EL JARDIN

The tallest building on the Brownsville skyline is the El Jardin Hotel. "Bienvenidos" reads its southern wall that faces Mexico. Since its bloody conception in 1848 in the wake of the Mexican-American War, there has been a relationship between Brownsville and Matamoros, mostly cordial since families have resided on both sides at the same time, but sometimes fractious, but a good river, rather than a good fence, has kept both communities better friends in the long run. Brownsville and Matamoros were live-and-let-live border towns in which vigilantes decided fates when individuals crossed the line. The thick, gnarly branches of the mesquite easily supported human fruit. Violence has always reigned. The Mexican-American War started here. The Civil War ended here. While much has been made of Pancho Villa attacking New Mexico in the early 1900's, Matamoros' Juan Cortina and his band of Merry Mexicans killed several Brownsville citizens when they took over downtown a Sunday morning in 1859. From that time until the end of WWI bandits from Mexico would meet the U.S. Army, the Texas Rangers, the ranch posses of King, Kenedy and other wealthy landowners and local militias that resulted in hundreds of deaths during this period. In 1906 a contingent of black soldiers stationed at Fort Brown, exasperated by abuse and racism, allegedly left their barracks and shot up the city, killing and wounding a few citizens. Many historians assert that the fallout from the resulting hearings and trials destroyed the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt. Violence rages to this day. The druglords make millions and nobody doubts they contribute to Brownsville's booming banking business. The turf wars and illegal immigration have brought the military and para-military outfits to the border, but within the volatile mix, life maintains its mañana pace. It is understood that contraband is part of border business. In the old days when marijuana harvests were at their peak, the downtown merchants would unload their inventory as the mafiosos and their families splurged. The drug traffic flourishes and I assume the druglords spend lavishly, but the local merchants have either died, boarded up their stores or rented their locales to the Koreans and second-hand sellers. The northside mall and the chains receive the brunt of Mexican customers. Besides the El Jardin, there are the remnants of four other hotels that were part of downtown and my life. They were the Fort Brown, once the city's most luxurious accommodations with a plush club that the university has bought and turned into dorms, the Milner, caddy-corner fron El Jardin, now called La Colonial, the Cameron Motel, the nicest stay downtown and the Hotel Económico that has no air-conditioning, no baths in the rooms and rents by the hour if the need arises. All five have served me well. The El Jardin was Brownsville's most famous hotel, rising ten stories, located next to one of the railroad's terminals and the center of all social interaction. Built in the 1920's, the city's first radio antenna rose from its roof. Celebrities who found their way this far south in the heyday of the big-band era stayed at the hotel, but by the time I traipsed into the threadbare lobby in the 1960's accompanying my father to breakfast, its best days had been consigned to history, the railroad a memory and the majority of Brownsville's visitors lodging at the motels with Spanish motifs and swimming pools lining the state highway entering from the north. But El Jardin was a happening place. Though its rooms had a musty odor and its carpets had frayed, the bar and restaurant did a brisk business. Prior to Brownsville building its first mall along the river that dealt downtown a mortal blow with the exodus of Sears and Penney's, many merchants ate breakfast and lunch at El Jardin. It was the Silver Dollar Club that captivated my interest. Brownsville, in those days, had a number of cantinas that were off-limits to decent women. The Silver Dollar Club was also off-limits so a husband could unwind with women, many from Mexico, who in the dark lounge with the band alternating between cumbias and ballads under a cloud of thick cigarette smoke, became more and more alluring, the inexpensive drinks erasing discriminating tastes. The regulars had their regulars, but the salesmen who wanted an adventure without risking their families, and the girls who wanted a risk without condemning themselves to lives of a barfly, discovered that the Silver Dollar Club met their expectations. It was a safe place with a slight edge, a fistfight not uncommon but guns and knives non-existent. And there was nothing like a hotel bar where the move from sharing drinks in the club to sharing a bed was only a short trip up the elevator.