CAN HARLINGEN OVERCOME ITS DIVISIVE PAST AND BE INCLUSIVE?

By Old Time Harlingen Resident

As a lifetime resident, Harlingen has always seemed for me, to be a tale of two cities: the west Hispanic side and the east Anglo side.

The dividing line between the two sides has changed over the years. The Anglos on the east city, had very little respect for the Mexicans that lived on the west side. They didn’t want Mexicans in their schools, their stores, or their neighborhoods. They wanted to tell Mexicans how things worked, and they didn’t want Mexicans to speak up.

In the mid-1900’s, the dividing line of the two Harlingen’s, was what we now call F street and then it went further east at Tyler street. Back then, Mexican-Americans were not allowed to attend what was then considered the most advanced school in the region (Bowie). Bowie school was designed by a well-known designer with neo-Mayan architecture.

People still marvel at the designs on that building. It should be a museum!

I have an older friend who still remembers being told that he could not attend that school. His parents were so upset that they moved to another town. Bowie School now is in the middle of the most heavily Hispanic neighborhoods in Harlingen, and its students are 99% Hispanic. How ironic – it seems as if the Harlingen’s bigoted forefathers who excluded Mexicans from this school ended up creating a fitting symbol of Mexican culture for future Hispanic generations to appreciate in their own neighborhoods. Who would’ve guessed it back then?
(On Aug. 26, 1921 Harlingen was celebrating the first lighting of the "white way," this being the decorative streetlights recently erected on Main (now Jackson) Street. As the block party on that Friday evening drew to a close, a disturbing specter appeared. The front page article day's Brownsville Herald describes it:
"Ku Klux Klansmen, 104 Strong, Parade Streets of Harlingen Last Night"
A Ku Klux Klan parade, in which 104 knights of the invisible empire led by a fiery cross and a United States flag, was the startling conclusion to a civic celebration held in Harlingen last night.).Back to our two cities. For Mexican Harlingen, downtown was the area surrounding La Placita. For Anglo Harlingen, downtown Harlingen was Jackson Street.

Oh, yes, there was the Lozano building and store on Jackson street, which was the exception, not the rule. The two downtowns of Harlingen had very different histories. The history of La Placita is told in stories carried down by generations. There was a brothel near La Placita owned by a lady named Pancha Rocha. She would sell moonshine during prohibition. I had an uncle who Pancha Rocha would pay to collect empty moonshine bottles from the Mexican alleys, to bring them back for use in selling more moonshine. Pancha Rocha would bury the moonshine in the ground to keep from being discovered.

After prohibition, the Casanova brothers opened a bar on the dirt road (now called Tyler street), and there was a famous murder in that bar, which took place on the very same night that the 33 Hurricane struck. It seems one of the Casanova brothers struck a non-paying customer with a machete or a knife as he was walking out of the bar. The victim lay bleeding in the ditch near the bar as the rain caused by the approaching storm fell over his body. After the hurricane, Pancha Rocha let many who had lost their homes, stay in the rooms of her brothel.

As Harlingen grew, so did both of its downtowns. La Placita got more and more cantinas, and Jackson Street got more and more shops. La Placita had cantinas, and Jackson street had soda shops. They were two very different worlds – and they existed just a few blocks from each other! In the 1958, there was a great festival celebrating Harlingen’s 50 year anniversary.

The two cities came together to celebrate the Capital City. Those were great times because Harlingen was the leading economy of the entire valley.

But things got worse as the sixties approached. As the Hispanic population grew, the line separating the two Cities, would move east – to the railroad tracks. Hispanics moved into the neighborhoods around Bowie and West Buchanan, and the Anglos started moving east too! They found paradise in the neighborhoods of Austin, Parkwood and Treasure Hills. Their subdivision surveys made sure to include stipulations about the racial backgrounds of those who were allowed to live in their new havens.

Then came the Kennedy Johnson era, and the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed segregation and discrimination. Suddenly, nobody could tell Hispanics to only live on one of Harlingen’s cities. They could actually buy a House in the Angle City and live right next to the Harlingen establishment! “There goes the neighborhood!” must have been a common refrain in certain Harlingen circles.

Soon after the Civil Rights Act was passed, the leaders of Harlingen suddenly found a pressing need to sell its airport land to a group of Harlingen citizens, who converted it into a private Country Club! Even though this club was not in Harlingen – they called it the “Harlingen Country Club”.

They eventually turned the area around the Country Club into its own township (Palm Valley). How special is that? To this day, Palm Valley has never had a Hispanic mayor. In a region that was 60-70% Hispanic! The City of Harlingen lost its Air Base and converted it into its new airport. With the closing of the airbase, many of the “flyboys” moved north.

The Hispanic population in Harlingen because the majority in the late 1960s. Jackson Street almost became a ghost town, as the Anglo side of Harlingen developed farther east – in what everyone called “Sun Valley Mall” Harlingen leaders started a program called “Go Harlingen!” to promote Harlingen as a retirement community to lure more Anglos from the midwest. They were trying to sell the homes left empty by the flyboys. To this day, Harlingen is still making efforts to draw retirees from the midwest. (There aren’t many Hispanics in the midwest – by the way.)

By the 70’s Harlingen as a Community had become less segregated, although there were still relics of its plantation-like past, such as the Algodon Dance, the Country Club, and the City Government. In the 80s there was a move to revitalize the old Jackson street downtown area, which by then had become a haven for loan companies, discount stores and the Salvation Army.

The effort to revitalize the district, had some success and by the mid-nineties, there were antique shops, boutiques and a few cafes worth visiting there. La Placita, on the other hand, had continued to be home to cantinas and pool halls. It’s central park area had become a beacon for prostitutes and drug dealers.

But with the rise of the Hispanic population in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, there was a struggle over control of Harlingen’s City Hall. Today, many professional Hispanics live in Treasure Hills and at the Country Club. Socially and politically, there is still an invisible line between the two cities.

People (both Anglo and Hispanic) who move to Harlingen from other parts, find it unusual that backyard bar-b-cues and parties are either 90-100% Anglo or 90-100% Mexican-American. The “two cities” continue to live next to each other – although they remain worlds apart.

So how do Single Member Districts fit in with all this history?
About 10 years ago, a group started to try to revitalize La Placita in the same model as Jackson street’s group. When they failed a few years later, the Jackson street downtown district decided to incorporate La Placita as part of their group, in an effort to help it develop as Jackson street had.

The City government agreed. The Downtown Improvement District forced property owners in La Placita to pay a premium to the Downtown District, and the Downtown District took that money to make improvements. La Placita property owners felt that the money was mostly going to improve Jackson Street. Then, the Downtown Improvement Board decided they were going to improve La Placita by dictating to property owners there how to paint their buildings and what kind of signs they could put up. When La Placita property owners complained to the all-Anglo City Commission, they were ignored.

The La Placita building owners said, “Enough is enough,” It seemed to some owners of buildings in La Placita that the time had finally come for people on the east side of Harlingen to have more respect for the Mexican Americans in Harlingen.

They had had enough of the long history, of Anglos telling Mexican Americans – where they could go to school, where they should live, and now – what color they could paint their buildings and what type of signs they could put on their private property. The La Placita building owners started having meetings to discuss how to regain control over La Placita, and how to recreate the Community of Harlingen into one based on mutual respect for all citizens of the Community. One solution was to make the Harlingen City Government less influenced by the establishment that by now lived primarily in Treasure Hills, Austin, and the Country Club (the Country Club is outside of Harlingen, but the people owned business in the City and involved themselves in Harlingen’s politics.)

And so, the Single Member District election, is kind of a culmination of a long history of division in Harlingen. The La Placita building owners organized a group that called itself Citizens for A New Harlingen, and they started a petition drive to put Single Member Districts on a ballot for the November 2008 election. Will it make Harlingen more unified? I think it will.

There are people on both sides that are tired of having two cities Instead of having a Community where one side always dictates to the other side how things should work – shouldn’t we have a Community in which all citizens are equally represented? Wouldn’t that make our city more unified and less divided along racial and income lines? After all these years… isn’t it time to end the “two cities” and start working for a new beginning and a New Harlingen?