Posted on 07/27/2005 4:56:23 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
The president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps of Texas resigned by e-mail late Monday evening, criticizing a lack of structure in the group and claiming racist undertones in the Goliad-area chapter.
"The Sarco group has chosen to go a different course than what I feel is in the best interest of the organization nationally and locally," Bill Parmley of the small community near Goliad wrote in the letter e-mailed late Monday night to Chris Simcox, national president of the Arizona-based Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, and Goliad County Sheriff Robert DeLaGarza.
The Advocate obtained a copy of the letter late Tuesday afternoon from DeLaGarza's office, in which Parmley resigned as both the head of the Texas branch of the organization and the chapter in the Goliad area.
In a Tuesday phone interview Parmley accused members of the group of having secret meetings without him in violation of the group's bylaws and of actively working to undermine DeLaGarza because he is Hispanic.
Kenneth Buelter, the group's vice president and the man Parmley said was a key leader of the efforts against him, said the group has no underlying racism and hasn't held any meetings without notifying Parmley.
The resignation came as a surprise, he said. Buelter was traveling Tuesday and said he hadn't seen a copy of the letter, but had heard about the resignation from other group members.
"No, I did not see it coming," he said of the resignation. "We felt like Bill was doing a wonderful job for the organization."
He continued, "As of late, there have been differences of opinion as to how to do some things," Buelter declined to elaborate over the phone.
The national organization was sorry to lose Parmley, Simcox said.
"We were sorry to hear about it, and just thank him for everything he's done and we move on," Simcox said.
As an example of the attempts to undermine DeLaGarza, Parmley said members of the group secretly met with 24th Judicial District attorney Mike Sheppard earlier this month. Sheppard confirmed he had met with some community members earlier in the month in regard to DeLaGarza, but declined to discuss the contents of the meeting out of respect for the citizens' expectation of confidentiality.
Buelter said that he and other Sarco residents had met with Sheppard about certain practices of the sheriff in regards to using convicted felons on work details, but that meeting had nothing to do with the Minuteman Corps or immigration issues.
For his part, DeLaGarza said he didn't know of any efforts by the Minuteman Corps to undermine his authority or position. However, the accusations raised by Parmley did cause concern if the group is indeed plotting to take more aggressive actions, he said.
"I know the people in my community," DeLaGarza said. "The community itself will not tolerate racism in Goliad County."
If members of the Minuteman Corps should step out of line, "The community is going to come down on those people, not us," DeLaGarza said.
Parmley's accusations won't have any effect on how the sheriff's department does its job or responds to the Minuteman Corps, the sheriff said.
Parmley also wrote in the e-mail that group members circumvented his authority and took decisions to the national office in Arizona.
"There is no useful purpose for my position as state president or even president of the Goliad chapter with everything needing to be cleared and double checked with HQ," Parmley wrote in the e-mail.
Buelter said some members had simply contacted the national headquarters in Arizona seeking information when it was not passed on to Texas members in a timely manner.
In addition, Parmley stated the Sarco group refused to support his efforts to cooperate with the local chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens to conduct some sort of fundraisers to help provide humanitarian support to illegal immigrants taken into custody by DeLaGarza's department.
Buelter said he still hoped such a fundraiser could take place and was hoping to work with the Goliad-area LULAC chapter to plan the event.
As further evidence of the underlying racism in the group, Parmley said Judge Emilio Vargas, Goliad County Justice of the Peace, didn't show up for a July meeting because of concerns over racist views of members.
Vargas said in an interview Tuesday evening he didn't attend the function because of a family matter, but hoped to attend a future meeting of the Minuteman Corp if his schedule permitted.
Parmley also criticized the national organization as a whole for a lack of organization.
"You have no structure and these Texas chapters have no structures because there are no bylaws. How can leaders whom are assigned positions lead if what they implement are disregarded or circumvented. It is a recipe for disaster," the e-mail read.
But Simcox said he is not sure from where Parmley's concerns are coming.
"We have a mission statement and we have a very clear standard operating procedure and a very clear operational procedure with strong management," Simcox said. "I'm not sure where he's coming from with that."
The resignation should have no effect on the organization's plan for extensive border observation activities in October, Simcox said.
Thomas Doyle is a reporter with the Advocate. Contact him at 361-580-6511 or tdoyle@vicad.com.
Oy. Not what I wanted to do, but...so be it.
You know what your ancestors thought? Amazing. I have family members who died in the Mexican War, men from North Carolina, Tennessee, and...Texas.
I think I know how they thought. Remarkably, many of them left letters, bibles, etc. One of the guys that died left letters to home. Mostly he just talked about how he wanted to get it all over with. Guess it did. For him, at least. The others talked about "fighting the oppressors". Since these were men who were about 2 generations away from the Revolution, I can only think that they regarded the Spaniard hierarchy as the sort of feudal hegemonists that the English Kings and Nobles were.
Which, of course, is correct.
As far as the Spaniard land grantees still in "Tejas", or rather Coahuila y Tejas, I have only opinions. I have found that some fought with the Anglos. Not surprising; every war has fuzzy lines of loyalty, some crossover. Santa Anna made few friends, as he was clearly looking to be a king. But in large, I don't see any mass opposition to him or the new "Mexican" government of 1821 among the descendants of the land grantees. Why should they? Bad as Santa Anna's government might be, he wasn't about to confiscate their dirt.
They could not make the same conclusion about the Americans. So I doubt that they were all just one little gang of go-getters, ready to start their own little planet.
I did a bit of research on the grantees a few years ago. The records kept by the Spaniard Crown, and their appointees in Nueva Espana, were quite thorough. What was remarkable was how few they were in the area west of the Bexar, and how large the grants. Ranchos of 48,000 acres were quite common.
It must have been a tough life: really on their own.
But then....the Anglos came. And the grantees became rather a small proportion of the population in a short time.
And that's what really happened. The few who went along with the Americans? They were a few. The rest...stayed loyal to who you'd expect. In 1846, it got worse, and in 1848, went downright bad.
As for Catholicism and Mexico....yup, they've gone up and down. But are you seriously trying to say that somehow, Spaniard Catholics were politically similar to American Protestants, because Mexico after the 1821 Revolution blamed the Catholic church for the previous 300 years of oppression?
"I think Bill was doing a good job, from all I read, and that his resignation was a surprise to everyone."
You sound far more knowledgeable than I am. I'm not up on what the minutemen are about. With that in mind:
Possibilities:
1. I hope it's just a misunderstanding. Perhaps if things were told to him in the wrong context, he may have thought there was some kind of plot. A single, unscrupulous messenger can cause false assumptions to be made, easilly.
In fact, perhaps some minutemen thought the sheriff committed a crime, went to the DA, and the DA stabbed them in the back.
2. Bill Parmley may have been offered some kind of deal if he stabbed them in the back.
3. Perhaps there are genuine loose cannons there, maybe even racists? I hate to think so, but there are bound to be, sooner or later, a few racists who try to manipulate the minutemen.
4. Perhaps one or more leftist operatives are causing trouble there.
I can only account for my ancestors and what they thought. They were independent and thought of themselves as Texicans. I also have journals and have been blessed to be part of a family that treasured genealogy (official chronicling and record keeping as sort of a science/family obsession with letters, journals and photos began in about 1900) and the passing down of stories. Distant relatives who went the ranching way rather than the farming way (the farmers, my more recent ancestors, went broke later) have better documentation than I do today, but they're nice to share with their "poor relations" like me.
It's entertaining at times to read through these journals, etc., and understand my "FReeper Gene". My ancestors were certainly independent and opinionated, and while they may or may not have--how did you say--"held hands" and sang kumbaya with the American immigrants to Texas, they didn't work to sabotage them either.
There wouldn't have been mass opposition to Santa Anna from Hispanic Texicans because there weren't that many of them, and to my knowledge they didn't go off and have some seperate movement apart from the mainstream one led by the men who are now Texas' greatest heroes. Others were apathetic, but that's true for some of the non-Spaniards at the time as well. It was all about survival, especially to the west of Bexar (still is in that God Forsaken land).
I'm not trying to "seriously" say anything about "Spaniard Catholics" during that specific period, but at different times during Mexican/Texican history, there were periods when the Catholics were practically at war with the Mexican government.
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Be Ever Vigilant!
Minutemen Patriots ~ Bump!
"There is no useful purpose for my position as state president or even president of the Goliad chapter with everything needing to be cleared and double checked with HQ," Parmley wrote in the e-mail.
Sounds like some crying to me. “I’m the leader , darn it! I make the decisions!”
As further evidence of the underlying racism in the group, Parmley said Judge Emilio Vargas, Goliad County Justice of the Peace, didn't show up for a July meeting because of concerns over racist views of members.
Vargas said in an interview Tuesday evening he didn't attend the function because of a family matter, but hoped to attend a future meeting of the Minuteman Corp if his schedule permitted.
Maybe he should make sure the people he uses as examples are going to tell the same story as him.
In a Tuesday phone interview Parmley accused members of the group of having secret meetings without him in violation of the group's bylaws and of actively working to undermine DeLaGarza because he is Hispanic.
"You have no structure and these Texas chapters have no structures because there are no bylaws. How can leaders whom are assigned positions lead if what they implement are disregarded or circumvented? It is a recipe for disaster," the e-mail read.
So, how could members violated the bylaws if there are none??? This Parmley guy seems like a mole to me. A little lefty that infiltrated the Minutemen. Now he is trying to bring them down, and doing a poor job of it. I’ve seen 3 year olds that tell more convincing stories than this guy.
"You're not serious, right?"
Yes, I'm serious. I don't believe Bush would do that. I realize that politics is a rough game, and he plays it rough. But I don't believe he thinks "anything goes".
"Come and Take It"
Thanks for the reference. Inspiring reading.
yes the loyalties at that time were dims but something is for sure after the independence the Mexican goverment blamed the Spaniards and not the catholic church indeed santa anna also used the catholicism to attract some catholics in the U.S. army to join his side. religion started being a issue until the confrontantion between liberals and conservators and ceased after the cristeros uprising when the first post-revolutionary presidents tried to make México an atheist country.
LULAC cannot be trusted. I've seen LULAC members....and they do not have Americas best interests at heart.
PING
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.