When I heard that Governor Greg Abbott planned to put up buoys along the literal Mexican border, I scoffed. A buoy is a marker to signify a geographical area in water. Aboott’s buoys are a Poacher’s trap, a creation more suited to the wild imaginations of the horror movie SAW than a legitimate use by the State of Texas.
When Abbott followed the lead of Arizona’s governor and put up shipping containers along the Eagle Pass border with Mexico, he seized land that once belonged to the people of that city. Since then, shipping containers lined up from end to end have halted activity at the once-popular Shelby Park along the riverbank. The newly-installed razor wire and obstructed view create the impression that is popular with MAGA voters in Ohio, North Carolina, and Georgia — that there is an invasion from south of our country. The reality is that a once-thriving public green space has been seized from its owners to create this false narrative, and it’s the people who live in Eagle Pass that suffer from this falsehood as well as the migrants who experience additional hardship and misery at the risk of their lives while they are legally seeking asylum.
The hypocrisy from the Christian Right — a focus on “life” — is well documented. What is less understood is the toll on civic life. The Mayor declared himself “owner” of the park so that he could sign the documents the State of Texas needed to execute its cosplay militarization of Eagle Pass. This is ludicrous — it’s a City park and thus belongs to the people of Eagle Pass; it’s not the Mayor’s. The appeal to appease our media-thirsty Governor is real; I’ve seen it here as well. Don’t confront Abbott because we could risk his wrath. Imagine in a city of just 30,000. Yet what is the cost of appeasement?
Civic life is the cornerstone of American democracy. And it is our everyday reality. Local government matters because it creates the banal rules that we all live by, like it or not. Taxes, schools, access to medical care and clean water, how many retail shops and local parks, where the liquor stores are located — all of it controlled by local government. To have the State government take over some of these basic functions to create an alternate reality eats away at our mental health. It’s a dark version of The Truman Show, and the residents are the ones being lied to and manipulated.
People I serve as a City Council Member are concerned about the quality of their parks, the teens who speed in their streets, the dogs and cats without owners, and the activities they believe should be provided to our youth. Safety means policing their neighborhoods; it is not reflected in militarization of a strip of land where they have walked, fished, and kayaked since childhood. The focus of City government needs to be on opportunities to grow and develop a better future for our children, not on the soap-opera drama of a national campaign platform.
The continued manipulation of local city officials by our State leaders to promote a fake crisis harms the true obligation of elected public servants — that of providing the smart growth that our next generation deserves and demands. It is a betrayal to our way of life. Rather than ask us to participate in the dehumanizing of people, our cities need to serve our residents and to partner to find real solutions in a complex yet wondrous world.
Art by Sue Coe
Thank you, Ms. Cigarroa. Your words are ATM (A Toda Madre).