I heard a campaign commercial for Mayra Flores the other day where she claims growing up picking cotton after her family immigrated to the Valley from Mexico. Since she is 36 years old that would mean she was working in the fields picking cotton in the ’90s. Wow — a real hardworking farm worker.
I wonder if she has any pictures. We used to work in the fields when we were growing up. We used to pick oranges, cucumbers, tomatoes, cantaloupe and harvesting onions here in the Valley. We would migrate to Colorado to hoe sugar beets in the summer and on the way back hoe cotton in West Texas. We used to take pictures of us working in the fields.
The reason I’m asking if she has any pictures of her picking cotton is because the last time cotton was picked by hand in Texas was 1975. This would be many years before she was even born.
Cotton farmers started using a striper puller machine in the ’60s and little by little hand-picking cotton was phased out.
I feel very insulted by Mrs. Flores’ lies about her doing any kind of farm labor. I was born in 1963 and I did get to pick cotton in the field with my family around 1973.
Jesus Rodriguez
Elsa
Gas prices
addressed
In reference to Mr. Gerald Pahl’s Nov. 15 letter, for many years we used to go to Matamoros to fill our tanks with cheap diesel and gasoline! Why? Mexico has been a major producer for years and we benefited!
Yes, COVID reduced production in this country, but that should have been temporary!
Countries create their own economic spheres of influence that either help or hurt everyone. Those countries that shun drilling for oil and gas because of their green policies pay the price! Joe Biden’s war on fossil fuels affects us and the countries that we export to!
Let me remind everyone of American influence in the world! At our height of production, the ports of Brownsville and Point Isabel let the price of shrimp for the entire world! When you are producing large amounts of any commodity, you influence prices! Abruptly stop production and the world feels it!
Biden definitely affected the rebound of the American oil industry!
If you are a current or past business owner, you are very familiar with the words risk and return on investment! You don’t invest in oil production when the president tells you he plans to put you out of business!
Take out that cash you have stashed in the mattress! After this recent election, if no one can halt the Obama, Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agenda, get ready to see some vicious price increases! You ain’t seen nothing yet!
Ernest Gorena
Brownsville
Disgusting
behavior
Oh, my goodness! Did you hear this? MAGA morons, including some supposedly prominent Republican politicians, are mocking and spreading falsehoods about the attempted murder of Nancy Pelosi’s husband? This is so diabolically disgusting!
Remember when Republicans sounded like, well, you know, like the Brady Bunch? Now they sound more like the Sopranos! The party that traditionally refuses change is now uncharacteristically changing very rapidly, and for the worse! Figure them out, will you?
Will the mockers mentioned above convince the unconvinced that these creeps desperately need a check-up from the neck-up, and very, very soon? Hoo-boy.
Italo J. Zarate
Brownsville
Abortion
defended
Again, from the premier Mission neighborhood, on Nov. 4 one Coronado defends the other when there is no possibility for defense since obviously a fetus, zygote, parasite is not a living, breathing child and, as he clearly states, depends entirely on the mother. He goes on to sat that if no one murders the fetus it may become a child. He doesn’t mention what happens to the ones that due to physical deformity, disease or the mother’s actions (alcohol, drugs, etc.) might not make it. He also ignores those that may become an unwelcome, unsupportable addition and as a child may suffer abuse, poor care, malnourishment on and on.
By questioning the right to an abortion people assign these fetuses, if they become children, to a life of hell on earth. I do not say the fetus is not human. It is not a child.
I believe abortion is at best a last resort, except for the reasons above; then it’s an unfortunate necessity.
Also, please don’t throw the 10 Commandments at me when you have made it quite clear you would rather offer up the mother’s health/death instead of an abortion. So sad you choose to make an issue black and white when here in this century, in the real world, very little is.
I won’t address gun control because you already covered it when you said the 10 Commandments state that “thou shalt not kill.” Nor will I remind you in depth that the 2nd Amendment states gun ownership is predicated on participating in a “Well ordered Militia.”
Finally, Mr. Coronado, please attempt to offer solutions and not continual condemnation of those who do. I’ve offered many before: better gun control laws, vetting, outlawing combat-style weapons, laws allowing women to retain control of their bodies. Better easier adoption services.
Ned Sheats
Mission
Cruz stump
questioned
The junior senator from Texas went to Georgia to politick for a football coach. When’s the last time you saw Ted Cruz in McAllen? Do you think the football coach the senator championed has ever read the Constitution? Perhaps the senator is going to great lengths to offer morality or literacy lessons to the hypocrite coach.
I am a life-long Republican, in the voting booth since Goldwater. For me, country is more important than party and party is more important than a particular politician.
D.J. Neyhart
Berkeley, Calif.
Gaming
politics
As for all the gerrymandered maps that were OK’d by Democrats or Republicans in each of the 50 states this year, all I have to say is that the real winners of this year’s midterm election are none other than the gerrymandering system and the politicians from both parties who used the same system in a desperate attempt to remain in power in our country’s legislative branches (Congress included).
How does winning a midterm election by gaming the system benefit the people of each state in our country when redistricting is done every 10 years or so?
May the members of both parties work together in Congress in the upcoming new year to make gerrymandering a federal crime throughout the United States. Plain and simple.
Remember, it is we the people of this great nation who happen to be their employers, not the opposite.
Roberto Lopez
McAllen
War funding
questioned
Let me see if I got this straight: The Biden administration is sending billions of dollars to aid Ukraine fight the war against Russia, Volodymyr Zelenskyy (the president of Ukraine) diverts millions from this cash to FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange, FTX then donates multimillions of dollars to the Democratic candidates so they can win the elections and continue sending more American taxpayers’ money to aid Ukraine.
Bottom line: Republican taxpayers’ money is going to Ukraine, which in turn goes to FTX and then to the Democratic candidates. So in effect, we (Republicans) are donating money without our knowledge to defeat our own candidates. You can’t get any dumber than that.
José C. Coronado
Mission
Editor’s note: Those involved report that FTX donated its services to convert cryptocurrency donated to aid Ukraine into tangible currency to buy military equipment. The Federal Election Commission reports that before its collapse, FTX donated to both Democratic and Republican candidates and organizations.
