Returned yesterday evening from Cameron County, the southernmost county in Texas, where I was visiting my ninety-four year old aunt, who retired to Texas from upstate New York three decades ago. As the crow flies, Harlingen, the town in which my aunt lives, lies just 15 miles from Mexico. Notes from the border:
***Virtually every nurse, maid, cook, janitor, and security guard in the Golden Palms, the complex to which my aunt retired, is Hispanic, which in this case, of course, means Mexican. Although I often overheard them speaking Spanish among themselves, when they spoke to residents they invariably did so in perfect, unaccented English. (They were also hard-working, attentive, and cheerful. Although I never used to give much thought to longevity, I would now like to live long enough to be cared for one day by Mexicans.)
***I spoke to workers at a grocery store, a Wal-Mart, and an authentic Mexican restaurant. (How authentic? There was a mariachi band performing at one end and four Border Patrol guards eating lunch at the other.) Although, again, these workers used Spanish among themselves, when they spoke to me they did so in unaccented English—even when I spoke Spanish, they answered in English.
***The candidates for office in today’s primary? According to the posters I saw all over Harlingen, they are virtually without exception Hispanic. Armando Villalobos is running for district attorney, Rafael Salazar for county tax assessor, Joe Cisneros and Omar Lucio for sheriff. The only candidate with an Anglo surname is Jan Cassidy, who, for any readers of this happy Corner who happen to vote in Cameron County, is running for the board of commissioners. Yet each candidate made his boasts exclusively in English, not Spanish. Omar Lucio’s posters, for example, told voters not that Lucio is a man of liderazgo and integridad but of “leadership” and “integrity.”
***Since English was being used everywhere, I decided that in Cameron County the great project of assimilation was getting along just fine. Heck, I thought, this place even displays all the hallmarks of the red, or Republican, America: The region is dominated by medium-sized towns, not big cities; country music stations outnumber rock stations on the radio dial; a church stands on every second street corner; and the residents drive American cars (in four days I spotted not a single Mercedes or BMW). Then I looked on the Internet. In the last presidential election, Al Gore outpolled George Bush in Cameron County by 33,214 votes to 27,800.
***I’m still plenty dubious about the president’s temporary worker proposal, but after my four days in Cameron County I can see why Karl Rove decided to back it.