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Posted on 04/14/2003 8:50:18 PM PDT by kattracks
Mexico-U.S border dwellers celebrate POW's freedom
By Deborah Tedford
MONTERREY, Texas, April 14 (Reuters) - Mexican and Texan migrant farmers took a break from the sorghum fields on Monday to share prayers and kisses with the family of a Mexican-American soldier freed from his Iraqi captors.
More than 150 friends, family members and neighbors from the border communities of Mission, Texas, and the Mexican town of Reynosa gathered at the home of Army Spc. Edgar Hernandez on Sunday and Monday to congratulate Hernandez's family, a family friend said.
The family of Army Spc. Edgar Hernandez planned a homecoming with the young soldier's favorite Mexican foods after learning the 21-year-old was one of seven prisoners found early Sunday morning after being held for three weeks by Iraqi forces.
Maria De La Luz Hernandez, Hernandez's mother, buzzed about the kitchen of her home in the small town of Alton, Texas, fielding phone calls from well-wishers and calling family and friends in Texas and Mexico to tell them the good news, said Joel Hernandez, one of Hernandez's brothers.
"I'm going to give him a hug and I'm going to tell him, 'Son, I love you very much,"' she told reporters with the local Spanish-language television station.
Maria Hernandez had not seen her son since he was shown on Iraqi television after he and other members of the 507th Maintenance Company from Fort Bliss, Texas, were captured March 23 in an ambush near Nasiriyah, Iraq.
The faces of Hernandez and four other members of his company looked bruised and confused in a video that has been widely broadcast, but Hernandez said she prayed everyday and never doubted that he was safe.
Hernandez's family came from the Mexican border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, so the town fathers put up yellow ribbons on the plaza downtown and at City Hall in show of support for the family.
Yellow ribbons waved on the antennae of cars and yellow bows were tied to the grills of pickup trucks in the small town, populated mostly by migrant farm workers.
Two weeks ago more than 400 people from Reynosa and Mission turned out for a mass and prayer vigil.
On Monday more than 100 well-wishers dropped by with cookies, casseroles and hugs, said Yoli Martinez, a family friend.
"The war is thousands of miles from us, but here everybody knows everybody," said Martinez, who works at Junior's Supermarket.
"People from everywhere -- Reynosa and Mission -- prayed to the Virgin (of Guadalupe) to keep Edgar safe. Small towns are like that, like a family."
But up the border in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, happiness over the captives' release was overshadowed by the death of 18-year-old Ruben Estrella Soto.
Soto was a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Ciudad Juarez. He served in the 507th Maintenance Company with Hernandez, but he was killed during the assault by Iraqi troops.
04/14/03 23:41 ET
Stumbling around in the Clintonian PC world.
Mexicans are Americans. They are in fact North Americans. So are Canadians.
The problem is we don't have a simple term for "United States Citizen" other than American. I know that sort of frosts all the other Americans, from Hudson's Bay to Tierra del Fuego, but there it is.
I sort of like gringo. Simple, conveys contempt and is understood by everyone on both continents.
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