Indigenous Texas Nature Tours

18/05/2020

HE DIDN’T WANT TO CRY WHILE EATING
So, he took his student to his apartment to say goodbye 🙄

What was supposed to be a memorable farewell to a beloved teacher turned out to be a traumatizing experience for a soon-to-be High School graduate in 2015.

It was an emotional last week of her high school years, and she had to say goodbye to many friends and teachers… including Mr. Augusto Contreras, her drama teacher.

Mr. Contreras was particularly kind to her... he knew how to make students feel special. On that fateful evening he went to her home to say goodbye. He asked her mom for permission to take her daughter to go get whataburger.

They were supposed to come back and hangout outside her home where they would be joined by other students.

He never brought her back.

HIS FAMOUS APARTMENT

Even though Mr. Contreras was very popular among his students, and had a special skill to charm parents, rumors were circulating in the small Valley View community.

It was an open secret that he would often take students to his apartment… after hours. He seemed to be more interested in good looking girls… looking for any excuse to hold their hands and have physical contact.

A former student said Mr. Contreras sometimes allowed them to drink alcohol when they were with him.

When the father got home and found out the young teacher had taken his daughter and never returned, he immediately suspected he had taken her to the man’s apartment… he was right.

The father & mother of the girl went to the area where they knew he lived and started looking for his car. When they found it, they knocked on several doors in the building until they found them.

The father dragged the young teacher out of the apartment and was about to beat him up, but his wife stopped him… he had so much rage that she thought it would turn into a tragedy.

Mr. Contreras claimed he wanted a more intimate place to say goodbye, because he didn’t want to cry while eating… he was very emotional too, and seemed terrified.

The father vowed to press charges, but later they opted for silence. After all, they had arrived on time, before anything worse happened… if it had, Mr. Contreras might not have survived the night.

They knew Mr. Contreras was loved by many, and the naive high school girl was likely to be blamed in the small Mexican-American community. It wasn’t worth the embarrassment of the scandal.

Mr. Contreras also claimed they were waiting for other classmates. The couple and their daughter waited for a long time nearby to see if it was true, but no one showed up.

The naive high school girl finally realized she was lied to by a teacher she trusted and respected.

OTHER INCIDENTS, NO ALLEGATIONS

According to a source, during a trip to New York, which Mr. Contreras chaperoned, a female student got so drunk that she vomited… Mr. Contreras was kind enough to take her to her room and spend the night with her to “take care of her.”

Her classmates were shocked, but other than whispers, no one complained. However, the rumor of a drunk female student and a young male teacher spending the night together in a hotel room, alone, spread as soon as they got back.

MOVING ON: NO PASA NADA

Mr. Augusto Contreras left Valley View ISD at the end of that school year. He claimed he wanted to dedicate his full attention to his art studio, Creative Arts Studio where he gives children and teenagers music and acting classes… with no school administrators or fellow teachers to gossip.

It’s unclear if the numerous rumors about Mr. Contreras’s unusually-intimate relationship with his students played any part in his departure.

The family of the girl broke their friendship with Mr. Contreras, but he fulfilled his pledge to them to stay away from their daughter.

Augusto Contreras is now running for Commissioner of the City of Hidalgo Texas.

We reached out to Mr. Contreras and he denied ever inviting students to his apartment... he also denied ever doing drugs

(a video is circulating online where a man can be seen snorting an unknown substance off a table; the author of the video said it’s him).

He blocked a representative of JusticeRGV before she could ask about other facts in the story.

28/10/2019

Two spiny orb weaver spiders with different colors on them. This species of orb weaver spiders are from the Americas including the Caribbean🕷️🕸️

19/10/2019

Here we are cooking some locally hunted game, specifically rabbit and dove. We are trying to only eat meat when it is hunted by us or gifted to us. It's pretty hard to hunt in general as permits and weapons are expensive and if you don't own land it definitely gets harder to do. Eating meat is not a must, but we do it when the land provides just like with plants

19/10/2019

Resacas, also called oxbow lakes, are the remaining channels of the river having once flowed through that site. In other words, every resaca in the valley that wasn't built by the city used to have the river running through it. The resulting low lying land periodically fills up with water or stays filled to offer habitat to a huge number of species. Shown are the wildlife in and around some resacas in order: Anhinga on the waters edge, two parrots nesting in a dead palm tree peeking out, an American Coot guarding the eggs it laid on a reed island in the resaca, a St Bernard enjoying the scenery and a green Jay feather left at the water's edge in a tree.

11/10/2019

A Black Crested Titmouse visiting us and peeking in. We've always thought they were cute little gossips and this confirms it. We don't have chickadees in this part of Texas but we have these cousins of them. These titmice are only found around here too, as to the North, their place/niche is taken up by the Tufted Titmouse.

11/10/2019

Papayas are truly amazing. They are from this continent, and are a delicious but stinky sometimes fruit, that even smells floral when you approach the tree with fruit. The seeds can be used to treat gastrointestinal parasites.

Even though it acts like a palm tree, it is able to bear fruit quickly, the tree shown being between 1.5 and 2 years old, and is already producing fruit! They do need to be protected from freezing so they are a warm weather tree for sure.

An enzyme derived from the fruit, called papain, is used to homogenize, or digest, tissue to make cellular cultures for biomedical studies, making it a crucial part of medical advancements. This makes it also used in meat tenderizers!

11/10/2019

A very RGV dinner, tacos, lonches, and a baked potato, all with the fixins. I don't know about yall, but growing up in Brownsville, I didn't see many lonches at restaurants. But after working in Mercedes and Harlingen, I see them all around!

So we wanna know, were lonches (mini sandwiches) popular where you grew up, or did you hear about them til later? Say where you're from if you comment a response!

03/10/2019

We like this image a lot because it shows how an area can have the potential for all kinds of life that coexists, but human consumption for capitalism, ie growing and selling for maximum profit, tries to grow plants like in the bottom image, in neat little rows with controlled water sources. But life is more diverse and healthy with a mix of land uses, none of which should dominate or remove a land's natural features. Keeping grass or astroturf (plastic) lawns, controlling stream paths and keeping vegetation short all destroy habitat for our neighbors in this world. So keep your garden and house as free of pesticides as you can, leave a few dead branches around your yard, don't cut the grass so often, and leave the mulch to soak back into the soil.

03/10/2019

BROWNSVILLE, Texas – One of the three Liquefied Natural Gas companies looking to settle at the Port of Brownsville receives a multi-million dollar tax break from Cameron County. This morning …

01/10/2019

This is where the Rio Grande meets the ocean, and the the Boca Chica of Boca Chica Beach. This coast is in danger from the local politicians selling out the health of the area to private companies such as the LNG terminals due to be constructed as well as the spacex launch site. It took more than ten billion dollars to attempt to fix the soil around Cape Canaveral, and every pipeline leaks up to hundreds of times more than oil companies will admit to, these companies will poison one of the cleanest ocean ecosystems in the state.

29/09/2019

It is important to take care of our water, even in a place like here where there is so much of it. Irrigation practices that use enough water to leave pools of water cause salt to build up in the soil. A big pool of water has a lot of salts like calcium and sodium chlorides and before it all soaks through the ground, some of it evaporates, due to our intense heat.
Drip hoses like the ones shown here in our garden, allow water to drip evenly and slowly through the ground, not leaving enough water exposed to evaporate. Tree bags offer a similar benefit to boost tree growth. The corn is also planted in a pit/bowl shape, spaced more closely than commercial corn, and planted alongside beans, melons and amaranth in order to maximize the available rainwater among many plants.

29/09/2019

Remember, humans made cats, it is our responsibility to keep them indoors. We gave them a drive to kill even when not hungry and now when they are "outside" cats, they cause extinctions. Outside cats are one of the biggest threats to migrating birds every year. Please bring your cat inside, they are like kids and can get hurt when just left out as well. It's better for them, and it's life or death for the other lil critters. We brought this lil baby to the humane society where they have been getting food, lovings, and ready to be adopted.

27/09/2019

Our corn and amaranth are doing great, even more than in the spring! Though we don't know for sure, we suspect the intense heat this year had something to do with our main crops not producing as well. We are using seeds from nativeseeds.org, specifically the blue escondido corn and Raramuri okite amaranth. There are also some bonus blue speckled tepary beans that came up from our last planting that will create even more soil boosting diversity.
We have a mix of irrigatable and desert varieties of crops. 🌾🌵🌱🌴

12/07/2019

A federal judge ruled that a “serial” polluter in Lavaca Bay can face more than $100 million in penalties.

06/07/2019

Global Energy Monitor urges investors to steer clear of next wave of big oil and gas projects.

30/06/2019

Environmentalists are asking federal regulators to take a second look at NextDecade’s plans to build an liquefied natural gas export terminal in deep South Texas amid allegations that the Houston company plans to build a larger plant and its proposed permit would allow.

18/09/2017

18/09/2017

También estamos indignadas, también tenemos miedo y también queremos sentirnos seguras y tenemos propuestas, en apoyo a las campañas alternas para salvarnos.

18/09/2017

A Coca-Cola bottling plant in Mexico consumes millions of liter of water per day while wells dry up

18/09/2017

Everything in this photo of the entrance trail at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge will be cleared down to bare dirt if the Trump administration is allowed to build the border wall in South Texas. That's because U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) intends to clear a 150-foot "enforcement zone" all along the wall. You can help by submitting a comment opposing CBP's EXTREME plans this week! Complete instructions for doing so are here: http://wp.me/pTQq7-lh

18/09/2017

This...is...amazing Nathan W. Pyle !

16/09/2017

A black community in Texas filed a civil rights complaint with the EPA over pollution from an Exxon Mobil refinery. The EPA did nothing for 17 years.

16/09/2017

The Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and the Lipan Apache oppose Texas LNG and the destruction of federally recognized indigenous sites. The Garcia Pasture site contains remains of a pre-columbian indigenous village, indigenous burial sites, and numerous artifacts. It has also referred to as the "premiere historic site of cameron county" by the National Park Service.

Read more:https://etypeservices.com/SWF/LocalUser/PIPRESS1/Magazine178014/Full/files/assets/common/downloads/publication.pdf

14/09/2017

14/09/2017

12/09/2017

12/09/2017

Advocates for stronger protective measures say the killing is evidence that the government isn't doing enough to safeguard indigenous people.

08/09/2017

The Incarcerated Women Who Fight California’s WildfiresBy choice, for less than $2 an hour, the female inmate firefighters of California work their bodies to the breaking point. Sometimes they even risk their lives.By JAIME LOWEAugust 31, 2017A crew from Rainbow Camp cutting the line on a small fire...

07/09/2017

07/09/2017

Nan Paulina, Mujer maya kaqchikel, tejedora de Santo Domingo Xenacoj Guatemala, C.A.

07/09/2017

Climate change...

07/09/2017

Ethical Fashion Guatemala is pushing for Etsy, Google, and Shopify to remove products and websites that infringe on the artisans' copyrights.

06/09/2017