By Jerry McHale
The Mchale Report. Blog
Tony Estrada, the owner of the Broken Sprocket but an outspoken Southmost product with a decidedly conservative point of view, said it best: "No outsiders will judge us."
City Commissioner Cesar De Leon's racist statements exacerbated by other crude remarks have many Brownsville sinners reacting with righteous anger. The callow politico has precipitated a feeding frenzy of indignation.
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Even the debauched County Judge Eddie Trevino is acting like he is going to renounce his secular excesses and take the orders of an Oblate missionary. For a town where the majority of the live-and-let-live denizens reside in glass houses, everyone seems to be raining rocks on the Third World Capital of the United States.
There are two perspectives on the De Leon controversy that echo Estrada's sentiments: Some actions are inexcusable and unforgivable. However, though some actions are inexcusable, they are forgivable.
As the Broken Sprocket's proprietor also states: "We will judge our own."
Those who insist that De Leon's words were inexcusable and unforgivable are right. If the once aspiring politician was this indiscreet in Austin or Washington D.C., we would have the first recorded lynching of a Mexican-American by a mob of African-Americans.
I was recently at a gathering of millenniums at Terra's Bar & Grill, all of them professionals, and they unanimously opined that De Leon's mea culpa was hypocritical and self-serving. They all agreed that De Leon should resign for the good of Brownsville.
They scoffed at De Leon's excuse that he was engaged in a private conversation not meant for public consumption.
"Is he saying that his official comments are nothing more than empty rhetoric that hide his true sentiments?" posed a UTRGV professor.
"If I said that my wife was a worthless whore with tits that hung to her waist and an ass that hung to her knees and afterwards I endeavored to placate her with the excuse that my insults were nothing more than locker room talk, do you think I would be occupying the same house, let alone the same bed, with her?"
De Leon's words were inexcusable.
But they are forgivable.
"We will judge our own," thunders Estrada.
De Leon was the victim of a conspiracy by a perpetrator who counted on Icarus flying too close to the sun with his new wings that gave him the swagger that he could soar above the general populace. Never was an ambush so successfully consummated. Lulled into thinking he was bullshitting with buddies over a few beers, De Leon started talking smack while his alleged friend secretly recorded him as part of a scheme that at this date has all the appearances of blackmail.
While most the citizenry remain disgusted with De Leon's outburst, they are equally disgusted by the manner in which the commissioner's insensitive comments were obtained. There is an overwhelming consensus that it was a cowardly act.
How do those sympathetic to De Leon choose to judge him? They regard him as a talented individual who has made a positive difference in the city, but who committed a grievous error as a result of his immaturity. He allowed power to go to his head that ultimately undermined his common sense.
De Leon's supporters look at him as a father and mother might look at their son who has been arrested for a DUI. There is no excuse for driving drunk although most men have taken the wheel inebriated on an occasion without thinking about the possible repercussions: They could kill someone or themselves.
Drunk driving is inexcusable just like calling the two African-Americans assistant district attorneys "fucking niggers" is inexcusable. But in the same manner that drunk driving is forgivable, De Leon's insults are forgivable if the community determines that an honorable man lapsed into a dishonorable moment. Many regard De Leon as a good person who made a bad mistake.
He has been humiliated. He has been humbled. He asserts that he has apologized to the persons he has offended and he has apologized to the public. His political career is most probably over. For the rest of his life people in Brownsville will mutter behind his back as he passes them in a hall. He has experienced the merciless reality of politics where ambition can lead to perdition. He has been scarred for the rest of his life.
Hasn't he been punished enough?
There are those who will rightfully circulate petitions and demand that he resign. They are justified in insisting that De Leon's remarks were inexcusable and unforgivable.
But there are those of us who don't believe that De Leon is a racist and that he is the product of a fine family. We see a young man blessed with a vision for realizing Brownsville's potential. We also see him wiser from a bitter lesson learned in the school of hard-knocks.
We live in racially charged times and we must face the difficult issues that divide us and try to resolve our differences. But we can't allow extremists from either end of the political spectrum to reduce existence to a black-and-white world. Life is lived in the gray.
Though I am an abject sinner who has been fortunate in that I have never been caught but who knows that he is going to pay a worse price than the terrible price that he is already paying because he has an instinctual comprehension of the universal and eternal laws of karma, I am in no position to judge anyone, but if Mary Helen Flores or Erasmo Castro, as much as I respect them, presented me with a petition, I wouldn't sign it even though I might have signed it a week ago.
After further deliberation, Cesar De Leon deserves a second chance.
Posted 9th October 2017 by Brownsville Literary Review.
