Colonias Provide Glimpse Into Bush Policy

This is the place where Texas politicians come to get mud on their boots.

Former Gov. Ann Richards slogged through the squalid roads of the border’s infamous colonias, as did Govs. Mark White and Bill Clements before her. The communities, among the poorest in the U.S., are a magnet for politicos in the same way the rubble of the South Bronx used to be for presidential candidates.

In places with quaint Spanish names like La Joya (“the jewel”) and Las Milpas (“the cornfields”), the politicians tour cinder-block homes where foul-smelling irrigation water flows from the showers and taps. They see septic tanks that overflow and cover the ground with a sickly film.

People here say Gov. George W. Bush has less colonia mud on his shoes than his predecessors. His preference is, they say, for the pachangas and barbecues where border power-brokers--an overwhelmingly Democratic and Mexican American lot--traditionally seal deals and alliances.

Still, the five years Bush has been governor have seen some significant improvements in colonias in Hidalgo and other Texas border counties, where an estimated 400,000 people live in substandard conditions. Bush’s record in providing services to the poorest communities along the 1,200-mile border with Mexico--where unemployment usually hovers at three times the national average--offers a window into how his “compassionate conservatism” translates into policy.

If Bush wins the Republican presidential nomination, his success in the cities and towns on the north side of the Rio Grande may provide a blueprint for an assault on Democratic Party strongholds elsewhere.

His administration has resisted new large-scale spending programs supported by Democrats and has had only modest proposals of its own. Progress in the colonias has come largely because his administration has worked diligently to implement water and sewer projects that liberal activists first set in motion long before he took office.

“He surprised a lot of us with his willingness to work with people that the vast majority of Republicans wouldn’t think of reaching out to,” said J.J. Garza, chief of staff to state Rep. Rene Oliveira (D-Brownsville). “You have to give him a lot of credit for that.”

More Popular Than His GOP Predecessors

Indeed, Bush is more popular in Texas border communities than any other GOP governor before him, even though politics here remains dominated by the same party machine that has faithfully delivered votes to Democratic candidates since Reconstruction. In his 1998 reelection campaign, Bush became the first Republican governor to win a majority in several border counties, including El Paso and Hidalgo. (National polls show Bush enjoys a similar popularity among Latinos nationally, leading Democratic Vice President Al Gore by 11% in a recent survey.)

Many people here like Bush’s chummy style and his attention to the personal: Among other things, he is famous for remembering faces and names. He has also made his secretary of state, Elton Bomer, into a border czar charged with coordinating the state’s response to the region’s problems. Such moves have helped him win over some key Democrats to his presidential bid, most notably El Paso Mayor Carlos Ramirez.

“More than any other governor, he’s visited our city,” said Ramirez, who plans to join Bush on the presidential campaign trail. “You can tell when someone is patronizing you, and the governor has never done that. He is genuine.”

For most leaders here, however, a visit from or a heart-to-heart with the charismatic man who might be president is not quite enough to make them forget the times he let them down.

“Bush is a very personable guy, down to earth, and he carries on a good conversation,” said Democratic state Sen. Eddie Lucio of Brownsville. “But that’s not enough out of a leader. You need to roll up your sleeves and address the issues.”

Earlier this year, Bush earned the enmity of Lucio and other border leaders when he declined to support their “border Marshall Plan.” The centerpiece of the package was $1 billion in bonds for highways and other infrastructure projects. After the Texas Senate passed the bill, it died in the House. The governor took no stand on the proposal, and months later his administration offered a much more modest plan.

The border leaders expected Bush to support the initiative, especially after he put in an extra effort to woo Latino voters in 1998, when he made a seemingly never-ending series of border visits and ran television spots in Spanish.

“This past legislative session we were slapped,” said Jose Eloy Pulido, the top elected official in Hidalgo County. “Well, maybe ‘slapped’ isn’t the right word. We were ignored.”

Later in the session, Bush signed a colonia reform bill, which strengthened government oversight of development and accelerated a program to hook up residents to water and sewer lines. “These solutions remove bureaucratic barriers and get help quickly to those who need it the most,” Bush said in signing the bill. Some of the bad feelings were soothed.

“Don’t paint me to be too critical of the man,” said Pulido, a hulking man with several hunting trophies on the wall of his Edinburg office and a Stetson hanging from a hook nearby. “If he becomes president, I don’t want him to invite everyone else from Hidalgo County to Washington but me.”

Colonia activists like Carmen Anaya, 84, are less taken by the Bush mystique. “I’ve never met him; I don’t know anything about him,” said Anaya, a member of Valley Interfaith, a group based in Mercedes. Anaya has photographs of herself with Govs. Richards and White and with Republican U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, but none with Bush.

“He won’t meet with organized people,” she said.

Whatever their frustrations with Bush, however, if you ask Anaya or others here who is to blame for the colonias’ worst sanitation problems, they will likely mention the local mayor, county commissioner or county judge before any politician in Austin.

“Compadrismo,” from the Spanish word for “godfather of my son,” dominates the local political system. Pulido’s predecessor as county judge was indicted on corruption charges and driven from office, although he was later acquitted. Patronage, favoritism and incompetence among city and county leaders have prevented millions of dollars worth of federal and state money from being spent, the activists say.

“Here, the corruption is obvious and apparent,” said Father Plutarco Belanggoy, a native of the Philippines and pastor in La Joya. “I tell my friends back home that it’s a different USA we are in here. It’s the dark side of the U.S.”

Land Sold Without Essential Services

Colonias are tracts of land that have been subdivided and sold without essential services. Before a 1989 reform, it was perfectly legal for developers to sell properties without even water hookups. Families buy the plots and then build their own homes, paying as little as $10,000 for the land or making monthly payments as low as $50.

The colonia residents are the poorest people in a region that has seen only spotty growth from the trade boom after the North American Free Trade Agreement. Some of their homes are constructed in stages--a wall or two at a time--by families who leave the border for months at a time to take farm and factory jobs in the South and Midwest. The frames of unfinished homes line colonia streets, many with stacks of discarded wooden pallets nearby.

Hermelinda Sanchez’s family has lived in the colonias of Los Ebanos for three generations. The street she lives on is named for her father, a World War II veteran. And yet even she draws her water from an illegal hookup to the community’s new water main. Recently, that water was polluted with gasoline.

“We put a match over the water and it almost caught fire,” Sanchez said. But that is not the worst of the community’s problems. “When it rains, a lot of the streets get flooded and the school buses won’t come in here. The children walk through the mud to get to school.”

The struggle to improve life in the colonias gained momentum in the mid-1980s, when media reports and the work of groups like Valley Interfaith in the Rio Grande Valley and the El Paso Interreligious Service Organization drew attention to the stark poverty. Most streets were unpaved and rates of hepatitis A were five times the national average. Since then state and national programs have set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to ameliorate the worst of the conditions, primarily the lack of water and other utilities.

But actually getting trenches dug and pipes laid has proved difficult. In western Hidalgo County, a program to install sewer services has languished for seven years, bogged down, locals say, by the incompetence of local leaders.

“Our project just does not move, and in the meantime our people are suffering,” teacher Janie Rangel said. “I’ve been here 20 years and nothing has changed.”

Several observers say Bush’s border policy was itself moving at a snail’s pace until the Austin American-Statesman ran a series of articles in 1998 showing how little things had changed in the colonias.

Bush entrusted the region’s seemingly intractable problems to Secretary of State Bomer in January. A former state legislator, Bomer was among the first Democrats to endorse Bush’s 1994 run for governor. During a stint as insurance commissioner, he developed a reputation as a no-nonsense fix-it man.

“Gov. Bush told me, ‘I’d like you to work on the colonia problem. I’d like that to be one of the most important things you work on for me,’ ” Bomer said.

A Quiet Crusade to Expand Services

The tall, white-haired West Texan has since made the region a testing ground for “compassionate conservatism.” From his office in Austin, he has directed a quiet crusade to expand sewer and water services, mostly through the aggressive implementation of programs created during previous administrations. (Bomer has sought only $25 million for new water projects, a small amount compared with the $600 million set aside in the late 1980s.)

For a year now, Bomer has waged war against the red tape and lethargy of border bureaucrats. His efforts include a program to connect residents to existing water mains; many residents cannot afford to pay the hook-up fees even when the water main runs just a few feet from their homes. Bomer’s office said 16,000 households have been connected since Bush became governor in 1995.

Completing the hookups is a matter of good “conservative” fiscal sense, he said. Families that are not connected are not paying water bills and taxes, depriving the government of a return on its investment.

Even the activists of Valley Interfaith, schooled in the aggressive politics of the late organizer Saul Alinsky, give Bomer and his office high marks. “Mr. Bomer is a good man,” said Elida Bocanegra, echoing the sentiments of many here.

To people used to playing second fiddle to the “metroplexes” of Dallas and Houston, having Bomer in their court, and a Republican governor in Austin who at least takes public notice of their interests, is a refreshing change.

Even though Bush has launched few initiatives of his own, he has acted as a buffer to the more conservative elements of the Republican Party who would rather see funding for existing border programs cut back.

“Part of the reason he can get away with this is his name,” said Garza, the legislative aide. “It’s sort of like Nixon going to China.”

Among those supporting Bush are those disaffected with the traditional Democratic Party machinery, which, they feel, has taken the border for granted. Pulido said he backed Bush’s gubernatorial campaign after meeting with the candidate in 1994, when Pulido was running for county clerk. He supported Bush again in 1998.

Given the region’s fierce political loyalties, however, such a stance is tricky, and most of Pulido’s “support” for Bush was decidedly passive. He made no formal endorsement.

“It’s a Democratic area,” Pulido said. “If I went around and said I support a Republican, people would not be happy. But I did not go out and raise flags for Gov. Richards either.”