What is the Cavalry - Dispatch?
Friends and strangers, welcome. Everybody that knows me, knows, Matt doesn’t social media. So what is this, and why now?
As I write this, the town I grew up in— a tiny place with a population of about 3600 on the edge where the Chihuahuan desert fades into the westernmost edges of the Texas Hill Country, is experiencing almost routine police chases and helicopter overflights as authorities hunt for traffickers and potentially dangerous illegal aliens. This used to never happen. Emergency sirens here used to mean bad weather. Or that a neighbor was having a medical emergency. Not anymore. It’s almost cliché to observe it, but this was a place where even in 2019 you could get away with leaving doors and windows unlocked. Not anymore.
Not all illegal border crossers are dangerous. This is a fact. It is also a fact that some are. And you cannot possibly know who is and isn’t when suddenly in their presence.
Having to clarify that last in so awkward and inserted fashion is partially why I am launching this enterprise. Somehow it seems we have become unable to have nuanced conversations about reality in public spaces. Efforts to do so are waved away on all sides as propaganda, political correctness, right-wing bootlicking, conspiracy theorizing, or acts of executing some leftist-socialist-agenda. It kills me to read comments online from what seem to be normal fellow citizens, dismissing the crisis here as simple propagandizing and efforts by a Republican Governor to create a crisis and stir up a voting base.
Many citizens living with the day-to-day of the reality in Kinney County are actually in something of a state of revolt against Governor Greg Abbott, believing in some cases that his actions demonstrate a wish for this whole thing to just go away somehow. They suggest this border crisis is a tarbaby for him, one with zero upsides whether political or actual.
What is the truth? I don’t know, and I have no way of determining it from here. What is true is that people here can see with their own two eyes that there are more illegal aliens than ever coming through this tiny little community. The jail is overwhelmed. It has about 14 beds. The local Sheriff and his deputies are in it up to their necks, trying to manage the tide.
Not all illegal border crossers are dangerous. They don’t have to be. There just needs to be a tiny percentage who are. A tiny percentage lost in a sea of desperate folks hoping for a better life. Heartbreaking and sad, to be sure. What is one to do?
Folks living here can also see another truth with their own two eyes. There has been a change in the nature of some illegal aliens crossing the border. An experienced eye can somehow tell— some of those being arrested are almost spiritual descendants of past generations of border crossers in this area. Men mostly, young and old, looking for work. Hiking all evening out of the sun’s glare, they kept a low profile and it was rare for a taxpayer to even lay eyes on them. To a kid growing up here, they were like Bigfoot. Only real. Instead of giant simian footprints, you could find signs of their travel in the form of discarded tuna cans and pouches, soiled and abandoned clothing, and other objects no longer needed for the journey.
Now, mixed in with the humble but proud and tough workers coming to satisfy a two-faced thirst for cheap labor in the United States, one finds hardened and dangerous criminals, shepherding desperate people who are in absolutely no condition to hike the kind of mileage and geography here. Many of these latter are women. Sometimes, if they are attractive at all, or even if they’re not, they will be raped— multiple times by the men conveying them in many cases to a life of subjugation and prostitution. And in some cases, age will be no shield to their virtue. These hardened criminals have been forged on the anvil of narco-territorial war that has been fought in Mexico now for almost 15 to 20 years. They have been hammered and shaped and twisted into seemingly faceless and fearless men willing to do whatever is needful, where the only laws to govern their actions are the whims and desires of their superiors in the Cartel power structure.
Welcome to the Border in 2021.
Fort Clark Springs is one of the communities in Kinney County. It is a retirement/leisure community, built upon the bones of an old U.S. Army post that was used as a base for sorties against the Comanche, Lipan Apaches, Kickapoo, and any other Indian raiders during the frequent Indian Wars that dominated American westward expansion. Cavalrymen and Seminole Indian Negro scouts mingled with settlers in the nearby town of Brackettville. The history of the fort helped name one of the newspapers later founded in the area, called “The Kinney County Cavalryman.” It was the only newspaper in the community when I was growing up, I’ve named this enterprise the Cavalry - Dispatch in homage to it. Presently, the county is served by the published weekly “Kinney County Post,” which I have also been writing material for. There will doubtlessly be some cross-pollination, but we are speaking of two different efforts that will hopefully be satisfying two different needs. My writing here will be more general— aiming to help shine a light on things in an area the New York Times has called a “news desert,” for people from outside the county. Sad to say, neighbors in Kinney, Val Verde, Maverick, and Uvalde Counties may well find little of value in the Cavalry - Dispatch. Much of what will be written here is not news to them. They are living it. Concurrently, much of what I am writing in the Kinney County Post will be of less value to outsiders, as it is focused on serving its subscribers and being the hometown newspaper— covering the news of record, yes, but also the small town achievements, pleasures, and joys that come of living in a small and rural community.
Most coverage of the border comes from outsiders flying in and out of the Rio Grande Valley, or Laredo, Texas, filing dispatches from Laredo, McAllen, and Brownsville, or at the other end of the Rio Grande, El Paso, and calling it good. They ignore what are actually very distinct cultural and economic differences in many of the communities that lie between. Some even drop into San Antonio, more than 120 miles from the border and believe they can give their readers and viewers a decent handle on events.
Right or left. Libertarian or authoritarian, I think we can all agree: The Fourth Estate is struggling to hold up its end. Grab a corner— start sweating. Anybody can do it, for free or paid. Even me.
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