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Gonzalez beats trustee
HERE’S TO 150
By TARYN WHITE THE ZAPATA TIMES
After 16 years on the Zapata ISD school board, Zachary Garza, 58, will be stepping down from his Precinct 4 seat to make way for Diego Gonzalez, 54, who defeated him in Tuesday’s election, 385 to 177. “It feels great to win by as much as I did,” Gonzalez said. “I worked really hard going door to door to get people out to vote for me.” Although Gonzalez has no strong platforms he plans on taking to the board, he is happy to rely on the other board members to show him the ropes. “I plan on getting my feet wet and learning from the other board members to know exactly what I have to do,” Gonzalez said. “But I know I will only vote for things I truly believe in.”
“I plan on getting my feet wet and learning from the other board members.” DIEGO GONZALEZ
Gonzalez, a Zapata native, said his years of experience working in the banking industry and his work as an operator for an oil and gas company will help him to be an asset to the board. A 1974 graduate of Zapata Independent School District, Gonzalez is proud to be given the
See GONZALEZ | PAGE 11A
Photo by Ulysses S. Romero | Laredo Morning Times
Irene M. Cortinas credits her faith and the American Cancer Society.
Cancer Society lends a hand (Editor’s note: United Way is funding 25 agencies with its 2008-09 campaign. This is the first in a series on the agencies and the people they help.)
By CHRISTINA ROSALES LAREDO MORNING TIMES
Irene Cortinas was no stranger to cancer when she was diagnosed with it in May 2008. It didn’t take away from her initial shock but she knew all she could do was hope for the best. After her mother died of bone cancer and her husband of lung cancer, 55-year-old Cortinas said she felt resilient and was able to
overcome the alarming diagnosis quickly. “God has a perfect plan for all of us,” Cortinas recalled thinking when the doctor told her she had stage two cancer. “All that happens in our lives is for the greater good.” Cortinas felt a lump in her left breast on May 6. She went straight to her primary care physician who referred her to Dr. Gary Unzeitig, a breast cancer surgeon. In June, the one-and-ahalf inch tumor was removed. She had two weeks to recuperate before oncologist Eduardo Miranda told her that she
Residents inaugurate park to kick off sesquicentennial By ZACH LINDSEY THE ZAPATA TIMES
he residents of Zapata came out en masse to witness the dedication of a new park in remembrance of Zapata County’s sesquicentennial. The dedication was part of a four-day long celebration, starting with a drug-free pep rally at the Zapata County Courthouse. Today’s events will feature a parade through town, a musical per-
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formance by Zapata’s own Intocable and Sunday will see festivals in Falcón, Lopeño and San Ygnacio. Friday’s events included performances by the Zapata High School’s nationally recognized Mariachi Halcón, Dalia’s Dance Academy and a performance of the National Anthem by Zapata High School student Ashley Flores. County Commissioners, veterans and local lawyers celebrated the history of Zapata. The new Zapata County Sesqui-
centennial Park was created by the Zapata County Sesquicentennial Committee. “The committee was appointed by the Commissioners Court to plan for the celebration,” said County Judge Rosalva Guerra. “Some of them remember the centennial.” History was on everyone’s lips, but the park was meant to memorialize not just the history of Zapata,
See 150 | PAGE 7A
Photos by Cuate Santos | Laredo Morning Times
TOP: Zapata County residents participate in the dedication of the Zapata Sesquicentennial Trail Park on Friday morning. ABOVE RIGHT: Reynaldo Uribe, of San Ignacio, former county treasurer and tax collector/collector for Zapata County, looks at a marker of the officials that served during his tenure, from 1970-1973. Uribe was recognized as one of the oldest living public officials. ABOVE LEFT: Arabella Gonzalez Bishop and her husband, Darwin, listen to speakers during Friday’s ceremony. Bishop, who has been an educator for more than 50 years, was recognized for the longest service to education in Zapata.
See CANCER | PAGE 11A
A LAKE VIEW
Republic of the Rio Grande started in Revilla f things had gone according to plans out of a Guerrero Viejo (Revilla) meeting, Zapata and Laredo probably would have similar bronze statues honoring two Antonios. One was named Antonio Zapata and the other, Antonio Canales Rosillo. History tells that Antonio Zapata (1800-1840) and Antonio Canales (1802-1851) were key Federalist partisans in opposition to the post-San Jacinto dictatorship of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Rio Grande frontier history of
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ODIE ARAMBULA the Zapata region has recorded Canales and Zapata as key to the insurgency against the Centralist Mexican government that led to
the short-lived government of the Republic of the Rio Grande. In January 1840, Canales-led insurgents grouped down rural roads and villages in Tamaulipas Nuevo Leon to take on a larger Centralist army in Monterrey. It was part of a strategy to get Nuevo Leon backers to join partisans in Tamaulipas and Coahuila to support the establishment of a separate government away from Mexico and the now Texas republic. To this end, Canales, a lawyer, earlier had advanced the proposi-
tion of a republic — the Republic of the Rio Grande — as a buffer between Mexico and Texas. A series of bad turns at the approach to Monterrey prompted Canales and his troopers to dig in at the Bishop’s Palace — the Obispado — on high ground. Zapata and his men, on the other hand, moved on to run into stiff opposition. He took heavy losses as some of his cavalry deserted to the Federalists. Zapata’s Centralists forces returned to safer grounds closer to the Rio Grande.
The general from Guerrero (Zapata) and about 50 of his men, however, returned to the battlefield and were caught near a village in Coahuila in the Battle of Morales on March 24, 1840. Some of the men denounced the rebellion of the Federalists, but 23 did not. Zapata and the 23 were tried by a military tribunal, convicted of treason and executed at Monclova, Coahuila, on March 29, 1840. History tells that Bacilio Benavides, a strong Laredo proponent of the Republic of the Rio
Grande movement, was outraged when he learned that Zapata’s head had been put in a sack and taken to his native Guerrero to be exhibited on a pole for three days. In relating the events of the Centralists’ actions, historians in later years reminded the Mexican nation that Father Hidalgo and two of his closest allies had suffered the same fate in Coahuila for conspiring for the independence of Mexico from Spain.
See LAKE VIEW | PAGE 11A