Bordertown 
History Lesson 
“Beldades” Of the Ball
For more than half a century, the most important event in the life of a teenage girl in Laredo has been the Society of Martha Washington Colonial Pageant and Ball, a curious display of Anglo culture in a decidedly Hispanic city. But as violence spreads across the border, can the old world survive the new?
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The only girls who are guaranteed the privilege of making their debuts at the Society of Martha Washington ball are the daughters of the members. Granddaughters and nieces can also be presented, but because daughters take precedence, and because only so many six-foot-wide hoopskirts can squeeze onto the civic center stage, grandmothers and aunts have been known to occasionally engage in ruthless politicking. The cost of a dress—never mind the outlay for the parties that a girl’s parents host in the months before the ball or the jewelry or the private dance lessons or the photographer or the wardrobe required for the myriad debutante events—is a well-kept secret, since both Gutierrez and her clients value discretion, but a custom, hand-beaded gown is rumored to run from $20,000 to $40,000 and higher. When it comes to presenting a daughter to society, many families partake in an old practice: “echar la casa por la ventana”—literally, “to throw the house out the window,” or to spare no expense. The ball has become a theater for conspicuous consumption; as Laredo’s upper class has been enriched over the past decade by NAFTA, a colonial gown has become the ultimate status symbol. “The dresses didn’t used to be as elaborate,” observed a former debutante who asked not to be named. “They’ve started to look more Marie Antoinette than Martha Washington.”
Those excesses have left some residents, who remember all too well when Laredo was known as the poorest city in America just four decades ago, feeling uneasy. Meg Guerra, a self-described “recovering debutante” and the editor and publisher of the irreverent monthly paper LareDOS, points out that even though a booming economy has put Laredo among the top ten fastest-growing cities in the country, the city’s economic extremes are most vividly on display during Washington’s Birthday Celebration. She even satirized the gulf between the city’s haves and have-nots in a piece she wrote in the late nineties about an imaginary gala she called the Colonia Ball. In the breathless style of a society columnist, she described the outfits worn by the make-believe debutantes who hailed exclusively from Laredo’s barrios and colonias. “Her chartreuse and aqua frock was heavily beaded with miniature 55-gallon drums and fish skeletons,” Guerra wrote of one girl, whose gown was also adorned with “teeny tiny Border Patrolmen fashioned of embroidered green polyester.” The debutantes arrived not in a fleet of chauffeured limousines but “in a dazzling assortment of low riders and conversion vans.” The ball’s theme was “Home Is Where You Live.”
Forty years after Guerra made her debut, she remains bewildered about why Laredoans persist in rallying around George Washington rather than a homegrown revolutionary figure, such as her personal choice, Colonel Antonio Zapata. An accomplished cavalry officer, Zapata led military campaigns that won independence for much of northern Mexico, an area that briefly became the Republic of the Rio Grande. But when Laredo fell to the Mexican Centralist government, in 1840, Zapata was tried for treason, executed, and beheaded. His head was displayed on a pole as a warning to anyone contemplating insurrection. “We have so much history here,” Guerra said. “Why have we all agreed to ignore it?”
THE PARTIES FOR THE DEBUTANTES began in September. There were the afternoon teas at the Laredo Country Club, including an all-pink tea party with pink tablecloths and pink roses and big pink bows tied around each girl’s chair. “We had to be very proper,” debutante Meaghan Farrell explained to me. “You couldn’t chew gum, and if the tea was held in your honor, you had to greet everyone and write thank-you notes.” There was a slumber party where the debutantes arrived in their pajamas and ate sushi. A makeover party where everyone got makeup lessons and updos. A hamburger bash. A boot-scootin’ party with country music. A disco-themed bowling party. A Christmas caroling party, in which the girls serenaded the two Laredoans chosen to portray George and Martha Washington. A spa party with pedicures. A shoe party where girls modeled their most stylish high heels. All told, there were 56 parties—Friday night dance parties, Saturday afternoon teas, Sunday brunches. There was even an Academy Awards party where the debutantes walked down a long red carpet wearing sunglasses and silver lamé gloves and struck poses for the pretend paparazzi. Each girl received a gold star with her name on it, like the ones on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and competed for an Oscar statuette made of chocolate that was awarded to the Best Debutante in a Leading Role.
But the biggest party of them all always follows the ball, at a bar across the Rio Grande. The time-honored debutante tradition is to stay up all night and then return blearily by limousine at dawn to have makeup reapplied and hair styled and gowns put back on for the parade that morning. And yet this February, the talk among the debutantes was that the after-party, for the first time in memory, would not be held in Nuevo Laredo. Though generations of teenagers had knocked back tequila shots on the other side of the river and rambled down Avenida Guerrero from bar to bar, the violence between rival drug cartels—or what some Laredoans refer to as “the trouble”—had put an end to all that. Teenagers still crossed over now and then to attend their cousins’ weddings and quinceañeras, but the wealthiest among them brought bodyguards. Rather than an after-party across the border, the debutantes ended up having only the chaperoned fiesta their parents threw for them last fall, in Laredo, with mariachis and nonalcoholic drinks. “This hasn’t been the best year to be a senior,” sighed debutante Arleen Averill.
In the week before the ball, the front page of the Laredo Morning Times trumpeted bad news from across the river: “Criminals Winning,” “Three More Die in N.L.,” “Crime Wave Spreads.” Around Laredo, political posters calling for “Order on the Border” were everywhere, as were bumper stickers of a white dove emblazoned with the slogan “Paz en los dos Laredos vale la pena” (“Peace in the two Laredos is worth the effort”). Conversations centered on the news that many of Nuevo Laredo’s wealthier families were relocating to Laredo, as were businesses and restaurants. “We have a lot of new students from Nuevo Laredo,” Arleen told me. “When you see them at school, it’s like, ‘Oh, she lives on this side now?’” For locals, moving between one city and the other was nothing new; when the Rio Grande became the international boundary, in 1848, residents who wanted to keep their Mexican citizenship settled south of the river, and in 1914, when Nuevo Laredo was burned in the Mexican Revolution, they returned for a while. But this particular migration seemed different, since Laredoans said they felt no hope that Mexican authorities would be able to stem the violence. “We used to think of ourselves as one city with a river that ran through it,” said Quico Canseco, an attorney who was chosen to play George Washington six years ago. “What is happening now bodes very badly for the convivencia—the coexistence—we have enjoyed. Now there is fear. We lived together as one place, and we treasured each other’s company. But if it continues like this, there will only be one Laredo.”
As the celebration of the city’s Americanness got under way, members of the Society of Martha Washington busied themselves revising the script for the pageant and readying decorations for the parade floats. The debutantes practiced their bows under the tutelage of 92-year-old dance instructor Lula Lacey, who had taught many of their mothers how to bow for their debuts as well. (“Every girl should have a chance to be a queen for a day,” Lacey said. “I think it’s grand.”) And the society’s own George and Martha Washington, along with a group of volunteers called the Sons and Daughters of Liberty, visited local schools in colonial costume, talking to students about early American history and encouraging them to take part in the upcoming celebration. I tagged along one morning when they spoke to an assembly at the Sanchez-Ochoa Elementary School. George Washington—portrayed by Robert H. Summers, the congenial owner of a Jiffy Lube franchise and a descendant of the esteemed Bruni family—took to the stage in a ruffled colonial shirt, waistcoat, breeches, and riding boots, accompanied by Martha Washington, Betsy Ross, and assorted other historic figures. One wide-eyed boy ran up to the stage and stared hard at Summers, looking back and forth between the man who stood before him and the figure depicted on the $1 bill he clutched in his hand.
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