THE TODDLE INN...

I stopped Saturday morning at a convenience store to buy El Bravo before continuing to my favorite breakfast joint in Browntown--The Todde Inn. Les Perez pere et frere were greeting their customers in the traditional South Texas manner and I knew the majority of the patrons--teachers, coaches, government employees and small businessmen.

If Cobbleheads and the Vermillion are the city's favorite watering holes, you can see many of the same people in the morning at The Toddle Inn. With a cup of coffee, I ordered a breakfast taco with potato, egg and bacon, well-cooked. .

The Brownsville Herald, which fails to report that Matamoros is a cauldron of chaos and boiling blood, features nothing about the weekly slaughter in the streets.

El Bravo displayed a photo of the governor photographed with a narco--wanted in the United States--as his bodyguard, reassuring the public that his number one priority remained restoring peace to his state.

In another article the newspaper chastised the Mexican army for being trigger happy, their nervous fingers allegedly leading to the death of a motorist. PRI, Mexico's political party that turned corruption into an art form, owns El Bravo.

Critics have charged that PRI is attempting to return to power by allying itself with the drug lords. Based on the journalism being practiced at El Bravo, this argument has credibility.

Brownsville is profiting from its neighbor's woes in the short run with the latter's citizens buying homes and opening businesses, but the financial repercussions could be devastating in the long run.

South Texas' economy is tied more to Mexico's fortunes than its own nation. The Port of Brownsville depends on Monterrey. The maquiladoras provide its working class with millions in spending money. Sunrise Mall and RGV merchants need their Mexican customers in order to survive. The Winter Tourists, besides the beautiful weather and inexpensive golf courses, consider Mexico a luring attraction.

If the highways are too dangerous to drive, if the corporations decide that other countries offer cheaper labor and safer conditions and if American retirees fear that they could be on the receiving end of a bullet merely strolling through the TSC/UTRGV campus on the opposite of the river, then the Depression that has turned Mid-West factories into rust would descend upon us and turn the Rio Grande Valley into dust.

"Do you still go to Matamoros, Sheriff, for cabrito?" I asked the lawman who opened his restaurant a half-century ago.

"If I had terminal cancer and I wanted someone to put me out of my misery, I'd take a walk to the plaza," he said. "Until then, I'm going to live life to the fullest, which excludes crossing the bridge."