurants like Maiz, Mr. Taco, Main Street Deli, New York Deli, and Whataburger. The owner of Maiz stated the orders started out at 100 plates and ende...

  By Diego Garcia III  ★  Editor of The Brownsville Beacon William Randolph Hearst was an American businessman and publisher who was the first person to establish the largest chain of newspapers across the country. His media company was known as Hearst Communications. At the height of his power, his newspapers reached over one million readers a day and covered over 30 major American cities. In order to capture as many readers as possible, Hearst relied on sensational headlines and stories telling of sex, violence, and corruption rather than objective, unbiased facts. This type of journalism is widely known as Yellow Journalism.  The most infamous of William Randolph Hearst stories revolves around the Spanish-American War, or the time period leading up to the Spanish-American War. Hearst sent artist Frederic Remington to Cuba to capture images of the conflict between Spain and the United States in 1897. Remington sent Hearst a cable saying there wasn't going to be a w...

By Diego Garcia III ★ Editor of The Brownsville Beacon She is known as the greatest American gymnast of all time. The GOAT. She won four olympic gold medals and a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Her world championship resume includes 19 gold medals, three silver medals, and two bronze medals. Add the Pacific Rim Championships and the World Cup, and her medal count swells to 27, five, and four. Her skills are unquestionable. She has moves gymnasts perform in her routine named after her. She is an inspiration to young women around the world. Aspiring gymnasts hit the mat in gyms everywhere trying to emulate Biles' routine. In addition to her unbelievable and superhero-like athletic ability, she is also an advocate for change in the world that is USA Gymnastics. The sexual abuse scandal which left the sport's governing body with a huge black eye, and former diagraced team doctor Larry Nasser incarcerated. Biles came forward and said she was one of the gymnas...

By Diego Garcia III ★ Editor of The Brownsville Beacon Todays choices in television and visual media are greater and more bountiful than the original "golden age" of television ever had. The first golden age of television existed in the United States from the late 1940's through to the 1950's. During that time, you needed a large antenna to capture over-the-air stations broadcast across the nation. Your "rabbit ears" would pick up broadcasts from the Columbia Broadcasting System, the American Broadcasting Company, or the National Broadcasting Company. These companies first got their start in radio. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA), started the National Broadcast Company in 1926. Radio grew so rapidly that NBC split into two broadcasting companies. One would eventually be sold off and renamed the American Broadcast Company. The Columbia Record Company invested in a radio network that would eventually be named CBS. After televisions were inv...