AT MARKET SQUARE, A STILLNESS IN THE AIR

By Juan Montoya
When I was a child my family used to live in the farmlands in the northern outskirts of Brownsville.
The land was a quilt work of cotton and citrus farms, green as they eye could see. Farmhands, many from Matamoros and northern Mexico, would flock to the Brownsville area to work on the cotton and citrus crops. In the spring, the workers would thin the interminable rows of the cotton fields by hand, spacing the plants so that when harvest time came, the plants would be able to yield their maximum yields of the valuable fiber.
During the winter months (January, February and March), the crews would be in the Bayview area harvesting the oranges and grapefruits that gave the area its fame as a winter paradise.
On Saturday, the work would stop at noon and the workers and their families would crowd on pickup trucks to do their week's shopping in downtown Brownsville.
There was La Casa del Nylon and Manitou's for the women to stock up on fabrics and other domestic goods. Hardware, clothing and other needs were all within a stone's throw from Market Square. El Kress, Woolworths, and other chains were available a street over on Elizabeth Street.
The Market Square area was virtually crawling with people. Roving bands of musicos would tread their way through the crowds on the sidewalks and congregate near its center. The Market Square cantinas did a rollicking business, as the men – after a week's worth of arduous labor under the hot sun – walked into their cool interior to slack their thirst.
If anything, it was a lively scene what with music blaring from the nickle jukeboxes or conjuntos playing corridos for the patrons. While the men indulged in their weekly bacchanal, the families would walk into one of the handful of movie theaters such as El Mexico, El Iris, La Reina, El Grande, and over at Elizabeth and Levee, the Majestic and El Capitol.
The crowds of weekend visitors would mix on the sidewalks with the "townies," in the days when everyone knew each other, if just by sight.
It would be dusk before the crowds clear and make their way home. Then Market Square would also fold up and enter into a slow rhythm over the week until the weekend cam and the excitement invaded the areas again.
This came to mind today when I had the chance to visit the El Tapiz building on some other chore. The Planning Department is there back again after a slight respite when the city administration was playing musical chairs with the offices.
I commented to a city administrator that Market Square seemed eerily quiet after the November 30 ouster of the cantinas after their landlord – now the city of Brownsville – evicted them once and for all.
What will be there after the cantinitas are gone?
"There is some kind of plan," said the administrator, reluctant to give out too much info. As for the silence, he said it was welcome for city employees at El Tapiz.
"Sometimes we would come in and there would be people by the fountain doing God knows what there," he would say. "You'd walk out at lunch and the loud music was blaring from the bars. It's actually nice now to enjoy the quiet."
Some of the cantina owners like Señor Limon over at La Movida or La Señora Marta over at El Domino said they are already negotiating with real estate owners downtown to set up shop and provide services to their customers.
Now we have Mercaditos, gentrification, and Better Block events attempting to infuse life into the 1840-circa center of Downtown Browntown.
But as far as Market Square, the days of the blue-collar cantinas and conjuntos are over.