Frontera
NorteSur
December 2002-January 2003
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Frontera
NorteSur |
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January 23, 2003 Kendzierski estimates that 60% of the people at Casa del Migrante had been living in the US long enough to have made lives for themselves there before they were returned to Mexico. He says that these same people are now having difficulty surviving in Mexico. For 2003, Kendzierski is expecting that Casa del Migrante will house about as many people as it did last year. Mary Galván Romero of the Instituto Madre Asunta, a Tijuana home for migrant women, said that the Instituto sheltered 913 women in 2002. Currently there are 25 women staying at the facility. Galván told the Tijuana newspaper Frontera that women are currently
arriving in Tijuana to try and cross the border during the month of
January. Many of them were previously living in the US but went home over
the winter holidays to visit family. Now they are trying to return to the
US. The All American Canal near Mexicali claimed its first victim in 2003: fifteen-year old Manuel Pérez Chávez. Mexicali's La Crónica newspaper wrote that Pérez was a young man with dreams and aspirations who wanted to try his luck in the US but will now be returned in a coffin to his home state of Oaxaca. On Monday, January 20, Mexicali's immigrant-protection group Beta learned of Pérez's disappearance the previous day. Beta found his body on Tuesday, January 21. Pérez was with three cousins and a nephew when he tried crossing to the US. More than a year had passed since had seen his brother living in Salinas, California and Pérez had hoped to see him that same Sunday. Instead, his brother went to claim his body. Pérez's brother, who is not named in the article, said that Manuel was the sixth of nine children. He dropped out of school in the fourth grade because he had to begin doing agricultural work in his poor home town of San Andrés Zavache Ejutla in southern Mexico. At the time of his death, four of Manuel's siblings were working in the US and the young man had hoped of joining and helping them and finding work as well, his brother said. Sources: Frontera (Tijuana), January 23, 2003. Article by Luis Adolfo
San. January 14, 2003 The agents have been charged with drug violations and other crimes. When they were arrested, the agents were holding captive two men that they had arrested for allegedly transporting more than four tons of marijuana. The men, who had been held for three days without being processed through the Mexican legal system as they should have, said that the FEADS agents wanted them to pay US$2 million for their release. It is unclear if they were to be released with or without the seized marijuana. The men also said that the FEADS agents were demanding the names of the people from whom they had received the marijuana. The FEADS agents were not charged with kidnapping in the case although charges still may be added. In a January 13 statement to the Tijuana newspaper Frontera (no relationship to Frontera NorteSur), José Campos Murillo, a federal assistant attorney general, admitted that the FEADS Tijuana office "had gotten out of control." He added however that the FEADS as an institution is not under investigation, nor is the head of the FEADS, Mario Bermúdez Molina. The six FEADS agents that were arrested had all been with the agency for less than six months. Prior to this they were with the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (Federal Investigation Agency, AFI) and the Policía Judicial Federal (Federal Judicial Police) which later became the AFI. Source: Frontera (Tijuana), January 14, 2003. Article by Agustín Pérez Aguilar. January 10, 2003 Currently, Tijuana receives 4.5 cubic meters of water per second which will be sufficient for the city until 2006, according to Sánchez. However, beginning in 2003, work will begin to expand the aqueduct that supplies Tijuana. When finished, the city will receive 6 cubic meters of water per second, said Sánchez. Sánchez also spoke about California's water supply and said that it is
a separate issue from Baja California's. Recent cuts in water to
California by the US federal government will not affect the arrival of
water to Tijuana, he stated. December 19, 2002 On December 11, 2002, in Tijuana, a tunnel in the early stages of construction was discovered. It came within a block of the US. De la Torre stated that tunnels have become big business for drug traffickers and that authorities are watching all areas along the border that are ideal for tunnel building. However, de la Torre also stated that while the PFP has 400 agents in strategic points in Baja California and doing intelligence gathering in the state, the agency currently has no people in Tijuana. A constant exchange of information between the PFP and the DEA has led not only to the discovery of tunnels used for the transport of drugs but also to the prevention of crimes, said de la Torre. Source: La Voz de la Frontera (Méxicali), December 19, 2002. Article
by Abraham Salcido Bastidas. While tens of thousands of his fellow citizens are leaving the US in a mass exodus to return to Mexico for the Christmas holiday, 24-year old Gilberto Cruz Morales of Chiapas is trying to get into the US according to an article in the Mexicali newspaper La Crónica. Cruz, age 24, is from the city of San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, and says that it was not easy to make the decision to traverse all of Mexico to go to the US to look for work. In the end, it was his precarious economic condition that forced him to leave Chiapas, he said. "My last job was as a carpenter's assistant and I was paid 20 pesos [approximately US$2] for an eight-hour day, I didn't receive health insurance or any other benefits," he said. While the newspaper article described Cruz as mixing his "dialect" or language with Spanish, it did not mention what specifically his other language was. However, in another part of the article, Cruz is described as an indigenous man although again without mention of his people or community. About Chiapas, Cruz states "The people there dedicate themselves to the fields, many people work gathering the harvest they have there, but in these moments the situation is very difficult and that is why I had to come here." When La Crónica tried to get Cruz to talk about the presence of the Mexican army in Chiapas, Cruz did not want to answer. Finally he said that, instead of being a benefit to the region, the soldiers' presence has been damaging. "The presence of soldiers in San Cristobal is now seen as something normal but the adult indigenous leaders do not like to see soldiers in Chiapas," Cruz stated. To arrive at the Baja California-California border, Cruz said he spent three days on a train in deplorable conditions and more than once went without food or water. "The trip was difficult," he said, "I was the only one that left from Chiapas but at different points other people got on the train that were also going to try to cross to the US." On Saturday, December 7, Cruz was detained by the US Border Patrol and was returned to BC. Not discouraged, Cruz said he would try again to cross to the US. "In Chiapas there are not many options and I think that I will keep trying to enter the US until I succeed." Talking about how the Border Patrol treated him, Cruz said he did not
have any complaints. He also said that he had not had any problems with
city or state authorities in Mexico. In October, 2002 it was announced that the Tijuana and Baja California police assigned to Beta were withdrawn from that organization when the INM announced that Grupo Beta agents would no longer carry firearms. See a previous article at the FNS web site for more information on this event: http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/immi.html In an apparent reversal of the firearms policy, Reynoso said that agents may discretely carry weapons in potentially dangerous situations or areas. However, Reynoso noted that Beta's goal is to be a migrant aid
organization and not a police force. So far this year, the INM has deported approximately 1,200 foreigners in violation of Mexican immigration laws. In 2001, the INM deported a total of 1,262 people. The INM said that 65% of those deported are from Central America, the majority of whom are from Guatemala, while others are from El Salvador and Honduras. US citizens account for 12% of the people that have been deported and 23% are from other nations. Source: Frontera (Tijuana), December 3, 2002. Article by Daniel Salinas. |