Frontera NorteSur
May 2002

May 24, 2002
Remembered: Fourteen Migrant Deaths in Arizona Desert One Year Ago

Fourteen migrants from a group of approximately 28, died a year ago as they entered the US on foot through the Arizona desert. The migrants died from dehydration after wandering lost for five days in temperatures that reached as high as 109 degrees.

The migrants had been left in the US desert by "polleros," immigrant smugglers, that told them to walk to a highway a few hours away. The road was actually over 50 miles from where the migrants had been dropped off from the polleros' trucks.

In Tijuana, advocates for migrants protested last year's deaths and hung yellow "crime scene" tape along the US-built wall that separates the US and Mexico. Activists noted that since the beginning of heightened US-border enforcement in 1995, more than 2,000 people have lost their lives while seeking a better life.

Claudia Smith, of California Rural Legal Assistance, said that so many deaths demonstrate the failure of the Border Patrol's attempts at migrant rescue. Further evidence of this failure, according to Smith, is that approximately 8,500 Border Patrol agents have rescued only 613 migrants from dangerous situations in the past nine months.

Also participating in the memorial service was Luiz Kendzierski, director of Tijuana's Casa del Migrante. He put 19 crosses in the ground near the fence in memory of the 19 people that have died on the Baja California border with the US since the beginning of 2002. Kendzierski also stated that one third of migrant deaths have taken place along that state's border since 1995.

New Federal Force to Target Human Traffickers in Mexico

In other immigration news, Mexico has said that it will set up two special law-enforcement groups that will go after human traffickers, one on its northern border and one on the southern border of the country. The new task forces will be part of the Federal Interior Ministry.

Agents will routinely be rotated throughout the nation, a common practice in Mexico aimed at keeping law enforcement officers from becoming corrupted. Corruption is a real problem with immigration law enforcement since human trafficking is estimated to be at least a billion dollar a year industry.

Felipe de Jesús Preciado Coronado, head of Mexico's National Migration Institute, said that the Institute asked President Fox to create the new task forces a year ago.

"The band of delinquents that dedicate themselves to trafficking people are, from my point of view, more perverse than drug traffickers, because they traffic in people and leave them to die," Preciado said.

Preciado also stated that in Mexico migration-related crimes are not seen as something serious. "How many of us don't have a relative waiting to find a good trafficker that offers full services? It is these task forces that will be fundamental to combating these bands," he said.

Finally, US officials have announced the purchase of 15 helicopters that they say will be used to rescue lost migrants.

Mexican officials also announced that they will install ten rescue towers in high-risk crossing areas in Baja California and Sonora. The towers will be visible from up to six miles away and will be routinely checked by Mexico's migrant-rescue group, Beta.

Source: El Diario, May 24, 2002. Sun news service and Reforma.

May 20, 2002
Infectious Waste Improperly Disposed of in Méxicali

A truck filled with infectious hospital waste was seized by environmental officials at a Méxicali waste transfer station not able to handle such material. The vehicle belonged to a waste-disposal company called "Gen" and was carrying needles, syringes, and other blood-contaminated items from government-run medical clinics. The truck was the second Gen vehicle seized within a week and the company's business license was revoked by Mexico's environmental protection agency (Profepa).

According to the Méxicali newspaper La Crónica, Profepa is considering fining the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) which is the government agency that runs the clinics where the infectious waste originated. However, the IMSS replied that it is not responsible for waste found at the transfer station and said that it followed all the appropriate infectious-waste disposal procedures.

An official at the waste transfer station stated that infectious waste needs to be disposed of properly and not thrown in with the city's other waste. He said that one related health concern is for the people that make a living by sorting recyclable materials out of the city's waste stream. Some of these people get needles stuck in their arms and hands when they are going threw garbage, he stated.

Source: La Crónica, May 15 & 16, 2002. Article by Beatriz Limón.

May 14, 2002
Air Pollution Increase In Méxicali, Dirt Roads to Blame

Méxicali's air pollution levels, up from last year, are serious and troublesome, said Favio de la Cruz Díaz, assistant director of the Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Medio Ambiente (Federal Environmental Protection Agency, Profepa).

According to De la Cruz, the number one air contaminant is dust which comes from the 45% of Méxicali's streets that are not paved. De la Cruz recommends that residents moderately spray water on to dirt roads to keep down dust levels. Vehicle speeds should be kept below 15 kilometers per hour (9 mph) on the roads or else dust will get into the air.

Another serious pollutant that has been found by Méxicali's 6 air-quality monitoring stations is carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is produced by vehicle engines. De la Cruz told the Méxicali newspaper La Crónica that city residents should have their cars inspected every six months and that they should all have catalytic converters on their vehicles.

Méxicali currently has a fleet of 350,000 cars.

Regarding pollution from industry, De la Cruz said that smokestack factories contribute only 3% of the city's air pollution. This number is so low, he said, because industry has discovered that it saves on fuel costs when it obeys national environmental laws.

Source: La Crónica (Méxicali), May 10, 2002.

May 9, 2002
BC's Cocopa Indigenous Community: Fighting to Fish and Survive

In late April, 2002, Mexico's Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (National Commission for Human Rights, CNDH) sent a request to the Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Medio Ambiente (Federal Environmental Protection Agency, Profepa) to have Profepa allow the Cocopa indigenous people to fish in their historic territory.

The CNDH's request came after two years of study in which it concluded that a fishing ban in the Colorado River Delta Biosphere Reserve was unconstitutional as it violated the Cocopa's right to food, work, social well-being, and the preservation of their culture. The ban was established in 1993.

The Cocopa asked for the CNDH's help in 2000 when the water level of the Colorado River dropped to levels that the Cocopa believed would threaten the lives of regional fish, according to two articles in the Méxicali newspaper La Crónica.

While most of the 260 Cocopa have scattered throughout Baja California and western Sonora, fifteen families still remain in one community, El Mayor, which is part of the Colorado River ecosystem. The Cocopa are not allowed to fish in the rich Colorado River Delta, part of their historic range, and the ban is enforced by federal inspectors and the Mexican military.

Instead, the Cocopa must fish the meager pickings of the upper stretches of the Colorado. There, they pull in ten kilograms (approximately 22 pounds) of fish per day.

Further downstream, in the Gulf of California, fishing vessels bring in so many tons of fish that the fish market floods and the fish cannot be sold. In a strange twist, when they cannot survive on their own fishing, the Cocopa sometimes work gutting fish from the Gulf's big commercial boats, according to La Crónica.

The CNDH has said that if the fishing question is not dealt with properly in the next few years, the Cocopa will face serious survival problems.

Source: La Crónica (Méxicali), April 29 & May 3, 2002. Articles by César Murillo & Carlos Alvarez.

April 23, 2002
Méxicali Environmental and Health News

Trees planted to fight odors

In an attempt to mitigate odors coming from a waste-water treatment facility in Méxicali's Zaragoza neighborhood, Méxicali's Dirección de Ecología (Office of Ecology) has begun planting 6,000 trees on the banks of a waste treatment pond. Another 9,000 trees will be planted in future phases of the project.

According to Alejandra León Gastélum, head of the Dirección de Ecología, the trees are all from species that absorb odors and should reduce odors around the treatment plant by 60%. Her office is also in the midst of testing some chemical products to see if they could help mitigate the problem.

The plan to plant the trees received the backing of the Comisión Nacional de Reforestación (National Reforestation Commission) and is a joint project between the city and and federal government.

Safe drinking water?

In an investigative article for the Méxicali newspaper La Crónica, writer Marco Vinicio Blanco found that drinking-water distributors throughout the city appear to violate a number of health regulations.

In contradiction to federal law, many distributors were selling bottles of water that had no safety seals on them. Blanco even witnessed people pouring water from one container to another with plastic or aluminum funnels.

The same people that delivered water to homes were also collecting money for the sales, which is also in violation of Mexican law.

Finally, trucks that were used to transport water did not have any signs on them to let buyers know from where and whom their water was coming.

The Federal Consumer Protection Office (Procuraduría Federal del Consumidor) has said that in May, 2002 it will conduct an intense investigation of the industry to detect any irregularities.

Sources: La Crónica (Méxicali), April 4, 2002. Tree article by José Manuel Yépiz Ruiz.
La Crónica, April 8, 2002. Drinking water article by Marco Vinicio Blanco.