TOWER OF BABEL

Not only are they among the most ignorant people in the world, but Brownsvillians speak like ignoramuses. An Easterner may have founded the city, but good ol' boy losers on the lam were the town's first settlers.

"England sent its criminals to Australia," wrote a Brownsville historian. "American convicts fled to the border. They spoke an atrocious English that you can hear vomited from the mouths of our local white trash."

The number of dialects amazed Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist during a visit to the university several years ago.

"I stopped at the Brownsville County Club and the residents communicated in Spanglish," he recalled. "In the Southmost it was Tex-Mex. I heard nothing but pochismos in Las Prietas. In La Parra the inhabitants were conversing in a language that reminded me of Huichol Indians on peyote."

The English/Spanish mishmash goes from bad to worse when trailer trash marries barrio basura. Mixing a backwoods English with a bastardized Spanish produces a cacophony of inaudible sounds that would cause both Shakespeare and Cervantes to turn over in their graves.

"Delta" Dave Handelman used to lament when he was at Brownsville High about a reality in the school district.

"Women, who aren't fluent in either English or Spanish, are instructing our students."