Original story from the Times HERE [1]
A town against the wall
Granjeno on the Rio Grande has outlasted the rule of Spain, Mexico and the Republic of Texas. Now the border fence aims for its heart.
By Miguel Bustillo
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 17, 2007
GRANJENO, TEXAS — Gloria Garza doesn’t have a whole lot. But what she has, she clings to with pride.
She lives in a simple stucco house with a rustic wooden veranda and a well fashioned from odd stones her husband found around the state. Kittens stretch lazily in the sun beside her porch. Armadillos dart across her backyard.
Her two-acre lot is her heirloom, her link to a legacy that dates to 1767, when Spain’s King Carlos III gave her pioneer ancestors a porcion of property that started at the Rio Grande and stretched inland for miles.
So she is not going to be quiet while some bureaucrat in Washington tries to take it — to build a border fence. She doesn’t want to become an unintended victim in a war against illegal immigration that she sees as misguided and wrong.
“It would be heartbreaking,” said Garza, 51, who teaches tots in a Head Start program. “For us, this place has a sentimental value that is worth more than any amount of money.”
The homesteads were owned by descendants of the land-grant families, the Munguias and the Bocanegras, and Tejano families such as the Garzas and Anzalduas that got parcels through business deals and marriages. Most existed well before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which recognized the Rio Grande as the border between Texas and Mexico in 1848.
“We didn’t come to the United States,” said Rey Anzaldua, 62. “The United States came to us.”
the rest here. [1]
My unpublished letter to the editor below…maybe they will publish the next one?
Dear editor,
LA TIMES http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-granjeno17dec17,0,4053287,full.story?coll=la-home-center
While poignant, the story of changing life in the small south Texas town of Granjeno due to construction of a long past due border fence cannot compare with the involuntary transformation of the rest of the U.S. brought on by the fact that six years after 9/11, American borders are not secured.
Here in Georgia, English is an optional language. No one in the nation has forgotten that illegals waved the flag of Mexico while screaming their demand for amnesty and citizenship last year. Maybe the residents of Granjeno are more leery of Border Patrol Agent than illegals and drug smugglers – the rest of the country does not share that mind-set.
Having been born in the U.S; sixty-two year old Rey Anzaldua seems confused about loyalty and what century this is with his quote: We didn’t come to the United States the United States came to us”.
Mr. Anzaldua is part of a very small minority and many should note for him that rivers can be crossed both ways. Maybe Mexico would be more sympathetic to his attitude?
We look forward to the Times story on the heartache in the rest of the republic caused by the absence of a border fence and a government which works to enthusiastically enforce American law.
D.A. King
Marietta, Ga.King is president of the Dustin Inman Society, a Georgia-based non-profit group opposed to illegal immigration. www.thedustininmansocietyy.org