Thread: Shantytowns transform themselves

Shantytowns transform themselves
2007/7


By LYNN BREZOSKY, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago

LAS MILPAS, Texas - Sixty-six-year-old Zulema Hernandez‘s small home is brightly painted, with a side door opening up to a patio fragrant with potted herbs and flowers. Neighbors wave as they drive by over smooth, paved streets.

It is hard to imagine that as little as a decade ago, Las Milpas and Pueblo de Palmas — colonias, or immigrant shantytowns a few miles from the Mexican border — were Calcutta on the Rio Grande, poverty-stricken places that became filthy, stinking, disease-ridden expanses awash in mud and sewage whenever it rained heavily.

Las Milpas‘ transformation into a proud, largely well-tended community of more than 17,000 is an immigrant success story. As the many illegal immigrants of Las Milpas became U.S. citizens, they used the power of the ballot box to prod the state and federal governments to relieve their misery.

Over the past 20 years, a flurry of laws, grants and bond issues has brought running water, sanitation and other improvements to Las Milpas and other Texas colonias along the border.

"People organized, and they themselves helped transform their lives," said Elizabeth Valdez, chief organizer for the church-based network Valley Interfaith.

Many families were migrant farm workers, who went north each year to work the fields and returned in the winter to improve their homes, often by adding on to the trailer they first set up on the plot.

When Hernandez began living in Las Milpas 20 years ago, water had to be carried in for drinking, bathing and cooking.

Older children took to wrapping their feet in plastic bags after schools turned away colonia dwellers for tracking dirt. Outhouses overflowed and stank. Children suffered rashes and intestinal ailments.

When he and another clergyman headed out for their first Mass there, it had just rained and they couldn‘t get in.

They invited people to witness the conditions, such as a group of epidemiologists from the University of Texas.

"I was giving them a walking tour," he recalled. "One of the women stopped me at one point and said,

Wait a minute, let me get this straight. Are we in the United States or are we in Mexico?‘ and I said,

No, this is Texas.‘ ... And she said,

Well, it reminds me of my hometown — Calcutta, India.‘"

"The Border Patrol itself wouldn‘t go out there without a sheriff escort," he said. "It became kind of a Wild West. People talk about folks driving around, shooting each other. There were dope stashes. There were arms."

The squalid conditions drew national attention in the late 1990s and were used to attack then-Gov. George W. Bush during his 2000 presidential campaign.

By the 1990s, however, colonias had second- and third-generation families. Three-fourths of the residents were U.S. citizens, either by birth or naturalization. Many gained citizenship after a 1986 federal law offered them amnesty.

Around that time, the state Legislature set up a program to help poor areas build water and sewer systems. Also, Valley Interfaith organized what has since become a powerful voting bloc in South Texas.

Buses full of people would leave at 3 a.m. for daylong lobbying trips at the state Capitol in Austin or at political conventions. Community leaders testified about the filth and disorder.

New state laws led developers to install water lines, sewers or septic systems, build roads and provide utilities.

State voters have approved bond issues totaling $250 million to improve colonias. Some $650 million in federal money has also gone to ease conditions.

Cameron Park, with a population of 7,000 to 8,000, and Las Milpas now look largely like pleasant, working-class neighborhoods. The infrastructure has attracted stores, restaurants and gas stations, which in turn have meant jobs.

But Cameron Park and Las Milpas had geographic luck. Colonias more than 150 miles from the border, or in relatively prosperous regions, do not qualify for the state money.

A colonia near Corpus Christi is one of the unlucky ones, said longtime colonia activist Lionel Lopez. There, about 2,000 families until very recently lived amid outhouses or open waste pits, and health officials have found high levels of E. coli in the floodwaters people wade through to get to the paved roads. There is no police or fire protection.

Lopez stopped by after a fire and found a young man in a wheelchair who had been abandoned without food for days.

"We got missed," he said. "We‘re so far behind what you see in the Valley, and everyone‘s turning a deaf ear."


© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.leadingthecharge.com/ViewArt ... 7&source=2

They need to remove the illegal aliens from American soil.

Dixie

"And they did it all by themselves "( with taxpayer money) this is what you call all by yourself

sosadforus wrote:

"And they did it all by themselves "( with taxpayer money) this is what you call all by yourself

That's "free money", "found money", etc.

This just shows how well organized they and their sponsors are to get government benefits for themselves. To top it off they get a PR campaign, too.

Originally Posted by pjr40

sosadforus wrote:

"And they did it all by themselves "( with taxpayer money) this is what you call all by yourself

That's "free money", "found money", etc.

Thats what they call doing it all by themselves!!
Wouldn't want to thank Americans for anything you know, its only the money we go to work for everyday and have no say so on how it is spent once its stolen from our paycheck!

As the many illegal immigrants of Las Milpas became U.S. citizens

And herein lies the problem. I'd like to know how ILLEGAL aliens become U.S. citizens and are ALLOWED to become U.S. citizens.

This is a perfect example of how "guest worker" and "temporary worker" programs are never temporary. Those allowed in legally to participate in these programs, for the most part, never leave. Do not be fooled when the government labels something as "guest" or "temporary". Guest or Temporary means Permanent to bureaucrats.

Originally Posted by zeezil

As the many illegal immigrants of Las Milpas became U.S. citizens

And herein lies the problem. I'd like to know how ILLEGAL aliens become U.S. citizens and are ALLOWED to become U.S. citizens.

This is a perfect example of how "guest worker" and "temporary worker" programs are never temporary. Those allowed in legally to participate in these programs, for the most part, never leave. Do not be fooled when the government labels something as "guest" or "temporary". Guest or Temporary means Permanent to bureaucrats.

Ya, I say from now on when someone is running for office they have to take a test on spelling and definition of certain words, so we are assured they know the meaning before they take their oath. Like illegal!! just as an example