🚧 Infrastructure Inequities: Who Really Benefits?

Adelita Grijalva sheds light on the Regional Transportation Authority's flawed leadership structure and the fight for equitable resource distribution.

Three Sonorans

Jan 26, 2025

🙊 Notable quotes from the show

On Border Policies

Juan Ciscomani: "The majority of the drivers of the traffickers are US citizens. The vast majority of them are..."
- Context: Discussing cartel recruitment and border crossings, revealing the complex economic realities driving human smuggling

On Transportation Equity

Adelita Grijalva: "I'm coming in with the lens that equity for the city benefits the entire region."
- Context: Discussing the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) board, hinting at broader infrastructure challenges

On Election Integrity

Grijalva: "If you're one of the people that won, if the election is unsafe and rigged, but you are one of the people that won, I just find that really hypocritical."
- Context: Critiquing election fraud claims in Pima County

On Border Dynamics

Grijalva: "I wonder how many people on the border actually understand the symbiotic relationship that we have with Mexico directly..."
- Context: Challenging simplistic border narratives, highlighting economic interdependence

On Climate and Migration

Ciscomani: "These cartels... humans and people are dispensable. They don't care that we've seen the kind of abuse that migrants have gone through."
- Context: Discussing border crossings during extreme weather conditions

😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾

🌵 Tucson's political landscape came under scrutiny during a lively 📻 radio discussion, as key figures tackled pressing issues like 🚧 border security and 🚍 transportation equity amid a brutal ❄️ January cold snap. Juan Ciscomani highlighted an unsettling reality where U.S. citizens drive human smuggling, while Adelita Grijalva pushed for fair funding in transit projects, all against a backdrop of unsheltered individuals battling freezing temperatures. Together, their exchanges illustrate the complex relationship between policy, personal history, and the local community. 🤝

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🗝️ Takeaways

🌍 Juan Ciscomani reveals that many human traffickers are U.S. citizens, challenging popular narratives about border crimes.
🚌 Adelita Grijalva advocates for fair transportation funding but faces skepticism about historical biases in resource allocation.
📊 Deep-seated cynicism about election integrity emerges while genuine concerns about voter access are often ignored.
❄️ The plight of unsheltered residents during severe cold weather highlights urgent calls for systemic change and empathy.
💔 Personal experiences underscore the contradictions politicians face in addressing immigration issues.

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Dispatches from the Desert: Political Soundwaves in the Coldest January

Frigid Frequencies: A Morning of Political Thaw

On Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025, as Tucson shivered through its coldest January in generations—a climate change canary if there ever was one—Bill Buckmaster's radio show became a heated forum of local political discourse.

The morning's political lineup read like a who's who of Southern Arizona's power brokers:

Adelita Grijalva, Pima County Supervisor and potential political dynasty heir;
Juan Ciscomani, the MAGA-adjacent congressional representative who seems determined to out-border-hawk even the most xenophobic members of his party.

🌟 Adelita Grijalva: Navigating Bureaucratic Battlegrounds

When Adelita Grijalva unpacked her political toolkit on the Buckmaster Show, she revealed a landscape far more complex than simple sound bites.

Her discourse was a multilayered examination of local governance that demands we look beyond the surface—porque la política verdadera lives in the details.

Regional Transportation Authority: The Infrastructure of Inequality

The RTA isn't just about roads—it's a potential battlefield of resource allocation. Grijalva's language hints at the profound challenges of equitable infrastructure:

"We're not invested and we weren't authors of any of what came before us. So being able to walk in with fresh eyes to look at how these funds are going to be distributed equitably across all of our region is really important."

Equitably—a loaded term that whispers of past inequities. The RTA represents a $2.46 billion regional transportation plan that could either cement (no pun intended) existing power structures or genuinely transform regional mobility (not very likely).

Grijalva's commitment sounds promising, but progressive ears hear the echoes of countless similar promises.

Let's cut through the bureaucratic bullshit: the RTA's voting structure is a systematic robbery of urban interests. One vote per entity means Tucson—the financial backbone of the region—gets diluted to just one-ninth of the board's power. This isn't representation; it's a legislative mugging.

"I'm coming in with the lens that equity for the city benefits the entire region."

Equity? More like a financial colonization scheme where urban Tucson subsidizes suburban sprawl. This $2.46 billion transportation plan is a climate catastrophe.

The real story? Urban Tucson is literally paying to pave its own environmental destruction. More roads, more cars, zero serious investment in public transportation—this is how capitalism turns climate crisis into concrete.

Each new mile of asphalt is another nail in the coffin of our desert, another tribute to the god of automotive supremacy.

Election Integrity: A Convenient Narrative

Grijalva's performative outrage about election fraud conveniently ignores the very real issues that plagued Pima County's recent election. Her dismissal sounds suspiciously like damage control:

"If you're one of the people that won, if the election is unsafe and rigged, but you are one of the people that won, I just find that really hypocritical."

But here's the inconvenient truth: There were legitimate concerns about ballot access, delivery delays, and communication breakdowns. The overwhelmed election system created real barriers for voters—a fact Grijalva glosses over with her glib soundbite. Election integrity isn't just about who wins, but about ensuring every vote can actually be cast and counted.

Unsheltered Realities: Counting the Invisible

In a week when temperatures plummeted to 26 degrees, Grijalva's commitment to the point-in-time count of unsheltered individuals wasn't just bureaucratic duty—it was a form of radical empathy:

"Last time [volunteers] were really saddened to see so many young people, people with children out."

This isn't just data collection. It's a real-time human rights assessment documenting the violent consequences of systemic poverty and housing insecurity.

Education and Federal Funding: The Precarious Landscape

Her insights into TUSD and potential federal funding cuts reveal another front of systemic challenge:

"I'm very concerned about the impact of some of the changes at the federal level in regards to Title I and Title IX and some of those other federal streams of funding that really support our local schools that may not be available."

Translation: The most vulnerable students are always first on the chopping block.

🐍 Juan Ciscomani: The Vendido's Betrayal

Enter Juan Ciscomani—a walking, talking monument to internalized colonialism.

An immigrant who has transformed himself into the most potent weapon in the MAGA arsenal, selling out his own community with a fervor that would make Stephen Miller blush.

The Performative Patriot: Weaponizing His Own Heritage

Ciscomani's political narrative is a masterclass in internalized colonial trauma—a biographical betrayal that deserves a dissertation in psychological self-erasure.

Born in Nogales, Sonora, raised on the border, Ciscomani represents a particularly insidious form of political minstrelsy: the immigrant who climbs the ladder of American exceptionalism by kicking away the rungs behind him.

His rise through the Republican ranks is a carefully choreographed performance of assimilation. Bootstraps narrative, now with an extra helping of border patrol contempt. Every policy stance is a desperate attempt to prove his "American-ness"—a magic trick where he transforms his own migration story into a weapon against future migrants.

The border, for Ciscomani, isn't a human landscape. It's a political battlefield where his personal history becomes ammunition. Immigrants are not criminals. They're economic refugees, teenagers desperate enough to risk everything, products of the same systemic violence Ciscomani now enthusiastically endorses.

Consider the bitter irony: A man whose own family's journey mirrors those he now demonizes, using his platform to further militarize the very border that once welcomed his own family. Each policy proposal is a stone cast not just at other migrants, but at his own reflection.

Divide and conquer doesn't begin to capture the psychological violence.

His support for Trump's border policies isn't just political calculation—it's a form of historical self-immolation. Every "roundup" strategy, every deportation narrative, is a ritual of political transubstantiation. Flesh and blood migrants become statistical abstractions, economic calculations, and border patrol talking points.

Vendido is too kind a word. Ciscomani isn't just selling out—he's conducting a surgical strike against his own origin story, transforming personal history into a manifesto of exclusion.

The border becomes a metaphor for his own fractured identity—a line he's constantly trying to cross, to erase, to remake in the image of those who would have kept his own family out. Each policy is a desperate attempt to prove he belongs by proving others do not.

Divide and conquer, indeed. But who, ultimately, is being divided? Who is being conquered?

Legislative Violence: The Three-Pronged Attack

His border control "strategy" is a surgical strike against human mobility:

Combat social media cartel recruitment
Prevent high-speed border chases
Eliminate "spotter" operations tracking border patrol

Each "strategy" is a love letter to border militarization, transforming human movement into a criminal enterprise. The subtext is clear: some humans are more human than others.

"These cartels... humans and people are dispensable."

The irony is chef's kiss levels of perfection. Ciscomani has transformed himself into the very mechanism of disposability he claims to critique.

Deportation as Performance: The Bureaucracy of Cruelty

His "roundup" strategy isn't about public safety—it's state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing:

"These are people that are here committing crimes that it's actually costing our communities money..."

Monetizing migration. Reducing human beings to economic calculations, transforming brown bodies into line items on a spreadsheet of xenophobic accounting.

A vendido doesn't just sell out—he builds the market for his own community's suffering. Ciscomani isn't just a traitor to his heritage; he's its most eloquent executioner.

Final Dispatches: Your Turn to Speak

As the radio waves fade and the desert night settles in, we're left with more questions than answers. So, queridos lectores, it's time to sound off:

RTA Roulette: How can we transform a transportation plan that feels more like a concrete conspiracy than a path to equitable mobility? Is there hope for public transportation in a region seemingly addicted to asphalt?
Border Betrayals: What does it mean when an immigrant becomes the loudest voice for border militarization? How do we understand political self-erasure in the age of performative patriotism?

Drop your thoughts in the comments. Resistencia is a conversation, not a monologue. Share your analysis, your anger, your hope. The desert is listening, and la lucha continúa.

Hasta la próxima revolución.

Cast of Characters: Tucson's Political Ensemble

Political Powerhouses

Bill Buckmaster
- Role: Local radio host, 37-year veteran of Tucson media
- Memorable Quote: Describing the current January as "coldest in a generation"
- Fun Fact: Saved by a blood transfusion from the Red Cross in 1970
Adelita Grijalva
- Role: Pima County Supervisor, District 5
- Political Lineage: Daughter of longtime Congressman Raul Grijalva
- Key Positions: Former TUSD School Board Member, First Latina elected in District 5
- Memorable Quote: "We're not invested, and we weren't authors of any of what came before us."
Juan Ciscomani
- Role: U.S. Representative, Arizona's 6th Congressional District
- Political Stance: Republican, Trump supporter
- Migration Background: Immigrant from Nogales, Sonora
- Key Committee: Vice Chair of House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security
- Memorable Quote: Emphasizing border control as the "number one issue for voters"

Supporting Cast

Raul Grijalva
- Role: Longtime Democratic Congressman
- Status: Not running for re-election in 2026
Courtney Slanaker
- Role: Executive Director, Red Cross Southern Arizona
- Memorable Quote: Discussing wildfire support, "If we can give [survivors] a little piece of that control back so that they can start their recovery, that's the best thing."
Rex Scott
- Role: Pima County Supervisor, District 1
- New Position: Chair of Pima County Board of Supervisors
- Mentioned: Transitioning roles with Adelita Grijalva
Jan Lesher
- Role: Pima County Administrator
- Background: Worked with Janet Napolitano, former #2 at Homeland Security who helped deport more people than all other administrations combined
- Described as: Hard-working, with extensive government experience