Frontera NorteSur
July  2003

July 14, 2003
Mexican Program Helps Families Locate Relatives in US

Through its consulates' departments of citizen protection, Mexico's Secretariat of Foreign Relations helps families locate relatives that have gone to Mexico's northern border or the US. 

So far in 2003, consular staff based in Mexicali, Baja California have received 50 requests to help locate migrants that have not been in touch with their families, says Patricia Valladares Sánchez, head of citizen protection in Mexicali. This service is one of those that is most frequently requested from her office, Valladares added. 

Valladares estimates that about 20% of the requests her office receives is to find people that have gone to live in Tijuana. The rest of the requests are to find people living in the US, mostly in Los Angeles and San Diego. 

"People come in and gives us information on where the last place the person they are looking for lived in the US. Generally they are fathers or sons of Mexican families that emigrated to the US with the goal of finding better job opportunities," says Valladares. 

The office can search for Mexicans that are in the US both legally and without documents. Valladares states that 30% of the people her office looks for are in the US legally, the other 70% are in the neighboring nation illegally. 

Approximately 90% of the people Valladares looks for are men. So far this year, the whereabouts of only four women have been requested by family members. 

Valladares mentioned that her office receives a stable number of requests every year and that the figure has not appreciably gone up or down over the past few years. 

Source: La Crónica (Mexicali), July 10, 2003. Article by Luis Adolfo San. 

July 8, 2003
Outcome Uncertain in Sonora Governors' Race

After winning just 15 of the 48 federal deputy seats from the northern border states and losing a previously PAN governorship in Nuevo León to the PRI, the PAN is hoping that it still might win the Sonora governors' race. 

Voting analysis through the Preliminary Election Outcome Program (Programa de Resultados Electorales Preliminares, PREP) was stopped suddenly on Monday July 7 after 80% of the vote had been examined. At that point, PRI candidate Eduardo Bours Castelo had a 1.1% lead over PAN candidate Ramón Corral Avila. Currently, Sonora has a PRI governor, Armando López Nogales.

Staff with the State Electoral Council (Consejo Estatal Electoral, CEE) said that it suspended the PREP because data sheets it needed from two of Sonora's largest cities, Hermosillo and Obregón, had been inappropriately put inside vote packets (paquetes electorales). CEE staff noted that they are not authorized to open the vote packets which contain ballots. 

However, PRI candidate Bours said that his party requested that the PREP be stopped. According to Bours, the PRI felt that voting data was being handled in a biased manner. 

Bours hopes that the CEE will announce the winner of the race by Friday and that the Congress will soon thereafter certify the election. 

PAN candidate Corral said that the race should be examined and decided by an electoral court. He also noted that an interim governor might have to be named if the court has not determined a winner by September 12, 2003. 

Sources: El Diario (Ciudad Juárez), July 8, 2003.