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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Before students were led in a rousing rendition of “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” a volunteer playing Lady Mary Montague spoke to the group about her contributions to the development of a smallpox vaccine. At the end of her presentation, she asked the assembled students, many of whom were dressed in red, white, and blue for the occasion, a simple history question. “Now, what nationality would we be today if George Washington hadn’t won the Revolution?” she said.
From the sea of children who sat before her, waving miniature American flags, came the unexpected answer, loud and clear, in a few hundred voices all converging at once. “Mexican!” they cried.
TWO HOURS BEFORE the Society of Martha Washington Colonial Pageant and Ball was set to begin, guests began arriving at the civic center for the Caballeros Cocktail Party, an event hosted by those men who had, in years past, portrayed George Washington. Socialites draped in chinchilla and mink greeted the visiting dignitaries, who included Senator John Cornyn and Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, as a photographer snapped pictures.
While guests admired the ice sculpture and nibbled on crab puffs, the debutantes bided their time in the dressing room. There were seventeen debutantes in all, and they stood, a bit nervously, in tight corsets and old-fashioned bloomers, trying not to smudge their stage makeup or touch their false eyelashes or fiddle with the hairpieces that cascaded down their shoulders in perfect corkscrew curls. It took the Mistress of Wardrobe and several assistants to dress each girl, lowering the enormous, weighty folds of her gown over her petticoat. (So wide is the girth of a colonial gown that, years ago, when the debutantes used to get dressed for the pageant at home, they had to be transported to the civic center in moving vans.) Their mothers stood by and appraised them, straightening hemlines and fluffing skirts and offering the occasional reprimand (“Give me your gum, young lady”) between soothing words about how radiant they looked. With half an hour to spare, the girls walked backstage, trailing satin and lace and aurora borealis beads, and waited to make their debut.
Every seat was filled by the time the lights went down and the string orchestra began to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The audience rose, hands over hearts, to sing. Among the various luminaries in the crowd was Princess Pocahontas—or at least the dark-haired high school senior in a beaded tunic who would portray her in the parade the next morning—and when she was introduced, she waved enthusiastically to the crowd. A fife and drum corps began to play, and the curtains drew back to reveal a mint-green drawing room with a faux fireplace, wainscoting, and chandeliers—a set modeled on the actual room in Philadelphia where Martha Washington once entertained her guests. “Tonight Martha and George Washington commemorate the president’s last night in office with Martha’s final drawing room reception and farewell celebration to honor George,” the emcee announced. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Society of Martha Washington presents … the first president of the United States of America, General George Washington!” A spotlight followed Robert Summers as he strode onstage in uniform, and a huge cheer went up from the crowd. “He was widely revered as the greatest man of his age!” the emcee exclaimed.
After Martha Washington promenaded before the audience and took her place next to George, it was time for the girls to be introduced. The debutantes emerged, each one in turn, from behind a set of French doors, which were swung open by pages in colonial attire. “Presenting … Katherine Janice LaMantia! … Alejandra Maria Vela! … Cristina Gabriela Echavarría!” the emcee cried as the girls appeared, resplendent in sequins and rhinestones that glittered under the stage lights. Taking the arm of her escort, each debutante descended a staircase into the drawing room as her pedigree was read. (“Meaghan’s family has participated in the society for five generations …”) And then, as she had practiced over and over again before the mirror, she bowed. Standing alone at the front of the stage, she sank into her dress and bent little by little, as deeply as she could, until her head was nearly flush with the ground. Every time, cameras flashed around her and the audience went wild. When the girls were at last all arrayed onstage and had taken their turns walking the length of the drawing room so that their dresses might be fully admired, the string orchestra struck up “America the Beautiful.”
The ball began as soon as the pageant ended, and the debutantes, who settled onto jeweled stools that had been fashioned for the occasion, received their well-wishers. Grandmothers, aunts, nieces, and friends hovered around them, kissing them on the cheek and exclaiming over their gowns. (“Don’t they look lovely?” Gutierrez said to me, clapping her hands together as she surveyed the room.) Late in the evening, after the crowd had thinned out, the girls gathered at the center of the dance floor as the band broke into Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration.” When they had danced so much that they couldn’t stand anymore, they dropped to the floor, laughing, their colossal skirts collapsing around them like fallen soufflés.
THE DEBUTANTES RODE through town the next morning on floats high up above San Bernardo Avenue. It was a bitterly cold day, but they looked serene as they waved to the crowd, their mothers’ furs thrown over their shoulders. On the sidewalk below, the hoi polloi had gathered with their camcorders and folding chairs and coolers. They cheered when the floats glided by and clamored for Mardi Gras beads, which the girls’ escorts tossed out by the handfuls. “Show us your shoes!” little kids cried, and the debutantes smilingly obliged, lifting their skirts to reveal that they were wearing sneakers or furry slippers under their ball gowns. Street vendors hawked cotton candy and chicharrones, and Miss Jalapeño rode by on a float decked out in hot peppers. There were drill teams and Korean War veterans, clowns and sheriff’s deputies, Shriners and peewee cheerleaders “cheering for our nation.” More than one float drifted by blasting “Born in the U.S.A.” from its loudspeakers.
The more poignant event was the one few people attended earlier that morning on the Juárez-Lincoln International Bridge. Each year before the parade, a pair of children from each side of the Rio Grande meet halfway across the river and exchange the abrazo, or “embrace,” that represents the mutual understanding between both nations. That morning, as the wind blew hard off the water, the parents of Americans who have disappeared in Nuevo Laredo over the past several years—27 Laredoans have gone missing—sat in silent protest at the entrance to the bridge, holding up photographs of their children. American officials sat in the grandstand that had been erected at the midpoint between Laredo and its sister city; Marines stood at attention. A clutch of reporters eyed the other side of the bridge as everyone waited quietly for the Mexican contingent to arrive. (“Ay, this happens every year,” the woman next to me whispered. “They take their time, and we wait and wait.”) For a while it seemed that no one was coming, but after almost an hour had passed, the sound of a military band began to reverberate from across the river.
After handshakes at the center of the bridge were exchanged between the two delegations and both the Mexican national anthem and “The Star-Spangled Banner” were sung, politicians took to the podium to talk of the opportunity that the day presented. “Let us mend the differences between our nations, learning to appreciate our differences, and strive toward our goal to continue to coexist harmoniously,” said Congressman Henry Cuellar. “We all recognize that what we ultimately share is far greater than what divides us.” Nuevo Laredo mayor Daniel Peña said, “There is no wall that can separate us … Que vivan los dos Laredos!” As the speakers continued on about this “time of crisis” and the need for “peace in our border cities,” the children at the center of the ceremony shivered in the cold.
At last it was time for the abrazo, and they stepped forward. The first hug would be exchanged between an eight-year-old boy from Laredo, who wore a black colonial cape and tricorne hat, and a seven-year-old girl from Nuevo Laredo, whose dress was elaborately embroidered with the image of the Mexican eagle. But rather than embrace, they stood looking at each other uncertainly.
“Go on, Ruben,” one man whispered from the sidelines. “Go on.”
The boy hesitated. Then he reached out and threw his arms around the girl’s neck before pulling away.
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