BORDER POLITICS

by Michael S. Clifford, Managing Editor

PRI Forms Women's Organization, Prepares for Elections

The centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) began an organization of women in December to confront the extreme number of acts of violence and sex crimes against their gender in Chihuahua, according to Diario de Juárez.

The PRI's Council for the Integration of Women will try to increase the ratio of women to men in political posts and promote equal opportunity in the labor force, economic life, and legal matters of Chihuahua, according to Professor Austrebertha López Jiménez. Jiménez was elected leader of the organization December 7.

Hundreds of female party members gathered at the PRI Municipal Committee gymnasium to hear party leader Oscar Villalobos Chávez criticize the administration's handling of the situation. He referred to a public insecurity in the state and a wave of violence against women in Juárez. At least 28 women were killed in Juárez this year.

"The women of Chihuahua do not deserve a government that says, as Francisco Barrio did a few days ago, that the crime index of victims is normal and we exhort them to speak out, and that all of us should speak out against what is happening in this state," Villalobos Chávez said. Francisco Barrio is the current PANista Governor of Chihuahua.

For her part, López Jiménez pledged her organization to support every measure to fight violence that affects women and to improve their safety.

Diario did not report either speaker offering a specific anti-violence plan, but they did speak of political changes. The great participation of women in politics is a condition of democracy at the end of this century, according to López Jiménez. She also promised the PRI the support of all its women to regain control of state government.

At the same meeting, Villalobos Chávez called for PRI candidates for state government positions to stand for office and show their interest publicly. At the time only party Secretary of Operations and Political Action Artemio Iglesías had openly announced his intention to run for office, while PRI groups in Juárez and Delicias had expressed support for Mario de la Torre Hernández, former mayor of Juárez and former federal delegate.

The party was aware of its different factions, but that would not divide it, the PRI leader said. "1998 will be the year for the PRI in which the party will attain unity, yet this will not rule out internal competition," according to Villalobos Chávez.

Source: Diario de Juárez

Political Leader Filiberto Terrazas Renounces PRI

After 40 years of political activism, Juárez lawyer Filiberto Terrazas Sánchez decided to leave the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) this month, saying it had drifted from its principles, according to Diario de Juárez.

Terrazas Sánchez switched his affiliation to the left-of-center Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). The former delegate of the Secretariat of Government also raised the possibility of seeking the PRD nomination to run for Mayor or for a seat in the state legislature.

Explaining his decision, Terrazas Sánchez called the PRI "heirs of Santa Anna, Maximilian and Huerta." "They have strayed from the guiding ideology of Hidalgo, Morelos and Juárez including the impression they have disappeared the ‘R' to such a point that Salinas has never pronounced the word revolution," he told Diario, referring to the Institutional Revolutionary Party's name. Terrazas Sánchez has held many public posts during his career and participated in many presidential campaigns. He was recently accused of fraud in a land deal.

Source: Diario de Juárez