Frontera NorteSur

Democratic Party activists Dee Dee Camhi and Larry Canady say enthusiasm is running high among the rank-and-file membership. Welcoming an infusion of new members, local chapter meetings draw between 30-60 people. What sets Camhi’s and Canady’s branch of the Democratic Party apart from many others is that it is located outside the United States, in Banderas Bay, Mexico, to be precise. First organized in November 2007, the Costa Banderas chapter of Mexico Democrats Abroad now counts more than 200 members. The chapter represents US citizens residing in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, as well as in the emerging, new gringo “colonies” located just to the north of the well-known tourist resort in the state of Nayarit.

“I think the same things that motivate (Democrats) here are the same things that motivate them in the States,” says Canady, a full-time resident of Puerto Vallarta who serves as the vice chairperson of the Costa Banderas organization. “I think they are probably a little tired of the last 8 years. I’ve seen more people enthusiastic and have more energy, more passion about this election than any other election that I remember.”

According to Costa Banderas Chairperson Camhi, immigration and Medicare stand out as two issues of particular concern for local Democrats. A Spanish teacher who is well-versed in Mexican culture, Camhi stresses that she and other US citizens living south of the border are surrounded by family-oriented neighbors who depend on remittances from family members working in the US to sustain them in a tough economy.

“We see the issue of what is supposedly immigration and illegals as not as significant as it seems to be played up in the press in the States,” Camhi says.

In Banderas Bay, many new immigrants are either retired or approaching retirement age. Camhi and Canady say US citizens are deeply concerned about the inability to tap into Medicare, a system they paid into all their lives, for payment of medical services in Mexico.

Mexico Democrats Abroad is working on a resolution for the August 2008 Democratic Party convention that would endorse Medicare coverage for US citizens living abroad. The backers of the resolution intend to have it approved as part of the party’s platform for the 2008 election, Camhi says.

Another issue of keen interest to the Mexico-based Democrats is the state of the cross-border economy, Canady adds. In the last decade, Puerto Vallarta and the surrounding region experienced a real estate sales boom as more and more US citizens moved into the area or purchased second homes for extended vacations or for income-producing rentals.

Literally, signs abound that the US housing market crisis is beginning to hit Banderas
Bay. For sale signs on existing properties are more common than in 2007, and the blonde-haired, English-speaking real estate agents who were once quite visible hustling potential clients on Puerto Vallarta’s streets are much harder to spot this year.

“The economy there is definitely going to spill over here, good or bad,” Canady contends. “I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg depending on what happens in the next year.”

Jumping into politics in late 2007, Canady and Camhi found themselves charged with the task of organizing the local version of the Democratic primary. Like other international Democrats, the new Costa Banderas members plugged into the Global Primary that commenced on Super Tuesday in February of this year. Barack Obama emerged as the favorite of Mexico Democrats victor by a close margin. In the Banderas Bay election, 126 Democrats voted. According to official figures posted on the Mexico Democrats website, Barack Obama got 68 votes, Hillary Clinton 56, Dennis Kucinich 1 and John Edwards 1.

In Mexico, registered Democrats were allowed to cast their ballots via an Internet voting system or at polling stations that were set up for Super Tuesday. The primary unfolded in areas with large populations of US immigrants, including San Miguel de Allende, Lake Chapala and Mexico City.

“Paris and London are the only two cities from abroad which had more voters than San Miguel de Allende,” Canady adds.

Writing for the Mexico Democrats website, Bruce Rossley, vice chairperson of the San Miguel de Allende chapter, describes the scene where 512 US citizens voted.

“It looked like any polling place in America,” Rossley writes, “but when you looked, more clearly, you realized that you weren’t in Kansas any more. The walls and concave ceiling of the polling place were covered in vibrant colors of red and orange, with figures of ancient Aztec warriors looking down on Americans casting their votes for the first time in a foreign land.”

Pre-election campaigning for the candidates and the Global Primary varied from place to place in Mexico. Camhi and Canady say they were prohibited from setting up a public literature table by local authorities in Puerto Vallarta, but that Democrats in San Miguel de Allende were able to promote the event in public with no trouble.

A milestone event, the Democrats’ 2008 Global Primary is perhaps the most salient example to date of what Miami University scholar Dr. Sheila Croucher calls “political transnationalism.”

With some estimates of the number of US citizens residing in Mexico exceeding one million (no exact census is publicly available), both the Democratic and Republican parties have an important stake south of the border for the 2008 and future elections.

Reports have circulated of efforts to organize Republicans in Puerto Vallarta, but several individuals who have been identified as part of the initiative could not be reached for comment or did not respond in time to a list of questions sent by e-mail.

Republicans Abroad celebrated its 30th anniversary this year with a Washington, D.C. event which featured Karl Rove, Republican National Committee Chair Robert “Mike” Duncan, Senator Tim DeMint, and scholars from the Heritage Foundation, among others. On its website, Republicans Abroad lists furthering anti-terrorism legislation, counting Americans overseas in the census and eliminating the double taxation US citizens working in foreign countries face as among prime issues of concern for the group. On Capitol Hill, Republican Senator DeMint is involved in a bi-partisan effort with Democratic Representative Gregory W. Meeks to provide tax relief for US citizens abroad.

In the Puerto Vallarta area, Republican candidate John McCain is getting positive comments from some US-born residents, according to Camhi and Canady. “I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as an election as we thought a few months ago,” Canady muses. “I see there are possibilities that nobody really considered, say, three or four months ago.”

The November general election will be very different from the Democrats’ Global Primary, which was organized for the sole purpose of selecting a Democratic presidential candidate. In addition to the presidential contest, Mexico-based Democrats will vote in congressional and local races as well. For November, the main task for the Costa Bandera Democrats will be to organize their supporters to complete and send absentee ballots to the US. According to Camhi, the ballots will be sent to the US in a diplomatic pouch via the US Consulate in Puerto Vallarta.

“What we’re looking at in the states in November is not only the president, but we’re looking at congressmen from each of the different states,” she says. “So each of us from a different state has to get a different ballot.” Much has been written about Latino immigrants in the US as being a potential swing vote this year, but could politicized US expatriates be the over-looked factor in close 2008 elections? Camhi says the impact of US citizens voting from Mexico and other places abroad will be difficult to assess because of the way absentee votes are compiled and counted in different places. “It could make a difference, but unfortunately, you’ll never know,” Camhi says.

For the fourth year in a row, New Mexico State University's Center for Latin American and Border Studies (CLABS) will sponsor the J. Paul Taylor Symposium. Scheduled for April 2-4 at the NMSU campus in Las Cruces, the theme of this year’s event is "Justice for Immigrants." Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America along with Cesar Chavez, is slated to be the opening speaker.

Dr. Neil Harvey, CLABS director, said the symposium will "offer a timely analysis of current challenges of ensuring fair treatment of immigrants." As Dr. Harvey underscored, the symposium will take place at a moment in history when "the lack of comprehensive immigration reform has created new problems and uncertainties."

Locally, the Las Cruces conference will convene at a time of controversies over an Immigration Customs and Enforcement raid last year in the southern New Mexico community of Chaparral, and the expansion of the US Border Patrol's "no tolerance" policy of incarcerating undocumented immigrants detained in the area between downtown El Paso and the Santa Teresa, New Mexico, border crossing.

Nationally and internationally, immigration remains a burning question in 2008. In Latin America, the US economic downturn is prompting concerns about the impact of slimming remittances, while in the United States immigrants could well prove a strategic swing vote in this year's elections. At the same time, connections between migration and the North American Free Trade Agreement are back on the public agendas in Mexico and the United States. Meanwhile, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants are closely scrutinizing US immigration policies.

The NMSU symposium will explore the immigration issue from broad national and international perspectives. The planned sessions will look at the many different dimensions of the migration phenomenon, with panels focusing on youth, women, indigenous peoples, agricultural workers, media, and law. A panel featuring Fernando Garcia of El Paso's Border Network for Human Rights and Ira Mehlman of the Washington, D.C.-based Federation for American Immigration Reform promises to be polemically hot.

Among the many speakers scheduled for the conference are: Oscar Chacon, National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities; Carlos Marentes, Border Agricultural Workers Union; Diana Bustamante, Colonias Development Council; Julienne Smreka, New Mexico Children's Cabinet; Alfredo Corchado, Dallas Morning News; Alfredo Quijano, Ciudad Juarez's Norte daily; Carlos Spector, El Paso immigration attorney; and Olga Pedroza, Centro Campesino Legal of Las Cruces.

Academic specialists from New Mexico State University, the University of Texas at El Paso, Arizona State University and the University of California-Berkeley will offer their analyses of historical and contemporary events, and cultural presentations will be delivered by Youth Poets on the Border, filmmaker Bill Jungels and photographers Diana Molina and Julian Cardona.

The symposium's events are free of charge and open to the public. For more information, interested persons can e-mail event coordinator Scott Anderson at scanders@nmsu.edu

On a day when the giant Mexican flag that usually flutters in the breeze over Ciudad Juarez's Chamizal Park was oddly absent, images of the Aztec eagle were still prominent among the Chihuahua farmers and their supporters who assembled across the street. Defying a fatally-frigid cold front that's left a slew of victims dead from hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning in the borderlands, a hardy group gathered on the morning of January 18 to begin a tractorcade to Mexico City. Organized as the Francisco Villa Campesino Resistance Movement (MRCFV), the northerners are moving south with a firm message for the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon: renegotiate the agricultural section of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to shield corn and beans from foreign competition.

“From Chamizal, a piece of national territory recuperated for the integrity and sovereignty of our country, we make a call to the nation, from the Mexican countryside and from the No Corn, No Country National Campaign, for the rescue of the nation, for the recuperation and clear exercise of our independence and popular and national sovereignty, and for the construction of a truly social, democratic and lawful state," proclaimed the MRCFV in a declaration.

"The government of Felipe Calderon has refused to protect corn and beans, basic foods for Mexicans and sources of employment, survival and cultural reproduction of three million farmers and their families as well as 56 ethnic groups in the country.”

Convened two years before the 100th anniversary of the 1910 Mexican Revolution and the 200th anniversary of the 1810 War for Independence, Mexico’s latest farmer protest is now gathering force with strong historical and political overtones.

Farmers intend to follow the same route that Pancho Villa took on his 1914 march into Mexico City, and on which an anti-NAFTA protest was conducted by protestors on horseback in 1999. Along the journey more farmers and tractors are expected to join the final push into the national capital for a massive anti-NAFTA demonstration. From the four directions of the old Aztec Empire, thousands of farmers plan to stream into Mexico City's Zocalo square on January 31.

“This action is historic...," said Victor Suarez, president of the National Agricultural Products Marketers Association. "Just like 100 years ago when the farmer organizations of Chihuahua played an important role in the Mexican Revolution with the Villistas and the Villista cavalry that went from the north to the south to liberate Mexico from the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. Today, the motorized cavalry departs to play a role in the liberation of Mexico from a right-wing government at the service of the monopolies."

In its Chamizal Declaration, the MRCFV urged groups including the National Workers Union, Zapatista National Liberation Army, National Democratic Convention and others to join forces and come up with an alternative to the “neo-liberal model” that has left “the institutions of the Republic held hostage."

Immediately galvanizing the modern farmers’ revolt was the New Year’s Day lifting of the remaining Mexican tariffs on corn, beans, powdered milk and sugar under the provisions of NAFTA. New Year’s Day was marked by anti-NAFTA border protests in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana.

Recognizing the extreme disparities in agricultural development among the three future NAFTA states, the trade accord's negotiators gave Mexican growers of sensitive products like corn 15 years to achieve competitive status. But as the old Ford and John Deere tractors collected for the tractorcade made clear, Mexican farmers are still decades behind their counterparts in the US and Canada who use the latest, costly models to work their farms. Surveying the scene, Carlos Marentes, the veteran leader of El Paso’s Border Agricultural Workers Union and the Bracero Project, said the aging tractors on display were the cream of the crop in a countryside where oxen and mules still leave grooves in the land.

“If you go deep, south in Mexico, you will see that the situation is even worse,” Marentes said. “Here we are talking about some of the ejiditarios, campesinos and producers who at least by working in the US were able to make a little bit of money to buy their machinery.” Despite their efforts, small farmers are still left out in the cold by agricultural policies in the three NAFTA that benefit “the big entities involved in large-scale, industrial, commercial agricultural production,” Marentes contended.

Many farmers consider the January 1 tariff elimination the final curtain on their livelihoods. A recent report by Ana de Ita published by the Center for International Policy’s Americas Program, documented how Mexican corn farmers have been subjected to lower prices and US-grown corn imports well above NAFTA quotas almost every year since the implementation of the treaty in 1994. According to de Ita, many US-produced corn imports are encouraged by long-term “soft” loans from the US Commodity Credit Corporation

As the clock approached high noon on January 18, the MRCFV and its supporters marched from the edge of Chamizal Park to the Bridge of Americas between Ciudad Juarez and neighboring El Paso, Texas. Forming a "human wall," the demonstrators briefly stopped most traffic returning from the United States. Amid chants of “No Corn, No Country,” signs were hoisted that denounced NAFTA and opposed the importation of genetically-modified corn
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After a final ceremony at the Mexican eagle statue that guards the entrance to the Bridge of Americas, an advance contingent of 14 old tractors entered the mid-day traffic of Ciudad Juarez and soon passed by the strip malls, fast food restaurants and maquiladoras built on lands which once marked by fields where world-famous cotton was planted.

The northern tractorcade is just one hot piece of the NAFTA pressure cooker building up in Mexico. In recent weeks, the Mexican press has carried numerous stories on the growing nationwide controversy around free trade. Many of the country’s main political actors are speaking out for or against revisiting the free trade agreement.

Key federal senators and deputies from the PRI and PRD parties verbally support the call by the MRCFV and its allies to renegotiate NAFTA'S agricultural clauses. Resolutions in support of farmers' demands have passed the Guerrero and Veracruz state legislatures, while a split has developed in the powerful Roman Catholic Church over the free trade treaty. Although the nine bishops of the Mexican Episcopal Conference urge a thorough reexamination of NAFTA’s agricultural sections, Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera is against reopening a trade agreement he says is reaping benefits for his country. The old National Campesino Confederation (CNC), at one time the most influential force in the countryside, gave its blessing to NAFTA when it was approved during the Salinas de Gortari years but is now demanding the trade pact’s revision.

On the legal front, farmers in Guanajuato and other states are pursuing challenges against NAFTA on the basis that the accord violates sections of the Mexican Constitution which protect the economic well-being of citizens. Mexico's Supreme Court, which has ruled that international agreements cannot supersede the nation’s Constitution, could wind up reviewing the constitutionality of NAFTA.

Until now, the Calderon administration has remained steadfast in its stance that NAFTA will not be touched. While defending NAFTA, the Calderon administration is rolling out a rural development strategy that combines subsidies, technical assistance, yield improvement and crop substitution to create a "winning" countryside that’s firmly integrated into the global market. Far from viewing NAFTA as a drawback, the Mexican government sees the accord as an opportunity for entrepreneurial spirits to meet national and foreign demands for food and fiber. In comments to the press, federal government representatives stress how NAFTA has made Mexico the top supplier of winter fruit and vegetables to the United States

In 2008, the Calderon administration plans to subsidize almost three million corn, bean, sugarcane and milk producers to the tune of about $2 billion. "The programs and resources are designed to benefit those who have the least, and they are for those producers with the greatest needs of support," insisted Mexican Agriculture Minister Alberto Cardenas in a statement. US corn producers, who will benefit from the Mexican tariff tear-down, currently receive on average about $20,000 per grower in subsidies. Mexican farmers, whose yields are almost four times less than those of US producers, each get about $770 in subsidies.

In a public relations offensive, the Calderon administration is touting its farm policies on the airwaves. On the day of the Ciudad Juarez tractorcade protest, the local affiliate of the federal government's IMER radio network aired spots that boasted of a record budget for the embattled countryside.

Some farm leaders including members of the Mexican Council for Rural Sustainable Development and the CONSUCC organization back the Calderon administration's free trade gambit.

CONSUCC Director Guadalupe Martinez Cruz recently defended the Calderon administration from criticisms by long-standing agricultural organizations like the CNC.

“Those of us who have memories know that they did not know how to construct a better future for Mexicans,” Martinez said, “but our organization nevertheless figures that we have to continue making a call to all the farmer organizations that are truly interested in transforming the countryside and rural families.”

The Other Rural Mexico and Beyond

Free trade’s opponents paint a vastly different picture of NAFTA and its consequences on rural Mexico. Among the speakers at the January 18 Ciudad Juarez demonstration was Lucha Castro, a prominent Chihuahua City attorney and women's activist. Castro read off a litany of disasters she pinned on the free trade model.

Castro charged that NAFTA and related government policies are responsible for expelling five million people from Mexico’s countryside. Merely two percent of Mexico’s agricultural production units benefit from the treaty, while eighty percent of Mexican farm exports are controlled by foreign capital, Castro said. Now a net importer of food, Mexico is in serious danger of losing its food sovereignty, she added.

“To compete with the United States all these years, the forests and soils have been devastated, and our aquifers have been over-exploited,” Castro continued. “Mexican consumers haven’t benefited from better prices. In 1994, you could buy 20 kilos of tortillas and 8 kilos of beans with a minimum wage salary. Nowadays, you can only buy 6 kilos of tortillas and 3 kilos of beans.”

Farm labor activist Carlos Marentes slammed NAFTA for having adverse effects in the United States as well. According to Marentes, the average yearly earnings of chile pickers in New Mexico slid to about $5,500 by 2006. Up against a wave of chile imports from Mexico and other countries, US growers are mechanizing the cultivation and harvest of crops and leaving workers without jobs, Marentes said. Many small farmer and other rural organizations in the US and Canada support the Mexican anti-NAFTA protest, he added.
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In Mexico, the Pancho Villa tractorcade is just one of numerous "social insurgencies" breaking out all over the landscape in 2008, said Alma Gomez, a former Chihuahua state legislator and longtime women's activist. The protests involve miners, teachers, environmentalists and many others, she said.

Rambling south on the Pan-American Highway atop their old tractors, the northern farmers are already attracting significant support from labor groups, non-governmental organizations and ordinary citizens. Prior to he tractorcade’s departure from the border, Oscar Enriquez, director of the Ciudad Juarez’s Paso del Norte Human Rights Center, lauded the contributions of farmers and rural communities to Mexican life. Enriquez predicted that the Pancho Villa tractorcade will sow the long road south with seeds of dignity as well as with love for the family, land and countryside.

“I think the march is a way of defending the culture of the men and women of the countryside. I also think that it has another dimension,” Enriquez said. “When the farmers, the planters, are the transmitters of the right to food, the right to human dignity, the right to culture, the right to own land, it should be clear that the government has the obligation to protect these rights, to respect these rights and guarantee that they are complied with.”

In one way or another, Esther Chavez Cano has touched countless lives throughout the world. In the judgment of El Paso labor activist Victor Munoz, collaborating with the longtime Ciudad Juarez women's rights activist shaped "who I am."

Assigned to cover the Ciudad Juarez women's murders for CNN in the 1990s, journalist Brian Barger was amazed by the boxes of newspaper clippings about the femicides Chavez had collected. Long before few cared, the founder of the March 8 Feminist Group was methodically documenting and publicly denouncing the rape-murders of young women whose bodies were dumped on the desert outskirts of Ciudad Juarez.

Profoundly moved by the crimes, Barger quit the reporting beat and helped Chavez found Casa Amiga, Ciudad Juarez's rape crisis and domestic violence center, back in 1999. The experience, Barger said recently at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces (NMSU), "changed my life."

Suffering from cancer, Chavez was honored at a November 9 NMSU ceremony attended by Munoz, Barger and other friends who gathered to celebrate the life of a Mexican feminist whose legacy will endure in the university's library, which now contains the Esther Chavez Cano Papers 1990-2006. Personally donated by Chavez, the papers cover the history of the Ciudad Juarez femicides as well as other developments related to women's and labor issues in the Mexican border city.

"NMSU is profoundly honored to accept the donation of the Esther Chavez Papers to the Rio Grande Historical Collections of the library, said Dr. Waded Cruzado-Salas, NMSU executive vice-president and provost. Praising Chavez's leadership, Dr. Cruzado-Salas said the human rights advocate's work assured that the "voices of the silenced" wouldn't be forgotten.

In an interview with Frontera NorteSur after the emotional celebration, Chavez reflected on the long struggle of Ciudad Juarez's women to combat gender violence and win justice. Chavez's best-known accomplishment was the establishment of the non-profit Casa Amiga as an institution of survival and healing for violence-tormented women and children.

Struggling out of an old house near the city's downtown for many years, Casa Amiga now occupies a large, modern facility in the southern section of the city that serves thousands of clients every year. Casa Amiga has inspired the creation of similar centers in a city where battered and assaulted women once had nowhere to turn. Still not satisfied, Chavez said she would like to establish a second center.

"I don't know if I have time, but it's urgent for me to open another (Casa Amiga) where we were in the city before, Chavez affirmed, “because the distances are such and the poverty is so great that a woman from the (other) side of the city who wants to visit us has to spend half her salary in a day just to go, because she has to take three buses, which are expensive,"

Observing Ciudad Juarez grow from economic investment and the North American Free Trade Agreement, Chavez contended that the city's workers have not enjoyed the fruits of the boom. In Chavez's view, Ciudad Juarez is saddled with a deadly underdevelopment that results in bizarre tragedies like this year's street cave-ins which killed a young girl who was walking to school, Jazmin Garcia, as well as a man who tried to rescue the 12-year-old child. "We are in the 21st Century," Chavez said in an incredulous tone.

After weathering years of battles and negotiations with successive Chihuahua state and municipal governments, Chavez assessed the gains and shortcomings of the women's movement. The seasoned activist cited as positive steps forward the creation of special prosecutorial divisions for women's homicides and sexual crimes, a new domestic violence law, legal system reforms, and the involvement of national and international human rights organizations in the Ciudad Juarez women's struggle.

Still, Chavez conveyed skepticism. "I ask myself constantly: If the mentality of judges and prosecutors doesn't change, the law might be good but it won't change anything."

Crediting the present Chihuahua state government for not trying to undermine Casa Amiga, Chavez maintained the current authorities have a better understanding of the gender violence problem-to an extent. Chavez charged that a "lack of political will" or a "cover-up" means scores of rape-murders linger in impunity.

"We have a lot of corruption," Chavez said. "It's not because I say it. You can see it in any newspaper you open up: an ex-cop kills a woman or an ex-cop was seen kidnapping....there's a cop involved in many of the Juarez crimes. It's known there is a pact between the police and those that sell drugs. A lot remains to be done."

Just days prior to Chavez's appearance at NMSU, a young mother, 22-year-old Claudia Elizabeth Gallegos Serranos, was found strangled to death and her body burned in Ciudad Juarez, according to press accounts. Questioning official statistics of the crimes, Chavez openly pondered: "Who are the real victims? How many disappeared are there in the city?"

Among others who were on hand in Las Cruces to honor Chavez was Paula Bonilla Flores, the mother of 1998 murder victim Maria Sagrario Gonzalez Flores. In a separate public presentation sponsored by the NMSU student group Advocates to Stop Chihuahua Femicides, Bonilla Flores retold the history of her daughter's brutal slaying and the long struggle for justice that followed it.

In 2005, Sagrario's family encouraged Chihuahua state police to arrest a suspect in the crime, Jose Luis Hernandez, who was sentenced to 28 years in prison for the young woman's murder last year. But Bonilla Flores, who said she was only notified of the sentence after making a special trip to the state prosecutor’s office, quickly added that several other suspects in Sagrario's slaying were still free.

In May 2007, prompted by the numerous irregularities in the murder investigation of her daughter, Bonilla Flores filed a complaint against the Mexican government with the Washington, D.C.-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the official human rights agency of the Organization of American States. Closer to home, Bonilla Flores and other relatives of femicide victims recently painted emblematic pink-background crosses along Ciudad Juarez's new Camino Real highway and, inspired by the Argentine mothers of the disappeared, began holding regular protests on the first Thursday of every month outside the offices of the Office of the Chihuahua State Attorney.

Like Chavez, Bonilla Flores is appalled by the efforts of some to sweep the murder cases under the rug or portray them as a "myth" or "black legend" that have stained Ciudad Juarez's reputation.

"My daughter Sagrario is not a myth. I didn't make it up that I had a daughter named Sagrario. I didn't make it up that she was murdered in such a way," Bonilla Flores said in an interview after her well-attended talk. "My daughter existed, and I would tell you all to believe in the families and not in everything the authorities say. We have the truth in our hands and in the case files of the victims. There are no advances, nothing is resolved and there are no real investigations."

In Esther Chavez Cano’s worldview, justice for Sagrario Gonzalez and many other women is truly an issue that transcends borders. "There's a lot to do, but there many more voices demanding justice, demanding changes. I think this is important. In spite of everything, more discordant voices are being born that say, 'I don't agree with this, I don't want this'," Chavez said. "Although you are Americans and we are Mexicans, the murdered women are the world's murdered women, because women are killed all over the world. We have to join together to bring an end to this."

Visitors to the Pepper Pot restaurant in Hatch, New Mexico, might be startled to see the hallway photo exhibit that shows the town under water and young men in a boat on a mission to rescue trapped animals. Best known for its iconic green chile crop, arid Hatch, which is a farming community located about one hour north of the US-Mexico border, is among the last places one might expect a flood.

Yet residents of the southern New Mexican town of about 1,600 souls are having a hard time shaking the memories of August 2006, the month when the Placitas Arroyo overflowed and flooded the village's center. More than 400 homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed and 500 people displaced.

Hatch was once at the top of the evening newscast. Volunteers turned out to help the flood victims, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other government and non-profit organizations offered aid and the Governor swooped in with a $15,000 state check in hand for emergency school supplies. Classes eventually resumed, some people moved back into their homes and familiar businesses reopened. Everything was back to normal, right?

Helen Woodward is among residents who criticize both the speed and amount of flood relief. After her home was swamped in three feet of water, Woodward set out to rebuild her life. Woodward recalls how 9 people, including from different agencies, including one “adobe expert” with a malfunctioning camera, inspected her home. Months later, with a $5,000 FEMA check spent and the family savings gone, Woodward is still waiting for extra help that hasn’t materialized. "Nothing has been done right," she contends.

The Aid Game

Despite an initial infusion of private and public aid, many Hatch residents now find themselves on the short end of the disaster relief stick. According to Lupe Castillo of the Hatch Area Recovery Team (HART), 95 percent of residents did not have flood insurance. Averaging between $3-5,000 per emergency case, FEMA payments carried a top limit of $28,500, says Earl Armstrong, an agency spokesman The federal agency committed an additional $878, 252 for repairing public roads, bridges and buildings in Hatch, Armstrong adds.

Other communities in Dona Ana County including Leasburg and Sunland Park suffered significant flood damages last year. According to Armstrong, 1,220 people registered for help from FEMA. His agency obligated $1,632, 758 for housing and other individual assistance countywide, Armstrong says. A total of $3,909,862 was obligated for public works repairs in the county, he adds.

Martha Morales' 84-year-old mother fled her flood-damaged Hatch home for a temporary trailer. A $10,000 FEMA payment helped with structural repairs and some home furnishings, but there was plumbing left to do, Morales says. "I'm grateful for (FEMA) help but it's not enough," she says.

Simply put, FEMA does not fully compensate victims of natural disasters. FEMA's function, in essence, is to supplement any payments made by private insurers under the National Flood Insurance Program. In fact, claims paid by private insurers are made with tax dollars funneled to the companies by FEMA.

A non-profit group, HART was established to accept and channel donations to people who fell through the official cracks. Pecan farmer Shelly Hayner, for one, wonders how HART has spent the aid money.

In response, HART's Castillo counters that the group has public meetings every two weeks and manages a careful screening process to get aid to those who deserve it. The volunteer aid worker insists that about 20 families who were not impacted by the flood were denied aid, while others were likewise rejected because they received assistance from the Small Business Administration and other agencies. HART's purpose is to help the neediest, she says.

Acknowledging that HART's fundraising goal has fallen far short of its $230,000 target, Castillo reports that the group raised about $44,500 and spent more than $27,000 by the end of May. HART has assisted 154 cases, Castillo adds, with 98 others still pending. Castillo blames the fundraising short-fall on what could be a popular misperception.

“A lot of people think we’re okay now. You know it’s dry, we’re okay now,” she muses. “But we’re not. We still need a lot, a lot of help.”

About 40 families from the demolished Caballo Apartments, which once housed many low-income farmworkers, now live in a FEMA trailer park five miles south of Hatch in Rincon. The rent-free, three bedroom Morgan home trailers are roomy, feature a nice kitchen but lack closets. FEMA is offering residents like Valentin Morones an up-front trailer purchase option for between $12-13,000, but the restaurant worker, who earns the minimum wage for part-time work, lacks a credit history.

"I'm going to see if I can get a some credit, but I don't think we're going' to qualify for it," Morones says. "I don't know where we're going to go. We're going to have to rent."

According to Rene Rodriguez, a FEMA manager in Las Cruces, new mobile home park owners will have to pay transport costs any permit fees to place their trailers-if they can find available land.

Like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Hatch's real estate is increasingly a coveted commodity. The small town is close to the planned Spaceport America, a major state economic development project that is slated to be built with more than $100 million in state and county funds.

Due to a land shortage, Rodriguez confirms that FEMA is likely to request an extension of the planned 18-month life of the trailer park.

Meanwhile, some Rincon FEMA park dwellers complain the all-electric units spit out monthly bills of more than $100 from the privately-owned El Paso Electric Company. Onion packer Maria Ramos says that she could not pay a bill and had her electricity cut-off, forcing the worker to stay with a friend in Hatch. Ramos contends that the $2,500 FEMA payment for her husband’s flooded trailer wasn’t enough to get the unit back into order. “I wish they would fix that trailer so I can go there, or help me pay the electric bill here,” Ramos sighs.

Hatch Valley native Patricio Torres, whose family counts generations in this section of the Rio Grande Valley, insists that warnings of a pending flood disaster in Hatch were brushed aside by officials. Torres, who witnessed damage to one of his properties last summer, complains that it was the fourth time in 9 years that he was flooded. "Every time I've tried to make the people aware, make the county aware that this is a problem, it's fallen on deaf ears," Torres maintains.

Grower Shelly Hayner, who lives very close to one of the spots where the Placitas Arroyo overflowed, says that she observed water running off two bridges over the arroyo in the immediate weeks preceding the flood. Hayner says that she snapped photos of water pouring from the Canal Street Bridge, flowing into farm fields and ruining crops.

"For a month, we had warnings that the arroyo wasn't carrying the water where it needed to go and nothing was done about it," Hayner charges. "It seems that there is still nothing done about it, so that this won't happen again."

Gary Esslinger, treasurer-manager for the Elephant Butte Irrigation District (EBID), one of the agencies which shares maintenance responsibilities for the arroyo, says work crews repaired the arroyo breaks and “hopefully” got rid of the immediate problem. To stave off a repeat of last year’s calamity, Esslinger says the EBID will have personnel out in the field around the clock this summer. “We’re prepared. We’ve started a warning system within our own agency,” Esslinger adds.

Last year, Hayner's pecan orchard was soaked in water for three weeks. The farmer says that she made public information requests to Dona Ana County for copies of the Canal Street bridge plans and any hydrological studies which might have been done on the structure but received no immediate response.

In addition to possible flow blockage from the two narrow bridges, Hayner and other residents suspect that the arroyo wasn’t properly cleared of brush and debris.

Upkeep of the arroyo, which is divided among a patchwork of private and public lands, emerged as the hot issue in the wake of the flood.

"We did listen to them," says Dona Ana County Flood Commission Director Paul Dugie, in answer to Hatch residents' long-running concerns. Declining to comment on specific allegations regarding the Placitas Arroyo because of what he says is possible litigation, Dugie adds that the cost-benefit issue previously arose in considering flood control improvements.

Federal regulations that govern the participation of the Army Corps of Engineers in flood control projects mandate that every dollar spent needs to be matched with one dollar of economic value downstream, he says. Unfortunately, Hatch came up short when cost-benefit considerations for the Placitas Arroyo were calculated, Dugie laments. The federal formula is very difficult to meet in lightly-developed and sparsely-populated rural areas, he adds.

In a newsletter delivered to Hatch residents last fall, town Mayor Judd Nordyke said that he was attempting to work with other agencies to form flood control district with the power to obtain easements and levy taxes so the arroyo could be put under the authority of one entity. As a new rainy season quickly approaches, the plan is still on the drawing board.

Esslinger concurs with some expert conclusions that even under the best maintenance conditions, the volume of water from unusual, heavy rains which ran off from the Uvas Mountains and into the Placitas Arroyo made a flood all but inevitable. “I’ve been here 30 years and never have seen in my life so much water come down an arroyo,” Esslinger affirms.

In his message last year, Mayor Nordyke quoted the US Army Corps of Engineers and the EBID as estimating that 7.500-10,000 cubic feet of water per second flowed through a section of the Placitas Arroyo, an amount of water similar to the capacity of the Rio Grande in El Paso.

Chile farmer Pete Atencio, who sells dried chipotle peppers and other enticing hot stuff in his Hatch Chile Sales store on the village's main drag, urges officials to put cement lining on the Placitas Arroyo. As always the issue gets down to cold, hard cash.

Flood commission head Dugie says that the problem in Hatch is just a sampler of a larger one in Dona Ana County. Tens of thousands of people live near scores of aging dikes, earthen dams and levees in need of repair and upgrade. Like the Placitas Arroyo, ownership and maintenance responsibilities for various flood control structures reflect historical patterns of development and are divided among numerous private and public entities.

A wish-list of the comprehensive improvements needed to fully modernize and secure the border county's flood control systems was prepared by Dugie’s staff and arrived at a whopping $21 billion price tag.

Historically, flood control projects in southern New Mexico have received scattered attention. Dugie is cautiously optimistic the outlook could be changing. "I think this past year has really opened people's eyes." he says, "everybody's looking for information right now." Currently, the Dona Ana County Flood Commission has prepared a capital improvement plan to present to legislators, Dugie says.

Working against greater flood control investments is the very force that unleashed the Hatch flood in the first place-Mother Nature. Some observers compare last year's flood with a once-in-a-century event. If accurate, the assessment could well mean that people will soon forget the potential of Mother Nature's wrath. That is, until the next flood comes roaring into town.

Meanwhile, as the Hatch Valley gears up for another chile harvest, many residents say that they cringe when rain clouds begin gathering in the skies. "You see a lot of scared people, and a lot of people left," says public school worker Bonnie Duran. "Some people thought they didn't have any help so they just abandoned their homes. Others are trying to do something with what the little they have."

Nearly six years after the discovery of eight murdered young women in a Ciudad Juarez cotton field stunned the world, growing doubts surround Mexican authorities' accounts of the crimes. Two previous cases against alleged murderers unraveled amid revelations of tortured suspects, fabricated evidence, bizarre stories of organ trafficking, misidentified victims, the murders of two defense attorneys and the suspicious death of one suspect. Now, the Chihuahua Office of the State Attorney General (PGJE), the agency charged with the investigating the crimes, is moving ahead with legal charges against the third round of suspects in the cotton field case.

In an interview with Frontera NorteSur, Chihuahua State Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez contended that three young men from Ciudad Juarez, Francisco Granados, Alejandro Delgado and Edgar Alvarez, embarked on a drug and alcohol-splashed killing spree of young women that began in the 1990s.

While holding that satanic worship could have been a motive in the slayings, Gonzalez denied that the ECCO computer school, which some family members of victims from both Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City suspect of involvement in femicides, had anything to do with the Ciudad Juarez crimes.

"This case is more related to street-level drug dealing," Gonzalez said. "These young men worked for an individual who distributed drugs in small quantities in a sector of Ciudad Juarez." Gonzalez declined to name the shadowy drug dealer, adding that authorities are attempting to detain two more suspects in the crimes. Past PGJE spokespersons, including former Special Prosecutor Suly Ponce, denied that drug dealing had anything to do with the women's murders.

Gonzalez charged that the current suspects randomly offered rides to young women on the street, sexually attacking and then stabbing their victims to death before dumping the bodies in the cotton field located across the street from the headquarters of Ciudad Juarez’s Maquiladora Civil Association. Situated in the city’s so-called “Golden Zone,” the cotton field sits in a heavily-transited area.

In addition to the 2001 cotton field murders, Gonzalez' office is linking the latest suspects to the Lote Bravo, Lomas de Poleo and Cristo Negro serial murders that ravaged Ciudad Juarez from 1995 to 2003. All three suspects named by Gonzalez were teenagers at the time of the 1995 Lote Bravo killings. A PGJE power point presentation about the case against Alvarez and his friends includes the names of 1995 murder victims Olga Alicia Carrillo Perez and Silvia Elena Rivera Morales as among the possible victims of the suspects. Initially, the PGJE tied the late Egyptian national Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif to the Carrillo and Morales murders.

Asked if the inclusion of Carrillo's and Morales' names in the PGJE's investigation meant that Sharif was innocent of the crimes, Gonzalez said that because Sharif's case was before her time she had no knowledge of his alleged victims. Maintaining his innocence, Sharif died in a Chihuahua City prison last year while serving a 1995 sentence for the murder of Elizabeth Castro in- a conviction critics have challenged.

At a public presentation sponsored by the Santa Fe Rape Crisis and Trauma Treatment held in New Mexico’s capital city on Mother’s Day weekend 2007, Gonzalez credited various US agencies, including the FBI, for permitting her current murder investigation to proceed. At the time of Edgar Alvarez's arrest in Colorado last summer, Tony Garza, the Bush Administration's ambassador to Mexico, announced a major step forward in resolving the eight murders, and Alvarez was quickly deported to Mexico.

Granados, who is jailed on an immigration law violation in the United States, gave a tape-recorded confession to the Texas Rangers last year which led to Alvarez and Delgado. Gonzalez attempted to play a portion of the confession to the Santa Fe audience but the audio failed to deliver.

"The important thing for us is that this is an investigation that flows from the investigation that the North American authorities also are directly realizing," Gonzalez later said in an interview.

"No type of pressure existed. We're working the technical and scientific evidence. Jose Francisco Granados' home produced physical evidence of women's clothing, and other implements including purses, women's shoes, cosmetics. All this is being processed in our forensic laboratory. We even managed to obtain a genetic profile from the Cristo Negro site that we will compare with the genetic profiles of Francisco Granados, Edgar Cruz, Alejandro, and the other two individuals whose detention is pending."

The PGJE's account of the cotton field killing is strikingly similar to the same department's original but later discredited version of how bus drivers Victor Garcia and Gustavo Gonzalez allegedly killed the women. In the original case, Garcia and Gonzalez were accused of randomly kidnapping women, raping their victims and then beating them to death with bats. Both men were allegedly high when they committed crimes, though toxicology tests contradicted the state's assertions. The basic difference in the latest PGJE case is that the alleged perpetrators supposedly used knives to kill their victims.

Sally Meisenhelder, an organizer for the Las Cruces-based Friends of Juarez Women, a non-governmental organization which has worked closely with victims' families, doesn't give credence to the PGJE's latest case. "It's the same old stuff, and now there is whole new set of scapegoats," Meisenhelder said.

Other knowledgeable sources strongly disputed the PGJE's claims of how the murder victims found in the cotton field were killed.

"The official position is absurd," contended Mexican criminologist Oscar Maynez, who headed the PGJE department that supervised the 2001 examinations of the eight victims. According to Maynez, the decomposed nature of the bodies, many of them just bones, made determining the cause of death difficult.

While investigators found no evidence of stab marks on bones of victims, Maynez told Frontera NorteSur that they detected signs that some of the victims could have been strangled to death, a pattern in scores of other killings. An upcoming report from the highly-respected Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, which has spent nearly two years examining the remains of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City femicide victims, is expected to draw similar conclusions.

Maynez quickly dismissed Attorney General Gonzalez's contention that the lack of identifiable stab wounds in the corpses was caused by the way the presumably substance-impaired killers cut into sensitive organs like the heart. "They are saying that these people are better than surgeons," Maynez said. "The (fabrication) of scapegoats is becoming more sophisticated. They are trying to feed the evidence into the story."

Maynez discounted the possibility that Alvarez and his street buddies, who reportedly struggled with drug, emotional, job and marriage problems, had the capacity to hide, transport and then dump numerous bodies over an eight-year period without being detected.

"You are talking about 16-year-old kids who had no money and were consuming drugs killing women and somehow didn't get caught," he said. "I'm sure they weren't involved in the cotton field murders."

The former PGJE official added, "US officials have to look closely at this case and not take my word for granted. This is very serious. Behind the murders is a very organized, resourceful structure."

The PGJE's case shows other signs of coming apart. Media reports place key suspect Alvarez in Colorado during many of the women's disappearances and murders attributed to the migrant.

Last February, "protected witness" Alejandro Delgado publicly recanted. Delgado charged that he was physically manhandled, isolated and threatened by Chihuahua state police officers. In statements to Ciudad Juarez reporters, Delgado declared that Granados and Alvarez were both innocent, and that he made up the murder story under pressure from Chihuahua state policemen who had isolated him away from his home.

Almost immediately after making his denunciation, Delgado was arrested by the PGJE and charged with murdering 16-year-old Silvia Gabriela Laguna Cruz in 1998. A judge quickly threw out the charge as baseless.

Gonzalez denied that Delgado was forcibly isolated or slapped with a trumped-up charge for complaining to the press.

"Alejandro Delgado said that he was really afraid of Edgar Alvarez's family and that he wanted to be protected," Gonzalez said. "He was with us a protected witness until his wife got mad and wanted him to go home. In our opinion, Edgar Cruz's defense picked (Delgado) once he got home to get Edgar Cruz off the hook."

Then there is the matter of Francisco Granados’ sanity. The allegedly repentant mass murderer reportedly engaged in unusual behaviors like talking to the devil ever since he was a teenager. While acknowledging that Granados could be lying, Gonzalez affirmed that authorities are conducting tests to determine the truthfulness of the suspect’s statements. Still, Gonzalez was confident that, until now, corresponding evidence has established the “reliability of this man.”

Questions hang over the authorities' version of the alleged randomness of how the victims were selected. Three of the cotton field victims had some sort of relationship with the privately-owned ECCO computer school in Ciudad Juarez, as did several other femicide victims in Chihuahua City to the south, an intercity "coincidence" that has not publicly come up at all in the cases against Granados, Alvarez and Delgado.

Patricia Cervantes, the mother of Neyra Azucena Cervantes, a 2003 Chihuahua City murder victim who worked and studied at the successor institution of ECCO, said in an interview that she has not been questioned by the PGJE about any possible connections between her daughter’s murder and the cotton field case. Cervantes expressed surprise at the state’s current case, adding that she has not seen any news of the prosecutions in the Chihuahua City media.

If the official version of the cotton field crimes is correct, it means that numerous victims who came into contact with ECCO, an almost tiny educational institution operating in a population pool of more than 2 million persons in two different places, somehow wound up in the clutches of serial killers in different places and at different times from early 2001 to early 2003. Several years ago, ECCO spokesmen denied any involvement in crimes to the border-region news media.

Pinning the murders on Alvarez and company closes the door on other possible suspects in the serial killings, including police officers. A 2003 US State Department cable about the Cristo Negro slayings obtained via the Freedom of Information Act by Keith Yearman, an assistant professor of geography at Illinios’ DuPage University, noted the lingering suspicions of official complicity in the femicides.

"Authorities report they are following several investigation leads, including one of possible police involvement in the disappearances, but no progress has been reported,” stated the cable.

Yearman, who is waiting to receive documents from the FBI, said that a similar request for documents from the US Central Intelligence Agency related to the cotton field case and other women’s slayings in Ciudad Juarez was turned down on national security grounds.

Claiming no party affiliation, Patricia Gonzalez was elected to her post in a 2004 multi-partisan vote by the Chihuahua State Legislature. The former judge has enjoyed a good rapport with sectors of the women's and human rights communities. At the Santa Fe forum, Maria Pilar Sanchez, director of Ciudad Juarez's Casa Amiga rape crisis center, praised Chihuahua’s state attorney general for "doing things" and bringing "transparency" to the scene.

Gonzalez's office is undertaking an ambitious legal and police training reform program in Chihuahua, planning, for example, to institute oral trials for the first time. However, the legal case against the cotton field suspects is proceeding in the traditional fashion of written statements constituting the weight of evidence.

Gonzalez’s legal reform efforts are encountering resistance from members of the old legal establishment who are criticizing both the speed and character of the reforms.

In Santa Fe, Gonzalez insisted that she is purging the PGJE of bad elements, but charged that her campaign is complicated by persistent corruption in the Federal Agency of Investigations, Federal Preventive Police and Ciudad Juarez Municipal Police.

Gonzalez confirmed to Frontera NorteSur that she has received death threats, specifically in connection to the investigation of men's homicides, but has not suffered "any threats" in relation to the femicide probes.

US support is a cornerstone of Gonzalez's efforts. A $5 million-dollar grant from the US Agency for International Development is underwriting much of the reform project. The grant is managed by the Washington, D.C.-based firm Management Systems International (MSI). According to the non-profit Center for Public Integrity, MSI is a privately-owned foreign aid contractor that runs programs in Iraq, Afghanistan and other nations.

Only days after Edgar Alvarez was deported to Mexico last year, Ambassador Garza appeared in Ciudad Juarez, where he praised the administration Attorney General Gonzalez and Chihuahua Governor Jose Reyes Baeza for opening a new forensic laboratory and "implementing a new criminal justice system that is transparent and fair, that protects human rights.."

Ambassador Garza's words contrasted with the US State Department’s internal discourse just a few years earlier. The State Department cables obtained by Yearman reveal that US authorities were fully aware of multiple episodes of torture, corruption and killings attributed to PGJE personnel.

Assisted by the USAID funding, US border states are contributing to the PGJE's make-over. Gonzalez's office, for example, has signed a training and legal cooperation agreement with the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General. In the run-up to the Santa Fe forum, the New Mexico AG's office released a press statement noting the gravity and cross-border significance of the femicides.

So far, the New Mexico-Chihuahua agreement doesn’t include joint field investigations. New Mexico Assistant Attorney General Maria Sanchez-Gagne told Frontera NorteSur that no one from her office, to the best of her knowledge, is involved in the cotton field investigation. Sanchez-Gagne would not comment on past incidents of violence and criminality involving PGJE agents, but defended the cross-border reform program underway between New Mexico and Chihuahua.

“What I do know is that Chihuahua is moving forward to change its criminal justice system,” Sanchez-Gagne said. “They are the first state to do this in Mexico, and we are applauding them and assisting them to make this a more secure city and state.”

Convictions of Edgar Alvarez and his friends in the cotton field case and other women’s murders could well mark the end game in many of the Ciudad Juarez femicides. High stakes exist for the PGJE, Patricia Gonzalez, Mexican human rights guarantees and US Mexico policy, not to mention the accused suspects, victims' families and society in general.

At the international level, non-governmental human rights organizations, the European Union, the United Nations, the United States Congress, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) have all clamored to one degree or another for justice. In the United States, the murders are likely to get renewed attention when the movie Bordertown, which stars Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Banderas, is released to commercial theaters this year.

According to attorney Adriana Carmona of the Chihuahua City-based Women's Human Rights Center. relatives of 7 Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City femicide victims are pursuing cases against the Mexican government for human rights violations in the IACHR. While the IACHR's recommendations are purely advisory, lawyers for victims' families are studying the possibility of taking the cases to the next level, to the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court for Human Rights, which issues obligatory orders to member countries, including Mexico.

Four of the IACHR cases involve women that Alvarez and crew are officially suspected of killing, but convictions of the current suspects could help block or slow international legal action. If the critics are on the mark, convictions of Alvarez and his old buddies will mean that the real killers of women once again go unpunished.

Already, Mexican law guarantees impunity in a growing number of the femicides. As the Washington Post noted in a recent article, Mexican law has a 14-year statute of limitations on murder. The newspaper mentioned several murders from 1993 whose prosecution time has passed. On a campaign stop in Ciudad Juarez last year, then-presidential candidate Felipe Calderon vowed to end impunity in the women’s killings.

Meantime, sectors of the Mexican government, media and industry are taking steps to wipe the memory of the cotton field and other serial crimes, still legally unsolved, from the public consciousness. Ciudad Juarez's identity as an industrial border magnet that constantly draws new people to the city even as older residents leave for the United States helps facilitate erasure.

Recently, the Office of the Federal Attorney General quietly withdrew police officers it had long assigned to guard the cotton field. Du Page University's Yearman finds irony in the pending relocation of the US Consulate to a site close to the cotton field in Ciudad Juarez's "Golden Zone". The relocation promises a bonanza for new businesses like hotels that serve thousands of visa-seekers. “The (cotton field) is going to be plowed over so we can expand the US diplomatic presence in Mexico," Yearman observed.

Additional Sources: Washington Post, May 14, 2007. Article by Manuel Roig-Franzia. El Paso Times, July 28, 2006; August 18 and 22, 2006; September 7 and 12, 2006. October 1, 2006. Articles by Diana Washington Valdez, Louie Gilot and Tammy Fonce-Olivas. Norte, September 10, 14 and 28, 2006; February 23, 2007. Articles by Carlos Huerta, Ignacio Alvarado Alvarez and Javier Arroyo Ortega. El Diario de Juarez, February 22 and 23, 2007. May 16, 2007. Articles by Armando Rodriguez, Martin Orquiz, Juan de Dios Olivas, and Sandra Rodriguez Nieto. El Universal/EFE, March 5, 2007. Aserto (Chihuahua City), March 2007. Article by Ignacio Alvarado Alvarez. Denver Post, August 17 and 20, 2006. Articles by Michael Riley, Allison Sherry and editorial staff.

The J. Paul Taylor Social Justice Symposium: Combining Theory and Practice for Environmental Justice

As a movement in its own right, environmental justice came of age during the 1980s. Arising from the struggles of predominantly low income, people of color in the United States and abroad against toxic dumping and other environmental assaults, the EJ movement, as it is now widely known, has spread far and wide.

Fruits of the struggle include the 1994 executive order by President Bill Clinton that ordered federal agencies to consider the "disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental effects" on minority and low income populations. In a similar vein, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed a 2005 executive order that required executive branch departments in his state to adopt an environmental justice imperative.
A ruling by the New Mexico State Supreme Court earlier in the same year ordered the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) to take into account social impacts and health issues in the review process for a proposed landfill in southern New Mexico,

Angus Wright, a professor emeritus of environmental studies at California
State University who has written extensively about the intersection between environmental and working-class struggles, says that a developing trend involves the fusion of academic research at places like New Mexico State University (NMSU) with grassroots, community activism. For Wright, the stakes for an academic-community partnership are higher than ever.

"Our present moment is one in which global climate change and the array of associated issues constitute perhaps the most dramatic and important turning point in the history of humans since the Pleistocene, and the way we meet that challenge will determine the quality of our lives and future generations for as long as we can imagine," Wright says.

In the spirit of combining theory and practice for environmental justice, NMSU's Center for Latin American and Border Studies recently sponsored the latest J. Paul Taylor Social Justice Symposium. Bringing together academic researchers, environmental justice advocates and others in Las Cruces, the event offered a multi-faceted look at environmental justice issues in the US-Mexico border region and beyond.

At one panel, New Mexico State University researchers who are collaborating with different US and Mexican government agencies on promoting alternative energy, spoke about projects that reduce environmental hazards and give indigenous and low-income communities in Mexico and other Latin American nations affordable access to electric power. In an interview with Frontera Norte Sur, NMSU researcher Robert Foster of the College of Engineering's Institute of Energy and Environment estimated that 5 million people in Mexico have no access to the electrical grid.

Foster added that the border state of New Mexico has tremendous potential as an alternative energy producer in wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass resources. "Given New Mexico's population, we can provide all of our electricity needs through the different renewable resources," he said.

In another session, community activists from southern New Mexico testified about rural communities that live with dairy odors, excessive power plant emissions, lead contamination, and chemical spills. Arturo Uribe, a community organizer from the small town of Mesquite south of Las Cruces, traced the multi-generational presence of his family in the Mesilla Valley. Uribe recounted the struggle many Mesquite residents have waged against an agricultural chemical manufacturer, which Uribe blamed for multiple spills and noxious smells.

"I'm right next to a chemical plant and when my grandmother and aunt made tamales they'd complain of odors," he said. "The community of Mesquite should come first before the profits of a company that is polluting,"

Many of the defining battles of the EJ movement have been fought along the US-Mexico border in places like Tijuana, where residents have long fought against the aging Metales y Derivados toxic waste dump, or in Ciudad Juarez-El Paso, where battles have raged against proposed nuclear storage facilities, illegal waste dumps, flood-borne destruction, and lead contamination. Nestled against the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua , southern New Mexico is on the frontlines.

Taking theory out of the classroom, symposium participants climbed aboard a bus for a "Toxic Tour ‘07" of activist Uribe's hometown of Mesquite and other communities where environmental issues are a mounting point of contention between companies and local residents.

The last stop on the tour was Sunland Park, New Mexico, a growing but still poor community set on the base of Ciudad Juarez’s hills. Sunland Park residents suffer from high levels of air pollution, live next to a contaminated Rio Grande and complain about lead contamination from an old smelter. Last summer, some residents' homes were flooded by heavy rains.

Organizations like the Sunland Park Environmental Grassroots Group and Neighbors in Action have opposed the presence of the Camino Real landfill operated that handles garbage from New Mexico, Texas and Mexico.

Kicking off a press conference attended by symposium participants and community members, Sunland Park Mayor Ruben Segura outlined his administration's campaign to transform Sunland Park from a border colonia into an "entertainment corridor" that celebrates the “cosmic race” of the borderlands. In addition to a New Urban-inspired downtown, Segura and planners have a new international crossing, geological park and science museum on the drawing board.

Mayor Segura ran down some of the obstacles confronting his town of about 17,000 people. While Deming, a southern New Mexico town with a comparable population to Sunland Park's, boasts an annual budget of $10.4 million and 165 municipal employees, Mayor Segura said Sunland Park must make do with a yearly budget of $4.4 million and 96 employees. Lack of gross receipts taxes stunts services, he said. Commenting on the Camino Real landfill, Mayor Segura said that it isn’t his business as mayor to push for one particular solution but he contended that the landfill was a "divisive" and archaic entity in a community that is attempting to acquire a new identity.

"And when we talk about social justice and when we talk about the poverty
component, it is the aggregate,” Mayor Segura affirmed. “It is not just one element. You know, the worst thing when I came here as mayor, we were known as the landfill city."

Speaking after Mayor Segura, several residents denounced the odors and spilled garbage that allegedly originate from both the landfill and the fleets of trucks that serve it. Suzanne Michaels, a former El Paso television news personality, who serves as the landfill's spokeswoman, demanded equal say for the company. Contending that Camino Real utilizes state-of-the-art environmental protection technology, Michaels took issue with residents' characterization of the landfill as a "dump." Former New Mexico Governor awarded Camino Real the state’s Green Zia environmental award back in the 1990s.

An exchange ensued between Michaels and resident Agustin Barraza, who
charged that he was never informed that a landfill would be built near his home when he purchased his property. Barraza maintained that upwards of 500 dump trucks pass through Sunland Park every day, hauling and spilling garbage from both sides of the border. "Those are germs that are coming out," he contended. Michaels disputed Barraza's numbers, estimating that the number of dump trucks was between 300-400, but promised to look into the Sunland Park resident's concerns.

In 2004, the NMED confirmed that medical waste and asbestos had been illegally dumped at the landfill, which is uphill from a residential area. In a separate interview, department spokeswoman Marissa Stone said that the NMED negotiated an $11,500 settlement with the Waste Connections company for the 2004 incident. Stone added that two follow-up NMED inspections turned up no violations.

In response to questions from Frontera NorteSur, Michaels denied that dangerous materials from maquiladora plants in Ciudad Juarez or elsewhere were permitted in the landfill. "We do not accept hazardous waste, medical waste or liquid waste," Michaels said. "The maquila trucks when they come in have a manifest that tells everything that is on the truck." Michaels said that a typical load of maquila trash that arrives at the landfill might include trimmings from car upholsteries or waste from card producers.

J. Paul Taylor, for whom the NMSU EJ symposium was named, was on hand for the Sunland Park landfill debate. An 86-year-old former New Mexico state lawmaker from Mesilla who served many years in the New Mexico House of Representatives, Taylor said that he remembered when Anapra, the original community of Sunland Park, was a "small village."

Recalling that he once facilitated a legislators’ tour of the landfill and community, Taylor urged Camino Real to listen to public opinion. "This is their community. They are concerned (about) the health of their children, about what is happening environmentally to their community. They want the best for their community," Taylor said.

The Camino Real landfill, which many Sunland Park residents want relocated, will have to get its solid waste permit renewed by the NMED this year. Considering that Sunland Park is an overwhelmingly low-income, Spanish-speaking community, the permit process will represent a test case of Gov. Bill Richardson's EJ executive order signed in 2005.

According to NMED spokeswoman Stone, her department will apply Governor Richardson’s executive order as it moves through the permit renewal process.

“The environment department is committed to affording the communities fair and meaningful participation," Stone said, adding that a public hearing will be conducted sometime next August. Stone said that a public notice will be published before the bilingual hearing. Prior to the proceeding, the NMED will accept written public comments for the record, she said.

Meanwhile, Sunland Park landfill opponents are joining forces with like-minded activists from nearby Chaparral, New Mexico, who are mobilizing opposition to a landfill slated for their community. Lorena Perales, an organizer of the anti-landfill Vecinos Unidos group, said that residents are dead set against turning Chaparral into a dumping ground for maquiladora plant waste from Mexico. "We don't want the same thing to happen to us as happened to Sunland Park," Perales said.

Elizabeth Rogers and Alex Kelly embarked on the trip of their lives. Selling their Chicago condominium, the couple flew to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, this past winter for a needed break from the old work routine. Based in beautiful but expensive Banderas Bay, the young travelers visited beaches, endured roving street vendors and explored the wonders of the tropical Pacific coast, a place where the waters hop with migratory humpback whales, dolphins and sea turtles. Rogers was struck by the gay-friendly atmosphere. "A lot of rainbow-colored flags and that kind of thing, which is nice," said the young woman. "That's accepted down here, I think."

Lodged in a Puerto Vallarta condo, the Rogers-Kelly team quickly stumbled across the pricey real estate market that defines Puerto Vallarta and surrounding areas. Time share vendors hustled the couple, and ads for expensive properties leaped into their eyes from the pages of slick magazines and newspapers. "There is undeveloped land, developed land, high rise condos, gated communities," Kelly observed.

Finding Puerto Vallarta a pleasant stay, the Midwestern couple nevertheless departed for the next leg of their world journey. Other US visitors, however, are purchasing homes and remaining in Puerto Vallarta for the long-haul. Mark Anthony Venegas should know. A native of Carlsbad, New Mexico, Venegas lived in San Francisco before moving to Mexico in 2003. Now heading a "full-service" real estate company in Puerto Vallarta, Venegas brokers properties, helps potential customers get financing and arranges for new homes to be built on empty lots. One division of Venegas' business caters to gay home buyers.

Seated in the air-conditioned comfort of his office in Puerto Vallarta's Olas Alas neighborhood, Venegas pointed to the push of the "rat race" and the pull of community, typified by a traditional family-centered culture, as attractions that convince gringos to move south. And like in his own case, the prevailing state of politics north of the Rio Bravo is a growing part of the picture, Venegas said.

"I love the US. It's the greatest country in the world. However, it's going through some difficult times right now with the Bush Administration and the war and everything else,” he said. “And so yes, I do believe there are a lot of expatriates that are down here dissatisfied with what's happening in the US."

Ken Grover, a longtime US-born resident of Puerto Vallarta who works in the marketing business, observed that an earlier gringo migrant wave tended to be polarized between affluent migrants and poor ones. "There were two extremes," Grover said. Nowadays, a lot of the newer migrants are better-off baby boomers who are still forced to stretch their dollars, according to Grover. Still, a respectable number of the new Mexican residents must work for a living- just like their darker-skinned neighbors. For some, trying to survive on pesos is a bitter jolt of reality.

Almost entirely ignored by a press more interested in undocumented Mexicans in the United States is the phenomenon of US-born workers who labor away in the service and professional sectors without the proper papers. A company that runs a Puerto Vallarta call center promises Canadians and Americans "help in attaining the proper work documentation necessary."

A recent, path-breaking article published in Dissent magazine described a group that doesn't learn the new language, displays its native flag, maintains its traditional customs, and even celebrates its old holidays in the new country. "Some live and work without proper documentation and have even been involved in the illegal transport of drugs across borders," stated the piece. Sound familiar?

Written by Sheila Croucher, a professor of political science at Ohio's Miami University who is studying US migration to Mexico, the article delved into the complex aspects of the new Gringolandia south of the border. Professor Croucher found that many of the same issues which surround the Mexican immigrant community in the US ring true with the US immigrant community in Mexico as well. As Croucher summarized it in an interview with Frontera Norte Sur, "The precise things that politicians and pundits are railing against in the US."

Nobody knows for sure how many people of US origin reside in Puerto Vallarta and other regions of Mexico, but Croucher said that one US State Department estimate made several years ago pegged the number at about 600,000 souls. Since 9-11, the US government has become reticent about disclosing information concerning US citizens living abroad, Croucher added.

In addition to the older haunts of San Miguel Allende and Lake Chapala in central Mexico, newer gringo "clusters" are emerging in the Baja Peninsula, in Rocky Point (Puerto Penasco) in Sonora, around Banderas Bay in Jalisco and Nayarit, in Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa and Troncones in Guerrero, and along the Mayan Riviera on the Caribbean Coast.

Mirroring Mexican immigrant communities north of the border, US migrant communities in Mexico boast their own social and civic organizations, participate in the political life of the old country and enjoy access to native-language newspapers, radio programs and cablevision.

The 2004 US Presidential campaign signaled the new importance of the US migrant population in Mexico. Speaking by telephone from Mexico City, Croucher recounted how the Democratic Party dispatched former Clinton Administration official Ana Maria Salazar to round up the expatriate vote, while the Republican Party sent President Bush's nephew, George P. Bush, to rally his party’s faithful. In the town of San Miguel Allende alone, the Democrats raised $10,000 dollars for Kerry's bid, Croucher added.

"After 2000 it became clear to people how close the elections could be and the importance of the vote abroad," Croucher affirmed.

A good percentage of the US migrants complain about the drift of politics as well as the propensity for overregulation back in the states. A young woman from the United States who preferred to identify herself only as Denise, has tasted the world from Pakistan to Puerto Vallarta. The world traveler contended that the strict security measures on US borders symbolize the end of liberty as we once knew it, and represent a closing window on the rest of the global community.

"It's a freedom thing, nobody likes to be controlled," she said. "In the states, it's black and white. Here there is a gray area. If you get stopped in the states, you always get a ticket."

For Croucher, economics, specifically health care costs, are far more influential in driving US citizens to Mexico than either George W. Bush or the local street cop. Many Mexican dental clinics and doctor's offices in the border region and points south thrive on a growing US clientele. Fees are reasonable, prescription medicines are affordable, appointments are given in minutes or hours instead of weeks or months, and the quality of service is good, “Americans I talk to have nothing but positive things to say about health care in Mexico." Croucher said.

Considering that the looming mass retirement of the baby boomers coincides with the growing melt-down of the US health care system, Croucher noted a certain irony in the snappy remarks of commentators who accuse Mexico of exporting its problems to the US. "We're exporting our problems abroad," Croucher contended.

Canadians are also moving to Mexico, but many are more apt to complain about Washington than Ottawa.

"The entire country of Mexico is booming with Americans investing," realtor Venegas concluded. He was quick to add that foreigners interested in buying property in Mexico have it easier than anytime in the past. Even though the nation's constitution prohibits foreign land ownership near coasts or borders, foreign buyers can now obtain renewable, 50-year trust deeds that grant all the rights of buying and selling. Mexican banks, most of which are now owned by foreigners, administer the properties for annual fees that average about $500 dollars for individual homes.

Low property taxes coupled with the availability of Mexican home mortgages in the United States are two incentives for foreign buyers. In contrast to the United States, however, prospective homeowners must plop down a bigger cash down payment- something in the neighborhood of 20 percent. With prices for condos and homes quoted in five or six figures, buying a property in Puerto Vallarta and many other markets is not for the budget-minded.

A local trade publication, the Vallarta Real Estate Guide, recently estimated that real estate sales in the Puerto Vallarta-Banderas Bay region jumped from $400 million dollars in 2004 to $550 million dollars in 2005. "Gold Rush Days are Here Again." ballyhooed the publication. Familiar US real estate companies including Century 21, Prudential and Coldwell Banker have representatives throughout the country, and friendly, English-speaking salesmen (and women) regularly emerge from their strategically-placed offices in front of the tourist pedestrian traffic.

Locals report that some Mexican landowners and homeowners are cashing in on the real estate market, selling off their properties in trendy places like Puerto Vallarta's old downtown, or "Gringo Gulch," as it is called. Locally, home prices are beyond reach for the average Mexican citizen, according to Marina Perez, a Puerto Vallarta environmentalist and longtime resident. Consequently, many Mexicans fall into the old Third World practice of purchasing cheap land or squatting on empty lots located on urban outskirts.

"Puerto Vallarta has always been expensive, but with all this going on home prices are going through the roof. The average citizen can't obtain a decent house, unless it is through low-income government programs," Perez said. "So what happens to the people who come without money and don't have access to the government housing programs? They go up on the mountain and get a lot. It doesn't matter to them whether or not they have electricity, water or sewage."

The lure of the shantytown is not surprising. After all, wages in the service-oriented tourist industry are low. A young Wal-Mart worker, who holds what is regarded as one of the "better" jobs in Puerto Vallarta, reluctantly disclosed earning a few hundred dollars a month- a pitiful income in a city whose prices mimic those in the United States. Wal-Mart workers are instructed by the company not to reveal their salaries to strangers or reporters, she added. In San Miguel Allende, Croucher found a similar economic dynamic. "Mexicans will say, yes, there are more jobs in the service industry, but we shop in the same stores and pay the same prices,"

In the broader picture, a combination of high real estate prices but low property taxes could be depriving municipalities like Puerto Vallarta and San Miguel Allende of much-needed sources of extra revenue. Many foreign owners reside in their properties only part of the year and attempt to rent them out to other foreigners at other times, frequently demanding dollars that are then deposited in US banks. In a reversal of J. Ross Perot's NAFTA-induced "giant-sucking sound," it's a cash flow that trickles out of the local Mexican economy in ever greater amounts.

Of course, it's way early to assess all the cultural, economic, social and even political impacts of the gringo population boom in Mexico. In places like Puerto Vallarta, the trappings of culture-music, language, cuisine, social behavior, and even spatial ambience- are undergoing visible and audible transformations. In nightclubs, the music of Shakira easily mixes with the blues of Eric Clapton. On the streets, English words increasingly infiltrate signs and scream from billboards. Franchises of Hooter's, Wal-Mart, Burger King, McDonald's, and Dominos continue sprouting up everywhere.

Like Mexican immigrants who find familiar product brands and culturally-popular businesses like hair-styling salons in the barrios of El Norte, US immigrants in Nueva Gringolandia have ready access to services from home, whether through the Internet or on the ground. The ageless, rowdy boomers who tear down the roof every night at the tequila-soaked Andale! bar in Puerto Vallarta every, can then soothe their hang-over seared, aching muscles with a California-style massage the next day.

Stirring deeper, morsels of low culture and high culture swirl in the expanding stew. Reminiscent of upscale Southern California or Bay Area eateries, Alaskan crab legs, fusion cuisine and Asian flavors are now regular menu items. A hip new restaurant in Puerto Vallarta offers spicy duck quesadillas concocted with Oaxaca cheese, mushrooms and chile-Hoisin sauce.

A tense, uncertain cosmopolitanism is emerging on Mexico's West Coast. English, Spanish and Canadian French are frequently heard in the same social venue, while Mexican indigenous languages spoken by street vendors trying to hawk handicrafts or gum to the better-off foreigners are heard off to the side. Before too long, expect Chinese to be part of the regular linguistic fare. Unlike the hot button issue of Mexican flags in the US, displays of US, Canadian and Mexican flags wave together without raising major hackles in places like Zihuatanejo or Puerto Vallarta.

On the artistic and literary fronts, the newcomers are making their mark too.
Puerto Vallarta's spacious public library, which offers free Internet access, was built with the financial assistance of foreigners. English-language books are available for borrowers to take home. While it might be said that Mexico is suffering a "technical brain drain" because of the migration of many professional Mexicans to the United States, it might be stated too that the US is now beginning to suffer an "artistic brain drain" due to the flight of creative individuals. "I think there are a lot of wonderful writers, artists, intellectuals that are coming down," Puerto Vallarta long-timer Ken Grover celebrated.

Some lament what they regard as the contamination of Mexican culture by rampant consumerism imported from the United States. Credit cards are back in fashion in Mexico, and status symbols prevail. According to world "citizen" Denise, a money game goes on between Mexican nationals and migrants. "You get a lot of Americans here who think they can overrun Mexicans with money," she added, "but Mexicans aren't stupid. They'll charge them double for everything."

In comparison to the immigration debate-polarized US, Miami University's Sheila Croucher hasn't detected a nationalistic resentment in Mexico boiling up against the gringo migrants-at least until now. According to Croucher, natives of San Miguel Allende maintain that the gringo presence allows the town to economically survive. Intriguingly, Croucher has heard more put-downs against the newer arrivals voiced by longer-established gringos. "The idea," she mused, "that these newcomers are messing up 'our' authentic Mexican towns."

In a visit replete with ironies, symbolisms and stirring messages, Subcomandante Marcos of Mexico 's Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) came to Ciudad Juarez on the eve of the annual Days of the Dead celebrations. Arriving as part of the EZLN'S "Other Campaign", Marcos, who is also going by the name of Delegate Zero, met with local non-governmental organizations, indigenous groups, campesinos, students and US supporters of the Other Campaign, some of whom traveled all the way from New York to show the legendary EZLN spokesman a video about the struggles of migrant workers in the Big Apple.

Launched in the months following the publication of the EZLN's Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, the Other Campaign is one step of an effort to unite Mexico 's indigenous and popular movements into a big anti-capitalist left and transform the nation without recourse to arms or political parties.

After an initial round of meetings with farmer, neighborhood and urban indigenous groups, Marcos participated in a November 1 protest at the Stanton Street Bridge between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso , Texas . Temporarily shutting down the crossing with a symbolic barricade of fertilizer sacks and a small coffin, the demonstration expressed solidarity with the Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan People (APPO)-led movement against the state government of Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz, as well as protesting the 700 miles of new border fences planned by the Bush Administration.

"It's only a wall to kill our people, just like the wall of the river and the desert that assaults them...," Marcos charged. "Our friends cross only to work and not to do harm. In order to cross and work in the US , they're treated like they are terrorists." Quickly picking up on another theme, Marcos blasted the continued impunity surrounding the serial rape-murders of women in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua state. "We've also seen that there's no justice here in Ciudad Juarez . Young women are murdered without anyone ever knowing who the guilty ones were."

As Marcos was speaking, a US Customs and Border Protection agency helicopter flashing a big Department of Homeland Security insignia swooped low over the crowd, snapping pictures and stirring up dust in protestor's faces. Briefly drowning out the Zapatista subcomandante's words, Marcos responded with defiant words that challenged the legitimacy of the border as well as the US and Mexican governments. The occupants of the White House and Los Pinos will fall "one by one" predicted Marcos. As Delegate Zero was delivering his speech, fellow Zapatistas in Chiapas were shutting down state highways in support of the APPO.

Outfitted in his usual military uniform and mask, Marcos shared the microphone with retired teacher Ernesto Ontiveros, a member of the International Association Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons and the father of a missing soldier. Marcos, who led EZLN fighters into battle against Mexican soldiers during the 1994 indigenous Maya uprising in southern Chiapas state, spoke after Ontiveros told the story of his son, Lt. Victor Hugo Ontiveros, who has been missing for 10 years.

Eyewitnesses have told Ontiveros that his son was kidnapped by an armed commando and whisked away in Ciudad Juarez on September 2, 1996, never to return home. The young Ontiveros' disappearance was one of the first of the thousands of "levantones,� or forced disappearances, and murders tied to organized crime that have shaken Ciudad Juarez in recent years. Showing no let-up, in the week surrounding Marcos' visits alone, more than a dozen new kidnappings or gangland-style executions were reported in the local press.

Almost three presidents, numerous special prosecutors and wads of promises later, Ontiveros said he still has no peace of mind about what happened to his son. Grinning sarcastically, Ontiveros told Frontera NorteSur that the three most common words he keeps hearing from law enforcement officials are: "we're getting close."

After Marcos' short speech, hundreds of demonstrators marched through downtown Juarez , passing by camper unit 666 of the municipal police force. Marchers followed the Rio Bravo to the gates of the Alta Vista High School , where a second, impromptu protest was staged. Halted at the school's entrance, some demonstrators, members of the press and even high school students trying to enter the school grounds were told by a security team headed by a tattooed, shade-wearing man that they could not pass without an official Other Campaign badge, even though participants were told before the march that no credentials were necessary unless video footage was going to be recorded.

Fresh from a protest against walls and eager to hear Marcos, shouts of "fascist" and "they're putting a wall between us and Marcos" emanated from the increasingly agitated crowd. "This is a public school, you can't impede access," yelled Cipriana Jurado, the director of Ciudad Juarez 's Center for Research and Worker Solidarity group. After a round of chanting, the security men finally relented and let the people onto the school grounds, proving that the mass protest tactics promoted by Marcos and the Zapatistas do indeed work.

Located about 30 feet from the Mexico-US border, Alta Vista High School was an appropriate choice for the Other Campaign's meeting. Seeking shade from the rising fall sun, several students waiting to hear Marcos remarked how they liked the school because of its liberal arts orientation, emphasis on critical thinking and free-style dress code. But Alta Vista's student body has had a rough time this semester, according to the students. Hit by the past summer's floods, the school lost computers and thousands of books. Freudian, Marxian and literary classics were all destroyed, they reported. Starting classes several days late, students said they've had to cope without books and in-school access to computers.

Government pledges to replace the lost materials have yet to materialize, and low-income students must choose between eating lunch or spending 20 or 30 pesos in an Internet cafe to keep with assignments, said student Alejo La Rosa. "It's expensive. You don't eat that day," La Rosa quipped.

La Rosa said he and another student dipped into their own pockets in order to purchase a computer to brighten up the school atmosphere with music that's run out of the small in-house radio station operated by students. "This is our expression of gratitude to our school," he said. "We want this to be the best school. It's our school and we have to support it."

Inside the school, Marcos met privately with representatives of various non-governmental organizations from Mexico and the US , and he later heard a series of public presentations in the courtyard outside. Displayed in front of the meeting area were old black and white photos of young men and women, supposed "subversives" from Chihuahua state, who were picked up by Mexican security men during the 1970s Dirty War and whisked away into official oblivion, much like Lt. Victor Hugo Ontiveros was 20 years later.

Carefully taking notes while puffing away on his pipe, Marcos, a prolific poet and writer, heard emotional presentations from two women who recounted how they were victims of rape; a message appealing for action against femicide in Mexico from the imprisoned Colonel Aurora, or Gloria Arenas, of the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI); denunciations of attempts to evict residents of the Lomas de Poleo colonia on Ciudad Juarez's outskirts, and the importance of culture in the "refoundation" of the border city.

Representing a rainbow of causes and sub-cultures, campesinos, colorfully-dressed indigenous Raramui women, dread-locked drummers, Chicano movement veteranos, academics, feminists, humble nuns, camera-heavy reporters, old braceros and young students all gathered around the Sup, as he is nicknamed.

Leftist literature sellers were present, and long-haired vendors hawking EZLN t-shirts not unlike the tie-dye merchants who used to follow around the Grateful Dead on concert tours did a respectable business. A new magazine, Ala Siniestra, put out by the University Left Committee of the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez was among the items available. Meanwhile, outside the school, agents from the Federal Preventive Police and other government agencies dutifully eyed the scene.

After the public meeting, Veronica Levya, the Ciudad Juarez representative of the Mexico Solidarity Network, commented that while it's still too early to assess the impact of events like the Other Campaign and the recently-held Border Social Forum, mass gatherings of the type have the benefit of bringing together disparate groups which are often too absorbed in their own day-to-day struggles.

The Other Campaign's Ciudad Juarez stop was just one jut in a long road trip that's taken Marcos and his supporters across Mexico . On the current leg of the tour, Marcos has visited indigenous groups, miners, fishermen and others in Baja California Norte and Sur , Sonora and Chihuahua . Mainstream print media coverage of the Other Campaign in Mexico has been extremely spotty, ranging from outright blackouts to brief, cursory mentions. Government reaction has been muted too, though one Ciudad Juarez news website quoted municipal government secretary Jorge Compean as calling Marcos "a clown." On the US side of the Paso del Norte region, the El Paso Times ran a couple of stories while the Albuquerque Journal featured the Stanton Street Bridge protest as its banner headline story in one of its November 2 editions.

In response to a call that "another world is possible without borders" about 1000 people gathered in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez , Chihuahua , from October 12-15, 2006 . Hailing from Mexico, the United States and other nations, representatives from immigrant rights, environmental justice, campesino, ex-bracero, Chicano, Native American, African American, Asian and Pacific Islander, left, and human rights organizations attended the first-ever Border Social Forum (BSF). A delegation from Cuba 's National Assembly also observed the events. BSF organizer Ruben Solis, coordinator of the San Antonio-based Center for Justice, said the event built on years of cross-border movements to "bring together all that's happened before in a new phase of development."

Kat Rodriguez, coordinator of the Tucson-based Human Rights Coalition, captured the concerns of many of the delegates at the meeting when she detailed migrant deaths in the dangerous border crossing zone between Arizona and Sonora . Rodriguez said her group has documented the deaths of 698 people in the Arizona-Sonora border region during the last three years alone. According to Rodriguez, 317 victims remain unidentified, with 17 remains so deteriorated that it is impossible "to know if they were male or female."

The human rights activist said stepped-up controls are confining previously frequent border crossers to "the golden cage" of the United States and encouraging more men to send for their families. "Another dynamic we've seen in the last three years is an increase in the deaths of women and children," Rodriguez said, adding that the death toll of border crossers has risen so greatly that last year Pima County was forced to rent a refrigerator truck to deposit bodies because the local medical examiner ran out of storage room.

Upwards of 4,000 migrants have died along the length of the entire US-Mexico border while trying to enter the United States without papers during the last 13 years, according to estimates from human rights organizations.

Contending that the failure of market-driven economic policies in Latin America to raise living standards and provide decent-paying jobs is spurring an increasingly fatal exodus from the South to the North, Rodriguez proposed the reexamination of the economic status quo. "I think the first thing we need is to demand a renegotiation of the free trade agreements, NAFTA and CAFTA" Rodriguez said. "Nobody asks why people are coming here."

During the Border Social Forum, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Ciudad Juarez to protest the planned construction of new walls on the US side of the border, a project which activists contend will force more desperate migrants into hostile weather zones like the so-called "corridor of death" east of the Yuma Valley . Before one day, a rainbow suddenly bloomed from the stormy border skies over the marchers.

Blasting the project as the "Wall of Death," the protestors wound their way through the border city's downtown femicide zone where dozens of young women have vanished. Filing by the pink cross monument set up to honor femicide victims and distributing leaflets in memory of 22-year-old schoolteacher Edith Aranda Longoria, who disappeared in May 2005, the marchers partially closed the Santa Fe Bridge between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas, before halting at the US borderline to hear short speeches delivered in support of immigrant workers and against prevailing economic policies.

Justice for veterans of the 1942-64 Bracero Program of Mexican guestworkers who worked in US fields and on railways was one prominent theme addressed at the BSF. Former bracero Filemon Ruiz Martinez, who labored in the sugar beet fields of Michigan in the late 1950s, recalled that he was paid "very little money" for lots of hard work. Early this year the Mexican Congress approved pay-outs to former braceros who had money withheld from their paychecks by the Mexican government decades ago for a supposed savings account. While some ex-braceros received payments of about $3,700 dollars this year, many others like Ruiz complain that they are still waiting for their money. "We understand that they gave 125 ex-braceros in Chihuahua their money, but they have given us absolutely nothing," Ruiz said.

Helping kick-off the BSF was a "reality tour" of Ciudad Juarez neighborhoods and industrial sites. Former maquiladora plant worker and tour guide Veronica Leyva of the Mexico Solidarity Network led two bus loads of visitors through the dusty and flood-prone streets of the Felipe Angeles, Anapra and Lomas de Poleo colonias. Situated in the high desert where company buses transport workers back and forth to the factories far below in the city, Lomas de Poleo is the focus of a land ownership dispute between long-time residents and members of the prominent Zaragoza family. The once-marginal shantytown is now a potentially lucrative parcel of real estate abutting the zone where the state governments of Chihuahua and New Mexico plan the new binational-border city of San Jeronimo-Santa Teresa .

Monitored by two guard towers that rise above the desert shrub, as well as the vigilance of two municipal policemen parked in patrol cars nearby, dozens of visitors listened to two residents accuse authorities of permitting a campaign of violence and intimidation against them to proceed unimpeded. Residents charge that the land conflict is behind house burnings and three deaths in Lomas de Poleo during the last two years, including the deaths of two young children in a mysterious fire. Displaying gunshot wounds, one young man said his friend Luis Alberto Guerrero was killed and another companion wounded in a confrontation last year with alleged Zaragoza gunmen. "The people who were responsible for this act are roaming free," he charged. "The law doesn't do anything."

In the 1990s, Lomas de Poleo gained international notoriety as one of the clandestine cemeteries where the multiple bodies of young female murder victims were discovered. Of the eight crosses erected in honor of the murder victims, only two were visible by the time of the 2006 BSF. One of the remaining crosses was defaced by gang-related graffiti.

Rambling out of the rough hills and back into the glitzy flatlands, the tour buses followed the long commute that maquiladora workers from Lomas de Poleo endure each day as they clock in another shift on the global assembly line. In contrast to the rustic living conditions they witnessed in Ciudad Juarez 's colonias, the BSF delegates also saw the newly redone Paseo del Triunfo de la Republica boulevard that whisks traffic pass the US fast food franchises, strip malls and trendy bars and cafes which define the other Ciudad Juarez . Halting in front of the Antonio J. Bermudez Industrial Park , tour guide Leyva compared the bustling side of her city with the forgotten one, and explained the wages and working conditions she said many maquiladora employees are forced to accept.

"It's important for you to see the channeling of economic resources by the government to the big industries, big capital. This channeling of resources has not permitted the development of the popular colonias," Leyva affirmed. "I don't know if you've noticed that we've passed through big avenues that are well maintained and preserved," Leyva continued. "It's not a coincidence that these avenues have been solely constructed for the purpose of linking together the 18 industrial parks of the city so commerce flows freely to the international bridges."

Yvonne Stratford and Gerda Graham closely paid attention to the tour scenes. The two women belong to Low Income Families Fighting Together, a non-governmental organization struggling to preserve low-income housing in Miami 's African American community of Liberty City . Appalled at the conditions in Ciudad Juarez 's colonias, Stratford and Graham stressed the need for people to organize. "Don't think (anybody) is going to give it to you," Stratford remarked. "You got to go out there and fight for it."

Convened just weeks after summer flooding provoked widespread destruction in Ciudad Juarez , the BSF featured one session in which residents of the Luis Olague colonia and other poor neighborhoods reiterated their complaints about uncertain relocation plans; the theft of flood relief aid; inadequate official support for reconstruction, and the spending of public money on monuments instead of flood control. Some explained how they now suffer anxiety attacks every time the skies thunder and the rain starts dropping.

Although the 2006 floods in Ciudad Juarez were especially bad, this year wasn't the first time colonia residents have experienced disaster from the rains. Elizabeth Flores, the director of Pastoral Obrera, a Catholic Church affiliated worker advocacy organization that assists flood victims, framed the disaster issue as ultimately one of human rights. "(Flooding damage) wasn't unpredictable, " Flores contended. "It was a lack of respect for the human rights of all residents of the city not to invest..."

Flood victims reported an additional problem that emerged after the deluge: the spread of health-threatening molds inside homes and stagnant water pools on the streets outside that provide prime mosquito-breeding grounds. "We cleaned and disinfected," shrugged Luis Olague resident Maria de Jesus Avila . "But what are we going to do?"

After hearing from grassroots groups, the BSF participants issued a statement that called for sweeping changes in economic, immigration, justice, environmental, gender, and security policies on both sides of the border. Comparing the fate of Louisiana flood victims in 2005 to those in Ciudad Juarez a year later, the statement denounced what it called "the classism and racism" of the authorities' "late, timid and limited" response to the flooding disasters in the United States and Mexico.

Denouncing border walls from the US-Mexico frontier to Palestine-Israel, Border Social Forum attendees expressed solidarity with the Oaxaca strikers, Pasta de Conchos mine disaster victims' families ex-braceros, and 5 Cuban prisoners currently held in the United States . They also called for an international group of observers to be present at Ciudad Juarez's embattled Lomas de Poleo colonia in order to "guarantee protection and security" for residents.

A central demand of organizers was to remove agriculture from world free trade agreements and that basic grains in Mexico be exempted from the tariff tear-down scheduled in the North American Free Trade Agreement for 2008. Picking up on last spring's immigrant worker strike and boycott in the United States , support for a similar action planned for May 1, 2007 was declared.

Organizers of the BSF came from many different groups in Mexico and the United States , including the Southwest Workers Union, Border Agricultural Workers Union, Pastoral Obrera, Cetlac, Southwest Organizing Project, Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, Democratic Farmers Front of Chihuahua, Grassroots Global Justice, Farm Labor Organizing Committee, and CISO, among many others.

Modeled after the World Social Forum initiated in Porte Alegre Brazil in 2001, the BSF is a prelude to the first US Social Forum scheduled for 2007 in Atlanta , Georgia . Tens of thousands of people have attended the world and regional social forums. Veterans of the Ciudad Juarez gathering plan to take their movement to upcoming regional and international social forums, as well as to other events like the 2007 Border Governor's Conference in Nogales, Sonora, where an "alternative border people's summit" will be held.

Organizer Ruben Solis said that participating social organizations will likewise attend big NGO meetings slated for Puerto Rico , Venezuela and Bolivia in the coming months. One important achievement of the Ciudad Juarez meeting, Solis said, was a call to organize a Mexican farmer's social forum in Chihuahua , Mexico . At the same time, plans are in the works to create an alternative border media network. In terms of developing solutions, Solis credited the Ciudad Juarez event for putting a wide array of social movements on the path of "convergence." instead of "competition." "(The BSF) carried out what we intended in terms of creating convergence between the movements," he said. "It has a multiplying effect, it's very positive."

In the balmy winds of late March, a bare lawn at the New Mexico State University campus in Las Cruces was transformed into a field of hundreds of pink crosses. Adorned with handmade clothing and pictures to symbolize the murdered women of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Mexico, the crosses were put up by community members and organizers of the Las Cruces-based Friends of Juarez Women as a kick-off to the three-day J. Paul Taylor Symposium on Social Justice convened to promote justice for the more than 500 women and girls murdered or disappeared in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City since 1993.

The event came at a strategic crossroads in the justice movement: While the Chihuahua State Attorney General's Office (PJGE), long charged with investigating the killings, is paying more attention to murders related to domestic violence and assisting in efforts to locate some missing women and identify the remains of unidentified corpses, impunity reigns in the cases of scores of raped and slain women.

�It's true there are 177 guilty sentences for the nearly 400 murders,� said Guadalupe Morfin, the head of the federal Commission for the Prevention and Elimination of Violence Against Women in Ciudad Juarez, �but there is still a layer of impunity in emblematic cases like the cotton field case.�

Choking back tears, Ciudad Juarez resident Malu Garcia told a crowd of hundreds gathered in a university auditorium how her then-four-year-old daughter was watching cartoons on television one day in 2001 only to see the corpse of the child's beloved 17-year-old aunt, Lilia Alejandra Garcia, suddenly flashed on the screen. The teenager had been brutally tortured, raped and strangled. According to Malu Garcia, the little girl suffered an emotional shock. Garcia contended that valuable evidence was lost in her sister's case, despite FBI-generated leads. Subsequently, she said a suspect personally warned her to shut up or suffer a similar fate as her sister.

"I am always going to stand up, not just because of Alejandra or because I have a daughter," Garcia vowed, "but because I am a woman and as a woman it pains me all that those women who have suffered, and I don't want this to continue happening in my country..."

Sadness, frustration and determination fill the voices of family members of murdered and missing women who have spent years struggling to find justice for their loved ones. Sacrificing normal lives, many report threats from anonymous intimidators. Denied justice, some family members and their supporters now seek legal redress in international forums. In frequently emotional testimonies, family members and women's advocates spoke in Las Cruces about lines of investigation that implicate members of law enforcement, organized crime and the business community.

Waving a paper, Eva Arce said she is confident that the recent decision of the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States to accept the case of her long disappeared daughter, Silvia Arce, is a step forward in her struggle. A jewelry and food saleswoman, Arce's daughter vanished in March 1998 along with a friend, Griselda Mares.

Undertaking an exhaustive investigation, Eva Arce pinpointed three officers of the former Federal Judicial Police as the likely culprits in the disappearances. Arce said she later tracked one of the men to a jail in Veracruz state, but the suspect has not been charged in the disappearance of Silvia. The IACHR is likely to issue non-binding recommendations to Mexican authorities in the Arce case, which could then move to the Inter-American Court for Human Rights if officials do not follow the recommendations. Rulings from the Inter-American Court are obligatory for member states like Mexico .

Arizona State University Professor William Simmons urged relatives to consider using an old US law, the Alien Tort Claims Act, as a tool of justice. The law allows foreign nationals to sue officials from their own countries in US federal courts for violations of the law of nations or US treaties. The act has been successfully used in the United States against officials from Paraguay and other countries.

Focusing on the torture suffered by women like Lilia Alejandra Garcia, Professor Simmons said the Mexican government is complicit in sanctioning an internationally-prohibited practice by failing to conduct proper investigations. "So I believe there could be a case in federal courts under the Alien Tort Claims Act," he added.

In the Mexican court system, the parents of Minerva Torres, an 18-year-old resident of Chihuahua City who disappeared in 2001 and was found dead in 2003, is pursuing criminal charges against former Governor Patricio Martinez, ex-State Attorney General Jesus "Chito" Solis and other officials for concealing their daughter's body. For two years, Torres' corpse was stored in state police headquarters without notifying the victim's family.

Torres' body was discovered in July 2003 on the Cuernos de la Luna mountain near state police headquarters, only feet away from the spot where another rape murder victim, Neyra Azucena Cervantes, was recovered two days earlier. Along with Cervantes and Torres, the bodies of 16-year-old Paloma Angelica Escobar and another unidentified victim were found at separate times in the same burial ground. At least three of the victims had attended private computer schools in Chihuahua City . �Like in Ciudad Juarez , we're talking about a clandestine cemetery,� said attorney Lucha Castro of the Human Rights Center.

Filed months ago, the case against Martinez and company is currently in the Chihuahua justice system, but the two former, high-level officials have yet to render their testimonies, according to Minerva's father, Francisco Torres. �It seems to me, there is no political will to try the ex-governor,� contended Castro.

Former prisoners, state officials and even Commissioner Morfin deplored the use of torture to fabricate murder cases against innocent people, including David Meza, imprisoned for almost three years for the murder of his cousin, Neyra Azucena Cervantes. Leading off the round of denunciations were Cynthia Kiecker and Ulises Perzabal, who were tortured by members of the old Chihuahua State Judicial Police and falsely accused of the 2003 murder of 16-year-old Viviana Rayas in Chihuahua City .

US citizen Kiecker described how the musician-artist couple eventually settled in Chihuahua City , participated in mar