Mexico Monitor

Mexico's Ramamuri hit hard by drought

2012-01-23T10:25:00.000-08:00

DROUGHT MONITOR

Rain has not fallen in some parts of northern Mexico for more than 15 months. Now 2.5 million people do not have sufficient drinking water, among those without are the Raramuri, an ancient indigenous group of an estimated 122,000 members. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports from the town of Sisoguichi in Mexico's Chihuahua state.

IMF seeks Latin America's support - Americas - Al Jazeera English

2011-12-03T08:50:00.000-08:00

IMF seeks Latin America's support - Americas - Al Jazeera English

Scores found dead where Mexican drug cartels fight

2011-11-25T17:27:00.000-08:00

Video Monitor

Bodies found in abandoned cars in Guadalajara, one day after 16 burned bodies found in Culiacan.

The bound and gagged bodies of 26 young men were found dumped in the heart of Mexico's second-largest city, in what experts said could mark a new stage in the full-scale war between the country's two main drug cartels. The bodies were found early on Thursday in two vans and a pickup truck abandoned on an expressway near the Milennium Arches in Guadalajara, one of the most recognisable landmarks in the city, according to several local media. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras, reporting from Mexico City, said "police believe it could be a revenge killing."

Al Jazeera English television

Mexico concerned over US role in war on drugs

2011-11-21T21:45:00.000-08:00

Video Monitor

Mexican officials are trying to calm concerns over reported US infringement of its southern neighbour's sovereignty. According to a New York Times report, US intelligence agents are operating in Mexico more than ever before to infiltrate drug cartels in Mexico. The newspaper cited security officials who said US unmanned surveillance planes and sophisticated human-intelligence gathering systems have helped Mexican authorities to kill or capture dozens of other prominent suspects involved in the drug war.

Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports from Mexico City.

Uploaded by AlJazeeraEnglish on Oct 26, 2011

Mexican teacher calms children amid shootout

2011-11-21T21:40:00.000-08:00

Video Monitor

A school teacher in Mexico has been honoured after she put aside her own fears to calm her young students during a shootout. Martha Rivera Alanis became an internet sensation after a video went online showing her leading children through a duck-and-cover drill amid the violence. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports from Mexico City.

Uploaded by AlJazeeraEnglish on May 30, 2011

Mexican civilians seek asylum in the United States

2011-11-21T21:31:00.000-08:00

Video Monitor

The increasing violence in Mexico as drug cartels continue to battle for control has prompted a growing number of civilians to seek political asylum in the United States. Caught in the deadly crossfire and deprived of justice at home, a large number of Mexicans-journalists and human rights activists in particular- seek safety across the border. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports from El Paso, Texas.

Uploaded by AlJazeeraEnglish on Oct 19, 2011

Hand-made Mexican guitars under threat from China

2011-06-22T15:56:00.000-07:00

Video Monitor

For nearly 250 years, the Mexican town of Paracho has been known for its high-quality, hand-made acoustic guitars. But it is a tradition under threat from drug violence and an influx of cheaper instruments. Streams of tourists used to fill the town's streets. Now those streets are often empty, as visitors shun the violence associated with drug trafficking. Experts say with global and social forces coming down heavily on the residents of the town, many stand to lose that part of their identity.
Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports from Paracho

Indigenous People Left Unprotected From Crime Groups

2011-06-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

DRUG WAR MONITOR

MORELIA, MICHOACAN - At least 800 Indigenous people angry at what they call the government´s inability to protect them from organized crime violence have blocked four main roads leading to Morelia, the capital of Michoacan state, where president Felipe Calderon began his war on drug traffickers in December, 2006. Their protest continues at this hour in Morelia´s main plaza.

Drug trafficking organizations in their region of Cherán have been hiring illegal loggers, who use violence to steal countless tons of choice wood and sell it for huge illegal profits in Guadalajara. At least 5 villagers have been killed in the conflict and several others are missing.

The indigenous demonstrators demand that the federal government send more soldiers to secure the area. For now, a small number of soldiers and federal police are guarding roadways in the Purepecha region of Michocán, but the people of Cherán say that´s not nearly enough.

Their protest takes place just days before an important national protest in Ciudad Juarez against the war on drugs. It´s led by poet Javier Sicilia, who´se son was killed by drug traffickers. This growing national movement is threatening to boycott next year´s presidential election if the federal government does not take steps to protect citizens.

US prepares to name new Ambassador to Mexico

2011-05-24T06:33:00.000-07:00

DIPLOMATIC MONITOR

A post left empty since March 19, 2011

Sources in Washington say the US government will likely propose career diplomat Earl Anthony Wayne as the next US Ambassador to Mexico, a key diplomatic post left abandoned since March 19th of this year. Wayne served as the US Ambassador to Argentina. He is currently second in charge at the US embassy in Afghanistan, where he has gained experience on failed states. He also understands the issue of people trafficking.

But Dolia Estevez, a veteran Mexican correspondent in Washington, says he is generally not knowledgeable of the many complex issues facing Mexico, and will have to rely heavily on his staff at the US embassy in Mexico City, which is largely made up of bureaucrats who worked for the previous US Ambassador do Mexico, Carlos Pascual.

Pascual resigned his post in late March following growing tensions in US/Mexico bilateral relations. Wikileaks had revealed that Pascual had authored a set of diplomatic cables that were highly critical of the Calderon administration. A source at the US State Dept. tells me Calderon personally requested that Pascual resign to avoid derailing the important US/Mexico bilateral relationship.

Mexican foreign relations officials know that Afghanistan is central to US anti-terror strategy, and, speaking off the record, they worry that Wayne could bring that policy emphasis to the US embassy in Mexico City.

SOURCES: Wikileaks, Dolia Estevez Blog, US State Department

SEE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Anthony_Wayne"

An ode to power of the radio and the human voice

2011-04-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

London Time: In Memoriam

The BBC’s Foreign Language Services have been sacrificed to budget cuts—a profound loss for Britain.

by Peter PomerantsevApril 03, 2011
Photo: Hulton-Deutsch Collection-Corbis

Early days of the BBC.

It was my grandfather’s secret life and hidden ritual, but one that he shared with millions across the globe. Throughout the 1970s, in his tiny Kiev apartment, my grandfather would wait until his extended family was asleep, tiptoe to the kitchen, quietly switch on the transistor Spidola radio, and gently push the dial to shortwave. He wiggled and waved the antenna to dispel the fog of jamming, climbed on chairs and tables to get the best reception, steered the dial in between transmissions of East German pop and Soviet military bands, pressed his ear tight to the speaker, and, through the hiss and crackle, made his way to these magical words: “This is the Russian Service of the BBC. The time in London is 10 o’clock.” And with these words, spoken in his language but with a British calm, came the relief that there was another, better, freer world. “London time” was not just a time zone, but a state of mind my grandfather could share, in his cramped Soviet kitchen connected to the mackerel sky over the London Strand, where from the World Service of the BBC a thousand voices in more than 30 languages all spoke of one idea to millions of listeners worldwide. Many of the listeners were risking their freedom: tuning in meant the secret police would be on their way, the knock on the door imminent. But it was worth it, just to hear those words: “BBC. The time in London is … ”

On March 22, many of the BBC Radio Foreign Language Services were silenced as part of the British government’s budget cuts. No longer will the BBC talk on the airwaves in Russian, Hindi, Mandarin, Turkish, Vietnamese, Azeri, Ukrainian, Albanian, Cuban-Spanish, Portuguese-African, Serbian, Albanian, or Macedonian. The station will have 30 million fewer listeners a week. There will be some websites and podcasts in the dropped languages, but these will be of limited relevance. Even in a fairly developed country like Russia, only 20 percent of the population has access to Internet connections fast enough to listen to audio podcasts.

Should Britain care? Has it lost anything?

I am biased. After being exiled from the Soviet Union in the late ’70s, my father drifted around Europe, baby me in tow, until he was given a home by the BBC’s Russian Service. During holidays and half-term he would let me come with him to work, to that island on the Strand known as Bush House. It was a wondrous island for a child. As soon as my father was locked in the aquarium of the broadcasting studio, I was free to roam every floor. Down the wide stairs I went—around me every color and ethnicity the world knows, all speaking, shouting English in different accents. All typing, smoking, sprinting between slamming doors to break the latest news. The programs were edited on reel-to-reels, the tape cut with tiny, deadly blades. I’d stuff my pockets full of outtakes from the floor. The hard-edged tape scratched my palms. I fancied myself a rescuer, saving voices destined for the bin.

The inhabitants of Bush House were all troops in a war. Every other journalist was a great exiled poet or minister-in-waiting. Every word they broadcast to Prague, Moscow, Tehran, Saigon, Havana, and Warsaw was treasured in their home countries. My father put on a radio version of Václav Havel’s plays—the first time most people in the U.S.S.R. had heard the imprisoned dramatist’s work. The Polish Service gave almost unlimited airtime to an upstart union leader in Gdansk called Lech Walesa; it was largely via the BBC Polish Service that the rest of Poland found out about Solidarnosc. When my father was too busy, I would play football in the long, purple-lit marble corridors with Egon from the Slovak Service. He would later be Havel’s deputy prime minister, but when I was 8 I beat him at penalties. In 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev was arrested in Crimea during the communist putsch, he stayed in touch with the rest of the world by listening to the Russian Service. My father phoned Margaret Thatcher’s office to request an interview. “She never gives interviews by phone,” the civil servant said. “Tell Margaret her friend Mikhail is about to be killed,” said my father. Thatcher gave the rarest of telephone interviews, less an interview than a direct message to her friend Mikhail. Margaret said she wouldn’t let him down.

The lights in the Bush House canteen and Members’ Bar never went out. Never. Those were my favorite places in the building: that conspiratorial excitement, the word “revolution” exclaimed over shepherd’s pie and gin-and-tonics. Britain had lost its political empire, but it still had its intellectual one. The BBC spoke to its audiences in their own languages, yet it was as if those languages had been infected with something very British. It wasn’t simply a case of delivering accurate information. It was the polyphony of views, the (essentially British) sharp debate that contrasted so clearly with the dull monotone and state-dictated voice-overs typical of broadcasting behind the Iron Curtain.

The ripples from those airwaves can be felt now. Meet Marat. Marat is one of thousands of Russian multimillionaires who make their home in London. He brings a ridiculous amount of money into the British economy. Marat could afford to live in any tax-free paradise; he chooses London. As a teenager growing up in industrial Samara in the 1980s, Marat would puff on weed, lie down on the floor, close his eyes, and tune in to Seva Novgorodtsev on the Russian Service. Most Brits have never heard of Seva, but he’s one the country’s greatest assets. Seva was as important as Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher in bringing down the Berlin Wall. His cult music show on the BBC Russian Service supplied the youth of the U.S.S.R. with their main source of alternative rock: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin—and, of course, President Dmitry Medvedev’s favorite band, Deep Purple. It was the music that defined the young Marat, the music he hummed to himself as he rebelled from the Komsomol, the soundtrack in his head as he made his first few hundred dollars. From those stoned teenage days, Marat knew a part of him would be forever British. Today we reap the financial benefits of Seva’s programs. The BBC is the single greatest advertisement for Britain that we have. People want to make their homes here, want their children to be British, invest in British businesses, allow us to invest in their countries because they feel a bond with Britain—a bond created, in no little way, by the BBC Foreign Language Services. The influence and profit generated by this bond are immeasurable. The British are often nonplused by foreigners’ adoration of this rainy island. The BBC made Britain fashionable to the world.

Now that “London time” has been silenced, it is the audience who will suffer least. They can tune in to a host of new radio shows and other media developed by the dictatorships. And though Congress is threatening budget cuts, there’s still the American Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty—in lieu of London, one can keep “Washington time.” No, the loss of the World Service is all Britain’s. In the place on the dial where my grandfather used to hear the words “The time in London is … ” there is only a hoarse hiss and crackle. We are losing our voice. Are we to become history’s mutes?

Pomerantsev is a television producer and nonfiction writer. He lives in London.

MEXICO-WIKILEAKS. More Revelations

2011-03-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

Mexican cartels get heavy weapons from CentAm, U.S. cables say

29 de marzo de 2011

Mexico City, Mar 29 (EFE).- The most fearsome weapons wielded by Mexico's drug cartels enter the country from Central America, not the United States, according to U.S. diplomatic cables disseminated by WikiLeaks and published here Tuesday by La Jornada newspaper.

Items such as grenades and rocket-launchers are stolen from Central American armies and smuggled into Mexico via neighboring Guatemala, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City reported to Washington.

The assertions appear in embassy cables written after three bilateral conferences on arms trafficking that took place between March 2009 and January 2010 in Cuernavaca, Mexico; Phoenix; and Tapachula, Mexico, respectively.

The cables' authors note that Mexican officials and politicians never hesitate to remind U.S. diplomats that Mexico's drug war - which has claimed 35,000 lives in the last four years - is fueled by Americans' demand for illegal drugs and by guns bought in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Yet one of the cables maintains that 90 percent of the heavy armament Mexican security forces seize from cartel gunmen comes from Central America.

The cable, which does not offer any particulars or supporting documentation, does acknowledge that the vast majority of the handguns and many of the assault rifles used by the cartels enter Mexico from the United States.

A message drafted after the October 2009 conference in Tapachula blamed the Mexican government for not doing enough to patrol the southern border with Guatemala.

"While there are 30,000 U.S. CBP (Customs and Border Protection) officers on the 1,926 mile Mexican/U.S. border, only 125 Mexican immigration officials monitor the 577 mile border with Guatemala," the embassy cable says.

La Jornada's publication of the cables follows revelations in the United States about a botched sting operation, "Fast and Furious," that saw members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allow close to 2,000 weapons to be smuggled from Arizona to Mexico over 15 months.

Around 1,200 of the those guns were never tracked down by authorities, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a U.S. think-tank.

U.S. President Barack Obama said that neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder gave authorization for Fast and Furious.

Mexican farmers struggle 100 years after Revolution

2010-11-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

Mexico Monitor

Mexico is marking 100 years since the start of its revolution against the country's dictatorship.

Emiliano Zapata was one of the rebel leaders who took up arms to reclaim land rights for peasant farmers.

Franc Contreras reports from Anenecuilco in Mexico, on Zapata's legacy and the ongoing struggle by farmers to benefit from the land that he once fought for.

2010-11-17T19:18:00.000-08:00

Drug Violence Monitor

A Catholic church in Mexico is being investigated following allegations it received funds from a major drugs cartel. Heriberto Lazcano, one of the leaders of the Zetas gang, is said to have laundered money via the chapel's priest. US authorities are offering a bounty of more than $7 million for Lazcano.

Here´s a video report I did with Associate Producer John Holman and Cameraman/ Video Editor Marcus Teply for the Al Jazeera English television news network. With help in post-production editing from Senior Producer Rachel Levin.

http://bit.ly/dkMXDd

PHONETAPPING ON THE RISE IN MEXICO

2010-11-16T09:07:00.000-08:00

Hemispheric Security Monitor

The tapes are part of a trend that has taken over Mexico, a place where charges of corruption abound, and few government officials pay for their misdoings.

By Ana Arana

It was the scandal of the week. A clandestine telephone interception revealed the conversation between two top executives from Stendhal and Norvartis pharmaceutical companies, as they discussed pay offs to a government official working for the Mexican social security system called Instituto Mexicano de Seguro Social (IMSS) in order to obtain an $80m government contract.

The tape was aired by Televisa, the television giant, on its nightly show last Tuesday to a national uproar. It was picked up by every newsmedia, something that is rare in Mexico, where professional jealousy keeps national media away from stories that are broken by other colleagues. The story conveniently broke as the Mexican Congress was debating an overhaul of the social security system, a multi-million programme that provides top medical care to more than 14 million Mexicans employed by private businesses. The system is facing bankruptcy. The tape release cost the two pharmaceutical officials their jobs, and the position of a top social security official.

The tapes are part of a trend that has taken over Mexico, a place where charges of corruption abound, and few government officials pay for their misdoings. Citizens, politicians and unknown sources are producing clandestine telephone recordings and videotapes that go on to accuse corrupt officials. In another case, a complaint by a resident of Aguascalientes province led police to videotape a doctor who was illegally asking for graft before he offered a service that fell within his insurance.

The tape was also released in another Televisa news program called Primero Noticias and placed in YouTube. The second case led to the government levying charges against the doctor.

But the proliferation of illegal recordings and videotapes is of concern to some in Mexico, as leaks from unidentified sources often further the personal goals of those who release the material to the media.

In the case of the pharmaceutical executives, it has been revealed that the recordings disappeared from social security offices. The telephone tapes had been sent to social security director, Daniel Karam, earlier on Tuesday and submitted for an internal investigation. Thus someone in the system decided it was better to send them to national television where an outcry would condemn the individuals featured on the tape before it was investigated whether the charges were real.

One of the executives in the tape has claimed that whoever taped their private conversations conducted an illegal act and connected three different conversations to make it seem convincing. It will be hard for the public, which is so accustomed to government officials asking for bribes to believe this turn of the story. A doctor friend of mine who works at the IMSS told me corruption in the system is endemic and even doctors engage in it by not working more than three hours a day. But it seems this tape appearance is more political—the two opposition political parties have used it to attack the ruling Partido de Accion Nacional for missteps in public policy.

Last year’s most famous recording was that of the former minister of labour, Luis Tellez, who accused former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari of stealing money. The release of the tape cost Tellez his job. Nothing happened to Salinas.

These illegal tapings or videotapes subvert Mexico’s legal system. They contribute to an overall cynicism among citizens who already feel the legal system does not protect them from corruption.

More dangerous is the possibility that drug cartels are also taping individuals and government officials. One security expert said he didn’t doubt the cartels are using sophisticated eavesdropping equipment. In Ciudad Juarez last year, the Federal Police were surprised when they discovered that an aerostatic balloon that had gone up in the city had eavesdropping equipment that could target their operation communications. This balloon apparently cost the lives of several police officers.

Fifteen years ago, while working on a story on Ciudad Juarez, I found a US citizen working for the Juarez Cartel who had built intercepting equipment to tape cellular conversations. The boxes cost $50,000 at the time and had been acquired by the late kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes. The inventor was eventually killed by Carrillo Fuentes. Technology has improved and with that the right to have interception free conversations has become more and more of an issue in Mexico these days.

Behind the scenes in Mexico's drug war

2010-11-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

Military Monitor

Though they keep a very low profile, I'm told there are US DEA agents operating behind the scenes in Mexico. I expect they're deeply involved in intelligence ops. Also, under the so-called Merida Initiative, the US gives training to military officials and provides some hardware, including helicopters. Some of Mexico's top military commanders learned counter-insurgency strategies at the infamous School of the Americas, which has been known to train military personal across the region in torture techniques. From the Mexican left, there are concerns that Mexico's military build-up will be -- or perhaps is being -- used to squash political opponents.

Mexicans await long-delayed US immigration reforms

2010-11-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

US Election Monitor

In the run-up to US midterm elections set for November 2, immigration reform has become a dominant issue as candidates for congressional positions campaign across the country.

The US has seen a recent surge in anti-immigrant sentiment, especially since Arizona recently made it a crime to be undocumented in the country and empowered police to detain anyone suspected of being illegal.

The new legislation has affected many Hispanic immigrants, which make up the largest ethnic minority group in the country.

Franc Contreras reports from the Mexican city of Tonatico, where many are following the ongoing US political debates to see what type of an impact the election would have on their hopes to migrate across the border for a better life.

Oakland´s Boutique Buds

2010-10-31T21:26:00.000-07:00

Marijuana Monitor

What underground mom-and-pop growers did while we debated legalization

OAKLAND, Calif. --Jeremy Ramsay leads us through the back corridor of the nondescript one-story building that is Harborside Health Center. His bright little office is windowless but cheery, its white walls reflecting the glow of fluorescent lights, banks of them. Layer on layer of shop lights are feeding dozens -- hundreds -- of six-inch rooted cuttings of marijuana.
Ramsay is manager, clones, a title straight out of "Brave New World." His babies are weeks away from bulking up and setting the bizarre clusters of mind-altering flower buds, but even in youth the lobed leaves, slender and saw-toothed, are distinctive, iconic, ominous.
If your last joint was experienced while coughing along to a Bob Dylan album in the '70s, Ramsay's offerings will seem incredibly far out. I mean, incredibly.
On the other side of the building, patrons are spoiled by a choice of varieties whose pothead names are lagging behind the contemporary, therapeutic image of marijuana -- sorry, cannabis -- in all its boutique wonder. Kushage bestows a high helpful for brainstorming. Sour Cream is so calming. Kish is fruity but potent. Martian Mean Green flowers up a stench, but the buds burn real stoney.
I have come to California to see a quasi-underground horticultural marvel: growers, breeders and dispensers who have quietly brought the hemp plant to a level not seen in its rocky 6,500-year history with humankind.
When alcohol was chased underground during Prohibition, the resulting clandestine booze was notoriously rank -- the paint-stripping moonshine, the barely drinkable homemade wine. Marijuana, however, has undergone radical advances since the war on drugs sent it deep into the shadows 25 years ago.
In the now semi-open marijuana landscape of Northern California, I find a plant species transformed. Skilled mom-and-pop breeders have developed hundreds of high-performing cultivated varieties, and home hobbyists have grown them to perfection using new techniques and technologies. Marijuana has never been more potent, more productive and more varied in its appearance, flavor and effect. It is twice as productive as in the 1980s and three or more times as potent. As the supply has increased, the value has dropped or stagnated, from $5,000 a pound 15 years ago to about $3,000 today. By the ounce, Ramsay says, the choicest varieties still sell for as much as $400, but the cannabis connoisseur can pick up high-grade strains for half that amount today.
Many Americans of a certain age will remember that in the 1970s, seedy homegrown pot was reviled for its raw, throat-burning quality. Now dope-smoking locavores steer clear of cheap, low- and mid-grade weed in favor of organically grown boutique strains. They speak of "presentation" and varieties so agreeably complex that "you inhale one flavor and exhale another." Just as in the vineyards of the Napa Valley a few miles to the north, complexities come from the soil, from the fruits of labor, from careful breeding. Suddenly, pot has terroir.
It's surreal, even for California, but it may be our future.
***
Fourteen years after Californians approved medical marijuana, they return on Tuesday to consider Proposition 19. This would allow people 21 or older to become the first in the nation to legally cultivate, possess and use small amounts of marijuana, and let local governments license commercial growers and retailers.
If it doesn't pass, its backers vow to return. If it does pass, California will become even more cannabis-friendly than the Netherlands.
Washington, D.C., and 13 states besides California are at early points along this path, allowing the chronically sick access to marijuana (in defiance of federal law). Advocacy groups consider the newly adopted D.C. law, still awaiting implementation, to be so restrictive as to be virtually impractical. It doesn't allow home cultivation, permits just five to eight growing centers and dispensaries, and limits each to just 95 plants. Meanwhile, federal sentencing mandates require a five-year prison term for possession of 100 or more. Maryland judges can lower the fines in medical marijuana cases, but you still may be arrested and convicted; Virginia has no medical marijuana law.
I am thinking about the District's limits on plants as I sit in Jeremy Ramsay's little cuttings room, where there are enough plants to fill 30 D.C. dispensaries. I had just come from another establishment, where I had seen hundreds of full-size stock plants in growing rooms, bathed in the sallow light of high-pressure sodium lamps. Even without Prop. 19, hundreds of thousands of Californians have received doctor's recommendations to use the drug since medical marijuana was legalized; estimates range from 400,000 to 700,000 residents. In theory, given the state's six-plant limit, they could have collectively grown millions of plants lawfully.
In Oakland's openly drug-tolerant district, I am taken to a cafe-style dispensary where buyers pore over the choicest buds for smoking and buy cuttings for $12 apiece, to a medical marijuana club where three members are drawing on skinny cannabis cigarettes, and to a curtained speak-easy where the patrons are enjoying a game of pool. The air is heavy with that pungent aroma of dope, and I am wondering: Was this what Prohibition felt like on the eve of repeal?
"I think what happens with medical marijuana is that it becomes impossible to make it medical marijuana alone," said Richard Lee, head of a medical marijuana trade school in Oakland named Oaksterdam University and the originator of Prop. 19. "It's a relatively safe substance. It's safer than alcohol and healthier than prison."
Those caught up in the violent web of the illegal marijuana world may have a different view, though an abiding argument of cannabis advocates is that full legalization will chase the violent criminals away. This is rejected by federal drug officials, who say that black market providers will remain in the game and that legalization will increase the availability and abuse of marijuana as prices continue to drop.
Marijuana use peaked in the late 1970s, when 60 percent of high school seniors had admitted to smoking pot. Then the baby boomers grew up, Nancy Reagan just said no, and for those outside this counterculture, the drug world seemed an unappetizing food chain, with violent drug cartels at one end and dopey kids at the other. Marijuana, of course, did not go away but flourished underground.
Ironically, the government's international war on drugs proved an enormous boon to marijuana cultivation in the United States. By 2002, as much as 10,000 metric tons of cannabis were cultivated annually, according to a government estimate. Jon Gettman, a criminal justice scholar, used this figure to argue that marijuana had become the nation's biggest cash crop, with a conservative value of $35 billion at a time when the corn harvest was $23 billion and soybeans $17.6 billion.
The original estimate may be too great, officials now say, though Drug Enforcement Administration raid reports show a signficant increase in the number of plants seized in California -- from 1.2 million in 2003 to 7.5 million last year.
In the past decade, according to the Justice Department, Mexican drug organizations have expanded their outdoor growing operations in the United States from the West Coast to such states as Arkansas, Georgia and even frigid Wisconsin. This, even as 28,000 people have died in bloody Mexican drug wars in just the past four years. Meanwhile, tightknit groups of ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese growers have increased the number of large-scale indoor operations from California to New England, according to the department's National Drug Intelligence Center.
These are the scary images of commercial syndicates. But what of the lone hobbyist raising plants in a tiny growing tent in an apartment, or more openly in garden beds as state laws are relaxed?
Such a base of marijuana gardeners also has been growing exponentially over the past three decades. Gettman, who teaches at Shenandoah University and lives in Lovettsville, Va., calls it the "atomization" of marijuana cultivation that fuels a singularly American fixation for growing crops to maximize yield. Gettman, who is also coordinator of the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, seeking to relax federal marijuana laws, says the government's assertion that most indoor cannabis cultivation is undertaken by Asian organizations is "ridiculous."
"A lot of Americans really, really like to grow pot," he said.
***
To meet such a cultivator, I drive north of Oakland into Sonoma County to see an Anglo named George van Patten, who is better known to his avid readers as his Latino alter ego, Jorge Cervantes.
In the 1980s, he ran a hydroponics store in Portland, Ore., and published one of the first books on how to grow marijuana: self-written, -illustrated, -printed and -bound because no publisher would dare touch it. The book became the foundation for more editions, fresh volumes and translations into Spanish, German, French and Italian. His latest book is about the basics of marijuana cultivation and is aimed at novices.
Approaching Sonoma, I see roadside fields of vines heavy with purple-black grapes, and through the town squat palms line the streets like upended joints, cartoonish and mocking. The sky is blue and cloudless, the sun impossibly bright. There is none of the fungal-inducing humidity of Washington or the wretched night heat that weighs so heavily on our garden plants. You could grow anything here, I'm thinking, if you had the water.
Cervantes had sent me publicity pictures of himself in a hammock, holding his pet dachshund and surrounded by a forest of container-grown cannabis. His black hair fell to his shoulders.
When I pull into his street, I wonder whether I have take a wrong turn: The gabled homes are tidy and uniform, and the neighborhood exudes an air of suburban rectitude. Cervantes is outside to greet me, but he is older and smaller than he appeared in the photos, his flowing hair now grayish blond. We enter his home, past a neat front lawn framed by white roses and purple agapanthus. The back garden has all the signs of a formerly basic landscape under fresh assault by an incurable gardener.
A new redwood privacy fence wraps around a large but unplanted garden bed. Since December, Cervantes has excavated five cubic yards of rock and sticky clay soil, and added 100 yards of enriched, amended soil. The side garden is dominated by three raised beds, two of which house ripening tomatoes, peppers and other summer vegetables. The third bed holds six marijuana plants, heavily branched, lush and green. Clearly, they have received loving care -- good soil, ample moisture and, as it turns out, pricey bat guano at $70 a box. They are growing under shade cloth in a raised bed enriched with bark chips, sand, chicken manure, compost and sterilized bone meal. Now, in late August, they are three feet across and at least as high.
Cannabis is a botanical loner, its sole relative the hopvine used to flavor beer. It also is an annual, but unlike other annuals, its plants are single sex. A male blooms with pollen, a female plant has clusters of ovaries, which produce seeds, but only if fertilized with pollen.
The inferior dope produced by criminal organizations typically contains stems, leaves and seedy buds and the rankest herb is combined with filler and pressed into bricks. But a hobby grower such as Cervantes knows that the highest quality and most potent marijuana is made primarily from the unpollinated female flower buds, of choice strains. Where once the wild article was scrawny and grudging -- ditch weed -- these modern cultivated varieties are bushy and packed with plump, resinous buds. This choice, seed-free herb is known as sinsemilla (Spanish for "without seed").
Marijuana, like chrysanthemums and poinsettias, is spurred to flower by the shorter days of late summer. But its bloom has none of the innate beauty of, say, a daisy or a rose. Pollinated by the wind, the blossoms have no need to pretty themselves for bees or butterflies. Each flower is wrapped tightly in a drab sheath, from which it sends up a pair of hair-like tubes, pistils in search of the pollen that the artful gardener denies them.
Cervantes removes the shade cloth so I can get a good look at these baby flowers. Weeks away from harvest, they are the size of a pea and just beginning to show their short blond hairs. Half of the varieties are of Bubba Kush, the other Purple Kush, a favored medical strain for treating both pain and depression.
Over the next few weeks, the plants' maiden blossoms will proliferate and form clusters, most noticeably at the branch tips. Lacking pollination, the plants will produce increasing numbers of individual flowers in a vain effort to attract a mate. The cluster at the top of the main stem will become so congested that it may stretch 18 inches or more and contain hundreds of engorged flowers. Among growers, the ugliness of the individual flower is more than surpassed by the spectacle of the huge bud spike.
Apart from the gathering odor, which can be strong and pungent, the maturing inflorescence is marked by a number of striking elements. It contains small, underdeveloped leaves that are trimmed at harvest. The pistils often change from their blond color to become threads of amber. The buds and leaves appear to be frosted with sugar crystals, and in some varieties, such as Purple Kush, the buds have a purple-blue cast.
After harvest the buds are cured and dried to permit storage, to preserve and intensify the psychoactive compounds and to prevent crop-destroying mold. Cervantes hopes to harvest 4 to 6 ounces from each plant, enough for about 300 cigarettes. He adds a little tobacco to his joints, a habit he picked up after six years in Spain as a self-imposed exile of the George W. Bush years.
In his office, he takes out some stored buds, and I look at them under a microscope: The surfaces are covered in minute crystalline structures, like the stalked eyeballs of snails, but glasslike. These fragile trichomes, which give modern varieties their frostiness, are full of a compound called THC, one of about 100 cannabinoids but the principal one for producing the high. The trichomes grow most abundant and THC-rich just as the plant matures. The gardener must be watchful.
As I am pondering this, the air is suddenly full of the acrid aroma of an ignited joint. Cervantes has a doctor's recommendation to take marijuana for insomnia and backache. He says he smokes from one to four joints a day. Everyone I meet on this journey seems to have some sort of chronic medical complaint, ranging from anxiety to insomnia, from attention deficit disorder to a condition called cyclic vomiting syndrome.
For those in their 30s, like Ramsay, the state legitimization of growing and using marijuana, for medical purposes at least, is a world they have grown up with. But for an earlier generation that came of age in the hippie era, then saw it all move underground, the present period of conditional legalization comes after years of living outside the law and within a dark realm of fear, stigma and seedy transactions. "I cried the first time I bought it" legally, said Cervantes, who is 56. "It's a whole different feeling. You can grow it and not be afraid."
His hydroponics store was closed in a nationwide DEA raid in the late 198os. Fearing prosecution, he went underground and spent increasingly long periods in the safe haven of the Netherlands. In Holland, he met other pot refugees from the United States and other countries, and this place of exile became a center of a nascent interest in breeding new varieties.
***
Hobby growers and breeders today collectively make this plant the subject of "the biggest seed-breeding program in the world," says Ed Rosenthal, a horticultural instructor at Oaksterdam University.
There are two basic breeding lines in cannabis hybridization: the wild species, Cannabis sativa, and a subspecies named indica. The sativa is a lanky, slow-growing but potent weed hailing from tropical and subtropical climes. Indica is native to Afghanistan and east along the foothills of the Himalayas, and is distinguished by its short, bushy habit and broader leaves. Other strains naturally developed with distinctive regional traits from Mexico to equatorial Africa to Thailand.
It's a simple proposition to create what might be an alluring hybrid between a male and female plant. What is more difficult and painstaking is to develop a seed strain that will replicate itself consistently. This requires raising several generations of plants, and can take from 18 months to five years or more.
In Holland in the 1980s, landmark strains such as Skunk No. 1 and Haze launched a breeding frenzy that spawned other classic varieties, including White Widow, Northern Lights and Big Bud. The hybridizers were tapping the myriad genes of sativas, indicas and naturally occurring varieties to increase the yield, shorten the flowering cycle and make the plants bushier for indoor cultivation.
Oaksterdam University's Rosenthal, writing in "The Big Book of Buds, Volume 3," says the cannabis world is now seeing a fourth breeding wave whose intent is to produce plants that are "tweaked to produce connoisseur highs."
At Harborside, Ramsay hands me a list of all of the clones he has received in recent months. The list runs to 222, and includes such choice varieties as Casey Jones, described in "The Big Book of Buds" as a sativa-rich hybrid that is "up, trippy"; Blue Cheese, indica-dominant and "highly euphoric" but "very functional"; and the sativa-heavy Purps, "giggly, blissful."
THC is the engine of the high, but the other aromatic essential oils drive the nature of the intoxication and the palliative effects.
But how has herb with 14 percent THC changed the high? It's quicker to take effect and a loaded THC variety like Train Wreck will be "more stoney," Cervantes said.
Experts such as Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, say the high potency has transformed marijuana for many users into a drug that can induce psychosis and paranoia and increase addiction. "The marijuana people were smoking 20 years ago was much less potent, and that explains why in the past medical consequences associated with marijuana were relatively rare," she said. "Now we are seeing an increase in [emergency room] admissions."
Breeders are now making varieties that are lower in THC but higher in another cannabinoid called CBD, considered helpful in treating illness without the high.
Across town, I meet Jeff Jones, a longtime cannabis activist and instructor at Oaksterdam University who runs a marijuana equipment store a couple of blocks from the school. The growing tents he sells speak volumes about the advanced state of home production. Designed for use indoors with their own lighting systems, they permit furtive cannabis cultivation as easily in, say, Silver Spring as in Northern California.
"I saw them ramping up about five or six years ago," Cervantes says. "They are really a big thing now."
Measuring just 4-by-4-feet and rising to about seven feet, Jones's floor model is made of a rigid fabric that is black outside and a reflective silver within. When zippered shut, none of the light escapes, and the grower can install a filtration system that not only moves air inside but prevents marijuana odors from escaping. The plants begin to reek at the flowering stage, and some varieties are so stinky you can smell them through brick walls.
The grower can raise plants either in soil or hydroponically, in an inert medium such as coconut fiber. In the hydroponic method, a reservoir holds water and nutrients, which are either pumped or wicked to the root zone.
The home grower can get started for less than $1,000.
Growing indoors has obvious advantages over outdoor cultivation: It is private, crops can be grown year-round, and, because you manipulate the hours of light, you can raise four to six crops a year, compared with one or two outdoors.
On the downside, indoor cultivation uses a lot of electricity, which is not only bad for your wallet and the environment but is a way for investigators to detect illicit operations. The latest advances are in LED lights, which use far less electricity and don't need cooling, but can cost as much as $2,000 a unit.
Gettman said people are "flocking" to hydroponic suppliers. A habitual smoker could easily go through $5,000 worth of marijuana a year.
Some growers are wary of Prop. 19, believing its passage would attract large-scale commercial nurseries. Already, there is speculation that wineries in Napa and Sonoma would get into it, as would big tobacco.
Separately from Prop. 19, the city of Oakland is preparing to issue four permits to allow large-scale commercial cultivation of marijuana for medical users. Harborside's founder and chief executive, Steve DeAngelo, remarkable for his pigtails and porkpie hats, is considering throwing one of them (hat, that is) into the ring. He joins me in Ramsay's cutting room cum office. "The debate moves from whether cannabis is going to be legal to how cannabis is going to be legal," he said.
Rosenthal sees a day when cannabis will be grown like another popular and ubiquitous crop. "I like the tomato model," he said, rattling off a possible hierarchy of breeders and growers: giant industrial companies; regional companies; farmers; individuals raising marijuana for cash from their own big back yards, then home growers. "There's room for everybody in that model," he said. "But with all the commercial ways tomatoes are grown, home growers still grow the most tomatoes in the U.S."
So Jorge Cervantes's little backyard patch offers a glimpse of an America he and his fellow cannabis comrades see as becoming not just normal but the foundation of an openly vast marijuana-growing nation. Botanically, Cannabis sativa has undergone a quiet revolution since the baby boomers came of age.
DeAngelo argues that just as the plant has changed, so must we, in our relationship to it. Marijuana, he says, can teach us how to be kinder to the earth and our fellow travelers on it. "We are at a different time in the history of this plant," he said.

SOURCE: Adrian Higgins, Washington Post. Published Sunday, October 31, 201

Adrian Higgins is a Washington Post staff writer. He can be reached at higginsa@washpost.com.

A brief review of Arizona history

2010-10-22T16:24:00.000-07:00

Historic Facts Monitor

Paleo indigenous people inhabited current-day Arizona around 10,000 BC.

Cochise people were planting corn there around 2,000 BC.

The Spanish killed many indigenous people, then took control of the region from 1528 to 1821.

After gaining independence from Spain, Mexico took over the region in 1821.

The US war on Mexico ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and Mexico losing half its territory including much of current-day Arizona in 1848.

The Gadsden Purchase (known as Venta de La Mesilla, or "Sale of La Mesilla", in Mexico) is a 29,670-square-mile (76,800 km2) region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. It was purchased by the United States in a treaty signed by President Franklin Pierce on June 24, 1853 and ratified by the U.S. Senate on April 25, 1854.

The "purchase" was the last major territorial acquisition in the contiguous United States.

The important Apache leader Cochise died of natural causes in 1874.

Powerful Chiracahua and other Apache tribes still ruled the area until 1886.

By 1886 one fifth of the entire US Army was in Arizona trying to capture Apache chief Geronimo.

Arizona becomes the 48th US state in 1912.

In 2010, Arizona still has vast Indian reservations where people live in severe poverty.

Drug violence begins to affect Mexico´s tourism zones

2010-10-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

Drug War Monitor

At least eight people have been killed in a fire bomb attack on a bar in the Mexican tourist town of Cancun. Local reports said the attack was carried out by a drug cartel which was trying to extort protection money from the bar owner. It has heightened fears that drug-related violence is spreading to tourist towns. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports from Cancun.

Poll shows US Latino voters still back Democrats

2010-10-05T16:18:00.000-07:00

US Election Monitor

Latinos and the 2010 Elections: Strong Support for Democrats; Weak Voter Motivation

by Mark Hugo Lopez, Associate Director, Pew Hispanic Center

In a year when support for Democratic candidates has eroded, the party's standing among one key voting group-Latinos-appears as strong as ever. Two-thirds (65%) of Latino registered voters say they plan to support the Democratic candidate in their local congressional district, while just 22% support the Republican candidate, according to a nationwide survey of Latinos. If this pro-Democratic margin holds up on Election Day next month, it would be about as wide as in 2008, when Latinos supported Barack Obama for president over John McCain by 67% to 31%.

However, Hispanic registered voters appear to be less motivated than other voters to go to the polls. Just one-third (32%) of all Latino registered voters say they have given this year's election "quite a lot" of thought. In contrast, half (50%) of all registered voters say the same. And when it comes to their intent to vote, half (51%) of Latino registered voters say they are absolutely certain they will vote in this year's midterm election, while seven-in-ten (70%) of all registered voters say the same.

The survey finds that among Latino registered voters, Republicans may be more likely to turn out and vote than Democrats. Some 44% of Latino Republicans say they have given the election quite a lot of thought compared with 28% of Latino Democrats. This partisan gap is consistent with survey findings of the full population of registered voters.

When it comes to opinions of President Barack Obama, a greater share of Latino registered voters approve of his job performance than do all U.S. registered voters-63% versus 47%. Yet when asked about the effect of his administration's policies on Hispanics, Latino registered voters are divided. More than half (51%) say his policies have had no effect on Latinos, while one-in-four (26%) say they have been helpful to Latinos and 13% say they have been harmful.

The new survey also reveals that the Democratic Party continues to hold a large advantage in party identification among Latino registered voters. More than six-in-ten (62%) Latino registered voters say they identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while one-quarter (25%) say the same for the Republican Party-a Democratic advantage of 37 percentage points.

Democrats are seen as the party that has more concern for Hispanics. Nearly half (47%) of Latino registered voters say this about the Democratic Party-down from 55% in 2008, but similar to the share on this question expressed by Latinos for much of the past decade. In contrast, very few see the Republican Party as more concerned about Latinos than the Democratic Party-just 6% of all Latino registered voters and 18% of Republican Latino registered voters say this.

When Arizona enacted an unauthorized immigrant enforcement bill earlier this year, the immigration policy debate reignited across the country. Even so, the new survey shows that immigration does not rank as a top voting issue for Hispanics. Rather, they rank education, jobs and health care as their top three issues of concern for this year's congressional campaign. Immigration ranks as the fifth most important issue for Latino registered voters and as the fourth most important issue for all Latinos.

However, the survey finds that two-thirds (66%) of Latino registered voters say they talked about the immigration policy debate with someone they know in the past year. It also finds that those who have had these conversations are more motivated to vote in the upcoming election than are those who haven't. Nearly six-in-ten (58%) Latino registered voters who have discussed the immigration debate say they are absolutely certain they will vote in November, compared with just four-in-ten (39%) of those who have not talked about the immigration debate.

This report is based on a nationally representative bilingual telephone survey of 1,375 Latinos ages 18 and older, including 618 registered voters. Interviews were conducted from August 17 through September 19, 2010. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level; for registered voters, the margin of error is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points. For a full description of the survey methodology, see Appendix B.

Mexico debates legalizing marijuana

2010-08-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

Drug War Monitor

A heated debate is under way among senior officials in Mexico over whether the government should legalise the use and sale of marijuana.

The discussion comes as violence from competing drug cartels in the country continues to spiral out of control, claiming thousands of lives every year.

Felipe Calderon, Mexico's president, has said he is firmly against the legalisation, arguing that it would only create "millions" of more drug addicts.

But Vicente Fox, the country's former president and a member of Calderon's conservative National Action Party, has urged the government to legalise drugs in order to "break the economic structure that allows gangs to generate huge profits in their trade, which feeds corruption and increases their areas of power".

"We should consider legalising the production, distribution and sale of drugs" because "radical prohibition strategies have never worked," he explained.

Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports from Mexico City, the capital.

U.S. government says Mexico´s drug war is working

2010-08-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

Drug War Monitor

Statement Before the U.S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control
May 5, 2010

Kevin L. Perkins, Assistant Director, Criminal Investigative Division, FBI
Anthony P. Placido, Assistant Administrator for Intelligence, DEA

"Current estimates suggest that approximately 93 percent of the cocaine leaving South America for the United States moves through Mexico. In just the past year, however, more cocaine—about 60 percent of the 90 percent, according to inter-agency estimates—stops first in a Central American country, before onward shipment to Mexico, than at any time since the inter-agency began tracking cocaine movement.

This trend suggests that the Calderon Administration’s initiatives, particularly those related to port security and the tracking of suspicious aircraft, are having an impact on how the cartels do business, requiring them to take the extra—and ostensibly more costly and vulnerable—step of arranging multi-stage transportation systems.

Changes in cocaine movement patterns are not the only measurable trend. Beginning in January of 2007—immediately after the Calderon government was installed—the price per gram of cocaine in the United States began to rise, with a correlative drop in cocaine purity. We are now in a 36-month sustained period of declining purity and increasing price in nearly every major cocaine market in the United States.

During this period, we have seen prices increase by almost 72 percent and purity fall by nearly 33 percent."

http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress10/perkins050510.htm
-----------------

From State Dept. 2010 Narcotic Control Report
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/137411.pdf
Cannabis cultivation Mexico (in hectares)
2005 5,600
2006 8,600
2007 8,900
2008 12,000
2009 in process

Cannabis production Mexico metric tons
2005 5,600
2006 8,600
2007 8,900
2008 23,000

It is estimated that DTOs’ annual gross revenue ranges between $15-30 billion from illicit drug sales in the U.S. Most of these proceeds are returned from the U.S. primarily through bulk currency shipments and laundered through legitimate Mexican businesses.

Despite the efforts of the GOM, drug cultivation rose significantly in 2009 according to U.S. government
agencies’ estimates. Opium poppy cultivation more than doubled to 15,000 hectares (ha) as of September
2009 from 6,900 in 2008—the highest level of production ever estimated in Mexico and all of Latin
America combined. Cannabis production increased 35 percent to 12,000 ha from 8,900 in 2008—the
highest level since 1992. These increases in drug production could represent greater vertical integration of
DTO businesses intended to diminish reliance on foreign suppliers of product. Mexico is not considered a
significant producer of cocaine, although DTOs continue to transit the drug through the country.

Drug violence claims over 28,000 lives since 2006

2010-08-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

Drug War Monitor
More than 28,000 people have been killed in drug violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown against cartels in 2006, a government official said Tuesday.

Intelligence agency director Guillermo Valdes also said authorities have confiscated about 84,000 weapons and made total cash seizures of $411 million in U.S. currency and $26 million worth in pesos (330 million pesos).

Valdes released the statistics during a meeting with Calderon and representatives of business and civic groups. Attendees are exploring ways to improve Mexico's anti-drug strategy.

Drug violence in Mexico ``is still growing,'' Valdes said.

The most recent official toll of the drug war dead came in mid-June, when the attorney general said 24,800 had died. He did not specify a time frame.

The government does not regularly break down murder statistics, but leading newspapers who kept their own counts say last month was the deadliest yet under Calderon: According to national daily Milenio, 1,234 were killed in July.

The Mexican government says most victims were involved in the drug trade.

Source: Associated Press

2010-07-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

Gulf Oil Spill Monitor

Besides seabirds and wetlands' wildlife, the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is also threatening the world's most endangered sea turtles. The Kemp's Ridley Turtle has been making a comeback in recent years with the help of conservationists. But its migratory path takes it right through the polluted Gulf. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports from Mexico's northeastern Gulf Coast.

Death toll rises at Arizona border with Mexico

2010-07-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

Border Death Monitor

July Could Be Deadliest Month in 10 Years on Arizona-Mexico Border
As US President Obama deploys 1200 more troops to the border, the deaths of undocumented immigrants have increased to the extent that they could break the record set in July 2005, when the office registered the deaths of 68 migrants.

By Maria Leon

TUCSON, Arizona – Crossing from Mexico to the United States over the Arizona border is becoming ever more dangerous and July is shaping up to be the deadliest month in 10 years for undocumented migrants.

Already this month the Pima County medical examiner’s office has received the bodies of 40 undocumented immigrants, and it has been forced to rent a mobile refrigeration unit to store them.

The deaths of undocumented immigrants have increased to the extent that they could break the record set in July 2005, when the office registered the deaths of 68 migrants.

“We’re halfway through the month. To have so many bodies is not a good sign. We could be facing the deadliest month we’ve had since we began tallying the deaths of undocumented people in 2000,” the county medical examiner, Dr. Bruce Parks, told Efe.

From Jan. 1-July 15, Parks’ office has received the bodies of 134 undocumented migrants, 32 more than during the same period in 2009.

The Pima County medical examiner’s office receives the bodies of the majority of undocumented migrants who die in their attempt to cross into the United States along the Arizona border.

“There’s no doubt we’re facing a real crisis of the kind nobody talks about,” Kat Rodriguez, the representative of the Arizona Human Rights Coalition, told Efe.

From Oct. 1, when Fiscal Year 2010 began, until June 30, the coalition has registered the deaths of 153 undocumented immigrants, 28 more than last year between the same dates.

“About 70 percent of these bodies have not been able to be identified,” the activist said.

Rodriguez agreed with Parks regarding the assessment that the situation is worrying given the high numbers of people missing in the desert that are being reported to the coalition.

She said that last week her organization received reports of seven missing people, four of them women.

“The families are ... desperate. They don’t know what to do. Some of them tell us that coyotes (migrant smugglers) told them that their relative became ill and they had to leave them under a tree, others don’t know anything, just that the person crossed the border, but never arrived at their destination,” the activist said.

When a family reports a person to be missing, the coalition passes this information to the U.S. Border Patrol so that they can initiate a search if it is believed that the person might still be alive.

That was the case this past weekend, when on Saturday afternoon Rodriguez received a phone call from a young man who was lost in the desert. The battery of his cellphone failed while he was talking to her, but he was rescued by the Border Patrol.

When the person has already been missing for some time, Rodriguez tries to obtain information that can help to identify their body, such as tattoos, type of clothing they were wearing, shoes, backpack, etc.

“When the body is found some hours after the person died, it can be recognized by its facial features, but when the body has already been in the desert for several months or just bones are found the identification is very difficult,” she said.

Rodriguez said it was “regrettable” that the entire country is currently talking about the issue of undocumented immigration, but nobody is speaking about the crisis that exists on the border and the increase in deaths among the migrants.

“Not even the people who are pushing for immigration reform talk about the deaths on the border,” Rodriguez emphasized.

The Border Patrol says 422 immigrants died along the entire U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2009. EFE

Mexican government workers offered new protection

2010-07-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

Drug Violence Monitor

Mexico's Government Rents Bodyguards to Officials Amid Violence

By Adriana Lopez Caraveo and Jens Erik Gould

Public servants can pay a daily fee for protection ranging from 1,365 pesos to 2,620 pesos ($107 to $206) depending on the bodyguard's skill level and the type of arms and vehicles used, according to a decree from Public Security Minister Genaro Garcia Luna published in the government's official gazette yesterday. The service, which provides bodyguards trained by the ministry, is only available to government workers.

The state will continue to provide bodyguards for top officials free of charge. Last year, the Public Security Ministry began offering federal lawmakers and court workers the option to pay for additional protection of their facilities.

Officials are expanding the types of protection available for government workers after the June 28 killing of Rodolfo Torre Cantu, a candidate for governor in the border state of Tamaulipas. It marked an escalation of Mexico's drug-fueled violence and represented the highest-level political assassination since presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was killed in March 1994.

Mexico has turned increasingly violent since Calderon came to office in December 2006 vowing to fight traffickers. More than 22,000 people have been killed in Mexico in violence related to organized crime since Calderon came to power, according to the U.S. State Department.

(c) 2010 Bloomberg News

Oaxaca prepares for new political era

2010-07-09T13:40:00.000-07:00

Post Election Monitor

Today I am back in Mexico City after a reporting trip to Oaxaca where voters recently ended of 80 consecutive years of state rule under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, and elected opposition candidate Gabino Cué who represented a coalition of political parties on the right and left.

The PRI´s 71 year reign on Mexico´s presidency ended in 2000 when Vicente Fox became the first-ever opposition president. Since then the PRI has clung to power at the state level. On Sunday the PRI once again took 9 of the 12 governorships that were up for grabs, including in Tamaulipas where one PRI candidate was murdered days before the bell weather vote.

The winning candidate is the brother of the man who was murdered. finishes his term as Governor in 2016, the PRI will have governed there for 87 consecutive years.

That will be true elsewhere in Mexico, but not in the states of Sinaloa, Puebla and Oaxaca, where voters pushed the PRI out of the statehouse for the first time ever.

In Oaxaca City, I interviewed Gabino Cue, the man who will be sworn in as Oaxaca´s governor next December. We talked about how he plans to address the numbers complex social problems left in the wake of the PRI´s rule.

The story takes us back to the 2006 popular uprising that began with teachers demanding a pay raise. Under PRI Governor Ulises Ruiz it spiraled downward to a wave of violent clashes between federal police and protesters that lasted 6-months.

At the height of the violence killed several democracy activists, including US journalist Brad who was shot dead when gunmen shot into a crowd. That case has never been resolved. Some pointed the finger of blame to Governor Ruiz, who at the time had been focusing on getting presidential votes for the PRI.

Once inaugurated into office, many Oaxacans hope Governor-elect Gabino Cué will order his new State Attorney General to seek a court case aimed at putting Ruiz behind bars for violation of civil and human rights.

But Cué told me he will seek no such case, saying he is not interested in "revenge."

Local elections in Mexico turn up some surprises

2010-07-04T20:22:00.000-07:00

Election Monitor

For the first time in more than 80 consecutive years voters in the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Puebla have ousted the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in key elections for Governors.

In those two poverty-stricken southern states the winners are coalition candidates belonging to strange bedfellows alliances between the right-leaning PAN and leftist PRD.

Oaxaca and Puebla have been PRI stalwart states since 1929.

I just spoke with my daughter, who was born and raised in Oaxaca, and she says even little children are calling this a historic day.

Exit polls indicate that the PRI has won races for Governor in Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Durango, Hidalgo, Tamaulipas, Tlaxcala, Veracruz and Zacatecas states.

The campaign is over. Soon the winners must show they can actually govern with honest, non-corrupt policies and practices.

President Obama's speech on US immigration reform

2010-07-01T22:30:00.000-07:00

Immigration Monitor

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release July 01, 2010
Remarks by the President on Comprehensive Immigration Reform

American University School of International Service, Washington, D.C.

11:12 A.M. EDT

THE U.S. PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. (Applause.) Everyone please have a seat. Thank you very much. Let me thank Pastor Hybels from near my hometown in Chicago, who took time off his vacation to be here today. We are blessed to have him.

I want to thank President Neil Kerwin and our hosts here at American University; acknowledge my outstanding Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, and members of my administration; all the members of Congress -- Hilda deserves applause. (Applause.) To all the members of Congress, the elected officials, faith and law enforcement, labor, business leaders and immigration advocates who are here today -- thank you for your presence.

I want to thank American University for welcoming me to the campus once again. Some may recall that the last time I was here I was joined by a dear friend, and a giant of American politics, Senator Edward Kennedy. (Applause.) Teddy’s not here right now, but his legacy of civil rights and health care and worker protections is still with us.

I was a candidate for President that day, and some may recall I argued that our country had reached a tipping point; that after years in which we had deferred our most pressing problems, and too often yielded to the politics of the moment, we now faced a choice: We could squarely confront our challenges with honesty and determination, or we could consign ourselves and our children to a future less prosperous and less secure.

I believed that then and I believe it now. And that’s why, even as we’ve tackled the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, even as we’ve wound down the war in Iraq and refocused our efforts in Afghanistan, my administration has refused to ignore some of the fundamental challenges facing this generation.

We launched the most aggressive education reforms in decades, so that our children can gain the knowledge and skills they need to compete in a 21st century global economy.

We have finally delivered on the promise of health reform -– reform that will bring greater security to every American, and that will rein in the skyrocketing costs that threaten families, businesses and the prosperity of our nation.

We’re on the verge of reforming an outdated and ineffective set of rules governing Wall Street -– to give greater power to consumers and prevent the reckless financial speculation that led to this severe recession.

And we’re accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy by significantly raising the fuel-efficiency standards of cars and trucks, and by doubling our use of renewable energies like wind and solar power -- steps that have the potential to create whole new industries and hundreds of thousands of new jobs in America.

So, despite the forces of the status quo, despite the polarization and the frequent pettiness of our politics, we are confronting the great challenges of our times. And while this work isn’t easy, and the changes we seek won’t always happen overnight, what we’ve made clear is that this administration will not just kick the can down the road.

Immigration reform is no exception. In recent days, the issue of immigration has become once more a source of fresh contention in our country, with the passage of a controversial law in Arizona and the heated reactions we’ve seen across America. Some have rallied behind this new policy. Others have protested and launched boycotts of the state. And everywhere, people have expressed frustration with a system that seems fundamentally broken.

Of course, the tensions around immigration are not new. On the one hand, we’ve always defined ourselves as a nation of immigrants -- a nation that welcomes those willing to embrace America’s precepts. Indeed, it is this constant flow of immigrants that helped to make America what it is. The scientific breakthroughs of Albert Einstein, the inventions of Nikola Tesla, the great ventures of Andrew Carnegie’s U.S. Steel and Sergey Brin’s Google, Inc. -– all this was possible because of immigrants.

And then there are the countless names and the quiet acts that never made the history books but were no less consequential in building this country -- the generations who braved hardship and great risk to reach our shores in search of a better life for themselves and their families; the millions of people, ancestors to most of us, who believed that there was a place where they could be, at long last, free to work and worship and live their lives in peace.

So this steady stream of hardworking and talented people has made America the engine of the global economy and a beacon of hope around the world. And it’s allowed us to adapt and thrive in the face of technological and societal change. To this day, America reaps incredible economic rewards because we remain a magnet for the best and brightest from across the globe. Folks travel here in the hopes of being a part of a culture of entrepreneurship and ingenuity, and by doing so they strengthen and enrich that culture. Immigration also means we have a younger workforce -– and a faster-growing economy -- than many of our competitors. And in an increasingly interconnected world, the diversity of our country is a powerful advantage in global competition.

Just a few weeks ago, we had an event of small business owners at the White House. And one business owner was a woman named Prachee Devadas who came to this country, became a citizen, and opened up a successful technology services company. When she started, she had just one employee. Today, she employs more than a hundred people. This past April, we held a naturalization ceremony at the White House for members of our armed forces. Even though they were not yet citizens, they had enlisted. One of them was a woman named Perla Ramos -- born and raised in Mexico, came to the United States shortly after 9/11, and she eventually joined the Navy. And she said, “I take pride in our flag and the history that forged this great nation and the history we write day by day.”

These women, and men and women across this country like them, remind us that immigrants have always helped to build and defend this country -– and that being an American is not a matter of blood or birth. It’s a matter of faith. It’s a matter of fidelity to the shared values that we all hold so dear. That’s what makes us unique. That’s what makes us strong. Anybody can help us write the next great chapter in our history.

Now, we can’t forget that this process of immigration and eventual inclusion has often been painful. Each new wave of immigrants has generated fear and resentments towards newcomers, particularly in times of economic upheaval. Our founding was rooted in the notion that America was unique as a place of refuge and freedom for, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “oppressed humanity.” But the ink on our Constitution was barely dry when, amidst conflict, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which placed harsh restrictions of those suspected of having foreign allegiances. A century ago, immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Poland, other European countries were routinely subjected to rank discrimination and ugly stereotypes. Chinese immigrants were held in detention and deported from Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. They didn’t even get to come in.

So the politics of who is and who is not allowed to enter this country, and on what terms, has always been contentious. And that remains true today. And it’s made worse by a failure of those of us in Washington to fix a broken immigration system.

To begin with, our borders have been porous for decades. Obviously, the problem is greatest along our Southern border, but it’s not restricted to that part of the country. In fact, because we don’t do a very good job of tracking who comes in and out of the country as visitors, large numbers avoid immigration laws simply by overstaying their visas.

The result is an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. The overwhelming majority of these men and women are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their children. Many settle in low-wage sectors of the economy; they work hard, they save, they stay out of trouble. But because they live in the shadows, they’re vulnerable to unscrupulous businesses who pay them less than the minimum wage or violate worker safety rules -– thereby putting companies who follow those rules, and Americans who rightly demand the minimum wage or overtime, at an unfair [dis]advantage. Crimes go unreported as victims and witnesses fear coming forward. And this makes it harder for the police to catch violent criminals and keep neighborhoods safe. And billions in tax revenue are lost each year because many undocumented workers are paid under the table.

More fundamentally, the presence of so many illegal immigrants makes a mockery of all those who are going through the process of immigrating legally. Indeed, after years of patchwork fixes and ill-conceived revisions, the legal immigration system is as broken as the borders. Backlogs and bureaucracy means the process can take years. While an applicant waits for approval, he or she is often forbidden from visiting the United States –- which means even husbands and wives may be forced to spend many years apart. High fees and the need for lawyers may exclude worthy applicants. And while we provide students from around the world visas to get engineering and computer science degrees at our top universities, our laws discourage them from using those skills to start a business or power a new industry right here in the United States. Instead of training entrepreneurs to create jobs on our shores, we train our competition.

In sum, the system is broken. And everybody knows it. Unfortunately, reform has been held hostage to political posturing and special-interest wrangling -– and to the pervasive sentiment in Washington that tackling such a thorny and emotional issue is inherently bad politics.

Just a few years ago, when I was a senator, we forged a bipartisan coalition in favor of comprehensive reform. Under the leadership of Senator Kennedy, who had been a longtime champion of immigration reform, and Senator John McCain, we worked across the aisle to help pass a bipartisan bill through the Senate. But that effort eventually came apart. And now, under the pressures of partisanship and election-year politics, many of the 11 Republican senators who voted for reform in the past have now backed away from their previous support.

Into this breach, states like Arizona have decided to take matters into their own hands. Given the levels of frustration across the country, this is understandable. But it is also ill conceived. And it’s not just that the law Arizona passed is divisive -– although it has fanned the flames of an already contentious debate. Laws like Arizona’s put huge pressures on local law enforcement to enforce rules that ultimately are unenforceable. It puts pressure on already hard-strapped state and local budgets. It makes it difficult for people here illegally to report crimes -– driving a wedge between communities and law enforcement, making our streets more dangerous and the jobs of our police officers more difficult.

And you don’t have to take my word for this. You can speak to the police chiefs and others from law enforcement here today who will tell you the same thing.

These laws also have the potential of violating the rights of innocent American citizens and legal residents, making them subject to possible stops or questioning because of what they look like or how they sound. And as other states and localities go their own ways, we face the prospect that different rules for immigration will apply in different parts of the country -– a patchwork of local immigration rules where we all know one clear national standard is needed.

Our task then is to make our national laws actually work -– to shape a system that reflects our values as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. And that means being honest about the problem, and getting past the false debates that divide the country rather than bring it together.

For example, there are those in the immigrants’ rights community who have argued passionately that we should simply provide those who are [here] illegally with legal status, or at least ignore the laws on the books and put an end to deportation until we have better laws. And often this argument is framed in moral terms: Why should we punish people who are just trying to earn a living?

I recognize the sense of compassion that drives this argument, but I believe such an indiscriminate approach would be both unwise and unfair. It would suggest to those thinking about coming here illegally that there will be no repercussions for such a decision. And this could lead to a surge in more illegal immigration. And it would also ignore the millions of people around the world who are waiting in line to come here legally.

Ultimately, our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable.

Now, if the majority of Americans are skeptical of a blanket amnesty, they are also skeptical that it is possible to round up and deport 11 million people. They know it’s not possible. Such an effort would be logistically impossible and wildly expensive. Moreover, it would tear at the very fabric of this nation -– because immigrants who are here illegally are now intricately woven into that fabric. Many have children who are American citizens. Some are children themselves, brought here by their parents at a very young age, growing up as American kids, only to discover their illegal status when they apply for college or a job. Migrant workers -– mostly here illegally -– have been the labor force of our farmers and agricultural producers for generations. So even if it was possible, a program of mass deportations would disrupt our economy and communities in ways that most Americans would find intolerable.

Now, once we get past the two poles of this debate, it becomes possible to shape a practical, common-sense approach that reflects our heritage and our values. Such an approach demands accountability from everybody -– from government, from businesses and from individuals.

Government has a threshold responsibility to secure our borders. That’s why I directed my Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano -- a former border governor -- to improve our enforcement policy without having to wait for a new law.

Today, we have more boots on the ground near the Southwest border than at any time in our history. Let me repeat that: We have more boots on the ground on the Southwest border than at any time in our history. We doubled the personnel assigned to Border Enforcement Security Task Forces. We tripled the number of intelligence analysts along the border. For the first time, we’ve begun screening 100 percent of southbound rail shipments. And as a result, we’re seizing more illegal guns, cash and drugs than in years past. Contrary to some of the reports that you see, crime along the border is down. And statistics collected by Customs and Border Protection reflect a significant reduction in the number of people trying to cross the border illegally.

So the bottom line is this: The southern border is more secure today than at any time in the past 20 years. That doesn’t mean we don’t have more work to do. We have to do that work, but it’s important that we acknowledge the facts. Even as we are committed to doing what’s necessary to secure our borders, even without passage of the new law, there are those who argue that we should not move forward with any other elements of reform until we have fully sealed our borders. But our borders are just too vast for us to be able to solve the problem only with fences and border patrols. It won’t work. Our borders will not be secure as long as our limited resources are devoted to not only stopping gangs and potential terrorists, but also the hundreds of thousands who attempt to cross each year simply to find work.

That’s why businesses must be held accountable if they break the law by deliberately hiring and exploiting undocumented workers. We’ve already begun to step up enforcement against the worst workplace offenders. And we’re implementing and improving a system to give employers a reliable way to verify that their employees are here legally. But we need to do more. We cannot continue just to look the other way as a significant portion of our economy operates outside the law. It breeds abuse and bad practices. It punishes employers who act responsibly and undercuts American workers. And ultimately, if the demand for undocumented workers falls, the incentive for people to come here illegally will decline as well.

Finally, we have to demand responsibility from people living here illegally. They must be required to admit that they broke the law. They should be required to register, pay their taxes, pay a fine, and learn English. They must get right with the law before they can get in line and earn their citizenship -- not just because it is fair, not just because it will make clear to those who might wish to come to America they must do so inside the bounds of the law, but because this is how we demonstrate that being -- what being an American means. Being a citizen of this country comes not only with rights but also with certain fundamental responsibilities. We can create a pathway for legal status that is fair, reflective of our values, and works.

Now, stopping illegal immigration must go hand in hand with reforming our creaky system of legal immigration. We’ve begun to do that, by eliminating a backlog in background checks that at one point stretched back almost a year. That’s just for the background check. People can now track the status of their immigration applications by email or text message. We’ve improved accountability and safety in the detention system. And we’ve stemmed the increases in naturalization fees. But here, too, we need to do more. We should make it easier for the best and the brightest to come to start businesses and develop products and create jobs.

Our laws should respect families following the rules -– instead of splitting them apart. We need to provide farms a legal way to hire the workers they rely on, and a path for those workers to earn legal status. And we should stop punishing innocent young people for the actions of their parents by denying them the chance to stay here and earn an education and contribute their talents to build the country where they’ve grown up. The DREAM Act would do this, and that’s why I supported this bill as a state legislator and as a U.S. senator -- and why I continue to support it as president.

So these are the essential elements of comprehensive immigration reform. The question now is whether we will have the courage and the political will to pass a bill through Congress, to finally get it done. Last summer, I held a meeting with leaders of both parties, including many of the Republicans who had supported reform in the past -- and some who hadn’t. I was pleased to see a bipartisan framework proposed in the Senate by Senators Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer, with whom I met to discuss this issue. I’ve spoken with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to plot the way forward and meet -- and then I met with them earlier this week.

And I’ve spoken with representatives from a growing coalition of labor unions and business groups, immigrant advocates and community organizations, law enforcement, local government -– all who recognize the importance of immigration reform. And I’ve met with leaders from America’s religious communities, like Pastor Hybels -- people of different faiths and beliefs, some liberal, some conservative, who nonetheless share a sense of urgency; who understand that fixing our broken immigration system is not only a political issue, not just an economic issue, but a moral imperative as well.

So we’ve made progress. I’m ready to move forward; the majority of Democrats are ready to move forward; and I believe the majority of Americans are ready to move forward. But the fact is, without bipartisan support, as we had just a few years ago, we cannot solve this problem. Reform that brings accountability to our immigration system cannot pass without Republican votes. That is the political and mathematical reality. The only way to reduce the risk that this effort will again falter because of politics is if members of both parties are willing to take responsibility for solving this problem once and for all.

And, yes, this is an emotional question, and one that lends itself to demagoguery. Time and again, this issue has been used to divide and inflame -– and to demonize people. And so the understandable, the natural impulse among those who run for office is to turn away and defer this question for another day, or another year, or another administration. Despite the courageous leadership in the past shown by many Democrats and some Republicans -- including, by the way, my predecessor, President Bush -– this has been the custom. That is why a broken and dangerous system that offends our most basic American values is still in place.

But I believe we can put politics aside and finally have an immigration system that’s accountable. I believe we can appeal not to people’s fears but to their hopes, to their highest ideals, because that’s who we are as Americans. It’s been inscribed on our nation’s seal since we declared our independence. “E pluribus unum.” Out of many, one. That is what has drawn the persecuted and impoverished to our shores. That’s what led the innovators and risk-takers from around the world to take a chance here in the land of opportunity. That’s what has led people to endure untold hardships to reach this place called America.

One of the largest waves of immigration in our history took place little more than a century ago. At the time, Jewish people were being driven out of Eastern Europe, often escaping to the sounds of gunfire and the light from their villages burning to the ground. The journey could take months, as families crossed rivers in the dead of night, traveled miles by foot, endured a rough and dangerous passage over the North Atlantic. Once here, many made their homes in a teeming and bustling Lower Manhattan.

It was at this time that a young woman named Emma Lazarus, whose own family fled persecution from Europe generations earlier, took up the cause of these new immigrants. Although she was a poet, she spent much of her time advocating for better health care and housing for the newcomers. And inspired by what she saw and heard, she wrote down her thoughts and donated a piece of work to help pay for the construction of a new statue -- the Statue of Liberty -- which actually was funded in part by small donations from people across America.

Years before the statue was built -- years before it would be seen by throngs of immigrants craning their necks skyward at the end of long and brutal voyage, years before it would come to symbolize everything that we cherish -- she imagined what it could mean. She imagined the sight of a giant statue at the entry point of a great nation -– but unlike the great monuments of the past, this would not signal an empire. Instead, it would signal one’s arrival to a place of opportunity and refuge and freedom.

“Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand,” she wrote,

A mighty woman with a torch…
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome…
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!”…
“Give me your tired, and your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to be free…
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Let us remember these words. For it falls on each generation to ensure that that lamp -– that beacon -– continues to shine as a source of hope around the world, and a source of our prosperity here at home.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America. Thank you. (Applause.)

END
11:47 A.M. EDT

Timeline of key events in Mexico since 2006

2010-06-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

History Monitor

What follows is a list of key political and economic events that have taken place in Mexico since I first began my work in the country in 1996. Thanks to BBC News, historian Lorenzo Meyer and Wikipedia.

1996 - The insurgency in the south escalates as the leftist Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) attacks government troops.

1997 - The PRI suffers heavy losses in elections and loses its overall majority in the lower house of parliament for the first time since 1929.

1997 December - 45 Indians killed by paramilitary gunmen in a Chiapas village. The incident causes an international outcry, President Zedillo starts an investigation.

1998 January - Governor of Chiapas resigns. Peace talks with the rebels are reactivated, but break down at the end of the year.
Fox election victory

2000 July - Vicente Fox of the opposition Alliance for Change wins presidential elections, the first opposition candidate ever to do so. Parliamentary elections see the Alliance for Change emerge as the strongest party, beating the PRI by just over 1%.

2000 December - Vicente Fox is sworn in as president.

2001 March - Zapatista guerrillas, led by Subcomandante Marcos, stage their 'Zapatour', a march from Chiapas to Mexico City to highlight their demands.

2001 April - Parliament passes a bill increasing the rights of indigenous people. A few days later, Subcomandante Marcos rejects the bill, saying it leaves the Indian population worse off than before. Marcos says the uprising in Chiapas will continue.

2001 November - President Fox appoints a prosecutor to investigate the disappearance of left-wing activists during the 1970s and 1980s.

2002 March - Roberto Madrazo wins the contest to lead the PRI, which governed for 71 years until 2000.
Past uncovered

2002 June - Millions of secret security files are released, shedding light on the torture and killing by security forces of hundreds of political activists in the 1960s and 1970s. President Fox says his government is not afraid to pursue prosecutions.

2002 July - Former President Luis Echeverria is questioned about massacres of student protesters in 1968, when he was interior minister, and in 1971 when he was president.

2002 September - Three army officers are charged with first-degree murder over the killings of 134 leftists in the 1970s.

2004 July - Investigator deems 1971 shooting of student protesters by government forces to have been genocide; judge refuses to order arrest of former President Luis Echeverria on charges that he ordered attack.

2005 January - Six prison officers are murdered and top-security jails are put on high alert amid escalating tension between the authorities and drug gangs.

2005 April - Political furore as Mexico City mayor and presidential favourite Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is stripped of his immunity from prosecution by Congress in a land dispute. The government eventually abandons the prosecution.

2006 February - A federal post of special prosecutor is created to tackle violent crime against women. Mexico had been criticised by the UN and rights groups over the unsolved murders of more than 300 women over 12 years in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. 65 miners are killed in an explosion at a coal mine in Coahuila state. President Fox orders an investigation.

2006 July - Conservative candidate Felipe Calderon is declared the winner of presidential elections with a razor-thin majority over his leftist rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who challenges the result with mass street protests. The Federal Electoral Tribunal confirms Mr Calderon's win in September. Mr Lopez Obrador challenged the outcome of the 2006 presidential election.

2006 October - US President George W Bush signs legislation to build 1,125km (700 miles) of fencing along the US-Mexico border. Mexico condemns plans for the barrier, which is intended to curb illegal immigration.
War on drugs

2006 December - A new federal police force is created to tackle drugs cartels; thousands of troops are deployed in the western state of Michoacan as part of a major anti-drug trafficking drive.

2007 February - New law obliging authorities to take tougher action against domestic violence comes into effect.

2007 July - A financial website says that Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim has overtaken Microsoft founder Bill Gates to become the world's richest person. Genocide trial against former president Luis Echeverria is suspended.

2007 October - Heavy rains flood nearly the entire southern state of Tabasco. Some 500,000 are made homeless in one of the country's worst natural disasters.

2008 Drug-related killings soar. Murders linked to organised crime leap to almost 1,400 in first five months of year.

2008 May - Attorney-general Eduardo Medina Mora says more than 4,000 people have been killed in 18 months since President Calderon took office and declared war on drugs cartels. About 450 of the dead are police, soldiers or prosecutors, and many of the killings have been concentrated along the US border.

2008 August - Hundreds of thousands join marches throughout Mexico to protest against continuing wave of drugs-related violence.
Energy reforms

2008 October - Faced with drop in Mexican oil production, government passes series of energy reforms. Package includes controversial plans to allow private investment in state oil giant Pemex.

2008 December - US justice department report says Mexican drug traffickers pose biggest organised crime threat to US.

2009 January - Government unveils package of emergency measures worth nearly $150m (£100m) to protect economy from effects of US economic downturn.

2009 February - Reports say about 1,000 people died in a further upsurge in drug-related violence in the first six weeks of 2009.

2009 March - Army troops enter Ciudad Juarez, on the border with the US, as open warfare erupts between rival drug gangs.

2009 April - Authorities close schools and public buildings after dozens are confirmed to have been killed by the virulent new swine flu virus.

2009 July - Opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) makes large gains in mid-term congressional elections, winning 48% of seats in the Chamber of Deputies.

2009 October - Murder rate in Ciudad Juarez on Mexico-US border reaches all-time high amid battles between rival drug cartels.

2009 December - One of Mexico's most-wanted drug lords, Arturo Beltran Leyva, is killed in a shoot-out with state security forces. The authorities put the number of drug-related killings for 2009 at around 6,500, the worst year of bloodshed since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels in late 2006.

2010 March - President Calderon calls on United States to share responsibility in battle against drug trafficking, after murder of three people connected to US consulate in border city of Ciudad Juarez.

2010 June - The leading candidate to become Governor of Tamaulipas state is murdered by unknown gunmen. President Felipe Calderon blames organized crime.

A look back to the violent clashes in Oaxaca

2010-05-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

History Monitor

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 03, 2006

Violent Clashes in Oaxaca.

Franc Contreras, the former Mexico correspondent for The World (Public Radio International) and a frequent contributor to the BBC and Al Jazeera English television was in Oaxaca City in 2006 and witness the clashes that took place at the Univesidad Autonoma Benito Juarez in Oaxaca City. Franc was on Imagen News on Thursday evening October 2, describing what he saw and heard. It was very violent. To listen go to www.imagen.com.mx/news APPO celebrated its "triumph" over the Federal Preventive Police and called on the population to reinstall the barricades around the city.

The APPO called for a "Mega Marcha" a city wide march on Sunday to show the "Federal Government that the people of Oaxaca will resist the PFP." After listening to Franc Contreras narration of the events that took place on Thursday, it has become quite clear to me that the City has been taken over by different groups (APPO, PRI, and Teacher’s Union..) which can be very violent, and that clearly want this conflict to go on beyond December 1st. I understand those who protest against the PFP, and support the APPO and their cause.

However, there has to be a point in which the federal government has to step-in to protect the rest of the population. Should the APPO supporters continue to take refuge at the University? Should APPO continue to illegally hold-on and broadcast from the University’s radio station? Should the Federal Government allow APPO to return and take over downtown Oaxaca City?

Following is description of what happened on Thursday in Oaxaca, sent by Franc Contreras.

"Today I witnessed violent street battles between federal police and students at the local university. The police came in an apparent attempt to remove the protestors from the university, where the protestors control the local radio station, Radio Universidad. The police used water canons and tear gas.

The protestors threw big rocks and molotov cocktails. I saw several people seriously injured, at least one of them a photo journalist for the Mexican daily El Universal. A home-made bomb went off near us. It was filled with large metal nails. The photog mentioned above stood right near me when a cluster of nails gorged deep into his right side. THe police took him away in a helicopter.

It was the most intense violence here since Sunday, when the federal police were sent to break-up the 5-month-long demostrations aimed at removing Governor Ulises Ruiz from office.

All this lastest for hours. Finally, the police were forced to retreat. AT this moment, thousands of people are in the streets near the university celebrating their victory over the police. Many in that crowd support the APPO, Asemblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca."

Franc Contreras

Mexicans recall 1979 Ixtoc oil spill in Gulf of Campeche

2010-05-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

Environmental Monitor

The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is forcing government officials experts to seek the most effective way of capping the flow coming from the below the waves. Historians are recalling a similar spill in 1979 near the coast of Campeche, Mexico.
Ixtoc I was an exploratory oil well in the Bay of Campeche of the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 km (62 mi) northwest of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche in waters 50 m (160 ft) deep. On 3 June 1979, the well suffered a blowout and is recognized as the second largest oil spill and the largest accidental spill in history. Approximately an average of ten thousand to thirty thousand barrels per day were discharged into the Gulf until it was finally capped on 23 March 1980, nearly 10 months later.

The following is a propaganda video by the Mexican government designed to counterspin the negative publicity coming from the historic Ixtoc oil spill.

Mexico to seek tighter ties with Canada

2010-05-25T11:16:00.000-07:00

Hemispheric Relations Monitor

BY FRANC CONTRERAS

MEXICO CITY - Starting tomorrow, Mexico’s president Felipe Calderon will be on the road again. Following diplomatic trips to Europe then the United States, on Wednesday he’ll be in Ottawa where he’ll meet with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Calderon’s aim is to shore up Mexico’s relationship with Canada, which has been waning for nearly a year after the Canadian government’s decision to require visas for Mexicans traveling to Canada. Still, Calderon is hoping to improve bilateral relations and remind Canada that Mexico is more than just a problematic neighbor to the south.

Canada’s decision last year to require visas for Mexican travelers was taken by many here as a slap on the face. Before the restriction, Mexicans were allowed to travel freely to places like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

Now Mexicans must go through a complicated process to prove that they will not seek employment and have enough funds to pay their expenses during their stay. It reminds many here of the tough restrictions the Unites States uses for Mexicans seeking visas.

Though a year has gone by, Mexican student Sofia Viguri is still feeling put off by Canada’s visa policy. She says she simply wants to study environmental protection or sustainable development in Canada. But the difficult process of getting her Canadian papers in order now has her thinking about getting her Masters degree in England.

SOFIA VIGURI / MEXICAN STUDENT, TEC de MONTERREY: "I can understand why they want to regulate or control it. But in another way, I don’t understand why it has to be such a bureaucratic process or why they have to make it so hard when it’s evident that you’re not planning to stay there illegally or something."

The Canadian government’s decision to impose visa restrictions on Mexicans angered many people here. They once considered Canada their most friendly neighbor to the north. Now Mexican president Felipe Calderon is hoping to revive Mexico’s relationship with Canada.

Calderon will likely remind Canadians that Mexico remains one of their most important trading partners, despite a fall in trade between the two nations in 2009. Mexican exports to Canada dropped 10.2 percent last year to 1.8 billion dollars. Canadian exports to Mexico fell 16.6 percent to 446 million dollars.

During their two-day visit May 26 to 28, the Canadian and Mexican leaders are also expected to discuss issues of regional energy production and climate change.

One stumbling block could be Canada’s forthcoming debate on its refugee laws. The numbers of Mexicans seeking refugee status in Canada has risen dramatically, partly due to drug related violence in Mexico. While Canadian critics argue that Mexicans are really seeking better economic conditions up north, Mexican human rights activists insist the threat is real.

LUIS ARRIAGA / DIRECTOR MIGUEL AGUSTIN PRO HUMAN RIGHTS CENTRE: "Police are committing a lot of human rights violations as well as the military forces against civilians. So I think that it is very important that the Canadian parliament consider those kinds of issues because Mexico is not a safe country."

All these issues are still over shadowed by the political and economic needs of the regional behemoth, the United States. This analyst says Washington’s decision to continue fortifying its borders is hindering bilateral affairs between the other two NAFTA partners, Canada and Mexico.

ISABEL STUDER NOGUEZ / POLITICAL ANALYST: "We could complement each other. But now with these barriers, and especially having the United States in middle, makes it very difficult for the two countries -- unless you wanted to invest political capital in the bilateral relationship -- it would be very difficult for the two countries to realize this potential."

The powerful role that the US plays in North America is not expected to diminish any time soon. But Calderon insists there’s still room to bolster Mexico’s ties with Canada, and perhaps giving both nations a slight lift in hemispheric importance.

Mexicans prepare boycott against Arizona

2010-05-19T20:18:00.001-07:00

Immigration Reform Monitor

A new law in Arizona targeting illegal immigrants has given police broad powers to stop anyone they suspect of being in the state illegally and detain them if they cannot prove their immigration status. The introduction of the law has angered activists in Mexico say the law is discriminatory. In response they are trying to organize a boycott of Arizona. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports from Mexico City.

Al Jazeera English television

Cleaning up Mexico City´s dirty air with more bikes

2010-05-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

Environmental Monitor

With more than three million cars and gridlocked traffic, Mexico City may not seem like the most bicycle-friendly place. But thanks to the city's mayor, a two wheeled revolution is under way. It is part of a larger campaign to ease traffic and clean up the city's notoriously polluted air. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports.

Wrongly jailed indigenous women gain freedom

2010-05-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

Social Justice Monitor

Mexico's supreme court has freed two indigenous women jailed since August 2006 after being accused holding federal police officers hostage. The two Nañu (Otomo) indigenous women were released after their convictions were overturned and authorities discovered they were arrested on false charges. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports on their case, which has called attention to a justice system criticised for jailing innocent indigenous people.

SWISS FIRM ACCUSED OF RELEASING HARMFUL TOXINS

2010-05-09T22:43:00.000-07:00

Environmental Safety Monitor

The victims include local children

APAXCO, MEXICO

I´m just back from an Al Jazeera reporting trip to the central Mexican town of Apaxco in Mexico State. Activists have called it the most contaminated place on planet earth. I looked down the a 30 meter ladder shaft down to water pumps where 11 campesinos died in March, 2009. A local lawyer told explained the government´s reasons for deciding that the men died for asphyxiation after falling into the water down below. A later state government report claims that 4 of the men were drunk when they plunged to their deaths.

Family members told us about loved ones they lost in this terrible incident of alleged neglect from a Swiss company called Ecoltec. If you look just at its website, you might be convinced that Ecoltec is definitely a green company.

http://www.ecoltec.com.mx/

Afterall, it purchases waste products from Mexico City and other urban areas and turns it into burnable fuel. But by making this so-called "alternative energy source," the company has frequently leaked a deadly solvent called Acrylate into the environment.

Once is ready it is taken to local concrete factories where it is burned as low-cost fuel. It is far cheaper than natural gas, but also more deadly where it is burned. That´s because burning old tires, clothing, plastics and other waste products releases cancer causing dioxins and heavy metals like mercury into the environment. Those deadly toxins make their way through the food chain and into human bodies.

Lukemia levels and other forms of cancer are high in the area, and the infant mortality rate is one of the highest in Mexico. A new study by an UNAM medical researcher indicates that many children in the area, located in a highly contaminated industrial corridor north of Mexico City, are suffering from memory loss and attention deficit disorder because of the high-levels of industrial contaminants in the air, water, food, plants and homes in the area.

Ecoltec denies any wrongdoing. The government environmental prosecutor has not yet give us their opinion on the case. Hopefully the story will be released later this week on the international newscasts of Al Jazeera English television.

Mexican copper miners in Cananea fight for job survival

2010-04-28T11:11:00.000-07:00

Labor Rights Monitor

Copper miners in the Mexican city of Cananea, have been on strike for nearly 3 years over unsafe working conditions. They´ve been occupying a part of the country's largest copper mine, which is owned by the company Grupo Mexico. Grupo Mexico argued that the strikers damaged and stole company property, costing the firm more than $1.5 billion. Mexico´s Supreme Court has upheld a lower court´s ruling that the strike is illegal, that the miners could be fired and evicted from the mine and that Grupo Mexico can install its own, more company friendly union. Some fear the court ruling could set a precedent and lead to the elimination of more and more labor unions in Mexico. Al Jazeera´s Franc Contreras reports from Cananea.

Humanitarian caravan attacked in Oaxaca state

2010-04-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Paramilitaries Attack Caravan Headed to Oaxacan Autonomous Town, 15 Wounded, 1 Disappeared

Phone Calls to Governor Urged So That He Orders State Police to Rescue the Wounded

by Kristin Bricker

A solidarity caravan headed to the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, was attacked on Tuesday afternoon. The caravan came under fire as it passed through La Sabana, a town controlled by UBISORT, a paramilitary organization that is allied with the ruling Institutional Revolution Party (PRI).

One young woman managed to make it to a hospital where she is being treated for a gunshot wound in the back.

There are reports of approximately 15 wounded people. Alberta Cariño, the director of the community radio organization CACTUS, is reported as disappeared.

The Puebla-based human rights organization Nodo de Derechos Humanos reports that the Oaxacan State Police who are in the area refuse to rescue the wounded "because they don't have orders to do so from the State." Nodo reports that the UBISORT paramilitaries have the area sealed off. Another source confirms that no one can leave or enter the area.

The caravan was headed to San Juan Copala to bring food, water,
clothing, and other basic necessities to the town, which has been the
victim of an extended paramilitary blockade. The UBISORT blockade has
made it nearly impossible to bring supplies into the town.

San Juan Copala declared itself autonomous following the 2006 uprising
in Oaxaca, and the autonomous government declared itself adherent to
the Zapatistas' Other Campaign. The autonomous municipality has been
the target of paramilitary violence ever since. Countless San Juan
Copala residents have fallen victim to paramilitary violence. The
most prominent case was the execution of two young Triqui radio
journalists. This past November, paramilitaries opened fire on San
Juan Copala's town hall during a caravan that was traveling to San
Juan Copala from San Salvador Atenco. UBISORT had put up a highway
blockade to stop the caravan, which was comprised of People's Front in
Defense of the Land (FPDT) members. While the FPDT was trapped
outside the town, paramilitaries attacked the town hall. They shot
four children, killing one of them.

The official action alert from the Nodo de Derechos Humanos is
reposted below. They request that people call Gov. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz
to demand that he orders the State Police to rescue the wounded.
Here's a quick line in Spanish: "Que manden la policia estatal a
rescatar los heridos en San Juan Copala." It means, "They need to send
the state police to rescue the wounded in San Juan Copala."

****

URGENT: The solidarity caravan that was en route to the Autonomous
Municipality San Juan Copala in the Triqui region, which was made up
of international observers, members of CACTUS, VOCAL, Section 22 of
the teachers union, the the APPO, was attacked with firearms in the La
Sabana community, which is controled by the organization Unidad de
Bienestar Social de la Region Triqui (UBISORT). This organization is
impeding the rescue of the wounded. Reports indicate that there are at
least 15 wounded, it is unknown if there are any deaths. It is
reported that Alberta Cariño, director of CACTUS, is disappeared. We
fear that this action constitutes a provocation that could be used to
justify the militarization of the Triqui region.

Requested Action

Call the Government of Oaxaca and demand that the necessary conditions
be established so that the State Police and rescue teams can rescue
them and provide them with medical attention.

Governor of Oaxaca

Ulises Ruiz Ortiz

Tel. +52 951 5015000 ext. 13005

Fax. +52 951 5015000 ext. 13018

The action alert can be found in Spanish here.
Digg this
Add to del.icio.us
Stumble It!
Posted by Kristin Bricker at 7:45 PM
Labels: APPO, Oaxaca, paramilitaries, the Other Campaign
1 comments:
Anonymous said...
http://www.proceso.com.mx/rv/modHome/detalleExclusiva/78839

This link of the magazine 'proceso' indicates that there were five
dead, including Alberta Carino.

April 28, 2010 8:00 AM

Vintage video of Emiliano Zapata

2010-04-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

Mexican Revolution Monitor

Emiliano Zapata in an interview with journalists. Morelos 1914 - 1919. No audio available.

Author tells life´s tales in violence-ridden Culiacán

2010-03-24T17:37:00.000-07:00

Drug War Monitor

Under orders from Mexican president Felipe Calderón more than 45,000 soldiers and federal police are still deployed to areas wracked by drug violence. Calderon has promised to dismantle the country's drug cartels and bring an end to the violence. Since he took office, more than 18,000 people have been killed, many of the dead include drug hitmen and government security officials. Heavily armed drug gangs have assassinated top police chiefs and they are suspected for the recent Juarez murders of US diplomatic workers. Recent intelligence reports have shown that the drug traffickers are fighting back. In some cases they are joining forces to create a new 'mega-cartels' and the Mexican people are caught in the middle. Elmer Mendoza is an Author who lives in Culiacan, one of Mexico's most violent cities, this is his story in his own words.

Produced by: Franc Contreras, Lara Rodriguez and Gaetan Mariage for Al Jazeera English Television.

The revolutionary writings of Ricardo Flores Magón

2010-03-13T12:01:00.001-08:00

Mexican Revolution Monitor

Big news this year, as Mexico marks the 100th year of its social revolution. You can now read back editions of the historic newspaper Regeneración, published by the legendary Flores Magón brothers, Ricardo and Enrique. They were anarchist journalists who helped move public opinion away from the dictator Porfirio Diaz. Have a look, especially at the July, 1906 editions that talk about the 1906 copper miners´ strike in Cananea, Sonora. That labor strike is said to have helped spark the Mexican Revolution. Enjoy some of the best historic accounts of that key event while digging through the Flores Magón archives.

http://www.archivomagon.net/

Border city of Reynosa living under state of siege

2010-03-11T08:55:00.000-08:00

Drug War Monitor

The border city of Reynosa is Mexico's new front on the war on drugs. A growing turf battle between Gulf cartel and their former armed allies, the Zetas, has terrorised locals and the situation has deteriorated to the extent that residents are afraid to go outside, even during the day. Journalists are also fearing for their lives after some reporters were targeted by gangs. The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists is now calling on the Mexican government to investigate a series of kidnappings of reporters covering the drug war in the area. Franc Contreras reports.

Two drug cartels battle over Texas shipping routes

2010-03-09T17:38:00.000-08:00

Drug War Monitor

The Gulf Cartel Battles its Former Allies

long-simmering conflict between drug cartels exploded into violence in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas bordering Texas last week. Shoot-outs, explosions, kidnappings and reports of large convoys with armed men freely roaming streets rattled a broad swath of the state, especially in the area stretching from Reynosa south to Matamoros known as the “Little Border.”

By Friday, February 26, more than 16 people were dead and 11 injured, according to Mexican and US officials. However, based on residents’ accounts of scores of victims, it’s likely the official figures are low. Amid an atmosphere of local media blackout, isolation and fear, false stories spread about high officials kidnapped and killed.

On Wednesday, February 24, the US Consulate in Matamoros issued a travel advisory for US citizens in and around Reynosa. Further, the US government announced the temporary closure of the Reynosa Consular Agency until additional notice. To the south, Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia cautioned US residents who did not have urgent business about crossing into neighboring Matamoros. “It’s best not to go,” Garcia said.

Last week’s violence hampered commerce, border crossings, school attendance and other routine activities in Reynosa, Valle Hermosa, Miguel Aleman, San Fernando, Matamoros, and other cities. By week’s end, the state education department acknowledged that school attendance had dropped by 60 percent in several cities.

Panic spread to the state capital of Ciudad Victoria, where schools were emptied by worried parents and businesses shuttered by frightened owners fearing armed encounters. Jaime Rodriguez Inurrigarro, Tamaulipas state attorney general, later denied that gun fights had broken out in the capital city.

Tamaulipas Governor Eugenio Hernandez Flores appealed on the population to ignore Internet-spread rumors he insisted had caused “a lot of damage in Tamaulipas” in recent days.

A primary gubernatorial candidate for the National Action Party, Mexican Senator Jose Julian Sacramento, had a different take on the situation.

“Tamaulipas is at war, and if there is no coordination between state and local governments, then the federal government will have a hard time waging a frontal attack on organized crime,” Sacramento said.

Although clashes were reported between Mexican soldiers and suspected cartel gunmen, a good deal of the violence was linked to a conflict between the long-dominant Gulf Cartel and its former armed wing, Los Zetas.

Similar in some ways to an internal corporate power struggle —in this instance over the control of a vast enterprise known as “The Company”—tensions between the two groups have been escalating for more than one year. Besides illegal drug dealing, human trafficking, product piracy, oil diversions and other lucrative activities are up for grabs.

Currently, US authorities are seeking the arrests and extraditions of individuals associated with the leadership of “The Company.”

In the lead-up to this week’s widespread fighting, preliminary skirmishes in which civilian vehicles were commandeered to use as street barricades, broke out February 8 and 19 in Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, respectively.

The violence could mean a new round of bad times for Nuevo Laredo, which has been relatively quiet in the past few years since an underworld pact largely halted a war that earlier devastated the city. In an unusual move, Nuevo Laredo Mayor Ramon Garza Barrios asked Roman Catholic Bishop Gustavo Rodriguez Vega for assistance in calming the nerves of the local population.

Last week’s violent showdown was practically announced, when the Gulf Cartel, La Familia and other smaller cartels unveiled narco-banners in several Mexican states earlier this month announcing an alliance against Los Zetas. Presumably auth-ored by Los Zetas, narco-banners posted in Tamapaulipas and four other states this week sarcastically challenged the purported alliance.

Other actors may be part of the latest fray, too. In other presumed Zetas’ banners posted in 26 cities across Mexico last February 11, the authors blamed alleged Sinaloa Cartel leader “Chapo” Guzman for recent atrocities in Ciudad Juarez and Torreon. The messages also accused Mexico’s federal government of protecting Guzman.

As last week’s fighting unfolded, reports surfaced that members of Michoacan’s La Familia drug cartel were sent to Tamaulipas to reinforce their allies in the Gulf Cartel.

In Tamaulipas, the consequences of years of press intimidation by organized crime and government officials, the murders of reporters, official inaction in prosecuting attacks against journalists and media self-censorship were evident this week as local residents had little solid information from local news sources about what was happening on the street. Conversely, Mexican national and US border news outlets provided better information about the local situation.

But the big news development came from civil society. For better or worse, Tamaul-ipas residents turned to social networks like Twitter and Facebook. A writer on Twitter complained the circumstances in his hometown were almost like Somalia.

The websites of national media organizations quickly became forums for writers claiming to be from Tama-ulipas. Many messages harshly criticized government officials for downplaying conditions on the ground, and some even provided details of the emerging situation.

Posting on the La Jornada website, Manuel Garcia credited social media for keeping the population of Reynosa informed.

Garcia wrote: “Hasn’t (Reynosa’s mayor) ever seen the vehicles that drive in broad daylight with CDG (Gulf Cartel) or XX initials? The checkpoints that these men install at the entrances and exits to the city? The pickups with armed men, sometimes escorted by the municipal police?”

On El Universal’s site, a woman identifying herself as Martha from Tamaulipas wrote that the shooting had spread to the coastal area of Tampico-Madero.

The latest outbreak of violence coincided with the February 25 sentencing of former Gulf Cartel kingpin Osiel Cardenas Guillen on drug trafficking charges in a Texas federal court. Observers were surprised by Cardenas’s 25-year sentence, which was considered relatively light in view of the charges against the defendant. Important Texas media outlets blasted the decision of Judge Hilda Tagle to bar the public from the proceedings and permanently seal the trial records.

Like violence-torn Chihuahua to the north, the narco-war in Tamaulipas occurs in a state election year for governor and other officials. Another important parallel could be drawn between the situation in Tamaulipas and the one in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. In both instances, major incidents of “spill-over” violence have yet to materialize on the US side. Several Texas law enforcement agencies reportedly mobilized their forces this week to monitor any potential threats to US territory.

In response to the Tamaulipas trouble, the Mexican navy dispatched marines to hot spots like Reynosa. As in the states of Guerrero and Morelos far to the south, the marines are increasingly used to carry out tasks formerly the domain of the army.

The growing tend of employing navy personnel as the favored front-line fighters in the drug war was reinforced this week with the appointment of Captain Hector Garcia Aguirre as the new head of the federal attorney general’s office (PGR) in Ciudad Juarez. A lawyer by training and a veteran of previous civilian law enforcement functions, Garcia was sworn in at a February 26 ceremony attended by former senator and current PGR official Francisco Javier Molina Ruiz in Ciudad Juarez.

Coming at a time when the Calderon administration has pledged to invest major resources in restoring order to Ciudad Juarez, the Tamaulipas violence represents a serious challenge to the Mexican state. Indeed, given the potential of the fighting to rapidly expand and engulf other states, the Calderon administration once again faces the prospect of managing simultaneous damage control from a shifting, multi-front war.

Source: Frontera NorteSur

Violence against soccer star unleashes manhunt

2010-01-27T05:57:00.000-08:00

Crime Monitor

Following an attack against football striker Salvador Cabañas, police investigators in Mexico City are now relentlessly tracking down the possible suspects.

The football star survived a gunshot wound to the head on on Monday. Cabañas plays for the popular Club Americas, which is owned by the powerful Televisa network. He remains in grave condition and is now fighting for his life in an intensive care united in the capital.

Meantime, the news media are continuously broadcasting photos of the two suspected gunmen, who officials believe shot Cabañas this week in a Mexico City bar.

In a country where few crimes are ever solved, every advance in the case, no matter how small, is being reported to the public. Crime analysts say Mexico City´s leftist mayor, Marcel Ebrard, can use this high-profile case to bolster his bid for the Presidency in 2012.

Al Jazeera reports on Mexican professional wrestling

2009-12-28T07:25:00.000-08:00

Lucha Libre

It involves flying kicks, headlocks and often, crushing blows. Yet professional wrestling is a career choice scores of young men in Mexico dream about. For some, it is a one-way ticket to fame and fortune. A school in the capital is teaching young would-be gladiators all the tricks and moves they need to succeed in the sport. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports from Mexico City.

Zapatista agrarian rebellion marks 100 years

2009-12-23T00:57:00.000-08:00

Plan de Ayala

Mexico Monitor presents a key document from the Mexican Revolution.

November, 1911

Mexican Marines kill a top drug trafficker

2009-12-18T16:51:00.000-08:00

Drug violence monitor

Mexico's Attorney-General is warning that there could be an upsurge in violence following the death of a leading drug lord. Arturo Beltran Leyva was killed in a shootout with Mexico security forces on Thursday. His death is the biggest strike so far in President Felipe Calderon's drug war. Franc Contreras reports from Cuernavaca, Mexico.

A new, independent media project in Mexico City

2009-12-14T12:03:00.000-08:00

Media Monitor

Here´s a note to anyone interested in independent media work. This month I am opening a professional audio production studio in Colonia Narvarte, Mexico City. Our studio is equipped with great digital recording equipment, and I have a group of very talented and experienced journalists and producers, who can work as trainers and media coaches. We are looking for interesting projects for the coming year.

Please send me a message with your proposals. Thanks and all the best in 2010!

Twitter: FrancMex
http://mexicomonitor.blogspot.com/

Drug cartels buy off officials with campaign cash

2009-12-03T13:25:00.000-08:00

Drug War Monitor

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Wednesday that cartels are seeking to control territory by sinking drug money into political campaigns and buying off officials before they are even elected.

Calderon suggested reforms are needed to make local officials more accountable, including allowing them to stand for re-election – giving them more reason to answer to constituents – and more closely supervising cash used in campaigns.

"The main and most practiced method used by criminals is to make contact with officials before they are elected, by financing their campaigns," Calderon said.

"Once an economic link between criminals and the candidate is established, it is very hard, practically impossible, to break it after they are elected, because it becomes a permanent link," he said.

Calderon said such corruption is aimed mainly at local officials, because drug and crime gangs now want to control specific territories for street-level drug sales and need the help of local authorities to do so.

In May, federal authorities arrested 10 mayors in the western state of Michoacan in an unprecedented sweep against politicians accused of protecting cartels, specifically the La Familia cartel. Eight mayors remain jailed on organized-crime charges.

Speaking at a conference aimed at keeping dirty money out of politics, Calderon said that while current electoral rules provide good oversight over campaign accounts at banks, more regulation is needed on spending by candidates in cash – the form that drug money usually enters the process.

Calderon has also said he will propose allowing local officials to run for re-election.

At present, most elected officials in Mexico cannot seek immediate re-election. Because local authorities serve a single term as short as two or three years, they often have little reason to worry about what their constituents think.

Speaking at the same conference, Vidar Helgesen, a Norwegian who is secretary general of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, said illicit funding is a major threat to democracy around the world.

He said such funds "are being used to influence electoral processes, penetrate political parties, corrupt local authorities and even capture entire state structures."

Helgesen said it is not just a problem for drug-producing nations. "Countries that represent the most important export markets for such substances, like the United States and European countries, are also increasingly being affected," he said.

Elsewhere in Mexico, university officials in Ciudad Juarez, a border city gripped by violence related to drugs and other crimes, announced plans for a protest march after a medical student was forced to kneel before being shot in the head by an attacker.

Officials at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez said 20-year-old Juan Antonio Chavez was killed at dawn Wednesday, but gave no motive for the attack. Spokesman Arturo Pedraza said Chavez was a student and a Red Cross paramedic.

Another student, 17-year-old Alfredo Franco, was killed by gunmen a few days ago, and Pedraza said the university was sponsoring a march Sunday to protest the violence against their students.

In Acapulco, in southern Guerrero state, police said they found the bound bodies of two men in different locations, but both were accompanied by a note saying: "This will happen to all the kidnappers."

The Pacific coast state of Guerrero has been a battleground in the drug-fueled violence that has cost almost 14,000 lives since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug cartels in late 2006.

Source: The Associated Press

Mexican farmers reeling from worst drought in decades

2009-11-22T21:47:00.000-08:00

Environmental Monitor

The El Nino weather pattern has dried up Mexico's rainy season this year, leaving nearly four million farmers reeling from the drought conditions. About 50,000 head of cattle have already died due to lack of water, and if the drought persists, as much as seven million hectares of corn and bean crops could be lost. From the rural community of Temascalito, Franc Contreras has more on Mexico's struggling farmers.

Canadian mining firm ignores Mexican court order

2009-11-16T14:03:00.000-08:00

Environmental Monitor

In Mexico a Canadian firm is flouting a federal court ruling to stop mining for gold. The company, New Gold, says locals support their work because it provides employment, but some residents in a nearby community are concerned about the effects the mining has on the town and the environment. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports from the town of Cerro San Pedro in Mexico.

Electric workers union continues protests

2009-11-16T09:05:00.000-08:00

Labor Rights Monitor

A growing number of trade unions, farmers organizations and students across Mexico are protesting a government decision to close down the Luz y Fuerza electric power company. More than 40,000 employees were fired in October when the government closed the regional electricity firm. Some critics claim it was an attempt by Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president, to limit the workers unions. But he says the company was inefficient. Franc Contreras reports from Mexico City.

Another reporter is murdered in Mexico

2009-11-04T10:13:00.001-08:00

Violence Against Journalists

Crime reporter Bladimir Antuna García was found murdered Monday night, according local news reports, after reportedly being abducted from a street in the Mexican city of Durango that morning. The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Mexican authorities to show their commitment to press freedom and the protection of Mexican journalists by immediately bringing all those responsible to justice.

Antuna, 39, a reporter for the daily El Tiempo de Durango, was on his way to work Monday morning when, according to witnesses cited by the local press, his car was boxed in by two other vehicles in Durango, 558 miles (899 kilometers) northeast of Mexico City. Armed men got out of a Jeep Cherokee, and dragged Antuna from his car into theirs before speeding away. The reporter was immediately reported missing.

Local authorities found the reporter’s body that evening not far from where he was abducted. Next to the body was a note stating: “This happened to me for giving information to soldiers and for writing too much,” according to national daily La Jornada. Local investigators told reporters that Antuna appeared to have been strangled, and there were no noticeable signs of bullet wounds.

“Bladimir Antuna García’s killing is yet another brutal reminder of the very precarious and dangerous situation in which Mexican reporters, especially those covering crime and corruption, work,” said Carlos Lauría, CPJ’s senior program coordinator for the Americas. “Mexican authorities must immediately investigate Antuna’s death, and bring all the perpetrators to justice in an effort to prove their commitment to press freedom and journalist safety.”

Victor Garza, editor of El Tiempo de Durango, told CPJ that in the week before his death Antuna had broken a story on corruption in the Durango City Police. Antuna had also investigated the murder of fellow El Tiempo de Durango reporter Carlos Ortega Samper, who was kidnapped on April 3 in a similar manner and then shot to death, though Antuna had not yet published a story, colleagues in Durango said. Ortega reported on local corruption. His murder remains unsolved, and CPJ continues to investigate whether Ortega’s death was linked to his work as a journalist.

Antuna’s colleagues said he had received at least three death threats in recent months. The most recent, they told CPJ, was a telephone threat from an unidentified individual who told the reporter that he would get no further warnings. Antuna did not say why he was being threatened. In April, armed men approached the reporter’s home at night but did not open fire, a colleague said. Antuna filed a complaint with local authorities for unspecified problems, the Spanish newswire EFE reported.

The local press freedom group Center for Journalism and Public Ethics said today that Antuna had told the organization last June that he had been in contact with another Durango journalist who was murdered in May, Eliseo Barrón Hernández. The center said Antuna told them he and Barrón had been exchanging information about police corruption and organized crime in the state.

In late October, the newly elected Mexican Chamber of Deputies decided not to renew the mandate of a special congressional committee on violence against the press, which had been appointed in 2006. CPJ called on Mexico’s Congress to show its full commitment to a free press by granting federal authorities jurisdiction over crimes against freedom of expression, a reform still pending in the legislature.

According to CPJ’s research, 39 journalists, including Antuna, have been killed since 1992. At least 17 were slain in direct reprisal for their work. Seven journalists have disappeared since 2005. Most covered organized crime or government corruption.

On May 25, Barrón Hernández, crime reporter for the dailies La Opinion and Milenio, was abducted from his home and shot to death. Federal prosecutors charged five men in June with Barrón’s murder. The head of the drug cartel Los Zetas allegedly ordered the reporter’s killing “in order to teach a lesson to other local journalists so that they wouldn’t meddle in the work of the delinquent group,” the Mexican federal prosecutor’s office said, according to local news reports. Four other reporters have been killed this year in Mexico. CPJ continues to investigate whether their deaths were linked to their work.

Source: Committee to Protect Journalists

A soldier every 3 feet on the US/Mexico border

2009-11-02T14:36:00.001-08:00

Immigration Anecdotes

Someone on Fox television once said what that we really need a soldier every three feet to guard the US/Mexico border. Allow us to put that idea into perspective.

The Mexican border is 1,969 miles long or 10,396,320 feet long.

Placing on soldier every 3 feet along the border would require 3,465,440 troops.

But one soldier cannot stand guard 24 a day and 7 days a week.

If we break this down into two shifts then we would need a total of 6,930,880 troops.

It all seems so absurd.

Thanks to the Brownsville Herald

Medical neglect in US Immigrant detention networks

2009-11-02T00:09:00.000-08:00

Immigration Monitor

In the United States of America, under the administration of Barrack Obama, most undocumented immigrants who are detained often have a legal claim to stay in the United States, but are routinely transferred to more remote jails before they can be helped.

Their defense lawyers now say that their recent effort have laid bare the fundamental unfairness of a system where immigrant detainees, unlike criminal defendants, can be held without legal representation and moved from state to state without notice.

Mistreatment and medical neglect have been widely documented in these detention networks, which churn roughly 400,000 detainees through 32,000 beds each year.

http://bit.ly/3FTriX

Source: The New York Times

US findings on jet-crash still not public information

2009-10-28T17:28:00.000-07:00

Mexico Monitor

By Franc Contreras

On November 4th, while the rest of the world recalls the historic US Presidential election that swept Barack Obama to power, Mexico will be remembering a tragedy. That´s the day a government Lear jet crashed in downtown Mexico City. Video of the flaming wreakage was seen by Al Jazeera viewers around the world.

Onboard that fallen aircraft was the country´s Interior Minister, Juan Camilo Mouriño. He had been at the center of numerous energy scandals. He was Felipe Calderon's right-hand man and climbed the political ladder on the current president's coattails. As Interior Minister he was the most powerful member of Calderon's cabinet.

That made Mouriño the President´s second in command and among his many responsibilities was overseeing Calderon´s self-declared war against organized crime and drug trafficking. Also on-board, a lesser know man named Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, who had been a top anti-drug official in Mexico for many years.

Just days after the crash, and before any investigation could be complete, the government quickly moved to call it an accident. Up to this day, the Calderon administration maintains it was an accident.

Mexico´s then Transportation Minister Luis Téllez said, “There was no indication of any sabotage whatsoever.”

Then US Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza said that American investigators had found no evidence of sabotage, prompting angry responses from Mexican legislators who said he had spoken out of turn.

Following the Calderon administration´s decision to call crash an accident, Mexican justice officials began collaborating with US government officials and sent the aircraft´s black box to the the US Federal Aviation Administration and the US National Transportation Safety Board and Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch to help in the investigation.

The findings of those reports, according to a brief review of documents, have still have not been made public, and most people in Mexico still doubt that the firey plane crash was an accident.

So far, there is no legal reason for allegations of wrong-doing.

But nearly one year after the deadly crash, the US Federal Aviation Administration and the US Transportation Safety Board have yet to release their findings.

I mentioned this to reporters for Mexico´s major mainstream dailies, Reforma and El Universal, and they were not aware of this.

Meantime, a growing number of Mexicans remain skeptical about the Calderon government´s decision to carry on with the so-called war on drugs. The anniversary of the plane crash will be an important marker of the Mexican public´s falling confidence.

Covering Mexico´s war on drugs for television news

2009-10-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

Drug Violence Monitor

9 decapitated bodies found in western Mexico

Al Jazeera English television wanted to cover this terrible story of drug violence in Mexico, but was unable to because no camera was available in the remote village where the violence took place. Here´s how the Associated Press reported the story on-line.

ACAPULCO, Mexico – Officers found the decapitated bodies of nine men in an abandoned pickup truck on a highway in the drug-plagued Mexican state of Guerrero, police said Friday.

The state Public Safety Department said the bodies and severed heads were inside 18 plastic bags left in the bed of the truck, which was found blocking a highway in the town of Tlapehuala late Thursday.

The department said in a statement that police also found a threatening message attributed to the drug cartel known as La Familia.

Guerrero is experiencing a wave of violent crime that authorities say is part of a battle between La Familia and other gangs for control of drug routes in the Pacific coast state.

Mexico has come under increasing pressure to make progress in improving human rights compliance by the armed forces under the Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion, three-year aid package from Washington.

The U.S. Congress must withhold some of the money unless the State Department reports that Mexico is not violating human rights in the drug war.

More than 13,800 people have died in unprecedented drug violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched a nationwide crackdown on cartels in late 2006.

Audience for Al Jazeera English TV grows exponentially

2009-10-16T12:10:00.001-07:00

Media Monitor

As Al Jazeera English television approaches its third anniversary in early November, the global reach for the network now tops 180 million households worldwide.

When AJE was launched in 2006 it had 80 million households. That's an increase of more than 100 million households in less than three years. This is a level which took BBC and CNN several more years to achieve.

This does not include the further audience breakthroughs AJE is expected to make in North America and elsewhere.

Within the next month, the network is expecting to receive confirmation that AJE will be distributed nationwide in Canada.

The network´s U.S. expansion is also continuing apace.

Apart from North America, AJE will have its first distribution in Australia next month, and we're hopeful that we will soon obtain a landing licence for India.

http://english.aljazeera.net/

http://www.iwantaje.net/

With recession, millions more Mexicans live in poverty

2009-09-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

Video Monitor

The Mexican government says the country is beginning to emerge from its deepest recession in 50 years, but officials say that the pace of economic recovery will be slow. As the recession drags on, in recent months, millions of Mexicans have fallen into poverty. Felipe Calderon, the country's president, says he is instituting policies to help the poorest in Mexican society but, as Franc Contreras reports, there are concerns that these measures will do little to bring relief to those most in need.

Ciudad Juarez woman denounces new Attorney General

2009-09-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

Justice Monitor

Vicky Caraveo is the founder of Mujeres por Juarez, and adviser to mothers who lost daughters in Juarez, Mexico, many who were brutally murdered or kidnapped and never seen again. She has been working for women’s rights for past 22 years. She has serious concerns about Auturo Chavez Chavez, Mexico´s newly named federal Attorney General.

I started Mujeres por Juarez in 1993. When Arturo Chavez Chavez came to be the Attorney General of Chihuahua state in 1996 we thought he was young, and that was good and we had a lot of hope that he could help our cause.

After 2 months of getting elected, because we put a lot of pressure on him, he met with us. After that, we never saw him again. He never took our calls or gave us an appointment. Meanwhile, women and young girls were getting kidnapped, raped, mutilated and killed.

When he left office in 1998 he gave us a condensed version of an information book containing all of the cases on women victims from 1993 to 1998. It only included the description of the girls, when and how they were killed. The cases barely had one piece of paper on them; barely any evidence.

The investigations were not properly carried out under his watch. He admitted it. He said, “I am sorry. I do agree that negligence did occur in the investigation when I was state prosecutor of Ciudad Juarez. But it wasn’t me; it was the people in charge of the investigations.”

He claims that when he left office 80% of the cases were solved, but we know that none of the cases were solved. There were no convictions. No responsible parties have been put in jail.

When the President of Mexico announced on the 1st of September that he was going to propose to the Senate the name of Arturo Chavez Chavez for Attorney General, I almost fainted in my chair.

I remembered having that one meeting with him…the way one of the mothers came in and dropped to her knees and asked, “Mr. Chaves, do you have any children?” He replied, “Yes.” So she pleaded with him, “Please, please, I want my Sadrario (her daughter) back. Please, please bring her back.” And he said nothing.

She continued to cry for another minute and then there was a silence and he said. “I will instruct the personnel to do the best they can to get your daughter back.” Sadrario was found mutilated, tortured, and killed 15 days later.

That is just one example. I have worked on these cases since 1993, and I have seen… too much.

Mexico is going through a bad stage still. And we are not confident that he is going to give us what we’re looking for. This year alone we’ve had 86 women killed. We have 22 girls between the ages of 16 and 17 that are missing. It is very, very sad. We are very concerned about what’s happening.

Franc Contreras comments on Journalism in Mexico.

2009-09-27T23:25:00.000-07:00

Media Monitor

Mexico remains among the most dangerous places in the world to practice journalism.

The government must put an end to the pattern of impunity in journalists’ murders by prosecuting all those responsible for Wednesday’s brutal killing of Norberto Miranda Madrid, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Miranda, a harsh critic of local crime, was shot to death in his office in Nuevo Casas Grandes in northern Chihuahua State.

Many of Mexico´s professional reporters still face a number of serious threats to their security, and far too many have fallen victim to violence particularly from organized crime. While violence appears to be increasingly directed at journalists here, most of them are not being killed every day here as some people on the Internet seem to believe.

A series of far more subtle social threats are forcing many more Mexican journalists to leave behind any hopes of making a decent living from gathering and disseminating the news.

Many hundreds of Mexican professional journalists working in print and electronic media are having to endure poverty-level salaries and direct censorship from their media employers. On a daily basis journalists all across the country are exposed to a wide array of many subtle social pressures that in the end produce an atmosphere that is leading to wide-spread self-censorship.

In effect, journalists in Mexico are systematically losing their rights to free speech.

Immigration prosecution apparently rise under Obama

2009-09-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

Immigration Policy Monitor

During the 8 months that Barrack Obama has been held the US presidency, nearly 70,000 immigration trials have been held in fiscal year 2009. If the current rate continues through December, there will have been a 14.1 percent increase in prosecutions compared to last year.

The data is based on a report done by Syracuse University, which found that 84 percent of legal actions were initiated by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and only 13 percent by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The number one charge reported was the inappropriate entry of a foreigner in time or place. Andrew Selee, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute, said the White House wants to show skeptical groups that it isn't weak on immigration and security issues.

Source: newamericamedia.org

The Arab world gets a Mexican cultural center

2009-09-26T11:18:00.001-07:00

Global Monitor

The leading entertainment and shopping mall in Dubai is set to open a "Mexican fun center" tailored for the Arab world. http://bit.ly/of86q

Source: tradearabia.com

2009-09-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

Global Monitor

The leading entertainment and shopping mall in Dubai is set to open a "Mexican fun center" tailored for the Arab world. http://bit.ly/of86q

Jailed indigeous woman freed. VIDEO INTERVIEW

2009-09-17T17:15:00.000-07:00

Video Monitor

Indigenous market vendor, Jacinta Francisco, spoke Thursday in Mexico after she was released from prison, where she spent three years for a crime she did not commit.

Mexico Taught the World About Pandemic Preparedness

2009-09-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

Influenza Monitor

What Mexico Taught the World About Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Community Mitigation Strategies

By Alexandra Minna Stern, PhD; Howard Markel, MD, PhD

On April 24, 2009, for the first time in Mexican history, President Felipe Calderón invoked the emergency health powers outlined in Mexico's Constitution and General Health Law.1-2

The catalyst for this dramatic action was the appearance of a novel strain of influenza A(H1N1) of unclear severity.

Harkening back to measures that originated in the late 14th century, when bubonic plague stalked much of Europe and Asia prompting ports and nation-states to order mass quarantines, Mexico instituted a broad-based and exacting menu of community mitigation strategies, or nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), including school closure, public gathering bans, isolation, quarantine, and social distancing.

Beginning on the morning of April 24, all schools were closed in Mexico City, the world's third largest metropolis (population +20 million), which encompasses the federal district and state of Mexico. By April 27, authorities cast the net wider and all Mexicans (were taking similar precautions).

Source: JAMA. 2009;302(11):1221-1222.

Author Affiliations: Center for the History of Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

US astronaut launches into the immigration debate

2009-09-14T15:11:00.001-07:00

Migration Monitor

Mexican-American astronaut calls for United States to legalize undocumented immigrants

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Spaceman Jose Hernandez said Monday the United States needs to legalize its undocumented immigrants — a rare, public stand for a U.S. astronaut on a political, hot-button issue.

Mexicans have hung on every word of NASA's first astronaut to tweet in Spanish — as Astro_Jose — since the son of migrants embarked on his two week, 5.7-million-mile mission to the international space station that ended Friday.

And they're still listening to him now that he is back on Earth.

During a telephone interview with Mexico's Televisa network, Hernandez pushed for U.S. immigration reform — a key issue for Mexico that has been stalled in Washington amid fierce debate.

"The American economy needs them," said Hernandez, 47, a California native who toiled in the cucumber, sugar beet and tomato fields alongside his Mexican-born parents. "I believe it's only fair to find a way to legalize them and give them an opportunity to work openly, so they can also retire in a traditional U.S. system."

NASA spokesman James Hartsfield told The Associated Press that Hernandez was expressing his personal views, "not representing NASA, the astronaut office or any NASA organization in his responses."

Hernandez said he wished all world leaders and politicians could see the Earth as he has, "so they could see our world, that really we are one, that we should work together."

"What surprised me is when I saw the world as one. There were no borders. You couldn't distinguish between the United States and Mexico," he told Televisa.

Hernandez's success shows why Mexican migrants have risked their lives to cross the U.S. border illegally to work their way out of poverty.

Millions in Mexico watched Hernandez's mission daily on Televisa, as well as following it on Twitter, where his dispatches appeared in English and Spanish. Hernandez also danced salsa, munched burritos and discussed Mexico's World Cup aspirations while floating in space aboard the shuttle Discovery.

Past NASA space missions barely got a mention on Mexican newscasts.

Hernandez's trip into orbit came at a time when the American dream for Mexicans and their families is fading. Deportations of illegal immigrants are at record levels, while tightened border security and the recession have caused a historic drop in the number of migrants heading north.

The rookie astronaut was one of two Mexican-Americans aboard, marking the first time two Hispanics have flown in space together. Astronaut Danny Olivas was making his second space flight. Rodolfo Neri Vela, a scientist, was the first Mexican citizen to make it to space, flying aboard the shuttle Atlantis in 1985.

Hernandez learned English at age 12, and applied for 12 straight years to become an astronaut before getting picked in 2004.

President Felipe Calderon has invited him to dinner at the presidential residence to talk about a future Mexican space agency. Hernandez's parents are from Calderon's home state of Michoacan, which has one of Mexico's largest populations of migrants in the United States.

The Michoacan town of Ticuitaco, meanwhile, wants to build a science museum in his name to inspire others to follow in Hernandez's footsteps.

"Jose Hernandez sets an example for our youth," said the town's mayor, Ricardo Guzman.

_____

By AP Writer Julie Watson. AP Aerospace Writer Marcia Dunn in Houston contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission(underscore)pages/shuttle/main/index.html

Jose Hernandez Reaching for the Stars Foundation: http://www.astrojh.com/index.html

Hernandez on Twitter: http://twitter.com/astro(underscore)jose

Jalisco Club in Washington state celebrates culture

2009-08-24T20:13:00.000-07:00

Migration Monitor

Mexican migrants in the United States are highly organized and remain proud of their roots. People from the state of Jalisco recently gathered to celebrate their culture in the U.S. state of Washington.

Many Mexican workers still struggling under NAFTA

2009-08-20T11:18:00.000-07:00

Trade Monitor

I recently spoke with three Mexican citizens to learn how the North American Free Trade Agreement has been affecting their lives in times of economic crisis.

JUAN is orginally from the gulf coast city of Veracruz, but he now lives in the border city of Reynosa, just across from McAllen, Texas. The 33-year-old man asks for a cigarette and refuses to give his last name. He works with a group of migrant smugglers in northern Tamaulipas state and says he is a "pollero." Though fewer undocumented Mexicans are seeking work these days in the U.S. because of the economic crisis there, Juan says he still has plenty of customers who pay him to help them cross the border with no documents.

"I know if they are possible clients by the way they dress and the way they act -- especially if they´re nervous.

Sometimes we go directly to the Mexican police here and explain the work we are doing. Other times they approach me and ask me what I’m doing, and then we agree on the amount for their bribe. Paying off U.S. agents is also part of the amount we expect to pay for doing business. Without that we would not be able to pass the migrants so easily. The amount we pay depends of the number of people we are passing at any given moment. I’ve been at this a long time, starting out in California, Mexicali. It’s the same system all along the border."

XOCHITL CALDERON CASTENDA is a single mother of 3 children. She works 60 hours each week sewing together shirts for a maquiladora factory in the city of Tehuacán, located in the state of Puebla. Her pay is little less than $800 dollars a month.

"I know how to cook and I could work as a maid, but it pays far worse than my factory job and has worse hours. So I choose to work in the maquiladora because I also know how to sew and it´s the best paying job around here.

In this work I´ve also made blue jeans for major name brands -- Guess, Furor, Levis, Lee, and the brands that Britney Spears uses right now. Those clothes are mostly exported to the U.S. I don’t make enough to buy that type of clothing. My job basically keeps me and my children fed and clothed. I can barely pay the rent. Let´s say my work pays just enough to prevent us from going into extreme poverty."

GERARDO LUIS ARREAGA is a wheat farmer in the town of Huarimaro located in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. He owns 20 hectares of land, but says he can not get loans to be able to compete with U.S. wheat farmers, who are subsidized by the U.S. government.

"We have land that is excessively fertile. We have rich, black soils like in Ukrane. or like your Rocky Mountains. The lands are productive. We can produce more wheat per acre than the United States. The problem is that it costs too much and so we can´t afford fertilizers or to dig for well water.

There are countries where the farmers don’t have production costs. Like the United States or Russia. They just plant the wheat or sorgum and they have no costs. And here we have many costs. And here credits are expensive. They charge us up to 10 %, that’s much more than the 3% they pay in the United States. We are a nation where the congress doesn’t decided these things, nor does the president. We are at the hands of big capital, and they have us on our knees. What will happen if agriculture is done away with in Mexico? There will be more immigration to the United States."

Sources: Franc Contreras digital audio archives

Calderón Denies Abuses by Military Go Unpunished

2009-08-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

Drug War Monitor

Available Evidence Contradicts President’s Statements

Washington, DC – The claim by President Felipe Calderón of Mexico today that army abuse cases are effectively prosecuted in Mexico flies in the face of all available evidence, Human Rights Watch said.

At a news conference in Guadalajara, concluding the North American Summit, President Calderón stated that his government has an “absolute and categorical commitment to human rights,” and that his critics would need to prove “any case, just one case, where the proper authority has not acted in a correct way, that the competent authorities have not punished anyone who has abused their authority, whether they be police officers or they be soldiers or anyone else.”

“There is plenty of evidence showing that army abuses in Mexico routinely go unpunished,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, the Calderón administration should address the problem and stop defending the failed system of military justice that perpetuates it.”

Since Calderón deployed more than 40,000 troops to combat drug-related violence, Mexican soldiers engaged in counternarcotics operations have repeatedly committed egregious abuses against civilians – including rape, torture, and killing. Last year, the country’s human rights ombudsman received 1,230 complaints of military abuses, a six-fold increase over the past three years.

The Mexican military customarily assumes jurisdiction to investigate and try army abuse cases in military courts. In its April 2009 report “Uniform Impunity,” Human Rights Watch documented in detail 16 cases of egregious abuses investigated by military prosecutors in which there has been no accountability. Nine of the military investigations were closed without any convictions.

For example:

· In a May 2007 case, soldiers detained eight people after a shootout between the military and alleged drug traffickers in Michoacan. Soldiers took the detainees, none of whom were involved in the shootout, to military installations, where the soldiers beat and kicked four of them, placing their heads in black bags, and forcing them to lie on the floor, blindfolded. A federal prosecutor requested that the military investigate the soldiers’ actions. The military closed its criminal investigation in a month and sent it to the archives, arguing there was no evidence that the soldiers had committed a crime.

· In August 2007, five soldiers detained a man in Michoacan, held him incommunicado in military installations for over 24 hours, beat and kicked him, placed a cloth bag on his head, tied his arms and feet, poured water on his face while they hit his abdomen, and applied electric shocks to his stomach. A federal prosecutor requested that a military prosecutor investigate the case. Despite the existence of medical exams documenting the torture, the military closed its investigation, determining it did not find evidence that the soldiers had committed a crime.

The report also documented fundamental flaws in the military justice system that contribute to the failure to hold soldiers accountable for abuses. These include a lack of basic safeguards to ensure independence and impartiality. Given that the system does not meet basic standards, over the past decade international bodies (including the UN Commissioner for Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) have repeatedly called on Mexico to transfer cases of military abuse to the civilian justice system.

In repeated meetings with top Mexican military and civilian officials, including the military attorney general, and despite several written requests over the course of several months, the government has been unable to provide a single example in the past 10 years of a conviction by military courts of a member of the military accused of committing a serious human rights violation.

Since Human Rights Watch presented the report, the Mexican Ministry of Defense has reported publicly that there have been “12 convictions issued during the current administration.” But the ministry has not provided basic information substantiating the claim, such as the facts of the cases that led to the convictions. The crimes for which the soldiers were convicted included the “infraction of duties that all members of the military need to abide by,” which is not a human rights offense, and “involuntary manslaughter,” which could, for example, be a death caused by a car accident.

Under US law, 15 percent of funds to be provided under the Merida Initiative, to help Mexico tackle the fight against the drug cartels, are to be withheld until the State Department reports that Mexico has met four human rights conditions included in the aid package, One of these requires that Mexico is ensuring that “civilian authorities are investigating and prosecuting army abuses, in accordance with Mexican and international law.”

International human rights bodies have consistently rejected the use of military prosecutors and courts in cases involving abuses against civilians, stating that the jurisdiction of military courts should be limited to offenses that are strictly military in nature.

To read the April 2009 Human Rights Watch report, “Uniform Impunity: Mexico’s Misuse of Military Justice to Prosecute Abuses in Counternarcotics and Public Security Operations,” please visit:
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/04/28/uniform-impunity

For more of Human Rights Watch’s work on Mexico, please visit:
http://www.hrw.org/en/americas/mexico

For more information, please contact:
In Mexico City, José Miguel Vivanco (English, Spanish): +521-55-4451-3407

Mexico accepts UN suggestions for pyramid

2009-08-07T16:09:00.000-07:00

Archaeology Monitor

MEXICO CITY—Mexico said Friday it accepts the recommendations of a U.N. committee that criticized a now-suspended plan to install lights on the ancient Teotihuacan pyramids to make it accessible for nighttime visits.

Julio Castrejon, a spokesman for Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, added, however, that while the institute "totally accepts" the U.N. findings, officials are not dropping the idea of lighting ruins to encourage more tourism and boost local economies.

He was responding to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, which monitors historical and natural heritage sites around the globe.

At its most recent meeting in Seville, Spain, the committee expressed concern that "the lack of a management plan appears to have allowed developments to take place, which have had a negative impact on" on the Teotihuacan site near Mexico City.

The committee requested that it be allowed to evaluate such plans in the future, presumably with the power to suggest changes. It also asked Mexico to draw up a management plan and form a working group of local, state and federal officials to increase coordination for protecting the site

Castrejon noted the project had been suspended and the lighting system removed, after it drew criticism from preservationists, union activists, legislators and some academics.

The U.N. committee also said the project caused damage to the pyramids' surface. Castrejon said none of the pyramids'original material was damaged. The pyramids had eroded over time, and much of the stone facing that was drilled into for the project is actually restoration material put in place over the last century, he said.

He said the small holes made in the modern restoration materials for light boxes and wiring also were patched with cement mimicking the color of the pyramids' stone.

Castrejon cited other ruin sites in Mexico, like the Mayan temples at Uxmal, as proof that nonintrusive lighting systems can be used to increase tourism and benefit local communities. He said something similar could be considered as part of a new proposal for Teotihuacan.

"If there is a viable and timely proposal, and UNESCO agrees to it, then it should be carried out because we believe that cultural heritage should be used by, and for the advantage of, the neighboring communities," he said.

Preservationists claimed the small, disguised light boxes and metal cable conduits damaged the pyramids' surfaces and the aesthetics of the nearly 2,000-year-old site.

After the criticism surfaced in January, the institute required the state government to lessen the project's impact by using fewer attached fixtures, but that did little to mollify critics and the project was eventually scrapped.

A popular tourist site about an hour's drive north of Mexico City, the massive pyramids at Teotihuacan were built by a relatively little-known culture that reached its height between 100 B.C. and A.D. 750. Teotihuacan was abandoned by the time the Aztecs arrived in the area in the 1300s and gave it its current name.

The local government launched the project to create a nighttime light and sound show for tourists, and defended it by noting that similar displays are used at archaeological sites around the world.

Source: Associated Press

Cantinflas Show cartoon - Anthropology Museum

2009-07-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

Mexican Cartoon Monitor

Museo Antropológico - El Cientifico - Cantinflas

A bloody revenge on Mexico's police

2009-07-15T18:51:00.000-07:00

Drug War Monitor

Twelve Mexican police officers have been murdered by a prominent drugs cartel in retaliation against the arrest of one of their top drugs barons. Franc Contreras reports for the BBC from Mexico City.

Foreign investors in Mexico now have guarantees

2009-07-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

Foreign Investment Monitor

WASHINGTON, July 8, 2009—The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the political risk insurance arm of the World Bank Group, announced today that Mexico has fulfilled all of its membership requirements to become MIGA’s 175th member.

Mexico’s membership in MIGA means that foreign investments going into Mexico are eligible for guarantee coverage from MIGA, which protects investments against the risks of transfer restriction, expropriation, breach of contract, non-honoring of sovereign financial obligations, and war and civil disturbance. Investors from Mexico going into other developing countries may also receive coverage for their investments from MIGA.

“We are pleased that Mexico has reached this important milestone” said Izumi Kobayashi, MIGA’s Executive Vice President. “Not only will MIGA’s membership benefit investors going into Mexico, but Mexico is gaining stature as a very important source of outward investment.”

According to UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2008, Mexico’s outward foreign direct investment flows surpassed $8 billion in 2007. “We hope that the products provided by MIGA will help investors from Mexico sustain such high levels of investment and expand into those countries and sectors where the need is most pronounced, and therefore the risks can be high,” adds Kobayashi. “Infrastructure investment, in particular, is needed in the Latin America and Caribbean region and this is a sector where MIGA can offer a range of risk-mitigation products.”

Source: The World Bank

Migrantes mexicanos sin representación en el Congreso

2009-07-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

Election Monitor

por Eileen Truax/Los Ángeles

Este 5 de julio los mexicanos fueron a las urnas a elegir con su voto a quienes los representarán en el Congreso federal durante los próximos tres años; sin embargo cerca de 10 millones de mexicanos verán llegar una nueva legislatura sin representación: son los mexicanos que viven en Estados Unidos.

La lucha por la participación de los mexicanos que viven en el exterior en los procesos electorales de su país tuvo origen varias décadas atrás, pero no fue sino hasta en los últimos diez años que se lograron modificaciones a la ley para que éstos pudieran contender por un puesto de representación popular.

A partir de entonces han existido algunos legisladores y alcaldes migrantes a nivel estatal, e incluso en el Congreso federal; pero en las elecciones de este domingo, sólo un candidato migrante cuenta con posibilidades reales de obtener una curul.

Esto no se debe a la falta de interés de los migrantes por participar en la política mexicana; todo lo contrario. Son cientos de dirigentes, activistas, organizadores en diversas ciudades de Estados Unidos los que han manifestado su interés en reiteradas ocasiones de participar en los procesos democráticos de su país, particularmente por lo que corresponde a la conformación de los congresos federales y locales.

El problema es que los partidos los han dejado fuera; a los migrantes no se les permite participar en las discusiones que tienen como finalidad crear políticas precisamente orientadas a los migrantes.

“Los políticos van a Estados Unidos, quieren nuestros dólares, pero no nos hacen parte de la toma de decisiones”, me dijo hace unos días vía telefónica Guadalupe Gómez, candidato a una diputación por el distrito 2 de Zacatecas, quien ha sido un activo integrante de las organizaciones comunitarias zacatecanas en California desde hace 20 años, y quien a fue uno de los principales promotores de la institucionalización del Programa 3x1.

Gracias a una candidatura uninominal lograda a través del PAN, Gómez es el único migrante que este domingo tendrá la posibilidad real de obtener una diputación, la misma que ocupó durante la legislatura saliente el finado migrante zacatecano Andrés Bermúdez, conocido como “el rey del tomate”.

“La gente acá conoce nuestro trabajo y saben que los migrantes no cobran por hacerlo, que es voluntario”, añadió Gómez, para quien la importancia de que haya representantes migrantes no radica en ser sólo la voz de la gente de un distrito, sino de los mexicanos “que fueron expulsados por falta de oportunidades”.

En ocasiones anteriores otros dirigentes mexicanos en Estados Unidos han tratado sin éxito de ocupar un cargo que dé voz a las inquietudes de su comunidad, la que manda los dólares que constituyen la segunda fuente de ingreso del país. Políticos de todos los signos suelen viajar a ciudades como Los Ángeles, Chicago o Nueva York para reunirse con estas comunidades.

Los gobernadores se acercan a los grupos organizados para pedirles su participación, a través del 3x1, en la construcción de obra pública en sus lugares de origen. Los candidatos a cargos locales los buscan sabiendo que, debido a que suelen ser quienes sostienen a la familia que se quedó en México, también tienen influencia en la toma de decisiones políticas de la misma, como la de por quién van a votar. Pero cuando de participación directa se trata, nadie da su brazo a torcer.

Son varias las alternativas que los migrantes han empezado a revisar para dar la vuelta a esta situación, particularmente después del fiasco del voto en el exterior durante la elección presidencial de 2006, en la cual se le dio a los migrantes el derecho a votar, pero como si fuera una burla, no se les autorizó un proceso de credencialización en Estados Unidos –recordemos que los migrantes indocumentados no pueden regresar a México a tramitar una credencial de elector.

Una de las ideas surgidas a partir de esta situación, es la de crear una sexta circunscripción electoral –en México actualmente existen cinco-, planteada formalmente ante el Congreso por el diputado migrante saliente José Jacques Medina; propuesta que, como muchas otras, se encuentra en el “congelador”.

Dirigentes migrantes como Germán Trejo, en Washington, han planteado la opción de crear un partido migrante bajo el cual se unieran los mexicanos en Estados Unidos para contender por puestos de elección popular. Otras alternativas seguro irán apareciendo, pero por ahora no será; habrá que esperar hasta la próxima elección, en 2012, para los mexicanos en el exterior tengan una nueva oportunidad de luchar por algún espacio de representación popular en su propio país.

Source: www.eileentruax.com

Economic crisis deepens & citizens´journalism emerges

2009-06-21T17:38:00.000-07:00

Media Monitor

Journalism 3.0

Until very recently, modern journalism was mostly a lecture -- journalism organizations told you what the news was, and you either bought it or you didn't.

Today's professional journalist needs to understand, and capture, the fact that our readers/listeners/viewers know more than we do. That's not a threat. It's an opportunity.

Digital collaboration and communication tools are helping us all create a new kind of journalism, something resembling a seminar or conversation.

The tools range from e-mail to weblogs to peer-to-peer, and they all add up to something genuinely new in news. Don't ask about the business model, however; no one knows what it is.

Source: Dan Gillmor, Founder and Director, Center for Citizen Media

17 mil niños migraron solos a EU en 2008

2009-06-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

Migration Monitor

Publicado: Lunes 01 de junio de 2009

Miles de menores de edad arriesgan su vida al cruzar de manera ilegal a Estados Unidos cada año, no por la necesidad de ir al reencuentro con alguno de sus padres, sino por la necesidad de trabajar, menciona un informe de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores.

En 2008, el número total de menores repatriados se ubicó en 17 mil 772 niños y adolescentes, de los cuales 64% (11 mil 378) reconocieron que dejaron sus lugares de origen para conseguir trabajo en territorio estadounidense.

Por el contrario, únicamente 20% viajaba solo porque tenía como objetivo principal encontrarse con alguno de sus padres o familiares.

De los casi 18 mil menores repatriados, 33% tiene la secundaria terminada, lo cual, según el informe, “indica la necesidad temprana del menor por insertarse en el mercado laboral, y la consecuente pérdida para el Estado mexicano de la inversión que ha significado la educación de estos menores”.

Pero entre los deportados también hay quienes que realizaban actividades ilícitas.

De acuerdo con el documento, 104 jóvenes servían como guías de indocumentados para internarse en territorio de Estados Unidos o incluso se dedicaban al tráfico de personas, y otros 69 aceptaron que “cruzaron la frontera a fin de realizar tráfico de drogas”.

De los repatriados, 94% (16 mil 855) tenían entre 12 y 17 años cuando fueron detenidos por las autoridades migratorias de Estados Unidos; de ellos, 7 mil 247 tenían ya 17 años cumplidos.

Source: Silvia Otero, El Universal

silvia.otero@eluniversal.com.mx

Activists call on Mexican voters to annul their ballots

2009-06-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

Mid-term Election Monitor

By Franc Contreras

Mexico is preparing for key July 5th mid-term elections that will remake the entire lower house of Congress (aka the Chamber of Deputies), and thus determine what reforms, if any, will be politically viable during the final three years of Felipe Calderon Hinojosa’s administration. These elections will also lay the political groundwork for the lead-up to Mexico’s 2012 presidential elections.

Indeed much is at stake in this election and the country’s leading political parties are spending tremendous amounts of money on their respective candidates. Amid the official fanfare, there’s a small and growing political movement across Mexico that’s calling on voters to annul their ballots on July 5th.

Among the organizers of this citizens’ movement to annul ballots is the President’s own cousin, Gabriel Hinojosa Rivero.

He says this is a way for voters to send a powerful message to those who control Mexico’s political system: The Mexican people are deeply frustrated with the endemic corruption that corrodes the system from deep inside the halls of power and it’s time for the country to take a new road toward greater democracy.

The organizers of the movement have yet to define what they mean by “greater democracy,” but what is clear is that they do not trust the entrenched interests to deliver the sweeping political and economic changes that their country desperately needs in order for a greater number of Mexican’s to begin sharing the country’s vast wealth that is now concentrated in the hands a very few.

One of the great challenges this new movement faces is the likelihood of low voter turnout on July 5th. Political analysts expect that will happen precisely because so many people here have little or no faith in Mexico’s politicians. Many potential voters I’ve spoken with over the years believe politicians here seek office in order to gain easy access to the public coffers and enrich themselves illegally.

Drug violence continues in Mexico's biggest border city

2009-05-26T15:01:00.000-07:00

Drug War Monitor

Despite the deployment of thousands of troops throughout Mexico, the country continues to be plagued by drug related violence. In Ciudad Juarez - on the border with the US - the body count is continues to rise. Thousands of Mexican soldiers have been deployed to the city to assist local police. And although they are frequently outgunned by drug cartels the army says they are having an impact as Franc Contreras reports.

Mexico's education system fails indigenous children

2009-05-17T14:29:00.000-07:00

Education Monitor

In Mexico, many children struggle in poorly equipped schools plagued by corruption. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras travelled to Zapacala in the southern state of Puebla, where many indigenous children attend some of the worst schools in Mexico.

Mexico's health care system among world's worse

2009-05-14T04:41:00.000-07:00

Influenza monitor

Below, a report from the national daily El Universal depicts the sorry state of Mexico's public health care system. My apologies for not providing a translation.

Sistema de salud, por los suelos

La contingencia por el virus de influenza AH1N1 dejó al descubierto la falta de médicos y la saturación de servicios; nula coordinación entre instituciones; además de carente infraestructura

ruth.rodriguez@eluniversal.com.mx
El virus de la influenza tipo A evidenció un sistema de salud débil, obsoleto y fragmentado. La falta de inversión en infraestructura y la creciente privatización de los servicios han dejado al país vulnerable, coincidieron especialistas. Además, a muchos mexicanos se les cancela su derecho constitucional a la protección de la salud.

Entre los países miembros de la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos (OCDE), según su reporte Health Data 2008, México se distingue por ser el que menos recursos destina a salud pública, con 6.6% de su Producto Interno Bruto (PIB), cuando el promedio de los países miembros es de 8.9%.

Sistema fragmentado

Durante los tres primeros días de la alerta sanitaria, a mediados de abril, todo fue confusión en clínicas y hospitales públicos. Testimonios de médicos y enfermeras, que prefirieron el anonimato por temor a represalias, coinciden en que predominó la desorganización. Una de las causas fue que cada institución (IMSS, ISSSTE, las secretarías de Salud, de la Defensa Nacional y Marina, y Petróleos Mexicanos) posee diferentes bases de datos de sus pacientes, lo cual impidió elaborar un diagnóstico nacional, en tiempo real, de lo que ocurría.

Maki Esther Ortiz, subsecretaria de Innovación y Calidad de la Secretaría de Salud, reconoció que la emergencia sanitaria permitió “detectar los rezagos en infraestructura de salud”; obligó a las autoridades a realizar, a marchas forzadas, un inventario del equipo médico disponible; y en menos de tres días debieron establecer lineamientos dirigidos al personal de salud para contener la transmisión de la influenza y tratar al paciente en forma homogénea en el primero, segundo y tercer niveles de atención.

Además, consideró necesaria “la integración funcional del sector” para mantener “una comunicación que permita que todos estemos conectados en tiempo real”, y que “se requiere de un padrón único de beneficiarios, de un expediente electrónico y de guías clínicas que homogeneicen todo el sistema nacional de salud”.

Gustavo Leal Fernández, profesor e investigador del Departamento de Atención de la Salud de la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Xochimilco, opinó que la epidemia mostró que no hay comunicación ni control de la Federación hacia los sistemas estatales, lo que explica la tardanza para notificar —cuando no hubo ocultamiento— a la Secretaría de Salud los casos con sospecha de diagnóstico por influenza tipo A.

Sin camas suficientes

El rezago en la infraestructura puede medirse, entre otros parámetros, por el número de camas hospitalarias, afirmó Nancy Pérez García, directora ejecutiva de Iniciativa Ciudadana y Desarrollo Social (Incide Social): México cuenta con 0.8 camas por cada mil habitantes, cuando el promedio de los miembros de la OCDE es de cuatro por cada mil habitantes.

Por su parte, el Observatorio de Política Social y Derechos Humanos encontró que países como Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia y Belice tienen más de 10 camas de hospital por cada 10 mil habitantes. En Brasil, por ejemplo, hay 26, mientras que en México sólo existen 10.

Un ejemplo es el Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS): en su informe anual, al Ejecutivo federal reconoció que dispone de 0.83 camas por cada mil habitantes, lo que equivale a un rezago de 25 años. En promedio, el mobiliario y los equipos tienen esa misma antigüedad.

A nivel nacional, de acuerdo con Incide Social, por cada 2 mil habitantes hay tres médicos, un consultorio y cuatro enfermeras, cuando la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) recomienda entre dos y tres médicos por cada mil habitantes. Además, en el país, según datos de la Secretaría de Salud, hay 1.8 médicos por cada mil habitantes.

Las carencias de infraestructura son más que números para quienes no son atendidos por falta de médicos o la saturación del servicio, o reciben atención deficiente. Esto quedó al descubierto durante la reciente epidemia.

Francisca Pérez, de 70 años, tenía síntomas de influenza la semana pasada, por lo cual peregrinó por varios hospitales de la Secretaría de Salud y el IMSS, escuchando en casi todos la misma respuesta: “No hay camas, no hay médicos”, hasta que la recibieron en el Hospital Naval del Distrito Federal.

Durante los primeros días de la epidemia, Dayna Sánchez llevó a su hija de cuatro años al Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Respiratorias, pues tenía fiebre y gripe. Tras una hora de espera, la pequeña fue recibida en el área de urgencias, donde la enviaron a consulta externa a solicitar una cita de seguimiento. Dayna la llevó entonces con un médico privado, quien le diagnosticó influenza estacional.

Privatización interminable

El retroceso de la inversión pública en infraestructura de salud y la privatización de los servicios comenzó en el sexenio de Miguel de la Madrid, aseguró Gustavo Leal Fernández, de la UAM; se intensificó con Vicente Fox y continúa con Felipe Calderón, al otorgar a empresas privadas concesiones para operar hospitales regionales de especialidad.

“Con estas empresas se establecen contratos de prestación de servicios por 15 o 25 años. Las empresas construyen los hospitales y prestan los servicios, el gobierno les paga por dar esos servicios”. Esto también ha dejado expuesto al país, sobre todo en contingencias.

Al tiempo que se otorgan dichos contratos, señaló, existe un abandono de la infraestructura de salud pública, que puede constatarse en el caso del IMSS, donde “no se han hecho inversiones en el tercer nivel de atención, y además también ahí se han subrogado servicios a empresas privadas”.

En febrero, organizaciones no gubernamentales presentaron al Consejo de Derechos Humanos de Naciones Unidas un informe sobre México donde resaltan que si bien el derecho a la protección de salud se incluye en la Constitución, sólo 61.8% de la población tiene cobertura de las instituciones públicas.

La Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH) difundió el lunes pasado un informe sobre el sistema de salud en los últimos nueve años, en el que asegura que las denuncias más recurrentes son por carencia de personal médico, tratamientos inadecuados y diagnósticos ineficientes, y que los obstáculos crónicos son la falta de infraestructura hospitalaria y recursos materiales.

José Ángel Córdova, secretario de Salud, ha reconocido que el problema no es cuántos médicos hay, sino cómo están distribuidos. “Tan sólo en la colonia Del Valle, en la ciudad de México, hay 50 médicos por cada mil habitantes, pero en toda la zona metropolitana hay tres médicos por cada mil habitantes”.

Coincide con ello Nancy Pérez García, pues dijo que en el tema de acceso a los servicios de salud es evidente “la desigualdad en el país”. Y se suma el Observatorio de Política Social y Derechos Humanos, según el cual sólo cinco estados (entre ellos Colima, Aguascalientes y Tabasco) cumplen la recomendación de la OMS de contar como mínimo con una cama de hospital por cada mil habitantes.

En cambio Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero, Quintana Roo, Zacatecas, Veracruz, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí y Morelos son los más rezagados en infraestructura, lo que impacta directamente en los municipios más marginados (la mayoría en Oaxaca, Guerrero y Chiapas), donde la esperanza de vida para las mujeres es de 51 años, y para los hombres de 49, mientras que el promedio nacional es de 79.9 años y 73 años, respectivamente.

“El Estado no está garantizando un derecho básico como es el de protección a la salud”, concluye la directora ejecutiva de Incide Social. “No estamos preparados para contingencias como la de la influenza. Los datos muestran que no existen la infraestructura ni el personal para poder operar una estrategia de atención. Esto habla de que no se ha hecho una inversión en el área y que el gobierno no asume su responsabilidad. Lo que se ha hecho es tratar de privatizar un derecho humano”.

Source: El Universal newspaper

Deported migrant woman runs for Congress in Mexico

2009-05-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

Immigration Monitor

The swine flu might have closed Mexican schools and slowed the nation’s economy to a near standstill, but it didn’t stop the latest political campaign
from getting off the ground.

Although campaign kick-off events mainly proceeded last weekend without the usual bluster, candidates from Mexico’s different political parties launched their bids for positions in the lower house of the Mexican Congress. In July, Mexican voters will go to the polls to elect new federal representatives.

Among the better known candidates running for Congress is Elvira Arellano, the deported activist from the United States who came to symbolize the face of the new immigrant movement. Taking refuge in a Chicago church in August 2006, Arellano defied a deportation order and US immigration authorities for one year in an unsuccessful attempt to remain with her young son. In August 2007, she was arrested and sent back to Mexico after appearing at an immigrant rights rally in Los Angeles.

Almost two years later, Arellano is on the campaign trail in Tijuana, Baja California, where she is the candidate for Congressional District #4 on the ticket of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

Keeping true to her word to keep the migrant issue alive in the public eye, the energetic activist is stressing immigrant rights issues in Mexico’s 2009 political campaign. In comments last weekend,

Arellano said she is especially concerned about the fate of women migrants who pass through Mexico on their way to the US, a journey that is often fraught with sexual assaults and other abuses.

“I am going to seek laws in Congress that protect women, and also that protect undocumented Central Americans who are treated like criminals in Mexico,” Arellano said.

Noting Tijuana’s character as a city of migrants, Arellano said she expected her message to receive a positive response from voters.

Arellano’s election run is the latest instance of a one-time Mexican migrant jumping into the political ring south of the border. Individuals like Arellano, who have experiences with laws, governments and civil societies on both sides of the border, are gradually making their mark on Mexican politics.

Perhaps the best-known example of a migrant-turned-politician prior to Arellano is the late Andres “Tomato King” Bermudez, who made good in California before returning to the state of Zacatecas and taking a stab at becoming mayor of the town of Jerez.

Initially denied a victory as a PRD candidate, Bermudez subsequently won the top job in Jerez as the representative for the center-right National Action Party in 2004. The flamboyant politician went on to win a Congressional seat for the same political party in 2006, becoming one of current President Felipe Calderon’s most virulent defenders in the post-election conflict that surrounded the contested presidential election three years ago. Bermudez died of cancer earlier this year while still serving as a federal legislator.

Sources: Frontera NorteSur (FNS) using articles from U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

The geopolitics of pandemics

2009-05-04T17:13:00.000-07:00

Influenza Monitor

Word began to flow out of Mexico the weekend before last of well over 150 deaths suspected to have been caused by a new strain of influenza commonly referred to as swine flu. Scientists who examined the flu announced that this was a new strain of Influenza A (H1N1) derived partly from swine flu, partly from human flu and partly from avian flu strains (although there is some question as to whether this remains true). The two bits of information released in succession created a global panic.

This panic had three elements. The first related to the global nature of this disease, given that flus spread easily and modern transportation flows mean containment is impossible. Second, there were concerns that this flu would have a high mortality rate. And third, the panic centered on the mere fact that this disease was the flu.

News of this new strain triggered memories of the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, sparking fears that the “Spanish flu” that struck at the end of World War I would be repeated. In addition, the scare over avian flu created a sense of foreboding about influenza — a sense that a catastrophic outbreak was imminent.

By midweek, the disease was being reported around the world. It became clear that the disease was spreading, and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Phase 5 pandemic alert. A Phase 5 alert (the last step before a pandemic is actually, officially declared, a step that may be taken within the next couple of days) means that a global pandemic is imminent, and that the virus has proved capable of sustained human-to-human transmission and infecting geographically disparate populations. But this is not a measure of lethality, only communicability, and pandemics are not limited to the deadliest diseases.

‘Pandemic,’ not ‘Duck and Cover’

To the medical mind, the word “pandemic” denotes a disease occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population. The term in no way addresses the underlying seriousness of the disease in the sense of its wider impact on society.

The problem is that most people are not physicians. When the WHO convenes a press conference carried by every network in the world, the declaration of a level 5 pandemic connotes global calamity, even as statements from experts — and governments around the world — attempt to walk the line between calming public fears and preparing for the worst.

The reason to prepare for the worst was because this was a pandemic with an extremely unclear prognosis, and about which reliable information was in short supply.

Indeed, the new strain could mutate into a more lethal form and re-emerge in the fall for the 2009-2010 flu season. There are also concerns about how its victims disproportionately are healthy young adults under 45 years of age — which was reported in the initial information out of Mexico, and has been reported as an observed factor in the cases that have popped up in the United States. This was part of the 1918 flu pandemic pattern as well. In contrast, seasonal influenza is most deadly among the elderly and young children with weaker immune systems.

But as the days wore on last week, the swine flu began to look like little more than ordinary flu. Toward the end of the week, a startling fact began to emerge: While there were more than a hundred deaths in Mexico suspected of being caused by the new strain, as of May about 25 (a number that has increased slightly after being revised downward earlier last week) have been confirmed as being linked to the new virus. And there has not been a single death from the disease reported anywhere else in the world, save that of a Mexican child transported to the United States for better care. Indeed, even in Mexico, the country’s health minister declared the disease to be past its peak May 3.

Sources involved in examining the strain have also suggested that the initial analysis of the swine flu was in fact in error, and that the swine flu may have originated during a 1998 outbreak in a pig farm in North Carolina. This information reopens the question of what killed the individuals whose deaths were attributed to swine flu.

While little is understood about the specifics of this new strain, influenza in general has a definitive pattern. It is a virus that affects the respiratory system, and particularly the lungs. At its deadliest it can cause secondary infections — typically bacterial rather than viral — leading to pneumonia. In the most virulent forms of influenza, it is the speed with which complications strike that drives death rates higher. Additionally, substantively new strains (as swine flu is suspected of being) can be distinct enough from other strains of flu that pre-existing immunity gained from flus of years past does not help fend off the latest variation.

Influenza is not a disease that lingers and then kills people — save the sick, old and very young, whose immune systems are more easily compromised. Roughly half a million people (largely from these groups) die annually worldwide from more common strains of influenza, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pegging average American deaths at roughly 36,000 per year.

Swine flu deaths have not risen as would be expected at this point for a highly contagious and lethal new strain of influenza. In most cases, victims have experienced little more than a bad cold, from which they are recovering. And infections outside Mexico so far have not been severe. This distinction of clear cases of death in Mexico and none elsewhere (again, save the one U.S. case) is stark.

Much of what has occurred in the last week regarding the new virus reminds us of the bird flu scare of 2005. Then as now, the commonly held belief was that a deadly strain was about to be let loose on humanity. Then as now, many governments were heightening concerns rather than quelling them. Then as now, STRATFOR saw only a very small chance of the situation becoming problematic.

Ultimately, by the end of last week it had become clear to the global public that “pandemic” could refer to bad colds as well as to plagues wiping out millions.
A Real Crisis

The recent swine flu experience raises the question of how one would attempt to grapple with a genuine high-mortality pandemic with major consequences. The answer divides into two parts: how to control the spread, and how to deploy treatments.
Communicability

The flu virus is widely present in two species other than humans, namely, birds and pigs. The history of the disease is the history of its transmission within and across these three species. It is comparatively easy for the disease to transmit from swine to birds and from swine to humans; the bird-to-human barrier is the most difficult to cross.

Cross-species influenza is of particular concern. In the simplest terms, viruses are able to recombine (e.g., human flu and avian flu can merge into a hybrid flu strain). What comes out can be a flu transmissible to humans, but with a physical form that is distinctly avian — meaning it fails to alert human immune systems to the intrusion. This can rob the human immune system of the ability to quickly recognize the disease and put up a fight.

New humanly transmissible influenza strains often have been found to originate in places where humans, pigs and/or fowl live in close proximity to each other — particularly in agricultural areas where animal and human habitation is shared or in which constant, close physical contact takes place.

Agricultural areas of Asia with dense populations, relatively small farms and therefore frequent and prolonged contact between species traditionally have been the areas in which influenza strains have transferred from animals to humans and then mutated into diseases transmissible by casual human contact. Indeed, these areas have been the focus of concern over a potential outbreak of bird flu. This time around, the outbreak began in Mexico (though it is not yet clear where the virus itself originated).

And this is key to understanding this flu. Because it appears relatively mild, it might well have been around for quite awhile — giving people mild influenza, but not standing out as a new variety until it hit Mexico. The simultaneous discovery of the strain amid a series of deaths (and what may now be in hindsight inflated concerns about its lethality) led to the recent crisis footing.

Any time such threats are recognized, they already are beyond containment. Given travel patterns in the world today, viruses move easily to new locations well before they are identified in the first place they strike. The current virus is a case in point. It appears, although it is far from certain, that it originated in the Veracruz area of Mexico. Within two days of the Mexican government having issued a health alert, it already had spread as far afield as New Zealand. One week on, cases completely unrelated to Mexico have already been confirmed on five continents.

In all probability, this “spread” was less the discovery of new areas of infection than the random discovery of areas that might have been infected for weeks or even months (though the obvious first people to test were those who had recently returned from Mexico with flu symptoms). Given the apparent mildness of the infection, most people would not go to the doctor. And if they did, the doctor would call it generic flu and not even concern himself with its type. What happened last week appears to have been less the spread of a new influenza virus than the “discovery” of places to which it had spread awhile ago.

The problem with the new variety was not that it was so deadly; had it actually been as uniquely deadly as it first appeared to be, there would have been no mistaking its arrival, because hospitals would be overflowing. It was precisely its mildness that sparked the search. But because of expectations established in the wake of the Mexico deaths, the discovery of new cases was disassociated from its impact. Its presence alone caused panic, with schools closing and border closings discussed.

The virus traveled faster than news of the virus. When the news of the virus finally caught up with the virus, the global perception was shaped by a series of deaths suddenly recognized in Mexico (as mentioned, deaths so far not seen elsewhere). But even as the Mexican Health Ministry begins to consider the virus beyond its peak, the potential for mutation and a more virulent strain in the next flu season looms.
Mortality

As mentioned, viruses that spread through casual human contact can be globally established before anyone knows of it. The first sign of a really significant influenza pandemic will not come from the medical community or the WHO; it will come from the fact that people are catching influenza and dying, and are doing so all over the world at the same time. The system established for detecting spreading diseases is hardwired to be behind the curve. This is not because it is inefficient, but because no matter how efficient, it cannot block casual contact — which, given modern air transportation, spreads diseases globally in a matter of days or even hours.

Therefore, the problem is not the detection of deadly pandemics, simply because they cannot be missed. Rather, the problem is reacting medically to deadly pandemics. One danger is overreacting to every pandemic and thereby breaking the system. (As of this writing, the CDC remained deeply concerned about swine flu, though calm seems to be returning.)

The other danger is not reacting rapidly enough. In the case of influenza, medical steps can be taken. First, there are anti-viral medicines found to be effective against the new strain, and if sufficient stockpiles exist — which is hardly universally the case, especially in the developing world — and those stockpiles can be administered early enough, the course of the disease can be mitigated. Second, since most people die from secondary infection in the lungs, antibiotics can be administered. Unlike with the 1918 pandemic, the mortality rate can be dramatically reduced.

The problem here is logistical: The distribution and effective administration of medications is a challenge. Producing enough of the medication is one problem; it takes months to craft, grow and produce a new vaccine, and the flu vaccine is tailored every year to deal with the three most dangerous strains of flu. Another problem is moving the medication to areas where it is needed in an environment that maintains its effectiveness. Equally important is the existence of infrastructure and medical staff capable of diagnosing, administering and supporting patients — and doing so on a scale never before attempted.

These things will not be done effectively on a global basis. That is inevitable. But influenza, even at the highest death rates ever recorded for the disease, does not threaten human existence as we know it. At its worst, flu will kill a lot of people, but the human race and the international order will survive.

The true threat to humanity, if it ever comes, will not come from influenza. Rather, it will come from a disease spread through casual human contact, but with a higher mortality rate than flu and no clear treatment. While HIV/AIDS boasts an extraordinarily high mortality rate and no cure exists, it at least does not spread through casual contact as influenza does, and so the pace at which it can spread is limited.

Humanity will survive the worst that influenza can throw at it even without intervention. With modern intervention, its effect declines dramatically. But the key problem of pandemics was revealed in this case: The virus spread well before information on it spread. Detection and communication lagged. That did not matter in this case, and it did not matter in the case of HIV/AIDS, because the latter was a disease that did not spread through casual contact. However, should a disease arise that is as deadly as HIV, that spreads through casual contact, about which there is little knowledge and for which there is no cure, the medical capabilities of humanity would be virtually useless.

There are problems to which there are no solutions. Fortunately, these problems may not arise. But if they do, no amount of helpful public service announcements from the CDC and the WHO will make the slightest bit of difference.

Source: www.stratfor.com

Editorial cartoon blends immigration and swine flu

2009-04-29T11:49:00.000-07:00

Influenza Monitor

Drawing by Rex Babin / Sacramento Bee (April 28, 2009)

Flu virus crisis puts Mexico City on high alert

2009-04-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

Influenza Monitor

Officials in Mexico City, home to about 20 million people, have declared a state of high alert. Restaurants have been partially closed, with only takeaway food being allowed to be sold. Gyms, sports clubs, swimming pools and billiard halls have been suspended as part of the government's strategy to slow the spread of the virus. Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras reports from Mexico.

Basic questions & answers about Mexico´s flu epidemic

2009-04-27T21:38:00.000-07:00

Influenza Monitor

From Tucson, Arizona, my sister Jessica asks a very good and difficult question -- is Mexico´s swine flu crisis real or merely a media fabrication?

It appears that indeed there is a major health emergency underway here in Mexico. Tonight the government says the suspected number of deaths in Mexico rose to 149, with nearly 2,000 people believed to be infected here.

One of the first swine flu-related deaths reported happened in Oaxaca City.

The vast majority of the deaths are happening here, in the city where I live.

So this is frightening.

All schools across Mexico are closed, at least until May 6th, in an attempt to prevent the virus from spreading.

It seems the government had information which it did not report, about a flu-related death that occurred in Veracruz state in late March. The authorities did not inform the public.

We must keep in mind that this is a key mid-term election year, and politicians here and around the world have been known to fabricate events to win votes.

But this situation, unfortunately, appears to be all too horribly real.

Public voices opinions on Mexico swine flu crisis

2009-04-26T16:19:00.000-07:00

Swine Flu Monitor

From Twitter, FrancMex

The White House says US President Barack Obama’s health “was never in any danger”, despite reports that Mexican archaeologist Felipe Solis, who Obama met on a trip to Mexico City last week, had died soon after from “flu-like symptoms."

The Mexican government admits that the flu outbreak here is far more severe than it originally acknowledged. Some 1,600 people are likely infected. Most people in Mexico are talking about the epidemic.

VERONICA MUNOZ, GUADALAJARA

"From my point of view, yes the government is managing the problem adequately. There is information and they are in constant communication, knowing that this is a grave situation. But there will always exist the doubt of whether or not they are really reporting the reality of this situation."

"De mi punto de vista , si se estan llevando las cosas adecuadamente, hay informacion estan en constante comunicacion, entiendo que esto es grave. Pero siempre existirá la duda si realmenete se está informando la realidad."

CONSUELO MORALES, MEXICO CITY

"For now, I'm just trying to get information, not just from our country but from other parts of the world, in an attempt to really know what is happening. And I'm trying to take it calmly because I think some of the government's efforts have caused confusion, doubts and fear. I'm referring to some comments here that there could exist certain preventative measures."

"Por ahora sólo trato de obtener información no sólo del país sino de otras partes del mundo para tratar de saber bien qué está pasando y claro tomarlo con calma porque creo que algunas medidas hechas por gobierno han causando confusión, duda y temor, me refiero que algunos comentan que pudo existir cierta manera de prevenir."

RODOLFO NEVAREZ, MEXICO CITY

"Well, most of the information is very confusing and alarming. Especially about the medication, and why are people dying here and not in the United States?"

"Es muy confusa toda la información y a la vez alarmante. Sobre el medicamento, por qué la gente muere aquí y no en EU?"

SELINE QUIROGA, PHOENIX ARIZONA:

"From my perspective, this is a huge issue that isn't getting as much US media attention as it deserves. I've had to search out stories which leave me dissatisfied."

WHO calls it an emergency of global proportions

2009-04-25T21:47:00.000-07:00

Influenza Monitor

Dr. Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organization, said the events in Mexico “constitute a public health emergency of international concern.”

The W.H.O. convened an emergency meeting of experts on Saturday, but the panel adjourned without raising the global pandemic alert level, saying it wanted more information.

Some experts expressed surprise that no action was taken since the Mexico outbreak seems to meet the definition of a Level 4 alert — sustained human-to-human transmission of a new virus.

The alert has been at Level 3 for years because of small clusters of human cases of avian flu.

Source: The New York Times

Mexico admits, flu outbreak worse than first portrayed

2009-04-25T21:34:00.000-07:00

Influenza Monitor

The Mexican government Saturday indicated that the outbreak was more severe than originally acknowledged, announcing that more than 1,300 people are believed to have been infected. The virus, which the World Health Organization's top official said had "pandemic potential," is now suspected in the deaths of 81 Mexicans, Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said.

Also Saturday, the Mexican government gave itself extraordinary powers to quarantine and forcibly treat infected people and to search homes and intercept suspected flu sufferers on public transport.

The emergency decree follows measures that have included the closing of schools in the worst-affected areas until May 6, and the temporary shutdown of museums, clubs and theaters in Mexico City. Hundreds of concerts, private parties and other events were canceled as federal and local officials urged people to avoid large gatherings.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Mexicans angry about government's handling of flu

2009-04-25T19:32:00.000-07:00

Influenza Monitor

CHEMA, OAXACA CITY

Pues se dieron dos casos de hecho cuando me vine una señora murió en el hospital y evacuaron todo el piso dónde ella estuvo
y un caso de una niña pero las autoridades solo dijeron que era una gripe atipica.

DIANA, MEXICO CITY

Oye, me acaban de informar lo de la influenza se suspenden clases hasta el 6 demayo. es horrible
estoy hijos de la fregada no les creo nada. Lo estan manejando para su coveniencia algo muy grave o gordo esta entre manos
y esta de pensarse si es algo de salud de verdad estos hijos de la tiznada la regaron y ahora no hayan como arreglarlo
pero si es algo politico, que es lo mas seguro, estan tratando de esconder algo muy grueso

Franc: Tu crees que estan tratando de esconder cifras mas dramáticas?
estas preocupada por la situación?

Diana: Si, van 80 muertos. 1305 casos hasta hace un rato cuando dijeron que las clases se normalizaban el miercoles
Ahora acaban de decir que hasta el 6 de mayo
que paso?

Franc: Qué opinas del PAN, el partido del Presidente Felipe Calderon?

Diana: Que no les creo nada. Mira, no le creo nada a nadie. la politica es una familia
que solo los beneficiados son ellos
y nosotros no exitmos, solo para su conveniencia
o cuando pueden obtener algo de nosotros
como en este caso.

dicen que de u manejo de uno de los laboratorios mas importantes se les escaparon unos bichos, por eso el virus mutó y por no tomar medidas a tiempo se les salio de las manos la otra, es que quieren tapar algo muy grave que pasa
cualquiera de las dos s grave y tenemos que estar preparados pa lo peor me explico de cualquier forma, son unos hijos de la tiznada

Deadly swine flu kills scores of people in Mexico

2009-04-24T23:45:00.001-07:00

Swine Flu Monitor

An outbreak of swine flu in Mexico has killed at least 20 people and sickened more than 1,000 others, the country's health minister has said.

Jose Angel Cordova told a news conference on Friday that the rate of deaths appeared to be slowing and there were no plans to seal the country's borders, although schools, libraries, museums, theatres were closed in a bid to contain the disease.

Meanwhile, US public health officials on Thursday said that eight people had been diagnosed with swine flu in the states of California and Texas.

Tests on Friday by the World Health Organisation (WHO) showed the virus from 12 of the Mexican patients was the same genetically as a new strain of swine flu, designated H1N1, seen in the US patients, AFP reported.

Initial reports from the WHO said that up to 60 people had died in Mexico from the disease, and Cordova said 40 deaths were being "analysed" for the disease.

US officials said the White House was closely following the outbreak in the United States and Barack Obama, the president, has been informed.

The officials said the virus in the United States was a never-before-seen mixture of viruses typical among pigs, birds and humans.

Armando Ahued, Mexico City's health minister, said a massive vaccination campaign was being launched against the illness.

Al Jazeera's Franc Contreras in Mexico City said the authorities had advised people not to go outside unless necessary and that many residents had bought surgical masks in attempt to avoid the disease.

Pandemic fears

The WHO, which has identified swine influenza as a potential source of a human flu pandemic, said it had activated its global epidemic operations centre, which oversees acute public health events in response to the crisis.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said the A/H1N1 influenza identified in at least two of the recent cases by US counterparts could develop into a pandemic-type virus.

Human outbreaks of H1N1 swine influenza virus were recorded in the US in 1976 and 1988, when two deaths were recorded, and also in 1986, while in 1988 a pregnant woman died after contact with sick pigs, the WHO said.

In recent years the global focus for a possible pandemic has shifted to the H5N1 bird flu virus, which has spread from poultry to humans and killed 257 of the 421 people infected by the virus since 2003.

Source: Al Jazeera English

Swine flu kills at least 20 in Mexico, hundreds sick

2009-04-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

Influenza Monitor

From my Twitter: FrancMex

Latest: Swine Flu Outbreak. People in Mex City are being told not to go to movie theaters, restaurants, etc. Better to say home and avoid the bug. less than 5 seconds ago

Mexico City health officials are urging citizens to stay home this weekend. The Swine Flu virus spreads through human contact.

(less than 5 seconds ago from web)

Top health official are offering local information about this flu outbreak:

+ (52 55) 5533 - 5533

+ (52 55) 5658 - 1111

As crisis deepens, doubts raised over taking IMF money

2009-04-23T22:49:00.000-07:00

Economy Monitor

By Franc Contreras

MEXICO CITY -- A new report from the International Monetary Fund says Mexico's economy will suffer the steepest declines in all of the Americas as a result of the economic crisis, which started in the world's richest countries.

The Fund predicts at 3.7 percent fall in Mexico's GDP.

The Mexican government says it’s prepared. It’s taken out a loan of $47 billion dollars from the IMF. That makes Mexico the first country in the world to take advantage of the so-called Flexible Credit Line. Colombia has already followed suit.

The IMF says the credit scheme is designed to help developing nations with solid economic policies cope with the global economic crisis. But in Mexico, there are concerns that the poorest people will be stuck paying the bill.

Out of work and nearly out of hope, José Alfredo Contreras Jimenez has come, once again, to this employment center in in the center of Mexico City. His government unemployment check is three months late. Bureaucrats blame the stagnating economy. Still, he goes through the paces once again, hoping for financial relief.

JOSE ALFREDO CONTRERAS, UNEMPLOYED WORKER: “You have the economy squeezing you up to the neck and though I’ve come here for help getting my check, they still tell me to wait another week.”

People all across Mexico – especially the poor -- are feeling the crisis come down on them. That’s no surprise. Mexico sends nearly 80 percent of its exports to the United States. But with US customers buying less, the crisis is being felt here more than any other part of the region.

That's especially true in Iztapalapa, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Mexican capital. Families here can earn just a few hundred dollars a month. And for these people -- considered the most vulnerable. It’s unclear to them just how they’ll benefit from this IMF money.”

Carlos Saldaña recently returned to this part of Mexico City from New York, where the stagnating economy cost him his job. He doubts this part of the city will ever see ANY of the IMF loan.

CARLOS SALDANA, UNEMPLOYED WORKER “I think the big, powerful companies get this money, and the people from the government. And I think the poor people will never get this money because I mean, they ignore them.”

But it’s not just the big companies that stand to gain, according to Mexico’s Treasury Secretary, Agustin Carstens. He’s trying to convince his skeptical countrymen that the Mexican government will spend very little of the Flexible Credit Line loan from the IMF. It totals $47 billion dollars.

Carsten calls the money, quote: “A preventive contingency plan” designed “only for developing nations with solid macro-economic fundamentals.”

Opposition Senators here argue that the IMF has a dark history of bullying developing countries into cutting back on public spending. They’re preparing to block the loan, calling it a bad decision made by greedy government officials.

RICARDO MONREAL, SENATOR OF LEFT-LEANING WORKERS' PARTY: They will leave generations of Mexicans paying off the debt. They are adhering to American principles that only benefit America, big transnational companies and the IMF. In other words the very people who are responsible for creating the global economic crisis we are currently facing.

Now even middle-class Mexicans are feeling it. Ivan Nieto’s once dreamed of buying a new home and moving into it soon with his new bride. But the government housing agency lacks funds. So his dreams are on hold.

IVAN NIETO, POTENTIAL HOME BUYER: This is tragic. Because of the economic crisis, I’ve had to give up on the plans I’ve made for years.”

Nieto is stuck with few choices. He must wait – officials say for at least another year – hoping that better times will return.

Source: First draft of an original script for Al Jazeera English television

Mexican anti-drug troops to train with US Navy

2009-04-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

Drug War Monitor

Mexico's Senate has authorized the country's navy to take part in U.S. military training for the second time to help boost the fleet's ability to fight drug traffickers. The exercises in Mayport, Florida, which start Monday, April 20th, and will continue for two weeks.

Mexico's drug violence has claimed more than 10,650 lives since President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led offensive against trafficking cartels in December 2006. In March, the government sent thousands more troops to the northern border to quell escalating violence.

Source: Al Jazeera

Obama avoids assault weapons ban promise

2009-04-16T17:37:00.001-07:00

Live Blog

In Mexico, Obama stops short of promising assault weapons ban
After meeting with President Calderon, Obama says he would push for a regional treaty to curb small-arms trafficking. But he acknowledges the difficulty of trying to revive the assault weapons ban.

By Peter Nicholas and Tracy Wilkinson

April 17, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City — President Obama conceded Thursday the U.S. is feeding the movement of weapons to drug cartels in Mexico, but he would not commit to reimposing a ban on assault weapons, a step that Mexican officials want, but which carries steep political risks.

Obama met with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, and said the subject of a U.S. ban on assault weapons was a key part of their discussion of the violence sweeping parts of Mexico.

Obama said he would push the U.S. Senate to ratify an inter-American treaty aimed at curbing small-arms trafficking and improving enforcement at the border. But he stopped short of saying he would use his political capital to resurrect an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.

Instead, he said his administration's focus would be on better enforcing existing laws and ramping up inspections to prevent the southbound flow of arms, among other steps.

Obama said he believes an assault weapons ban "made sense," acknowledging that such firearms are helping to "fuel extraordinary violence" in Mexico.

"Having said that," he added, "I think none of us are under any illusion that reinstating the ban would be easy," Obama added.

His comments represented a recognition of the political clout of opponents of the assault weapons ban. When the ban expired five years ago, an effort to prolong it by another decade failed in the Senate by a vote of 90-8.

Obama has been picking his fights carefully, hoping to husband his political strength for difficult battles ahead: fixing healthcare, imposing tougher regulations on the financial sector, and weaning the country from foreign oil.

And his host, Calderon, struck a patient tone. He cited statistics laying out the scope of the problem. His government has seized 16,000 assault weapons since he took office in December, 2006 -- 90% of them from the U.S., he said. But he added that he grasped the nuances involved.

"We understand that this is politically sensitive and how fond Americans are of their constitutional rights, especially those contained in the 2nd Amendment," Calderon said.

Obama arrived in Mexico City on Thursday en route to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago over the weekend.

With his quick stop in Mexico, Obama was showing support for Calderon following warnings from U.S. military officials that drug cartels poses a mortal threat to the Mexican government. Mexico objected to such alarms, and the Obama administration has been working to make amends.

As the first U.S. president to visit Mexico's capital in 13 years, Obama is delivering a message that he appreciates the "courage" shown by Calderon in combating Mexican drug lords, White House officials said.

Obama's view of Calderon is not universally shared in Mexico. Critics contend that Calderon is relying too heavily on military force and has neglected critical but politically sensitive areas that should also be addressed, like money laundering, judicial reform and high-level corruption.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Obama publishes op-ed article across Latin America

2009-04-16T15:43:00.000-07:00

Special live blog

Choosing a better future in the Americas

The op-ed below by President Barack Obama appeared this morning in the following newspapers:

Trinidad Express (Trinidad & Tobago)
St. Petersburg Times (USA)
Miami Herald (USA)
El Nuevo Herald (USA)

The op-ed also ran in the following GRUPO DE DIARIOS AMÉRICA (GDA) affiliates across the hemisphere:

La Nación (Argentina)
O Globo (Brazil)
El Mercurio (Chile)
El Tiempo (Colombia)
La Nación (Costa Rica)
El Comercio (Ecuador)
El Universal (México)
El Comercio (Perú)
El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico)
El País (Uruguay)
El Nacional (Venezuela)

By US President Barack Obama

As we approach the Summit of the Americas, our hemisphere is faced with a clear choice. We can overcome our shared challenges with a sense of common purpose, or we can stay mired in the old debates of the past. For the sake of all our people, we must choose the future.

Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors. We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas. My Administration is committed to the promise of a new day. We will renew and sustain a broader partnership between the United States and the hemisphere on behalf of our common prosperity and our common security.

In advance of the Summit, we have begun to move in a new direction. This week, we amended a Cuba policy that has failed for decades to advance liberty or opportunity for the Cuban people. In particular, the refusal to allow Cuban Americans to visit or provide resources to their families on the island made no sense – particularly after years of economic hardship in Cuba, and the devastating hurricanes that took place last year. Now, that policy has changed.

The U.S.-Cuba relationship is one example of a debate in the Americas that is too often dragged back to the 20th century. To confront our economic crisis, we don’t need a debate about whether to have a rigid, state-run economy or unbridled and unregulated capitalism – we need pragmatic and responsible action that advances our common prosperity. To combat lawlessness and violence, we don’t need a debate about whether to blame right-wing paramilitaries or left-wing insurgents – we need practical cooperation to expand our common security.

We must choose the future over the past, because we know that the future holds enormous opportunities if we work together. That is why leaders from Santiago to Brasilia to Mexico City are focused on a renewed partnership of the Americas that makes progress on fundamental issues like economic recovery, energy, and security.

There is no time to lose. The global economic crisis has hit the Americas hard, particularly our most vulnerable populations. Years of progress in combating poverty and inequality hangs in the balance. The United States is working to advance prosperity in the hemisphere by jumpstarting our own recovery. In doing so, we will help spur trade, investment, remittances, and tourism that provides a broader base for prosperity in the hemisphere.

We also need collective action. At the recent G-20 Summit, the United States pledged to seek nearly half a billion dollars in immediate assistance for vulnerable populations, while working with our G-20 partners to set aside substantial resources to help countries through difficult times. We have called upon the Inter-American Development Bank to maximize lending to restart the flow of credit, and stand ready to examine the needs and capacity of the IDB going forward. And we are working to put in place tough, clear 21st century rules of the road to prevent the abuses that caused the current crisis.

While we confront this crisis, we must build a new foundation for long-term prosperity. One area that holds out enormous promise is energy. Our hemisphere has bountiful natural resources that could make renewable energy plentiful and sustainable, while creating jobs for our people. In the process, we can confront climate change that threatens rising sea levels in the Caribbean, diminishing glaciers in the Andes, and powerful storms on the Gulf Coast of the United States.

Together, we have both the responsibility to act, and the opportunity to leave behind a legacy of greater prosperity and security. That is why I look forward to pursuing a new Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas that will help us learn from one another, share technologies, leverage investment, and maximize our comparative advantage.

Just as we advance our common prosperity, we must advance our common security. Too many in our hemisphere are forced to live in fear. That is why the United States will strongly support respect for the rule of law, better law enforcement, and stronger judicial institutions.

Security for our citizens must be advanced through our commitment to partner with those who are courageously battling drug cartels, gangs and other criminal networks throughout the Americas. Our efforts start at home. By reducing demand for drugs and curtailing the illegal flow of weapons and bulk cash south across our border, we can advance security in the United States and beyond. And going forward, we will sustain a lasting dialogue in the hemisphere to ensure that we are building on best practices, adapting to new threats, and coordinating our efforts.

Finally, the Summit gives every democratically-elected leader in the Americas the opportunity to reaffirm our shared values. Each of our countries has pursued its own democratic journey, but we must be joined together in our commitment to liberty, equality, and human rights. That is why I look forward to the day when every country in the hemisphere can take its seat at the table consistent with the Inter-American Democratic Charter. And just as the United States seeks that goal in reaching out to the Cuban people, we expect all of our friends in the hemisphere to join together in supporting liberty, equality, and human rights for all Cubans.

This Summit offers the opportunity of a new beginning. Advancing prosperity, security and liberty for the people of the Americas depends upon 21st century partnerships, freed from the posturing of the past. That is the leadership and partnership that the United States stands ready to provide.

Source: The White House Office of the Press Secretary

Live Blog - Obama visits Mexico

2009-04-16T10:48:00.000-07:00

Special live blog

Veronica Rodriguez, Guadalajara

"No dejan de hablar, de llegar a "acuerdos" que solo benefician a unos cuantos y no a los que realmente sufren. Creo que todo el mundo tiene la espectativas puestas en Obama, pero Obama no dejara de ser presidente de USA y como tal siempre vera el beneficio para su pais."

"The two governments keep talking, arriving at "accords" that only benefit a very few and not those who are really suffering. I think the whole world is betting on Obama, but Obama is the president of the USA and as such he'll seek what benefits his country."

LIve Blog - Obama Visit

2009-04-16T10:20:00.000-07:00

Live Blog

People all over Mexico are sending their comments about their calling Obama's historic visit:

Mercedes Betancourt, Monterrey
"Creo que tiene toda la intencion de entablar buenas relaciones con mi pais. Me cae bien, creo que es una buena persona interesada en los demas pero las buenas itenciones no levantan a un pais."

"I think he has the intention of enabling good relations with my country. I like him and believe he is a good person who is interested in others, but good intentions do not lift up a country."