PALMVIEW — The smell of fresh asphalt permeated the Springdale Heights colonia on Friday afternoon as a large construction roller ironed out the wrinkles of the new road leading to the home of Maria Ramos-Quintanilla and her husband, Guillermo Quintanilla.
For over two decades, the Quintanillas have witnessed — and persevered — in spite of floods, backed-up canals, a lack of streetlights and drainage, and a road full of potholes.
The Quintanillas, however, noticed positive changes around their home after joining La Union del Pueblo Entero, or LUPE, an organization that advocates for colonia improvements.
Last year, Hidalgo County installed streetlights.
“They put up lighting so we can see the potholes,’” Ramos-Quintanilla said jokingly.
The roads deteriorated even more every time it rained and water would back up in the clogged canal behind their home.
Last year, they were flooded.
The water reached halfway up the sedan sitting on their driveway. Other years, it’s gone up to their knees, and one of their neighbors saw the water reach halfway up their home’s windows.
The couple was featured in The Monitor in 2003, when a staff photographer captured them pulling a large plastic container that was floating through the floodwaters as they headed to buy groceries.
“When I got to work the next day, people were asking for my autograph,” Ramos-Quintanilla quipped.
She still has a copy of the newspaper.
On Friday she looked back at the lack of progress, but felt hopeful after attending LUPE’s bi-annual colonia meeting known as Cumbre de Colonias.
Dozens of colonia leaders from Hidalgo, Starr and Cameron counties packed into the LUPE headquarters hall in San Juan to listen to the priorities they will be focusing on for the next two years.
“It’s issues that impact our lives every day,” Juanita Valdez-Cox, executive director of LUPE, said Friday.
Prior to the meeting, leaders met and discussed the most pressing issues affecting residents. This year, they presented eight resolutions addressing immigration reform, public lighting, safety, drainage, health, trash collection, driving permits and street improvements.
“We’ll make a plan for every resolution, who gets it done, who executes each part, and when we want to finish it,” Cristela Rocha, an organizer with LUPE, explained Friday. “Then we’ll evaluate whether we saw results and any victories within those two years.”
Colonia residents, like Emma Alaniz from Edinburg, are hoping to collaborate with the county to make critical improvements that affect their health, like garbage collection.
Although colonias benefit from trash pick-up, Alaniz said they often don’t have a way to dispose of some waste.
“If you cut a tree down, you can’t put that in the receptacle. Or if you made some home improvements and had some spare material, you can’t put that in the trash can or take it to some landfills because they won’t accept all materials,” she said.
“If it’s possible, we want the county to provide us [large] containers once or twice a year, so families can deposit trash that doesn’t get picked up and that won’t be accepted in landfills,” Alaniz proposed. “A lot of people who don’t know how to dispose of their trash they’ll burn it. But burning it releases dangerous chemicals for our communities and our children.”
By adding the containers for collection, other problems, like illegal dumping, could be curbed.
Other resolutions will address a sense of safety that is lacking in some neighborhoods.
Alaniz said residents are concerned with school safety after the Uvalde school shooting, but they’re also worried about guns in their communities.
Several residents Alaniz spoke to have been grazed by stray bullets. One man, who was in his home at a colonia, cheated death after a bullet fell through his roof and passed by his ear, she said.
Another man, suspected of having mental health issues, is known for often firing his gun into the air. Alaniz said residents, including the man’s sister who has children, have called the authorities to stop him, but they’ve been told the laws in place restrict them from effecting any kind of arrest.
“There’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of need in the communities,” Valdez-Cox said. Still, she was motivated by the resolutions her organization adopted on Friday, including one that they’ve been fighting to amplify for years.
Colonia residents who are undocumented want the state to consider issuing driving permits for those who cannot obtain a driver’s license.
“The thing is that we’re not violating the law because we want to,” Valdez-Cox said. “We are driving without a license, without a permit, because the state has not passed a law to protect us in that area.”
The practice, or its equivalent, is already in place in Washington D.C. and twelve other states.
Currently, undocumented residents driving to school, running errands or heading to work can face stiff penalties for lacking a driver’s license. Valdez-Cox says it often happens to farmworkers, too. With the current labor shortage, she hopes lawmakers change that.
“We’re driving to help this economy, this country, but they get stopped because the state does not give them at least a driver’s permit,” Valdez-Cox said. “That’s like biting the hand that feeds you.”
LUPE often works with commissioners from their given precinct to effect change. On Friday, only one commissioner was present, others sent their representatives, and another failed to respond to the invitation altogether, Valdez-Cox said.
“I’m barely into my second year as a commissioner. I want to make sure I know the issues that my residents have in my precinct,” Hidalgo County Precinct 4 Commissioner Everardo “Ever” Villarreal said Friday. “The rest of the commissioners have more years in service, and because of that they know a lot more of the issues that they’re facing than I do.”
Villarreal said he shares the colonia residents’ concerns, too.
“Trash and drainage, I see as a similar problem, because a lot of the trash that our residents end up illegally, sometimes, throwing away, it goes into the drainage system that causes flooding issues for a lot of our residents,” Villarreal said.
Commissioners will continue to see and hear from colonia residents. Many of them show up frequently to the commissioners’ court meetings to hold them accountable and thank them for their service.
“We’re not here to tell you [commissioners], you’ve got to fix this, this and this by yourself,” Valdez-Cox said. “We’re here to say, this is what we’re experiencing where we live. It’s the suffering that happens for us and our children. We’re here to tell you what’s happening, but we’re willing to work with you. Hand-in-hand, we can get so much done.”
Colonia residents left the meeting energized and ready to see improvements soon.
The Quintanillas were dropped off at home by a friend, but they had to walk about a block to get through the construction rerouting traffic — a minor inconvenience if it means having a smooth road in the near future.
To see more, view Monitor photojournalist Delcia Lopez’s full photo gallery here:
Photo Gallery: South Texas colonia residents set priorities for next 2 years
