U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz makes public statement Border Stand

‘A right to fight’

City signs for border land surveys, adds fuel to fence fire

By Kevin Sieff/The Brownsville Herald

January 16, 2008 - 11:36PM

G. Daniel Lopez/The Brownsville Herald
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers survey markers were placed in Hope Park several months ago. Without the mayor'c consent, the city has granted permission for the government to survey it's land for the border fence.

The government’s demand for permission to conduct their initial surveys had been held at bay for months by organized resistance movements led by border mayors, residents and other elected officials.

That is until last week when city officials signed on the dotted line and stepped aside, allowing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to access public land, including city parks near the Rio Grande.

“We didn’t want to risk our relationship with the Corps,” Commissioner Ricardo Longoria said Wednesday. “We’re depending on them for our resaca restoration project. ”

On Jan. 8, the city signed an agreement issued by the Department of Homeland Security allowing the Corps of Engineers onto city properties.

In an Oct. 16 meeting, the City Commission denied Mayor Pat Ahumada’s proposal to refuse access to government surveyors. According to Longoria, this denial constituted a vote to grant consent to the surveyors.

But between the October meeting and the signing of the DHS document, no public vote took place on the issue. City Manager Charlie Cabler said he signed the form in executive session, behind closed doors.

“It is the first I hear of it," City Attorney Jim Goza said Wednesday. "I wasn’t aware that a form had been signed or sent out.”

Goza could not recall a vote to allow access for land surveys and added that officials cannot vote in executive session.

“As far as Charlie (Cabler) signing the form,” Commissioner Leo Garza said, “I don’t remember us voting or authorizing him (to do that).”

The Department of Homeland Security sent a letter on Dec. 7 asking the city for its consent to survey land, but according to city officials, the letter was sent to the wrong address. As a result, officials say, the city didn’t respond until after DHS’ Jan. 6 deadline.

Although the form of consent was only recently signed, commissioners discussed the issue at several commission meetings in late 2007. They claim to have considered the expertise of federal representatives, including U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi.

“We were told that there wasn’t much we could do,” Longoria said. “It was out of our control.”

However, Ortiz claims he offered no such insight. "If I was a landowner I wouldn’t give consent,” he said.

“The city commissioners will have to make the decision on their own.”

Mayor Ahumada was not present at the Jan. 8 closed-door meeting. On Wednesday, he was incensed by the City Commission’s decision. Surveyors will now have access to property at Hope Park, Impala Park, and several other stretches of land that lie in the path of a proposed fence stretching 17 miles in Brownsville.

“We’re only making it easier for them to start this project,” Ahumada said. “Citizens will now be able to blame the commission if they don’t support the fence … We live in a divided city.”

Ahumada is an active member of the Texas Border Coalition, an organization composed largely of elected officials from border communities. The coalition offered to donate $25,000 toward the city’s legal defense, but now that commissioners have given their consent to DHS, Ahumada doubts that the funds will be available.

The Brownsville Public Utilities Board received the same letter from DHS asking for consent, but the board refused. PUB owns 300 acres of land on West 13th Street and another 130 acres in the Southmost area. The 13th Street property is the site of a river pumping station, a power plant, and a water reservoir.

PUB could become a defendant in one of the 102 lawsuits expected to be filed in the fight over a border fence.

On Monday, the Justice Department filed the first of such suits against the city of Eagle Pass. A day later, the judge ordered the city to temporarily turn over land to the federal government.

After land is surveyed, the federal government will begin the process of purchasing property that lies along the path of the fence. If landowners refuse to sell, they will be sued again.

“They have a right to fight the fence,” Congressman Ortiz said, “and that’s what they’re doing.”
Herald reporter Emma Perez-Trevino contributed to this story.

Unapologetic wartime profiteers, they got rich moving troops and munitions during the U.S. war with Mexico and running Confederate cotton during the

Kent Biffle: Rancher Kenedy's known as more than just a pretty face

09:24 AM CST on Sunday, January 6, 2008

As historic figures go, Petra's must have been terrific. Her looks stunned frontiersmen.

And after researching her for years, biographers Jane Clements Monday and Frances Brannen Vick concluded that Petra (1825-1885) was beautiful not merely physically, but spiritually as well. Forever helping friends, kin and her Catholic church, she gave away a wagonload of money to charities way before such acts earned tax credits.

Historian John Henry Brown called her "a woman of superior accomplishments and great natural intelligence." He noted, "She was considered one of the handsomest women of her day."

Indian warriors killed her father, ex-governor of Spanish Texas, and carried off three of her sisters, one of whom was never rescued. After marrying a Mexican army colonel, Petra Vela de Vidal had six children. Widowed, she then married steamboat tycoon Mifflin Kenedy and had six more children. She helped the captain build a ranching empire whose tall bunchgrasses and mesquites adorned oil deposits unknown to them that today are worth untold millions.

A Pennsylvania Quaker who, as a boy, shipped before the mast, Captain Kenedy and another Yankee steamboat captain, Richard King, partnered as tight as bark on a Gulf Coast scrub oak. And, after profitably plying the Rio Grande with their fleet of steamboats, they amicably divvied up the proceeds in 1868.

Mifflin Kenedy had 400,000 acres (in present Kenedy County), next to the 900,000-acre King Ranch. Both captains were business majors of the buccaneer school. Unapologetic wartime profiteers, they got rich moving troops and munitions during the U.S. war with Mexico and running Confederate cotton during the Civil War.

If it weren't footnoted, Petra's Legacy: The South Texas Ranching Empire of Petra Vela and Mifflin Kenedy (Texas A&M Press) might be mistaken for soaring fiction. It is chockablock with crooked politics, cattle rustlers, land fraud, warfare, and enough illicit sex to populate South Texas courtrooms for generations. There were once about 300 claimants to the Kenedy estate.

Mifflin and Petra's aggressive son, James "Spike" Kenedy, drove herds to railheads in Kansas, where he proved a poor loser at the gambling tables.

On July 20, 1872, in Ellsworth, Kan., a gambling dispute erupted into a gunfight between Spike and Print Olive, a Texas rancher and gunman. Both shot-up combatants recovered.

In August 1878, the quarrelsome cards set Spike at odds with Mayor Jim Kelley of Dodge City, Kan. Spike tried to murder him, shooting into his house. His Honor was out, but his sleeping roommate, Dora Hand, a popular singer at the Lady Gay Theater, caught a fatal slug. Maybe being the son of the second-richest cowman in Texas had something to do with Spike's beating the rap.

In April 1884, Spike shot to death a disagreeable, vagrant vaquero at the La Parra Ranch. It was ruled accidental.

Much earlier, Petra's son (Spike's half-brother), Adrian Vidal, who had deserted both the U.S. and Confederate armies, was executed by Imperialists in Mexico, where he had been captured while fighting Emperor Maximilian's troops. The Kenedys' firstborn son, Tom, 35, was killed from ambush in 1888 while campaigning for sheriff in Cameron County.

When the Texas State Historical Association gathers March 5 in Corpus Christi, Petra's biographers will talk about her and the problems facing researchers of women in her time and place. Fran Vick is the association's new president, and former Huntsville Mayor Jane Monday is on the executive board. Historians will find the Kenedys' old La Parra Ranch a short drive down U.S. 77 from Corpus Christi.

kbiffle@sbcglobal.net