Thirty Years Later, Same Diamond, Same Rough Edges

I was looking for a book and found a newspaper article by R. Daniel Cavazos, editor of The Monitor, called "Starr: diamond in the rough," written sometime around 1994, mas o menos. A Rio Grande City businessman, Lauro Lopez, gets quoted in it, joking that the new Wal-Mart and H-E-B "SOO-PER" centers were coming because of trade with Mexico, not drugs. Decades later, Rio Grande City still has its Walmart and HEB, along with a Marshalls, a Ross, a Chick-fil-A and three different corporate coffee chains, and it still doesn't feel quite "soo-per" to the rest of the RGV.

Cavazos spends the rest of the column doing exactly what writers like me do now, defending the county against the drug-smuggling cliché while admitting the place is rough around the edges. He calls Starr County a diamond. Not smooth, he says, but a diamond anyway. I agree.

It's been rough lately. The poorest county in the country turned red, and instead of becoming an example, we became a punchline on cable news. Conservative outlets show up looking for a story, adding more salt to an open wound. It's been both ironic and a little sad. People who live here already know what it feels like to be studied like a specimen. First it was the cartel headlines, the same b-roll of border fences every single time. Now it's a confusing statistic nobody outside the county can explain. We continue to be under the same magnifying glass, just a new ailment for somebody else to study.

I grew up here. I still live here. That doesn't mean I haven't had the opportunity to leave. I actually chose to stay here. I love Starr County. The part that confuses people is how loving it and criticizing it is supposed to cancel the other out.

I write about county commissioners who hand out contracts to whoever happens to share a last name with them, or married into one, or owes somebody a favor or is fucking someone on the down low. I write about hospital boards that operate like secret societies. I write about voter turnout numbers low enough to make a person wonder if anyone here believes their vote does anything at all. None of that comes from hating the county. It comes from caring enough to notice when the county embarrasses itself, and then writing about it, because it's true and not because I'm out to ruin anybody.

Unlike Cavazos, my stories are not a last minute topic. They're specific. Those threads take days, even weeks, to confirm before a single sentence makes it to print. Different decade, same instinct. Defend the place by telling the truth about it, not by pretending the truth doesn't exist.

The actual point Cavazos was making decades ago, even if he buried it under a paragraph about furniture stores surviving peso devaluations, is that people don't stick around a place because they have to. It's a choice. Starr Conians are a rare kind. It doesn't matter if you're from Falcon or Roma or Rio Grande City or La Grulla, we grew up knowing half the county by name and the other half by their parents' names.

I could write nicer stories. Editors get this request constantly, usually phrased as a suggestion to cover something more positive, like the parade, or the ribbon cutting nobody attended, or whichever county judge wants a flattering photo for reelection season. Cavazos got the same ask back then and admitted his newspaper owed the county some of that softer coverage too. He wasn't wrong. But a parade story doesn't stop a commissioner from steering a contract to his cousin. Somebody still has to write the other story, under their own name, knowing exactly who's going to read it.

A Rotarian once gave Cavazos sarcastic applause for promising better community coverage. Getting heckled by a room of grown men in blazers over a promise to write nicer stories is a strange hill to die on, and yet decades apart, we've both ended up there. I've gotten that same applause more than once, usually right after publishing something true that someone in office didn't want printed. The applause doesn't bother me. People only get loud when something true lands too close to them.

Years from now, somebody is going to find one of my columns on the internet, the same way I found this one, probably without a clear date on it. It won't matter when it was written. It will probably be about the same exact thing I am writing about today. Some things here don't sand down that easy. The people who stay here are the ones still polishing it.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos

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