Friday, December 08, 2006
Here's an additional article on Cuban medical schools
If you have time, read this article in addition to the 7 required. (Scroll down for the list and articles).
Peace, Agustin.
New York Times, December 8, 2006
Havana Journal
Hippocrates Meets Fidel, and Even U.S. Students Enroll
Jose Goitia for The New York Times
Nancy Gonzáles, center, using a cadaver to teach anatomy to Jamar Williams, left, of Brooklyn and others.
By MARC LACEY
Published: December 8, 2006
HAVANA, Dec. 7 - Anatomy is a part of medical education everywhere. Biochemistry, too. But a course in Cuban history?
Enlarge This Image
Jose Goitia for The New York Times
Students from many countries at the Latin American School of Medical Sciences, founded by Fidel Castro, on a campus just outside Havana.
The Latin American School of Medical Sciences, on a sprawling former naval base on the outskirts of this capital, teaches its students medicine Cuban style. That means poking at cadavers, peering into aging microscopes and discussing the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power 48 years ago.
Cuban-trained doctors must be able not only to diagnose an ulcer and treat hypertension but also to expound on the principles put forward by "el comandante."
It was President Castro himself who in the late 1990s came up with the idea for this place, which gives potential doctors from throughout the Americas and Africa not just the A B C's of medicine but also the basic philosophy behind offering good health care to the struggling masses.
The Cuban government offers full scholarships to poor students from abroad, and many, including 90 or so Americans, have jumped at the chance of a free medical education, even with a bit of Communist theory thrown in.
"They are completing the dreams of our comandante," said the dean, Dr. Juan D. Carrizo Estévez. "As he said, they are true missionaries, true apostles of health."
It is a strong personal desire to practice medicine that drives the students here more than any affinity for Mr. Castro. Those from the United States in particular insist that they want to become doctors, not politicians. They recoil at the notion that they are propaganda tools for Cuba, as critics suggest.
"They ask no one to be political - it's your choice," said Jamar Williams, 27, of Brooklyn, a graduate of the State University of New York at Albany. "Many students decide to be political. They go to rallies and read political books. But you can lie low."
Still, the Cuban authorities are eager to show off this school as a sign of the country's compassion and its standing in the world. And some students cannot help responding to the sympathetic portrayal of Mr. Castro, whom the United States government tars as a dictator who suppresses his people.
"In my country many see Fidel Castro as a bad leader," said Rolando Bonilla, 23, a Panamanian who is in his second year of the six-year program. "My view has changed. I now know what he represents for this country. I identify with him."
Fátima Flores, 20, of Mexico sympathized with Mr. Castro's government even before she was accepted for the program. "When we become doctors we can spread his influence," she said. "Medicine is not just something scientific. It's a way of serving the public. Look at Che."
Che Guevara was an Argentine medical doctor before he became a revolutionary who fought alongside Mr. Castro in the rugged reaches of eastern Cuba and then lost his life in Bolivia while further spreading the cause.
Tahirah Benyard, 27, a first-year student from Newark, said it was Cuba's offer to send doctors to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, which was rejected by the Bush administration, that prompted her to take a look at medical education in Cuba.
"I saw my people dying," she said. "There was no one willing to help. The government was saying everything is going to be fine."
She said she had been rejected by several American medical schools but could not have afforded their high costs anyway. Like other students from the United States, she was screened for the Cuba program by Pastors for Peace, a New York organization opposed to Washington's trade embargo against the island.
Ms. Benyard hopes that one day she will be able to practice in poor neighborhoods back home. Whether her education, which is decidedly low tech, is up to American standards remains to be seen, although Cedric Edwards, the first American student to graduate, last year, passed his medical boards in the United States.
If she makes it, Ms. Benyard will become one of a small pool of African-American doctors. Only about 6 percent of practicing physicians are members of minority groups, says the Association of American Medical Colleges, which recently began its own program to increase the number of minority medical students.
Even before they were accepted into Cuba's program, most of the Americans here said they had misgivings about the health care system in their own country. There is too much of a focus on the bottom line, they said, and not enough compassion for the poor.
"Democracy is a great principle," said Mr. Williams, who wears long dreadlocks pulled back behind his head. "The idea that people can speak for themselves and govern themselves is a great concept. But people must be educated, and in order to be educated, people need health."
The education the students are receiving here extends outside the classroom.
"I've learned to become a minimalist," Mr. Williams said. "I don't necessarily need my iPod, all my gadgets and gizmos, to survive."
There are also fewer food options. The menu can be described as rice and beans and more rice and beans. Living conditions are more rugged in other respects as well. The electricity goes out frequently. Internet access is limited. Toilet paper and soap are rationed. Sometimes the water taps are dry.
Then there is the issue of personal space.
"Being in a room with 18 girls, it teaches you patience," said Ms. Benyard, who was used to her one-bedroom apartment back home and described her current living conditions as like a military barracks.
Other students cited the American government's embargo as their biggest frustration. The blockade, which is what the Cuban government and many of the American students call it, means no care packages, no visits from Mom and Dad, and the threat that their government might penalize them for coming here.
Last year Washington ordered the students home, but the decision was reversed after protests from the Congressional Black Caucus, which supports the program.
One topic that does not come up in classes is the specific ailment that put Mr. Castro in the hospital, forced him to cede power to his brother Raúl and has kept him out of the public eye since late July. His diagnosis, like so much else in Cuba, is a state secret.
Peace, Agustin.
New York Times, December 8, 2006
Havana Journal
Hippocrates Meets Fidel, and Even U.S. Students Enroll
Jose Goitia for The New York Times
Nancy Gonzáles, center, using a cadaver to teach anatomy to Jamar Williams, left, of Brooklyn and others.
By MARC LACEY
Published: December 8, 2006
HAVANA, Dec. 7 - Anatomy is a part of medical education everywhere. Biochemistry, too. But a course in Cuban history?
Enlarge This Image
Jose Goitia for The New York Times
Students from many countries at the Latin American School of Medical Sciences, founded by Fidel Castro, on a campus just outside Havana.
The Latin American School of Medical Sciences, on a sprawling former naval base on the outskirts of this capital, teaches its students medicine Cuban style. That means poking at cadavers, peering into aging microscopes and discussing the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power 48 years ago.
Cuban-trained doctors must be able not only to diagnose an ulcer and treat hypertension but also to expound on the principles put forward by "el comandante."
It was President Castro himself who in the late 1990s came up with the idea for this place, which gives potential doctors from throughout the Americas and Africa not just the A B C's of medicine but also the basic philosophy behind offering good health care to the struggling masses.
The Cuban government offers full scholarships to poor students from abroad, and many, including 90 or so Americans, have jumped at the chance of a free medical education, even with a bit of Communist theory thrown in.
"They are completing the dreams of our comandante," said the dean, Dr. Juan D. Carrizo Estévez. "As he said, they are true missionaries, true apostles of health."
It is a strong personal desire to practice medicine that drives the students here more than any affinity for Mr. Castro. Those from the United States in particular insist that they want to become doctors, not politicians. They recoil at the notion that they are propaganda tools for Cuba, as critics suggest.
"They ask no one to be political - it's your choice," said Jamar Williams, 27, of Brooklyn, a graduate of the State University of New York at Albany. "Many students decide to be political. They go to rallies and read political books. But you can lie low."
Still, the Cuban authorities are eager to show off this school as a sign of the country's compassion and its standing in the world. And some students cannot help responding to the sympathetic portrayal of Mr. Castro, whom the United States government tars as a dictator who suppresses his people.
"In my country many see Fidel Castro as a bad leader," said Rolando Bonilla, 23, a Panamanian who is in his second year of the six-year program. "My view has changed. I now know what he represents for this country. I identify with him."
Fátima Flores, 20, of Mexico sympathized with Mr. Castro's government even before she was accepted for the program. "When we become doctors we can spread his influence," she said. "Medicine is not just something scientific. It's a way of serving the public. Look at Che."
Che Guevara was an Argentine medical doctor before he became a revolutionary who fought alongside Mr. Castro in the rugged reaches of eastern Cuba and then lost his life in Bolivia while further spreading the cause.
Tahirah Benyard, 27, a first-year student from Newark, said it was Cuba's offer to send doctors to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, which was rejected by the Bush administration, that prompted her to take a look at medical education in Cuba.
"I saw my people dying," she said. "There was no one willing to help. The government was saying everything is going to be fine."
She said she had been rejected by several American medical schools but could not have afforded their high costs anyway. Like other students from the United States, she was screened for the Cuba program by Pastors for Peace, a New York organization opposed to Washington's trade embargo against the island.
Ms. Benyard hopes that one day she will be able to practice in poor neighborhoods back home. Whether her education, which is decidedly low tech, is up to American standards remains to be seen, although Cedric Edwards, the first American student to graduate, last year, passed his medical boards in the United States.
If she makes it, Ms. Benyard will become one of a small pool of African-American doctors. Only about 6 percent of practicing physicians are members of minority groups, says the Association of American Medical Colleges, which recently began its own program to increase the number of minority medical students.
Even before they were accepted into Cuba's program, most of the Americans here said they had misgivings about the health care system in their own country. There is too much of a focus on the bottom line, they said, and not enough compassion for the poor.
"Democracy is a great principle," said Mr. Williams, who wears long dreadlocks pulled back behind his head. "The idea that people can speak for themselves and govern themselves is a great concept. But people must be educated, and in order to be educated, people need health."
The education the students are receiving here extends outside the classroom.
"I've learned to become a minimalist," Mr. Williams said. "I don't necessarily need my iPod, all my gadgets and gizmos, to survive."
There are also fewer food options. The menu can be described as rice and beans and more rice and beans. Living conditions are more rugged in other respects as well. The electricity goes out frequently. Internet access is limited. Toilet paper and soap are rationed. Sometimes the water taps are dry.
Then there is the issue of personal space.
"Being in a room with 18 girls, it teaches you patience," said Ms. Benyard, who was used to her one-bedroom apartment back home and described her current living conditions as like a military barracks.
Other students cited the American government's embargo as their biggest frustration. The blockade, which is what the Cuban government and many of the American students call it, means no care packages, no visits from Mom and Dad, and the threat that their government might penalize them for coming here.
Last year Washington ordered the students home, but the decision was reversed after protests from the Congressional Black Caucus, which supports the program.
One topic that does not come up in classes is the specific ailment that put Mr. Castro in the hospital, forced him to cede power to his brother Raúl and has kept him out of the public eye since late July. His diagnosis, like so much else in Cuba, is a state secret.
Required Reading for last week of class
Please read the following articles posted below (class website). You will be asked about them in your final. Peace.
1. Violence Against Women: Stories You Rarely Hear About
2. Murder and Mutilation Stalk the Women of Guatemala
3. Feminism’s New Faces
4. Along the northern Mexican border, fear rules
5. Off the fence
6. U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS
7. Neoliberalist rethink neoliberalism
1. Violence Against Women: Stories You Rarely Hear About
2. Murder and Mutilation Stalk the Women of Guatemala
3. Feminism’s New Faces
4. Along the northern Mexican border, fear rules
5. Off the fence
6. U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS
7. Neoliberalist rethink neoliberalism
Violence Against Women: Stories You Rarely Hear About
Violence Against Women: Stories You Rarely Hear About
23 November 2006
UNITED NATIONS, New York—Every day, women all over the world are abducted into forced marriage; subjected to harmful traditional practices; married, while still children, to far older men; and injured through gang rape and rape with foreign objects—usually during conflict. In Guatemala, the death toll of murdered and mutilated women has already reached more than 500 for this year alone and has climbed steadily during the last five years. In 2005, 665 women were found murdered, compared to 494 in 2004. For a small country of 12 millions, these numbers are alarming and by far surpass those of the better-known homicides of young women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Every year, the plight of these women is too often ignored, consigned to the back pages of newspapers or relegated to no more than a passing mention in mainstream broadcast media—if at all.
To kick off the annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is highlighting five under-reported stories relating to gender-based violence for 2006.
These stories are as hidden as they are diverse. They include:
The rising tide of ‘bridenapping’—the abduction, rape and forced marriage of young women throughout Central Asia;
Breast-ironing, a traditional practice in a number of West African countries that involves crushing the breasts of young girls in order to deter male attention;
The epidemic of traumatic fistula in Africa, which is caused by gang rape and often the forced insertion of foreign objects into the rape victim. This results in the tearing of the delicate tissues separating the birth canal from the bowel and/or the bladder. Seriously injured and psychologically traumatized, the victim is left incontinent, leaking faeces, urine, or both. Too often, her family and community rejects her, to live out the remainder of her life as a pariah—doubly stigmatized—both by the rape itself and its terrible consequences.
The ongoing femicide of women in the Central American country of Guatemala. Unlike the killings of young women in Ciudad Juarez, on the El Paso/Mexico border, the wholesale murder and mutilation of Guatemala’s women continues to be enacted under a cloak of media silence and official neglect.
Child marriage—the forced marriage of girl children—most often against their will, to (usually) older men. Most of these marriages take place in the world’s poorest nations and mean girls are unable to complete their education; are at greater risk of being exploited, of contracting sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, and of dying or being injured in childbirth owing to the fact that their bodies are too immature to withstand the rigours of birth.
To learn more about five under reported stories on gender-based violence, please visit www.unfpa.org.
***
The United Nations Population Fund is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. UNFPA supports countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.
For more information, please contact:
New York: Patricia Leidl, Tel: 1-212-297-5088, mobile: 1-917-535-9508, leidl@unfpa.org;
Bangkok: William Ryan, Tel: +66 2 288 2446; mobile +66-89-897-6984, ryanw@unfpa.org;
Geneva: Siri Tellier, Tel: +41-22-917-8571, tellier@unfpa.org;
Mexico City: Trygve Olfarnes, Tel: +5255 5250-7977, olfarnes@unfpa.org.
23 November 2006
UNITED NATIONS, New York—Every day, women all over the world are abducted into forced marriage; subjected to harmful traditional practices; married, while still children, to far older men; and injured through gang rape and rape with foreign objects—usually during conflict. In Guatemala, the death toll of murdered and mutilated women has already reached more than 500 for this year alone and has climbed steadily during the last five years. In 2005, 665 women were found murdered, compared to 494 in 2004. For a small country of 12 millions, these numbers are alarming and by far surpass those of the better-known homicides of young women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Every year, the plight of these women is too often ignored, consigned to the back pages of newspapers or relegated to no more than a passing mention in mainstream broadcast media—if at all.
To kick off the annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is highlighting five under-reported stories relating to gender-based violence for 2006.
These stories are as hidden as they are diverse. They include:
The rising tide of ‘bridenapping’—the abduction, rape and forced marriage of young women throughout Central Asia;
Breast-ironing, a traditional practice in a number of West African countries that involves crushing the breasts of young girls in order to deter male attention;
The epidemic of traumatic fistula in Africa, which is caused by gang rape and often the forced insertion of foreign objects into the rape victim. This results in the tearing of the delicate tissues separating the birth canal from the bowel and/or the bladder. Seriously injured and psychologically traumatized, the victim is left incontinent, leaking faeces, urine, or both. Too often, her family and community rejects her, to live out the remainder of her life as a pariah—doubly stigmatized—both by the rape itself and its terrible consequences.
The ongoing femicide of women in the Central American country of Guatemala. Unlike the killings of young women in Ciudad Juarez, on the El Paso/Mexico border, the wholesale murder and mutilation of Guatemala’s women continues to be enacted under a cloak of media silence and official neglect.
Child marriage—the forced marriage of girl children—most often against their will, to (usually) older men. Most of these marriages take place in the world’s poorest nations and mean girls are unable to complete their education; are at greater risk of being exploited, of contracting sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, and of dying or being injured in childbirth owing to the fact that their bodies are too immature to withstand the rigours of birth.
To learn more about five under reported stories on gender-based violence, please visit www.unfpa.org.
***
The United Nations Population Fund is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. UNFPA supports countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.
For more information, please contact:
New York: Patricia Leidl, Tel: 1-212-297-5088, mobile: 1-917-535-9508, leidl@unfpa.org;
Bangkok: William Ryan, Tel: +66 2 288 2446; mobile +66-89-897-6984, ryanw@unfpa.org;
Geneva: Siri Tellier, Tel: +41-22-917-8571, tellier@unfpa.org;
Mexico City: Trygve Olfarnes, Tel: +5255 5250-7977, olfarnes@unfpa.org.
Murder and Mutilation Stalk the Women of Guatemala
Go to UN article for photos
Murder and Mutilation Stalk the Women of Guatemala
Activists call for the international community and national government to halt the ‘femicide’
Maria Elena Peralta visits her murdered sister's crypt.
Photo: Carina Wint
22 November 2006
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala— Above Guatemala City morgue and forensic medical service, clouds of vultures circle and dip. The smell of death and cleaning chemicals hits visitors with the force of a hammer. In Guatemala, a country that is still struggling to emerge from under the shadow of more than three decades of civil war, an estimated two women a day die a violent and often gruesome death. And the number of murdered females is steadily rising: 494 in 2004, 665 last year, and, as of 5 November, 516 and counting. Many of the victims have been mutilated and raped. For a country of 12 million, the numbers are alarming and surpass by far those of the better-known murders of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Speaking about the dismembered corpses, Doctor Mario Guerra says, “We see those often.” The coroner’s open, red pick-up truck brings in the bodies – many of which have been dumped throughout the city – in ditches, alleyways, parks and the city dump. Some of the corpses remain unidentified. Those are posthumously christened XX (Jane Doe) and buried at Verbena, the public graveyard next door.
Although the level of violence in Guatemala is high for both sexes, and more men than women are killed every year, women’s groups point out that women and girls are often killed because of their gender – raped, dismembered or murdered during domestic disputes or by gangs knows as maras(gangs of criminal youth). “These murders are carried out with such viciousness that it makes them stand out from other crimes,” says Nadine Gasman, UNFPA Representative for Guatemala.
Women’s groups use the Spanish-language term feminicido – female genocide – to describe the growing tide of violence, murder, rape and mutilation of women that is now sweeping across this Central American country.
Some of the murders display a shocking level of violence. The murder of Nancy Peralta, a 30-year-old accounting student who was abducted from the San Carlos University in Guatemala City is a case in point. Nancy was abducted and killed on 1 February 2001. Family members found her three days later at the city morgue where she had been admitted as yet another ‘XX’. Her throat had been slit and 48 stab wounds punctured her torso, legs and arms.
Nearly five years later, her family is still hoping that her killer may be caught and brought to justice. Nancy’s sister, Maria Elena Peralta (34), followed the investigation from its beginning, and has now dedicated her life to helping other victims and their families at the Survivors’ Foundation, a government-funded group that works to protect the legal rights of victims and their families. The Foundation also offers psychological and medical care.
The deterioration of our society is even more worrisome than the deaths. What kind of a future awaits our young people, if they internalize these values?
--Alba Maldonado
Her family’s attempts to find justice for Nancy have been blocked by stonewalling, official indifference and downright disrespect. Maria Elena says her family provided the Public Ministry – the office responsible for investigating and prosecuting crimes – with several leads that they believed relevant to her sister’s case. “But instead of investigating the leads, they started investigating us, her own family,” she recalls. Public Ministry officials also claimed that the victim had brought on her own misfortune by being a “gang member and a whore”. Public Ministry officials declined to be interviewed for this article on the grounds that the relevant officials were on vacation.
Back at the city morgue, forensic doctors labour among the dead with little assistance from modern technology. The morgue has access to a laboratory, but no DNA testing facilities exist in Guatemala. Critics charge that forensic investigations are often sloppy, and the official cause of death is frequently inaccurate and misleading. In most cases, the victims’ clothing, which is often the most valuable and only source of evidence, is either burned or handed back to the family. Too often, local authorities attribute the cause of death to gunshot wounds, while evidence of torture goes undocumented. In a number of instances, the police or pathologist have even ascribed the wrong gender to murder victims.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint a single cause for the femicide in Guatemala. Domestic violence, drugs and gangs are only one aspect of a much broader picture. Forensic studies have identified the maras' calling card: dismembered, often female, corpses left at the scene. But while the media has focussed primarily on those killings that bear the maras' unmistakeable signature, activists also point the finger at an undercurrent of corruption and abuse of power among the authorities themselves. All of this, coupled with the low status of women in the Guatemalan society, add up to a lethal mix.
A photograph of one of the Guatemalan women who have gone missing.
Photo: Carina Wint
It was a police officer who shot and killed Santos Marlen Flores, a 32-year-old mother of three, in her own home outside of Guatemala City. The officer was angry because Marlen’s half brother had fallen in love with his wife. The pair decamped together last June – leaving Marlen to face down the officer’s rage. One day he arrived at the family house demanding to know the couple’s whereabouts, which Marlen did not know. Angry and frustrated, the police officer returned a few days later and shot her four times. After struggling to stay alive for three weeks, Marlen died. In this case, unlike so many others, the justice system seems to be working: the police officer is in custody, awaiting trial.
Not all of the violence meted out to Guatemala’s women ends in death – thanks, in part, to the Survivors’ Foundation. On 4 October, 15-year-old ‘Ana’ was on her way to school when two men grabbed her by the arms. They forced her onto a bus and took her to the infamous Pavón prison, an overcrowded jail that, until recently, had the dubious distinction of being controlled by its 1,500 inmates.*
The two men, who identified her by a photo they were carrying, told her that her uncle, a gang member going by the nickname ‘Smiley’ had sent for her. At about 9 a.m. she was led through the gates of the prison to a section where mareros, or gang members, serve their sentences. The men who had brought her left as soon as they had dropped her off.
Once inside the prison, she was met by Smiley who chatted with her for a while, then started smoking marijuana. More prisoners came to join them, and soon they demanded that Ana remove her clothes. Then they started raping her. When she screamed, they put a rag in her mouth. Six hours later, she had been raped by 21 prisoners.
For Ana, this was the latest chapter in a three-year nightmare of sexual abuse. She had been coerced into having sex several times a week with gang members who lived in her neighbourhood. They told her they would kill her entire family if she said anything: first her mother, then her sisters, then her grandfather. She would be the last one to go, and it was she, they reminded her, who would suffer the most.
Now Ana is living in a safe house run by the Survivors’ Foundation at a secret location in Guatemala. Norma Cruz, Director of the Foundation notes that Ana’s case will receive a great deal of attention when it goes to court, because it potentially implicates high-ranking officials both in the police and prison system. “People in Guatemala receive the wrong messages about violence,” she says. “It is seen as acceptable, and the impunity tells people that they can go ahead and repeat the crimes.”
“The problem is so complex that it is almost impossible to pick a single factor that would help improve the justice system, but if I had to pick one it would be the investigation procedure,” says Mirna Ponce, a member of the Guatemalan Congress, who represents the conservative Guatemalan Republican Front.
Alba Maldonado, head of the leftist Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity party, member of Congress, and principal author of a study exploring the killing of women in Guatemala, says the violence is rooted in the country’s 36-year civil war, which ended in a peace agreement in 1996. As with most countries recovering from civil war, the killing goes on long after the fighting has stopped.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand people died during those years, she says. "There was never an investigation which led to the capture and punishment of assassins and torturers. Those people are out on the street, in government positions, and at all levels of power.”
About 97 per cent of murder cases are never solved. UNFPA is now buttressing efforts both within the Guatemalan government and civil society to tackle the situation. These efforts include support to an inter-sectoral commission headed by the Presidential Secretariat for Women, which will, among other thing, propose legal reforms. Support also includes plans to offer legal assistance to families of murder victims through a civil society organization.
“The deterioration of our society is even more worrisome than the deaths. What kind of a future awaits our young people, if they internalize these values?” Maldonado asks.
###
* On October 24, Pavón was raided by 3,000 soldiers and police armed with teargas, armoured cars and assault rifles. Inmates were moved to another prison.
Go to UN article for photos
Murder and Mutilation Stalk the Women of Guatemala
Activists call for the international community and national government to halt the ‘femicide’
Maria Elena Peralta visits her murdered sister's crypt.
Photo: Carina Wint
22 November 2006
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala— Above Guatemala City morgue and forensic medical service, clouds of vultures circle and dip. The smell of death and cleaning chemicals hits visitors with the force of a hammer. In Guatemala, a country that is still struggling to emerge from under the shadow of more than three decades of civil war, an estimated two women a day die a violent and often gruesome death. And the number of murdered females is steadily rising: 494 in 2004, 665 last year, and, as of 5 November, 516 and counting. Many of the victims have been mutilated and raped. For a country of 12 million, the numbers are alarming and surpass by far those of the better-known murders of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Speaking about the dismembered corpses, Doctor Mario Guerra says, “We see those often.” The coroner’s open, red pick-up truck brings in the bodies – many of which have been dumped throughout the city – in ditches, alleyways, parks and the city dump. Some of the corpses remain unidentified. Those are posthumously christened XX (Jane Doe) and buried at Verbena, the public graveyard next door.
Although the level of violence in Guatemala is high for both sexes, and more men than women are killed every year, women’s groups point out that women and girls are often killed because of their gender – raped, dismembered or murdered during domestic disputes or by gangs knows as maras(gangs of criminal youth). “These murders are carried out with such viciousness that it makes them stand out from other crimes,” says Nadine Gasman, UNFPA Representative for Guatemala.
Women’s groups use the Spanish-language term feminicido – female genocide – to describe the growing tide of violence, murder, rape and mutilation of women that is now sweeping across this Central American country.
Some of the murders display a shocking level of violence. The murder of Nancy Peralta, a 30-year-old accounting student who was abducted from the San Carlos University in Guatemala City is a case in point. Nancy was abducted and killed on 1 February 2001. Family members found her three days later at the city morgue where she had been admitted as yet another ‘XX’. Her throat had been slit and 48 stab wounds punctured her torso, legs and arms.
Nearly five years later, her family is still hoping that her killer may be caught and brought to justice. Nancy’s sister, Maria Elena Peralta (34), followed the investigation from its beginning, and has now dedicated her life to helping other victims and their families at the Survivors’ Foundation, a government-funded group that works to protect the legal rights of victims and their families. The Foundation also offers psychological and medical care.
The deterioration of our society is even more worrisome than the deaths. What kind of a future awaits our young people, if they internalize these values?
--Alba Maldonado
Her family’s attempts to find justice for Nancy have been blocked by stonewalling, official indifference and downright disrespect. Maria Elena says her family provided the Public Ministry – the office responsible for investigating and prosecuting crimes – with several leads that they believed relevant to her sister’s case. “But instead of investigating the leads, they started investigating us, her own family,” she recalls. Public Ministry officials also claimed that the victim had brought on her own misfortune by being a “gang member and a whore”. Public Ministry officials declined to be interviewed for this article on the grounds that the relevant officials were on vacation.
Back at the city morgue, forensic doctors labour among the dead with little assistance from modern technology. The morgue has access to a laboratory, but no DNA testing facilities exist in Guatemala. Critics charge that forensic investigations are often sloppy, and the official cause of death is frequently inaccurate and misleading. In most cases, the victims’ clothing, which is often the most valuable and only source of evidence, is either burned or handed back to the family. Too often, local authorities attribute the cause of death to gunshot wounds, while evidence of torture goes undocumented. In a number of instances, the police or pathologist have even ascribed the wrong gender to murder victims.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint a single cause for the femicide in Guatemala. Domestic violence, drugs and gangs are only one aspect of a much broader picture. Forensic studies have identified the maras' calling card: dismembered, often female, corpses left at the scene. But while the media has focussed primarily on those killings that bear the maras' unmistakeable signature, activists also point the finger at an undercurrent of corruption and abuse of power among the authorities themselves. All of this, coupled with the low status of women in the Guatemalan society, add up to a lethal mix.
A photograph of one of the Guatemalan women who have gone missing.
Photo: Carina Wint
It was a police officer who shot and killed Santos Marlen Flores, a 32-year-old mother of three, in her own home outside of Guatemala City. The officer was angry because Marlen’s half brother had fallen in love with his wife. The pair decamped together last June – leaving Marlen to face down the officer’s rage. One day he arrived at the family house demanding to know the couple’s whereabouts, which Marlen did not know. Angry and frustrated, the police officer returned a few days later and shot her four times. After struggling to stay alive for three weeks, Marlen died. In this case, unlike so many others, the justice system seems to be working: the police officer is in custody, awaiting trial.
Not all of the violence meted out to Guatemala’s women ends in death – thanks, in part, to the Survivors’ Foundation. On 4 October, 15-year-old ‘Ana’ was on her way to school when two men grabbed her by the arms. They forced her onto a bus and took her to the infamous Pavón prison, an overcrowded jail that, until recently, had the dubious distinction of being controlled by its 1,500 inmates.*
The two men, who identified her by a photo they were carrying, told her that her uncle, a gang member going by the nickname ‘Smiley’ had sent for her. At about 9 a.m. she was led through the gates of the prison to a section where mareros, or gang members, serve their sentences. The men who had brought her left as soon as they had dropped her off.
Once inside the prison, she was met by Smiley who chatted with her for a while, then started smoking marijuana. More prisoners came to join them, and soon they demanded that Ana remove her clothes. Then they started raping her. When she screamed, they put a rag in her mouth. Six hours later, she had been raped by 21 prisoners.
For Ana, this was the latest chapter in a three-year nightmare of sexual abuse. She had been coerced into having sex several times a week with gang members who lived in her neighbourhood. They told her they would kill her entire family if she said anything: first her mother, then her sisters, then her grandfather. She would be the last one to go, and it was she, they reminded her, who would suffer the most.
Now Ana is living in a safe house run by the Survivors’ Foundation at a secret location in Guatemala. Norma Cruz, Director of the Foundation notes that Ana’s case will receive a great deal of attention when it goes to court, because it potentially implicates high-ranking officials both in the police and prison system. “People in Guatemala receive the wrong messages about violence,” she says. “It is seen as acceptable, and the impunity tells people that they can go ahead and repeat the crimes.”
“The problem is so complex that it is almost impossible to pick a single factor that would help improve the justice system, but if I had to pick one it would be the investigation procedure,” says Mirna Ponce, a member of the Guatemalan Congress, who represents the conservative Guatemalan Republican Front.
Alba Maldonado, head of the leftist Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity party, member of Congress, and principal author of a study exploring the killing of women in Guatemala, says the violence is rooted in the country’s 36-year civil war, which ended in a peace agreement in 1996. As with most countries recovering from civil war, the killing goes on long after the fighting has stopped.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand people died during those years, she says. "There was never an investigation which led to the capture and punishment of assassins and torturers. Those people are out on the street, in government positions, and at all levels of power.”
About 97 per cent of murder cases are never solved. UNFPA is now buttressing efforts both within the Guatemalan government and civil society to tackle the situation. These efforts include support to an inter-sectoral commission headed by the Presidential Secretariat for Women, which will, among other thing, propose legal reforms. Support also includes plans to offer legal assistance to families of murder victims through a civil society organization.
“The deterioration of our society is even more worrisome than the deaths. What kind of a future awaits our young people, if they internalize these values?” Maldonado asks.
###
* On October 24, Pavón was raided by 3,000 soldiers and police armed with teargas, armoured cars and assault rifles. Inmates were moved to another prison.
Go to UN article for photos
Feminism’s New Faces
Feminism’s New Faces
By Joan Dawson
There is a simple expression that says there are two sides to every coin. Well, here is an article that will justify that saying. First, I’ll start with the bad news and then I’ll end on a good note. Bear with me as I go through the bad news. It’s ghastly. Oh, and I should mention, this article is in recognition of Nov. 25; ``International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.’’ That should give you a heads up _ pun intended.
First, the bad news: violence against women is on par with that of the Holocaust. Every year we lose 1.5 to 3 million women to gender-based violence, according to the Economist. Women face: bride burnings, honor killings, stoning, early marriage, sex selective abortions, female infanticide, sexual trafficking, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, incest, rape, sexual harassment, pornography, dismemberment, mutilation and murder. If you’re counting, that’s at least 16 forms of violence, or human rights abuses. Statistically, one in three women will suffer from violence in their lifetime.
In the world, there are several hot spots, in particular, where the life of a woman is given a low value. In Russia, a woman is killed every hour. There are only 10 shelters in the entire country. In Juarez, Mexico, young women, 14 to 22 years old, are raped, mutilated and killed. Their bodies are discarded in the desert. This has been going on since 1993. No one has been legitimately convicted. In Guatemala, 2200 women have been killed in five years. Exceptional cruelty and sexual violence characterize the killings. On the continent of Africa, in countries undergoing conflict, mass rape, often resulting in HIV infection, has been inflicted upon women and young girls. Gang rapes and rape with instruments such as weapons or sharp objects have been widely used. These are just a few of the injustices directed at women in the world today. Often the perpetrators are men; often the injustice is compounded with impunity.
Now, for the good news: Men have been educating themselves and organizing themselves to help in a cause that was once traditionally met with silence, or believed to be an inevitable part of a woman’s life, or (gasp) scorned feminists as male-bashers. Now, people who fight child abuse are not adult-haters. And people who fight poverty are not rich-bashers. So, let’s set the record straight, this is not about hate. This is about raising awareness and working towards the elimination of violence based on one’s gender.
Violence against women, although it’s existed for centuries or longer, was just recognized in the 1990s as a human rights abuse by organizations such as the UN. At the same time, a handful of Canadian men decided to speak out on the issue. These men started the white ribbon campaign. The campaign starts on Nov. 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and ends December 6, the anniversary of the Montreal massacre where a gunman barged into a Montreal college screaming ``I hate feminists,’’ then targeted and killed 14 women.
In the U.S., there are similar groups: Men Against Sexual Violence, Men as Partners Program, Men Can Stop Rape, and others. As well, authors are taking up the cause. Bob Herbert, a New York Times columnist, has recently written two columns about misogyny. And Jack Holland wrote ``Misogyny: The world’s oldest prejudice.’’ Many other articles, books and studies are being done by men today.
In Asia, men are showing signs of doing likewise. Over in Japan, a group of about 20 men in Tokyo formed the National Chauvinistic Husbands Association. Their goal? To become loving husbands! Not to be outdone, Korea has recently published a book called ``Male Feminists.’’ In it, the author explains how feminism is fair and ideal, and how it can be beneficial to men as well as women.
So there you have it, two sides of a coin. In honor of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, I applaud the brave men who have taken up this cause. You, like all feminists, face ridicule, silence and rejection. Despite these challenges, you courageously defend your principles of justice. You strive for non-violence and harmony. You are welcome new faces. You are lending credibility to a cause that does not just face women, but also the children and men that love them.
Nov. 25 is followed by 16 Days of Hope to eliminate gender-based violence. Men, you are giving us hope and we thank you for it.
The writer is an editor of ESL books in Mapo-gu, Seoul.
* * *
The Korea Times welcomes our readers' contributions to Letters to the Editor and Thoughts of The Times. The article should be preferably submitted by e-mail to opinion@koreatimes.co.kr and not exceed 900 words. _ ED.
By Joan Dawson
There is a simple expression that says there are two sides to every coin. Well, here is an article that will justify that saying. First, I’ll start with the bad news and then I’ll end on a good note. Bear with me as I go through the bad news. It’s ghastly. Oh, and I should mention, this article is in recognition of Nov. 25; ``International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.’’ That should give you a heads up _ pun intended.
First, the bad news: violence against women is on par with that of the Holocaust. Every year we lose 1.5 to 3 million women to gender-based violence, according to the Economist. Women face: bride burnings, honor killings, stoning, early marriage, sex selective abortions, female infanticide, sexual trafficking, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, incest, rape, sexual harassment, pornography, dismemberment, mutilation and murder. If you’re counting, that’s at least 16 forms of violence, or human rights abuses. Statistically, one in three women will suffer from violence in their lifetime.
In the world, there are several hot spots, in particular, where the life of a woman is given a low value. In Russia, a woman is killed every hour. There are only 10 shelters in the entire country. In Juarez, Mexico, young women, 14 to 22 years old, are raped, mutilated and killed. Their bodies are discarded in the desert. This has been going on since 1993. No one has been legitimately convicted. In Guatemala, 2200 women have been killed in five years. Exceptional cruelty and sexual violence characterize the killings. On the continent of Africa, in countries undergoing conflict, mass rape, often resulting in HIV infection, has been inflicted upon women and young girls. Gang rapes and rape with instruments such as weapons or sharp objects have been widely used. These are just a few of the injustices directed at women in the world today. Often the perpetrators are men; often the injustice is compounded with impunity.
Now, for the good news: Men have been educating themselves and organizing themselves to help in a cause that was once traditionally met with silence, or believed to be an inevitable part of a woman’s life, or (gasp) scorned feminists as male-bashers. Now, people who fight child abuse are not adult-haters. And people who fight poverty are not rich-bashers. So, let’s set the record straight, this is not about hate. This is about raising awareness and working towards the elimination of violence based on one’s gender.
Violence against women, although it’s existed for centuries or longer, was just recognized in the 1990s as a human rights abuse by organizations such as the UN. At the same time, a handful of Canadian men decided to speak out on the issue. These men started the white ribbon campaign. The campaign starts on Nov. 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and ends December 6, the anniversary of the Montreal massacre where a gunman barged into a Montreal college screaming ``I hate feminists,’’ then targeted and killed 14 women.
In the U.S., there are similar groups: Men Against Sexual Violence, Men as Partners Program, Men Can Stop Rape, and others. As well, authors are taking up the cause. Bob Herbert, a New York Times columnist, has recently written two columns about misogyny. And Jack Holland wrote ``Misogyny: The world’s oldest prejudice.’’ Many other articles, books and studies are being done by men today.
In Asia, men are showing signs of doing likewise. Over in Japan, a group of about 20 men in Tokyo formed the National Chauvinistic Husbands Association. Their goal? To become loving husbands! Not to be outdone, Korea has recently published a book called ``Male Feminists.’’ In it, the author explains how feminism is fair and ideal, and how it can be beneficial to men as well as women.
So there you have it, two sides of a coin. In honor of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, I applaud the brave men who have taken up this cause. You, like all feminists, face ridicule, silence and rejection. Despite these challenges, you courageously defend your principles of justice. You strive for non-violence and harmony. You are welcome new faces. You are lending credibility to a cause that does not just face women, but also the children and men that love them.
Nov. 25 is followed by 16 Days of Hope to eliminate gender-based violence. Men, you are giving us hope and we thank you for it.
The writer is an editor of ESL books in Mapo-gu, Seoul.
* * *
The Korea Times welcomes our readers' contributions to Letters to the Editor and Thoughts of The Times. The article should be preferably submitted by e-mail to opinion@koreatimes.co.kr and not exceed 900 words. _ ED.
Along the northern Mexican border, fear rules
Los Angeles Times
Along the northern Mexican border, fear rules
Police jobs go unfilled and a terrorized public demands reform as the death toll grows in a drug smuggling war.
By Sam Enriquez and Richard Marosi
Times Staff Writers
November 23, 2006
NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO - The top cop in this unhinged border city has 300 openings on a 600-member police force, and his fearful greeting gave a big clue why.
"Please, please don't use my name or take a photograph," the interim chief begged.
One police chief was killed last year, a second quit in the spring, and no one else appears brave enough, or foolhardy enough, to work this side of the law in Nuevo Laredo.
Mexican President Vicente Fox quietly withdrew the federal police he dispatched with great fanfare last year to bring peace, leaving the city virtually unprotected in a smuggling war that has claimed 170 lives since January.
This isn't the only border city where law and order are on the ropes.
In Tijuana, the rate of kidnappings ranks among the world's worst and some state police have refused postings after the killings of more than a dozen officers, some at restaurants and on city streets.
Organized crime is out of control, Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon said after a police commander was ambushed this month. The killing of police officers, he said, "speaks to the impunity of organized crime, that they think they're above the law, or protected."
As Mexico prepares for a peaceful transfer of power Dec. 1 with the inauguration of Felipe Calderon, the president-elect must take stock of the country's 2,000 drug-related slayings this year, residents and officials say.
"Calderon needs to apply the law or reform the law," said Nuevo Laredo resident Ana de la Cruz, the mother of two teenage daughters. "We urgently need help."
The drug problem that spans the United States and Mexico neither starts nor ends in these two border cities. But a healthy chunk of U.S.-bound dope lumbers past each day.
"The number of addicts is growing," said Adan Rosa Ramos, 24, a recovering methamphetamine user who works at a rehabilitation house in Nuevo Laredo. "There's a lot more drugs on the street."
The proximity of these cities to the United States is a blessing and a curse. The Tijuana-San Diego frontier is the busiest border crossing in the world. At Nuevo Laredo, trucks and trains ferry more than 40% of the goods traded between the neighboring countries.
The two cities also account for the most lucrative smuggling routes in the hemisphere. The tons of cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine seized by authorities each year is a fraction of what moves past them in trucks, cars, planes and tunnels.
Here's the arithmetic, said Daniel Covarrubias, the director of economic development in Nuevo Laredo: "The U.S. checks maybe 10% of the trucks that pass. Any more than that and it slows commerce. You run 10 trucks and take your chances."
Battle for control of the Nuevo Laredo corridor pits the Pacific Coast Sinaloa cartel against the Gulf cartel, whose top gunmen defected from an elite Mexican army task force. The conflict has spread to the states of Michoacan and Guerrero, where nearly 600 people were believed killed in drug-related homicides this year.
In Tijuana, the August arrest of alleged drug cartel leader Francisco Javier Arellano Felix escalated a battle among rivals believed responsible this year for many of the 318 killings in that city.
With government all but ceding control of the border, civil society has fallen into disarray or been cowed into silence. Newspapers in Nuevo Laredo have stopped reporting drug killings under pressure from advertisers, government and drug dealers.
Residents learned a lesson from Police Chief Alejandro Dominguez, who was gunned down in June 2005 within hours of taking office. He'd pledged to stand up to drug traffickers, who presumably responded in kind.
Dominguez's replacement quit and the interim chief closed his office door during a recent interview and said he wouldn't speak a word about the drug business and didn't want to be identified.
His name isn't important, and apparently neither is his job. Most of the force of almost 800 police officers was fired last year for corruption. About 300 recruits are working, but they spend their days mostly staying out of sight and out of trouble.
Even with out-of-town recruiting trips, there are no takers for 300 police jobs, including the chief's slot. Starting salaries of $600 a month apparently aren't worth it.
"Last year was bad," said the La Paz funeral home's assistant director, Alvaro Ordañez Sanchez. "A lot of cops."
Tallying the 170 people shot, burned and garroted so far in the drug war, Ordañez estimated the toll in Nuevo Laredo would approach 200 this year. That would make up about 10% of the drug-related homicides in Mexico, even though Nuevo Laredo, a city of 380,000, accounts for less than 0.4% of the nation's population.
Ordañez, whose firm also performs autopsies for the city, seems to be the only one willing to talk about the drug violence.
Elizabeth Hernandez, a state prosecutor responsible for deciding whether a homicide in Nuevo Laredo should be investigated by state or federal authorities, said she didn't know how many people had been killed.
"I've only been on the job nine months," said Hernandez, who suggested a visit to the federal prosecutor's office.
Assistant federal prosecutor Jose Enrique Corona rolled his eyes an hour later. "Of course she knows," he said.
When asked whether his office was investigating the slaying of Dominguez, the 56-year-old father who served only six hours as chief, Corona said the case was being handled by federal investigators in Mexico City. Prosecutors in Mexico City said it wasn't theirs. The truth is, few killings are investigated and almost none are solved.
"This is a city of lies," said one of the local reporters whose daily newspaper no longer covers drug killings. He was afraid to be named. "Last year we reported on all the killings, and business and government officials blamed us for disrupting commerce. Now police say nothing happens here. What a paradise."
Residents take pains to dodge the menace of drug trafficking. Some deny it exists. Look at the peaceful plazas, say boosters, and the thousands of trucks that ferry commercial goods daily to and from the United States.
"If you behave on the streets, you won't get into trouble," Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernandez Flores told potential investors during a business forum in Nuevo Laredo, which is linked by bridges with Laredo, Texas. An unofficial tally by the newspaper Milenio found 145 police officers were slain this year, a dozen of whom were from Tamaulipas.
When the Tijuana mayor favorably compared his city's crime rate with that of San Diego, some residents were stunned.
"Apparently, he's living somewhere else," said Genaro de la Torre, leader of a citizens safety group that helped organize a recent anti-violence march. "He needs to suffer what the people have suffered to realize what is really going on."
President-elect Calderon has proposed better police training, consolidation of federal law enforcement units into a single agency and creation of a national crime database.
"During the last few years, and really the last months, violence and organized crime have grown in an alarming way," Calderon told a business group last week. "We can't accept that as the image of Mexico. We can't have a daily image of executions and other bloody acts that go unpunished."
The Lopez family, which used to run a money exchange house on Nuevo Laredo's central plaza, is still waiting for justice. Thugs kidnapped one brother last month and returned the next morning for a second brother.
"He grabbed onto the pole of a payphone and wouldn't let go, so they shot him in the leg," said a reporter who interviewed witnesses. "He still wouldn't let go, so they shot him in the arm and took him. People said they called police, but nobody came."
*
sam.enriquez@latimes.com
richard.marosi@latimes.com
Enriquez reported from Nuevo Laredo and Marosi from Tijuana. Carlos Martínez and Cecilia Sánchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.
Along the northern Mexican border, fear rules
Police jobs go unfilled and a terrorized public demands reform as the death toll grows in a drug smuggling war.
By Sam Enriquez and Richard Marosi
Times Staff Writers
November 23, 2006
NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO - The top cop in this unhinged border city has 300 openings on a 600-member police force, and his fearful greeting gave a big clue why.
"Please, please don't use my name or take a photograph," the interim chief begged.
One police chief was killed last year, a second quit in the spring, and no one else appears brave enough, or foolhardy enough, to work this side of the law in Nuevo Laredo.
Mexican President Vicente Fox quietly withdrew the federal police he dispatched with great fanfare last year to bring peace, leaving the city virtually unprotected in a smuggling war that has claimed 170 lives since January.
This isn't the only border city where law and order are on the ropes.
In Tijuana, the rate of kidnappings ranks among the world's worst and some state police have refused postings after the killings of more than a dozen officers, some at restaurants and on city streets.
Organized crime is out of control, Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon said after a police commander was ambushed this month. The killing of police officers, he said, "speaks to the impunity of organized crime, that they think they're above the law, or protected."
As Mexico prepares for a peaceful transfer of power Dec. 1 with the inauguration of Felipe Calderon, the president-elect must take stock of the country's 2,000 drug-related slayings this year, residents and officials say.
"Calderon needs to apply the law or reform the law," said Nuevo Laredo resident Ana de la Cruz, the mother of two teenage daughters. "We urgently need help."
The drug problem that spans the United States and Mexico neither starts nor ends in these two border cities. But a healthy chunk of U.S.-bound dope lumbers past each day.
"The number of addicts is growing," said Adan Rosa Ramos, 24, a recovering methamphetamine user who works at a rehabilitation house in Nuevo Laredo. "There's a lot more drugs on the street."
The proximity of these cities to the United States is a blessing and a curse. The Tijuana-San Diego frontier is the busiest border crossing in the world. At Nuevo Laredo, trucks and trains ferry more than 40% of the goods traded between the neighboring countries.
The two cities also account for the most lucrative smuggling routes in the hemisphere. The tons of cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine seized by authorities each year is a fraction of what moves past them in trucks, cars, planes and tunnels.
Here's the arithmetic, said Daniel Covarrubias, the director of economic development in Nuevo Laredo: "The U.S. checks maybe 10% of the trucks that pass. Any more than that and it slows commerce. You run 10 trucks and take your chances."
Battle for control of the Nuevo Laredo corridor pits the Pacific Coast Sinaloa cartel against the Gulf cartel, whose top gunmen defected from an elite Mexican army task force. The conflict has spread to the states of Michoacan and Guerrero, where nearly 600 people were believed killed in drug-related homicides this year.
In Tijuana, the August arrest of alleged drug cartel leader Francisco Javier Arellano Felix escalated a battle among rivals believed responsible this year for many of the 318 killings in that city.
With government all but ceding control of the border, civil society has fallen into disarray or been cowed into silence. Newspapers in Nuevo Laredo have stopped reporting drug killings under pressure from advertisers, government and drug dealers.
Residents learned a lesson from Police Chief Alejandro Dominguez, who was gunned down in June 2005 within hours of taking office. He'd pledged to stand up to drug traffickers, who presumably responded in kind.
Dominguez's replacement quit and the interim chief closed his office door during a recent interview and said he wouldn't speak a word about the drug business and didn't want to be identified.
His name isn't important, and apparently neither is his job. Most of the force of almost 800 police officers was fired last year for corruption. About 300 recruits are working, but they spend their days mostly staying out of sight and out of trouble.
Even with out-of-town recruiting trips, there are no takers for 300 police jobs, including the chief's slot. Starting salaries of $600 a month apparently aren't worth it.
"Last year was bad," said the La Paz funeral home's assistant director, Alvaro Ordañez Sanchez. "A lot of cops."
Tallying the 170 people shot, burned and garroted so far in the drug war, Ordañez estimated the toll in Nuevo Laredo would approach 200 this year. That would make up about 10% of the drug-related homicides in Mexico, even though Nuevo Laredo, a city of 380,000, accounts for less than 0.4% of the nation's population.
Ordañez, whose firm also performs autopsies for the city, seems to be the only one willing to talk about the drug violence.
Elizabeth Hernandez, a state prosecutor responsible for deciding whether a homicide in Nuevo Laredo should be investigated by state or federal authorities, said she didn't know how many people had been killed.
"I've only been on the job nine months," said Hernandez, who suggested a visit to the federal prosecutor's office.
Assistant federal prosecutor Jose Enrique Corona rolled his eyes an hour later. "Of course she knows," he said.
When asked whether his office was investigating the slaying of Dominguez, the 56-year-old father who served only six hours as chief, Corona said the case was being handled by federal investigators in Mexico City. Prosecutors in Mexico City said it wasn't theirs. The truth is, few killings are investigated and almost none are solved.
"This is a city of lies," said one of the local reporters whose daily newspaper no longer covers drug killings. He was afraid to be named. "Last year we reported on all the killings, and business and government officials blamed us for disrupting commerce. Now police say nothing happens here. What a paradise."
Residents take pains to dodge the menace of drug trafficking. Some deny it exists. Look at the peaceful plazas, say boosters, and the thousands of trucks that ferry commercial goods daily to and from the United States.
"If you behave on the streets, you won't get into trouble," Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernandez Flores told potential investors during a business forum in Nuevo Laredo, which is linked by bridges with Laredo, Texas. An unofficial tally by the newspaper Milenio found 145 police officers were slain this year, a dozen of whom were from Tamaulipas.
When the Tijuana mayor favorably compared his city's crime rate with that of San Diego, some residents were stunned.
"Apparently, he's living somewhere else," said Genaro de la Torre, leader of a citizens safety group that helped organize a recent anti-violence march. "He needs to suffer what the people have suffered to realize what is really going on."
President-elect Calderon has proposed better police training, consolidation of federal law enforcement units into a single agency and creation of a national crime database.
"During the last few years, and really the last months, violence and organized crime have grown in an alarming way," Calderon told a business group last week. "We can't accept that as the image of Mexico. We can't have a daily image of executions and other bloody acts that go unpunished."
The Lopez family, which used to run a money exchange house on Nuevo Laredo's central plaza, is still waiting for justice. Thugs kidnapped one brother last month and returned the next morning for a second brother.
"He grabbed onto the pole of a payphone and wouldn't let go, so they shot him in the leg," said a reporter who interviewed witnesses. "He still wouldn't let go, so they shot him in the arm and took him. People said they called police, but nobody came."
*
sam.enriquez@latimes.com
richard.marosi@latimes.com
Enriquez reported from Nuevo Laredo and Marosi from Tijuana. Carlos Martínez and Cecilia Sánchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.
Off the fence
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-richardson08dec08,0,3085167.story?coll=la-news-comment
EDITORIALS
Off the fence
Walls won't work, New Mexico's governor reminds us. Immigration reform must be comprehensive.
December 8, 2006
NEW MEXICO Gov. Bill Richardson, the California-born son of a Mexican mother, traveled to Washington on Thursday to declare his interest in two of the most elusive goals in American politics: comprehensive immigration reform and the presidency. The second may be more realistic than the first.
"I come here as a border state governor and a Hispanic American who knows that our nation can no longer afford to ignore the issue of illegal immigration," Richardson told a Georgetown University audience. "We need to stop exploiting the immigration problem and start solving it. We need to pass realistic laws and then enforce them rigorously."
Richardson's thoughtful speech was both a rebuke to Republican immigrant bashers and a challenge to Capitol Hill Democrats. But few will likely read beyond this line: "Securing the border must come first - but we must understand that building a fence will not in any way accomplish that objective."
That language may be on the absolutist side, but the New Mexico governor is absolutely right to point out that a multibillion-dollar border wall, on its own, is no "reform" at all. It would merely shift the strain on the system elsewhere and fail to address the 45% of illegal immigrants who enter legally but overstay their visas.
For this, Richardson was given the usual treatment - surrealistic bashing from CNN's millionaire working-class hero, Lou Dobbs. Dobbs' website asked readers: "Do you believe, as New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson suggests, that efforts to secure our borders and ports are nothing more than demagoguery?"
In fact, Richardson has unusual credibility on the issue.
It wasn't long ago that restrictionists were singing his praises for declaring a state of emergency along the border and calling in his state's National Guard to patrol it. He would double the number of Border Patrol agents, mandate a tamper-proof employment card and make any "path to citizenship" expensive in time, money and effort. Yet Richardson would also more than double the number of annual work and family visas, and he has introduced driver's licenses for illegals in New Mexico.
Certainly the governor isn't right about every one of his proposals, and how his speech will affect his presidential aspirations remains to be seen. But he couldn't be more timely in reminding his party that comprehensive immigration reform is no less urgent now that Democrats control Congress.
EDITORIALS
Off the fence
Walls won't work, New Mexico's governor reminds us. Immigration reform must be comprehensive.
December 8, 2006
NEW MEXICO Gov. Bill Richardson, the California-born son of a Mexican mother, traveled to Washington on Thursday to declare his interest in two of the most elusive goals in American politics: comprehensive immigration reform and the presidency. The second may be more realistic than the first.
"I come here as a border state governor and a Hispanic American who knows that our nation can no longer afford to ignore the issue of illegal immigration," Richardson told a Georgetown University audience. "We need to stop exploiting the immigration problem and start solving it. We need to pass realistic laws and then enforce them rigorously."
Richardson's thoughtful speech was both a rebuke to Republican immigrant bashers and a challenge to Capitol Hill Democrats. But few will likely read beyond this line: "Securing the border must come first - but we must understand that building a fence will not in any way accomplish that objective."
That language may be on the absolutist side, but the New Mexico governor is absolutely right to point out that a multibillion-dollar border wall, on its own, is no "reform" at all. It would merely shift the strain on the system elsewhere and fail to address the 45% of illegal immigrants who enter legally but overstay their visas.
For this, Richardson was given the usual treatment - surrealistic bashing from CNN's millionaire working-class hero, Lou Dobbs. Dobbs' website asked readers: "Do you believe, as New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson suggests, that efforts to secure our borders and ports are nothing more than demagoguery?"
In fact, Richardson has unusual credibility on the issue.
It wasn't long ago that restrictionists were singing his praises for declaring a state of emergency along the border and calling in his state's National Guard to patrol it. He would double the number of Border Patrol agents, mandate a tamper-proof employment card and make any "path to citizenship" expensive in time, money and effort. Yet Richardson would also more than double the number of annual work and family visas, and he has introduced driver's licenses for illegals in New Mexico.
Certainly the governor isn't right about every one of his proposals, and how his speech will affect his presidential aspirations remains to be seen. But he couldn't be more timely in reminding his party that comprehensive immigration reform is no less urgent now that Democrats control Congress.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS
Miami Herald
Posted on Mon, Dec. 04, 2006
U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS
Exile groups join in urging an easing of Cuba restrictions
Moderate Cuban exile groups urged the Bush administration to ease travel restrictions and limits on humanitarian aid to Cuba.
BY OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@MiamiHerald.com
An umbrella group of influential Cuban exile organizations has joined the growing chorus of Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits calling for the United States to ease restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba.
About two dozen exile organizations, speaking in unison under the umbrella group Consenso Cubano, or Cuban Consensus, will release a report today calling for the Bush administration to ease travel restrictions. The groups say U.S. policies that restrict Cubans from visiting family members and that limit remittances and other humanitarian aid ``violate fundamental rights of Cubans, damage the Cuban family, and constitute ethical contradictions.''
The announcement underscores a growing rift between hard-line exile leaders who want to preserve the sanctions, and more moderate Cuban Americans in Miami and dissidents in Cuba who feel that increasing interaction can help promote a peaceful transition to democracy.
The disconnection has manifested itself at a time that an ailing Fidel Castro is no longer in power in Cuba, having temporarily transferred authority to his brother Raúl. And last month, Democrats took control of the U.S. House and Senate, which could trigger a reexamination of U.S.-Cuba policy.
Just last week, U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Díaz-Balart appeared on a popular Spanish-language television talk show, A Mano Limpia, in which they defended U.S. policy toward Cuba.
The station conducted a viewer poll during the program, and it showed that most callers favored the easing of travel and remittance restrictions.
`ON THE BRINK'
''We are on the brink of potentially monumental changes in Cuba relating to Fidel Castro's demise,'' said state Rep. David Rivera, who spearheaded a call three years ago for the Bush administration to tighten the U.S. embargo.
``Now is not the time to be considering any relaxing of sanctions on the Castro dictatorship. That is not an option for the administration or the majority of Cuban Americans.''
Consenso Cubano, which includes mostly moderate exile groups such as the Cuba Study Group, Democracy Movement and the Cuban American National Foundation, plans to hold a news conference today.
Consenso groups are also asking the Cuban government to lift restrictions on family travel.
''The measures which limit or deny Cubans their fundamental rights to travel freely to and from Cuba for humanitarian or family reasons . . . and their ability to freely send and receive personal and family aid, violates the fundamental rights of Cubans,'' said Consenso's ``humanitarian agenda.''
Oscar Visiedo, executive director of the Instituto de Estudios Cubanos, or Institute of Cuban Studies (not to be confused with the Cuba Study Group), said current restrictions on family travel and humanitarian assistance seem to be impeding a democratic transition on the island.
''My personal opinion is that we've seen that current policy isn't working,'' Visiedo said.
The announcement comes just a few days after top dissidents in Cuba signed a letter saying that easing remittance and travel restrictions to Cuba would help them in their struggle for freedom and democracy from within Cuba.
The dissidents said restrictions on family travel and on sending humanitarian aid ``in no way help the struggle for democracy we wage inside our country.''
SHARED VIEWS?
Marcelino Miyares, president of the Partido Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba, or Christian Democratic Party of Cuba, one of the Consenso organizations, said the dissidents' position shows that pro-democracy Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits are coming closer together in their policy thinking.
''They are thinking the same thing in Cuba as we are here,'' Miyares said.
© 2006 MiamiHerald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miami.com
Posted on Mon, Dec. 04, 2006
U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS
Exile groups join in urging an easing of Cuba restrictions
Moderate Cuban exile groups urged the Bush administration to ease travel restrictions and limits on humanitarian aid to Cuba.
BY OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@MiamiHerald.com
An umbrella group of influential Cuban exile organizations has joined the growing chorus of Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits calling for the United States to ease restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba.
About two dozen exile organizations, speaking in unison under the umbrella group Consenso Cubano, or Cuban Consensus, will release a report today calling for the Bush administration to ease travel restrictions. The groups say U.S. policies that restrict Cubans from visiting family members and that limit remittances and other humanitarian aid ``violate fundamental rights of Cubans, damage the Cuban family, and constitute ethical contradictions.''
The announcement underscores a growing rift between hard-line exile leaders who want to preserve the sanctions, and more moderate Cuban Americans in Miami and dissidents in Cuba who feel that increasing interaction can help promote a peaceful transition to democracy.
The disconnection has manifested itself at a time that an ailing Fidel Castro is no longer in power in Cuba, having temporarily transferred authority to his brother Raúl. And last month, Democrats took control of the U.S. House and Senate, which could trigger a reexamination of U.S.-Cuba policy.
Just last week, U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Díaz-Balart appeared on a popular Spanish-language television talk show, A Mano Limpia, in which they defended U.S. policy toward Cuba.
The station conducted a viewer poll during the program, and it showed that most callers favored the easing of travel and remittance restrictions.
`ON THE BRINK'
''We are on the brink of potentially monumental changes in Cuba relating to Fidel Castro's demise,'' said state Rep. David Rivera, who spearheaded a call three years ago for the Bush administration to tighten the U.S. embargo.
``Now is not the time to be considering any relaxing of sanctions on the Castro dictatorship. That is not an option for the administration or the majority of Cuban Americans.''
Consenso Cubano, which includes mostly moderate exile groups such as the Cuba Study Group, Democracy Movement and the Cuban American National Foundation, plans to hold a news conference today.
Consenso groups are also asking the Cuban government to lift restrictions on family travel.
''The measures which limit or deny Cubans their fundamental rights to travel freely to and from Cuba for humanitarian or family reasons . . . and their ability to freely send and receive personal and family aid, violates the fundamental rights of Cubans,'' said Consenso's ``humanitarian agenda.''
Oscar Visiedo, executive director of the Instituto de Estudios Cubanos, or Institute of Cuban Studies (not to be confused with the Cuba Study Group), said current restrictions on family travel and humanitarian assistance seem to be impeding a democratic transition on the island.
''My personal opinion is that we've seen that current policy isn't working,'' Visiedo said.
The announcement comes just a few days after top dissidents in Cuba signed a letter saying that easing remittance and travel restrictions to Cuba would help them in their struggle for freedom and democracy from within Cuba.
The dissidents said restrictions on family travel and on sending humanitarian aid ``in no way help the struggle for democracy we wage inside our country.''
SHARED VIEWS?
Marcelino Miyares, president of the Partido Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba, or Christian Democratic Party of Cuba, one of the Consenso organizations, said the dissidents' position shows that pro-democracy Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits are coming closer together in their policy thinking.
''They are thinking the same thing in Cuba as we are here,'' Miyares said.
© 2006 MiamiHerald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miami.com
Neoliberalist rethink neoliberalism
Here's an article by an advocate on free trade rethinking NAFTA.
Afta Thoughts on NAFTA
Bradford DeLong
The Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century created a Mexico where peasants had nearly inalienable control over their land; where large-scale industry was heavily regulated; and where the country was ruled by a single, corrupt, patronage-based party - the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). By the late 1980s, it was clear that this was not a very successful politico-economic framework with which to support Mexican economic development. Urban and industrial productivity remained far below world standards with little sign of catch-up or convergence. Rural agriculture remained backward. Successful development fueled by the transfer of labor from the countryside to the cities had come to an end in the late-1970s with the general slowdown of growth in the industrial core, even though oil-rich Mexico benefited enormously from the OPEC-driven tripling of world oil prices in that decade.
After stealing the presidency of Mexico from the true choice of the voters - Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas - Carlos Salinas de Gortari decided at the start of the 1990s to pursue policies of "neoliberal reform." He worked to open up the economy to trade; encourage rather than punish foreign investment; dismantle regulations and special privileges; and generally to rely on the market in the hope that any market failures that emerged to slow development would be less destructive and dangerous than the government failures - stagnation, corruption, entrenched interests - that many agreed were blocking Mexican prosperity.
So, in the early 1990s, Salinas de Gortari sought and won a free trade agreement with the United States (and Canada): NAFTA - the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA guaranteed Mexican producers tariff- and quota-free access to the U.S. market, the largest consumer market in the world. Once the United States was committed to allowing quota- and tariff-free imports from Mexico, the future twists and turns of U.S. politics would be unlikely to disrupt U.S.-Mexican trade. Industrialists could build their factories in Mexico to serve the American market without fearing the consequences of a political retreat from free trade by the United States.
More important, perhaps, NAFTA committed Mexico to following the rules of the international capitalist game in its domestic economic policies. Overregulation, nationalization, confiscation - all the ways that governments can take wealth, especially wealth invested by foreigners, and redistribute it - were to be ruled out, or at least made more difficult, as a result of NAFTA.
The hope was that this two-fold binding of national governments - the U.S. government committing not to let a wave of protectionism affect imports from Mexico and the Mexican government committing not to let a wave of populism affect the wealth that foreign investors would place in Mexico - would set off a giant investment and export-industrialization boom in Mexico and so perhaps cut a generation off the time it would take for full Mexican economic development.
Indeed, six years ago I was ready to conclude that NAFTA had been a major success. It looked as if NAFTA had been the most, or at least a very promising, road for Mexico. Given that the United States has both a neighborly duty and a selfish interest to do whatever it can to raise the chances for Mexico to become democratic and prosperous, it appeared that the pushing-forward of NAFTA by the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations had been one of the lamentably few good calls by the U.S. government in its management of relations with Mexico.
Six years ago I would have said that NAFTA was a success because I would have looked at Mexico's exports and seen that they had boomed. Indeed, they have continued to boom. Mexico's exports have gone from 10 percent of GDP in 1990 to 17 percent in 1999 to 28 percent today. In 2007, Mexico's real exports - overwhelmingly to the United States - will be fully five times as great as they were at the beginning of the 1990s. Here, in the rapid development of export industries and the dramatic rise in export volumes, it is clear that NAFTA has made a big difference.
Without the dual guarantees of free imports into the United States and respect for foreigners' property in Mexico, fewer investments would have been made in Mexico in capacity to satisfy American demand. And to those of us advocating NAFTA in the early 1990s, such an expansion of exports as we have in fact seen would have been confidently predicted to generate enormous dividends for Mexico as a whole. Increasing trade between the United States and Mexico moves both countries toward a greater degree of specialization and a finer division of labor. Mexico and the United States can both raise productivity in important sectors like autos, where labor-intensive portions are increasingly accomplished in Mexico, and textiles, where high-tech spinning and weaving is increasingly done in the United States, while Mexico carries out lower-tech cutting and sewing.
Such efficiency gains from increasing the extent of the market and promoting specialization should have produced rapid growth in Mexican productivity. Likewise, greater efficiency should have been reinforced by a boom in capital formation, which should have accompanied the guarantee that no future wave of protectionism in the United States would close factories in Mexico. This is the gospel of free trade and the division of labor that we economists have preached since Adam Smith. And we have powerful evidence around the world and across the past three centuries that this gospel is a true one.
The key words here are "should have."
Today's roughly 100 million Mexicans have real incomes, at purchasing power parity, of roughly $10,000 per year, a quarter of the current U.S. level. They are investing perhaps a fifth of GDP in gross fixed capital formation - a healthy amount - and have greatly expanded their integration into the world economy, especially that of North America, since NAFTA.
Real GDP has grown at an average rate of 3.6 percent per year since the coming of NAFTA. But this rate of growth, when coupled with Mexico's 2.2 percent per year rate of population increase, means that Mexicans' mean market income from production in Mexico is barely 15 percent above that of pre-NAFTA days. That means that the gap between their mean income and that of the United States has widened. And there is worse news: Because of rising inequality the gap between mean and median incomes has risen. The overwhelming majority of Mexicans are no more productive in a domestic market income sense than their counterparts of 15 years ago, although some segments of the population have benefited. Exporters (but not necessarily workers in export industries) have gotten rich. The north of Mexico has done relatively well. And Mexican families with members in the United States are living better because of a greatly increased flow of remittances.
Intellectually, this is a great puzzle for us economists. We believe in market forces. We believe in the benefits of trade, specialization and the international division of labor. We see the enormous increase in Mexican exports to the United States over the past decade. We see great strengths in the Mexican economy: macroeconomic stability, balanced budgets and low inflation, low country risk, a flexible labor force, a strengthened and solvent banking system, successfully reformed poverty-reduction programs, high earnings from oil and so on.
Yet success at what neoliberal policymakers like me thought would be the key links for Mexican development has had disappointing results. Success at creating a stable, property-respecting domestic environment has not delivered the rapid increases in productivity and working-class wages that neoliberals like me would have confidently predicted when NAFTA was ratified. Had we been told back in 1995 that Mexican exports would multiply fivefold in the next 12 years we would have had no doubts that NAFTA was going to be, and would be perceived as, an extraordinary success. We would have been convinced that Salinas de Gortari was right to focus his energies on free trade and NAFTA rather than on, say, education and infrastructure.
To be sure, economic deficiencies still abound in Mexico. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), these include a very low average number of years of schooling, with young workers having almost no more formal education than their older counterparts; little on-the-job training; heavy bureaucratic burdens on firms; corrupt judges and police; high crime rates; and a large, low-productivity informal sector that narrows the tax base and raises tax rates on the rest of the economy. But these deficiencies should not be enough to neutralize Mexico's powerful geographic advantages and the potent benefits of neoliberal policies, should they?
Apparently they are. The demographic burden of a rapidly growing labor force appears to be greatly increased when that labor force is not very literate, especially when crime, official corruption and inadequate infrastructure also take their toll. Reinforcing these deficiencies is an important additional factor: the rise of China. The extraordinary expansion of exports from China over the past decade has meant that it has been the worst time since the 1930s to follow a strategy of export-led industrialization (unless, of course, you are China). Mexico has succeeded at exporting to the United States. But because of the rising economic weight of China, it has not succeeded in exporting at prices that generate enough surplus to boost Mexican development.
In addition, there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that attempts by businesses to locate production for the U.S. market in Mexico are running into labor shortages. It is not that labor in Mexico is scarce, and it is not at all expensive. But labor with the skills needed to operate machines that could otherwise be located in Kuala Lumpur or Lisbon or, indeed, Cleveland, does seem to be hard to find. The logic of comparative advantage and the division of labor requires that the productive resources to divide the labor be present. The low level - and near stagnation over time - of education in Mexico may be a critical deficiency.
And there is the problem of Iowa: a gigantic and heavily subsidized corn and pork producing machine. The way NAFTA has worked out, the biggest single change in cross-border shipments has been that Iowa's agricultural produce is now sold in Mexico City. The impact on standards of living for Mexico's near-subsistence, rural farmers is frightening to contemplate. Imports from Iowa have been an extraordinary boon to Mexico's urban poor and urban working class. But have they been a good thing for the country as a whole?
We neoliberals point out that NAFTA did not cause poor infrastructure, high crime and official corruption. We thus implicitly suggest that Mexicans would be far worse off today without NAFTA and its effects weighing in on the positive side of the scale. We neoliberals point out that we could not have predicted the rapid rise of China: from the perspective of 1991, China's future looked likely to be riddled with political turmoil, repression and perhaps economic stagnation as the Communist Party feared too-rapid change, rather than the greatest economic miracle we have ever seen.
That neoliberal story may be true, but, then again, it may not. Having witnessed Mexico's slow growth over the past 15 years, we can no longer repeat the old mantra that the neoliberal road of NAFTA and associated reforms is clearly and obviously the right one. Would some other, alternative, non-neoliberal development strategy have been better for Mexico in the late 1990s and early 2000s? Would it have been better to have urged President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to focus his efforts on investments in education and infrastructure and on trying to clean up corruption rather than on free trade? Perhaps.
The stakes are high. Our current systems of politics and economics, around the world, are legitimized not because they are just or optimal but because they deliver a modicum of peace coupled with rapid economic growth and increases in living standards. Mexico's development problems are not large when compared to those of many other countries. We as a species ought to be able to help Mexico to do much better than it has in the years since 1990.
Brad DeLong is Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley, Chair of the Political Economy of Industrial Societies major, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Afta Thoughts on NAFTA
Bradford DeLong
The Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century created a Mexico where peasants had nearly inalienable control over their land; where large-scale industry was heavily regulated; and where the country was ruled by a single, corrupt, patronage-based party - the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). By the late 1980s, it was clear that this was not a very successful politico-economic framework with which to support Mexican economic development. Urban and industrial productivity remained far below world standards with little sign of catch-up or convergence. Rural agriculture remained backward. Successful development fueled by the transfer of labor from the countryside to the cities had come to an end in the late-1970s with the general slowdown of growth in the industrial core, even though oil-rich Mexico benefited enormously from the OPEC-driven tripling of world oil prices in that decade.
After stealing the presidency of Mexico from the true choice of the voters - Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas - Carlos Salinas de Gortari decided at the start of the 1990s to pursue policies of "neoliberal reform." He worked to open up the economy to trade; encourage rather than punish foreign investment; dismantle regulations and special privileges; and generally to rely on the market in the hope that any market failures that emerged to slow development would be less destructive and dangerous than the government failures - stagnation, corruption, entrenched interests - that many agreed were blocking Mexican prosperity.
So, in the early 1990s, Salinas de Gortari sought and won a free trade agreement with the United States (and Canada): NAFTA - the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA guaranteed Mexican producers tariff- and quota-free access to the U.S. market, the largest consumer market in the world. Once the United States was committed to allowing quota- and tariff-free imports from Mexico, the future twists and turns of U.S. politics would be unlikely to disrupt U.S.-Mexican trade. Industrialists could build their factories in Mexico to serve the American market without fearing the consequences of a political retreat from free trade by the United States.
More important, perhaps, NAFTA committed Mexico to following the rules of the international capitalist game in its domestic economic policies. Overregulation, nationalization, confiscation - all the ways that governments can take wealth, especially wealth invested by foreigners, and redistribute it - were to be ruled out, or at least made more difficult, as a result of NAFTA.
The hope was that this two-fold binding of national governments - the U.S. government committing not to let a wave of protectionism affect imports from Mexico and the Mexican government committing not to let a wave of populism affect the wealth that foreign investors would place in Mexico - would set off a giant investment and export-industrialization boom in Mexico and so perhaps cut a generation off the time it would take for full Mexican economic development.
Indeed, six years ago I was ready to conclude that NAFTA had been a major success. It looked as if NAFTA had been the most, or at least a very promising, road for Mexico. Given that the United States has both a neighborly duty and a selfish interest to do whatever it can to raise the chances for Mexico to become democratic and prosperous, it appeared that the pushing-forward of NAFTA by the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations had been one of the lamentably few good calls by the U.S. government in its management of relations with Mexico.
Six years ago I would have said that NAFTA was a success because I would have looked at Mexico's exports and seen that they had boomed. Indeed, they have continued to boom. Mexico's exports have gone from 10 percent of GDP in 1990 to 17 percent in 1999 to 28 percent today. In 2007, Mexico's real exports - overwhelmingly to the United States - will be fully five times as great as they were at the beginning of the 1990s. Here, in the rapid development of export industries and the dramatic rise in export volumes, it is clear that NAFTA has made a big difference.
Without the dual guarantees of free imports into the United States and respect for foreigners' property in Mexico, fewer investments would have been made in Mexico in capacity to satisfy American demand. And to those of us advocating NAFTA in the early 1990s, such an expansion of exports as we have in fact seen would have been confidently predicted to generate enormous dividends for Mexico as a whole. Increasing trade between the United States and Mexico moves both countries toward a greater degree of specialization and a finer division of labor. Mexico and the United States can both raise productivity in important sectors like autos, where labor-intensive portions are increasingly accomplished in Mexico, and textiles, where high-tech spinning and weaving is increasingly done in the United States, while Mexico carries out lower-tech cutting and sewing.
Such efficiency gains from increasing the extent of the market and promoting specialization should have produced rapid growth in Mexican productivity. Likewise, greater efficiency should have been reinforced by a boom in capital formation, which should have accompanied the guarantee that no future wave of protectionism in the United States would close factories in Mexico. This is the gospel of free trade and the division of labor that we economists have preached since Adam Smith. And we have powerful evidence around the world and across the past three centuries that this gospel is a true one.
The key words here are "should have."
Today's roughly 100 million Mexicans have real incomes, at purchasing power parity, of roughly $10,000 per year, a quarter of the current U.S. level. They are investing perhaps a fifth of GDP in gross fixed capital formation - a healthy amount - and have greatly expanded their integration into the world economy, especially that of North America, since NAFTA.
Real GDP has grown at an average rate of 3.6 percent per year since the coming of NAFTA. But this rate of growth, when coupled with Mexico's 2.2 percent per year rate of population increase, means that Mexicans' mean market income from production in Mexico is barely 15 percent above that of pre-NAFTA days. That means that the gap between their mean income and that of the United States has widened. And there is worse news: Because of rising inequality the gap between mean and median incomes has risen. The overwhelming majority of Mexicans are no more productive in a domestic market income sense than their counterparts of 15 years ago, although some segments of the population have benefited. Exporters (but not necessarily workers in export industries) have gotten rich. The north of Mexico has done relatively well. And Mexican families with members in the United States are living better because of a greatly increased flow of remittances.
Intellectually, this is a great puzzle for us economists. We believe in market forces. We believe in the benefits of trade, specialization and the international division of labor. We see the enormous increase in Mexican exports to the United States over the past decade. We see great strengths in the Mexican economy: macroeconomic stability, balanced budgets and low inflation, low country risk, a flexible labor force, a strengthened and solvent banking system, successfully reformed poverty-reduction programs, high earnings from oil and so on.
Yet success at what neoliberal policymakers like me thought would be the key links for Mexican development has had disappointing results. Success at creating a stable, property-respecting domestic environment has not delivered the rapid increases in productivity and working-class wages that neoliberals like me would have confidently predicted when NAFTA was ratified. Had we been told back in 1995 that Mexican exports would multiply fivefold in the next 12 years we would have had no doubts that NAFTA was going to be, and would be perceived as, an extraordinary success. We would have been convinced that Salinas de Gortari was right to focus his energies on free trade and NAFTA rather than on, say, education and infrastructure.
To be sure, economic deficiencies still abound in Mexico. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), these include a very low average number of years of schooling, with young workers having almost no more formal education than their older counterparts; little on-the-job training; heavy bureaucratic burdens on firms; corrupt judges and police; high crime rates; and a large, low-productivity informal sector that narrows the tax base and raises tax rates on the rest of the economy. But these deficiencies should not be enough to neutralize Mexico's powerful geographic advantages and the potent benefits of neoliberal policies, should they?
Apparently they are. The demographic burden of a rapidly growing labor force appears to be greatly increased when that labor force is not very literate, especially when crime, official corruption and inadequate infrastructure also take their toll. Reinforcing these deficiencies is an important additional factor: the rise of China. The extraordinary expansion of exports from China over the past decade has meant that it has been the worst time since the 1930s to follow a strategy of export-led industrialization (unless, of course, you are China). Mexico has succeeded at exporting to the United States. But because of the rising economic weight of China, it has not succeeded in exporting at prices that generate enough surplus to boost Mexican development.
In addition, there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that attempts by businesses to locate production for the U.S. market in Mexico are running into labor shortages. It is not that labor in Mexico is scarce, and it is not at all expensive. But labor with the skills needed to operate machines that could otherwise be located in Kuala Lumpur or Lisbon or, indeed, Cleveland, does seem to be hard to find. The logic of comparative advantage and the division of labor requires that the productive resources to divide the labor be present. The low level - and near stagnation over time - of education in Mexico may be a critical deficiency.
And there is the problem of Iowa: a gigantic and heavily subsidized corn and pork producing machine. The way NAFTA has worked out, the biggest single change in cross-border shipments has been that Iowa's agricultural produce is now sold in Mexico City. The impact on standards of living for Mexico's near-subsistence, rural farmers is frightening to contemplate. Imports from Iowa have been an extraordinary boon to Mexico's urban poor and urban working class. But have they been a good thing for the country as a whole?
We neoliberals point out that NAFTA did not cause poor infrastructure, high crime and official corruption. We thus implicitly suggest that Mexicans would be far worse off today without NAFTA and its effects weighing in on the positive side of the scale. We neoliberals point out that we could not have predicted the rapid rise of China: from the perspective of 1991, China's future looked likely to be riddled with political turmoil, repression and perhaps economic stagnation as the Communist Party feared too-rapid change, rather than the greatest economic miracle we have ever seen.
That neoliberal story may be true, but, then again, it may not. Having witnessed Mexico's slow growth over the past 15 years, we can no longer repeat the old mantra that the neoliberal road of NAFTA and associated reforms is clearly and obviously the right one. Would some other, alternative, non-neoliberal development strategy have been better for Mexico in the late 1990s and early 2000s? Would it have been better to have urged President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to focus his efforts on investments in education and infrastructure and on trying to clean up corruption rather than on free trade? Perhaps.
The stakes are high. Our current systems of politics and economics, around the world, are legitimized not because they are just or optimal but because they deliver a modicum of peace coupled with rapid economic growth and increases in living standards. Mexico's development problems are not large when compared to those of many other countries. We as a species ought to be able to help Mexico to do much better than it has in the years since 1990.
Brad DeLong is Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley, Chair of the Political Economy of Industrial Societies major, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Required Reading
M/LAT 12
Revised Syllabus
Week of Nov. 27th
Snodgrass Godoy. “Health, Wealth & Trade: CAFTA & Medicine”
“Fraying of a Latin Textile Industry” The New York Times
“Will Mexico Soon Be Tapped Out?” Los Angeles Times
Here's the list of articles we will be discussing this week. Please scroll down for the articles. Some are posted here in their entirety, for the rest you'll need to click on the link. You will need to reall all articles for your final paper/exam. Peace.
"Taking Aim At Immigration In Texas" [scroll down to find in this webpage]
"On Education" [scroll down to find in this webpage]
" Haiti" [scroll down to find in this webpage]
Week of Dec. 4th
“U.S. Cities Rise in Violence Along Border with Mexico” The New York Times.
“State of Siege: Drug-Related Violence and Corruption in Mexico – Unintended Consequences of the War on Drugs.”
Week of Dec. 11th
Work on Final Paper.
Week of Dec. 18th.
Final Paper Due.
In the fields, a rude awakening
Los Angeles Times, Front Page
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-tulelake5nov05,1,4592505.story?page=2&coll=la-headlines-frontpage
THE STATE
In the fields, a rude awakening
For some laborers, U.S. guest worker program was a bitter letdown.fell short of their dream.
By Lee Romney
Times Staff Writer
November 5, 2006
TULELAKE, CALIF. - The ad in his hometown newspaper was enticing, the meeting with a company recruiter even more so.
For six to eight weeks of strawberry work, Ricardo Valle and his wife, Ana Luisa Salinas, would get good pay, free transportation to and from Mexico with food included, three daily meals - even a little cabanita with a kitchenette that they would share with just one other couple.
Like most of the 250 Mexicans on U.S. guest worker visas who arrived Sept. 22 at this lonely post near the Oregon border, Valle and Salinas did the math: In the contract period promised, they could make more than they would in a year and a half in Nogales, Mexico. Valle quit his maquiladora job, where for a dozen years he had assembled electric curtain motors.
As strict immigration enforcement limits the pool of available farmhands, growers are clamoring to expand the federal guest worker program. But the experience of the workers, whose contract ended last week, offers a rare look at the system's potential pitfalls. In interviews and legal declarations, dozens of workers have said they went hungry not just on the bus north but in the weeks that followed. Instead of the cabanitas, they got crowded dorms. They were also paid less than they'd been told they would be - and less than the law required - for a shorter period than they'd been promised.
"From the moment we got on the bus in Nogales, we knew they were feeding us lies," Valle, 52, said as he tended to his sick wife in a cramped dormitory set up in an exhibition hall on the county fairgrounds here. On the bus, he said, "they gave us a liquid diet - pure water - for 24 hours. Those who had money could eat. The rest of us, we ate air."
After they arrived in Tulelake, the workers said, they found out their contract term had been cut nearly in half, to just over a month. Furthermore, they were required to trim 1,025 strawberry plants per hour to prepare them for later transplantation. Without farm experience, meeting the goal proved so grueling that they worked through breaks and lunchtime.
Many failed and quit. Others were fired. Soon, only a little over half the original workforce was left. The employer, Sierra-Cascade Nursery of Susanville, Calif., is now under investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor, which oversees the guest worker program. California's Department of Industrial Relations has ordered the company to correct numerous wage violations and conduct a self-audit.
And, responding to an emergency request by attorneys for the nonprofit advocacy group California Rural Legal Assistance, a federal judge two weeks ago ordered Sierra-Cascade to make meals more nutritious, give workers more living space and heat the fairgrounds' frigid shower rooms.
Sierra-Cascade's human resources director, Larry Memmott, said the company was using the visa program for the first time and had made mistakes.
"We may not have provided the proper food for them in the beginning," he said. "We may have missed a meal. But we went in and corrected what we need to correctŠ. We'll take our lumps and move forward."
The complaining workers were "bad apples," he added.
Advocates with California Rural Legal Assistance, which has filed suit on behalf of more than 50 workers, point instead to systemic problems that arise when human labor becomes an importable commodity. Employees entirely dependent on the sponsoring company are unfamiliar with the law and unlikely to complain, they say.
"Unlike workers in any other part of the free market, who have the ability to vote with their feet, these workers don't," said Mark Schacht of the rural legal group's foundation, which plans to propose state legislation to strengthen worker protections.
"These guys get delivered when the employer wants. They get taken away when the employer wants, and they are subjected to a regime that has elements of un-free labor."
Sierra-Cascade's seedlings are grown in Northern California and Oregon, then trimmed and shipped to warmer climates. In 2004, Memmott said, an immigration review indicated that 80% of the company's workers were undocumented.
"Last year, we couldn't fill our trim shed at all," Memmott said. "We figured that this year we weren't going to wait and see."
Memmott recruited in the state of Chihuahua and in neighboring Sonora, which has achieved relative prosperity from ranching and multinational assembly plants known as maquiladoras.
Some learned of the jobs through friends. Some saw fliers. Rigoberto Talamantes Flores and his wife, Alicia Punuelas Ledezma, both 42, of Nuevo Casa Grande, Chihuahua, heard a radio pitch. "We thought we would come, because of the illusion that it would alleviate some of the economic pressures on us," said Flores, who shuttered his shoeshine shop to make the trip.
They said they were told the pay would be $9 an hour - the legally required rate under the program - plus production bonuses. Nowhere in the solicitation, workers said, was any mention of the high work quota. That was disclosed only in the contracts handed out at night in Susanville, where the bus dropped off 200 visa holders before taking the Tulelake workers farther north.
Disappointments multiplied upon arrival. The site of the nation's largest World War II Japanese internment camp, Tulelake sits in a desolate volcanic basin of rich soil. Road signs warn motorists not to run down migrating fowl, more numerous here than humans.
"We were cramped so close together that our legs would knock when we put on our shoes," Reyna Amelia Tarango Ponce, 45, whose husband closed his Chihuahua brake shop to come north, said of the dormitories.
At first, couples were housed with single women - until a man was accused of a sexual assault during the night. Foreman Javier Chavez fired the accused worker and installed wooden barriers to split the room.
The eight-hour days that workers say they were promised, and for which they were paid, quickly stretched to 10 - and longer, with the bus ride to the trim shed, where they stood in the cold for up to an hour waiting to begin.
Breakfast at first consisted of bread and coffee; after a few weeks the food did improve when Memmott changed cooks. Come payday, many workers were unable to cash their checks in the tiny town, whose bank is closed Saturdays and charges $15 for the service.
"We have nothing - not even enough to buy soap," said Valle, who, without change for the laundry machines, spent Sundays scrubbing clothes under a cold outdoor spigot and drying them on the fairgrounds' chain-link fence.
The gloves, aprons and boots that advocates say are required by law - to protect workers from such hazards as icy plants and knife blades - were not provided, though some workers purchased them.
Attorneys for the workers say the production quota is unreasonable and should have been disclosed during recruitment. Memmott says he showed them a video and told them: "It's going to be cold. It's going to be hard work."
Many others make the grade, he said. Most are domestic hires - experienced migrants from the poorer farming states of Oaxaca and Michoacan. The working conditions, housing, wages and food are no better or worse than what they are used to, said 28-year-old Alejandro Ramirez of Zamora, Michoacan. "Those on the contract, they were made certain promises," he said. "But for us, it's pretty good."
On a recent morning in the company's trim shed, 18-year-old Federico Hernandez of Oaxaca moved with a spasmodic rhythm, his hands twitching and his feet dancing as he separated plants at the roots. Working this way, he said proudly, he could trim 1,200 plants an hour and make a decent wage.
But a lack of experience hampered many of the visa holders.
It was a Oaxacan laborer from the Central Valley who took pity on the visa holders. The worker called an activist in Oaxaca, who in turn contacted an organizer at the Fresno office of the rural law group. That organization alerted regulators and dispatched attorneys to Tulelake.
Memmott said his company is cooperating with the U.S. Department of Labor. In response to the agency, he said, the laundry machines now operate without coins and the kitchen is serving healthier fare.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Industrial Relations' Division of Labor Standards Enforcement has notified SierraCascade that it is violating labor law by failing to pay overtime after eight hours, to ensure rest breaks and a 30-minute lunch break, and to compensate workers for time in transit and waiting to begin work.
They "intend to correct the issues we've addressed and pay restitution to their employees," said Dean Fryer of the Department of Industrial Relations.
The pending lawsuit alleges, among other violations, that the company, through false representations, enticed the workers across an international border.
Memmott attributed the problems to the program's learning curve. Sierra-Cascade had planned to provide couples the more private housing in nearby Newell, he added. But when fewer guest workers arrived than anticipated, the company opted to save the cost and time of busing them farther.
Next year, he said, the company might seek some more-experienced workers farther south in Mexico. Advocates, however, say they may petition the U.S. Department of Labor to block Sierra-Cascade from using the program.
The company has pledged to make workers whole. Still, some damage cannot be undone, workers said. In Mexico, where age discrimination is pervasive, Valle is certain he will never get his maquiladora job back.
"Twelve years to quit for the American Dream, which is now a nightmare," he said.
lee.romney@latimes.com
Times staff writer Sam Quinones contributed to this report.
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-tulelake5nov05,1,4592505.story?page=2&coll=la-headlines-frontpage
THE STATE
In the fields, a rude awakening
For some laborers, U.S. guest worker program was a bitter letdown.fell short of their dream.
By Lee Romney
Times Staff Writer
November 5, 2006
TULELAKE, CALIF. - The ad in his hometown newspaper was enticing, the meeting with a company recruiter even more so.
For six to eight weeks of strawberry work, Ricardo Valle and his wife, Ana Luisa Salinas, would get good pay, free transportation to and from Mexico with food included, three daily meals - even a little cabanita with a kitchenette that they would share with just one other couple.
Like most of the 250 Mexicans on U.S. guest worker visas who arrived Sept. 22 at this lonely post near the Oregon border, Valle and Salinas did the math: In the contract period promised, they could make more than they would in a year and a half in Nogales, Mexico. Valle quit his maquiladora job, where for a dozen years he had assembled electric curtain motors.
As strict immigration enforcement limits the pool of available farmhands, growers are clamoring to expand the federal guest worker program. But the experience of the workers, whose contract ended last week, offers a rare look at the system's potential pitfalls. In interviews and legal declarations, dozens of workers have said they went hungry not just on the bus north but in the weeks that followed. Instead of the cabanitas, they got crowded dorms. They were also paid less than they'd been told they would be - and less than the law required - for a shorter period than they'd been promised.
"From the moment we got on the bus in Nogales, we knew they were feeding us lies," Valle, 52, said as he tended to his sick wife in a cramped dormitory set up in an exhibition hall on the county fairgrounds here. On the bus, he said, "they gave us a liquid diet - pure water - for 24 hours. Those who had money could eat. The rest of us, we ate air."
After they arrived in Tulelake, the workers said, they found out their contract term had been cut nearly in half, to just over a month. Furthermore, they were required to trim 1,025 strawberry plants per hour to prepare them for later transplantation. Without farm experience, meeting the goal proved so grueling that they worked through breaks and lunchtime.
Many failed and quit. Others were fired. Soon, only a little over half the original workforce was left. The employer, Sierra-Cascade Nursery of Susanville, Calif., is now under investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor, which oversees the guest worker program. California's Department of Industrial Relations has ordered the company to correct numerous wage violations and conduct a self-audit.
And, responding to an emergency request by attorneys for the nonprofit advocacy group California Rural Legal Assistance, a federal judge two weeks ago ordered Sierra-Cascade to make meals more nutritious, give workers more living space and heat the fairgrounds' frigid shower rooms.
Sierra-Cascade's human resources director, Larry Memmott, said the company was using the visa program for the first time and had made mistakes.
"We may not have provided the proper food for them in the beginning," he said. "We may have missed a meal. But we went in and corrected what we need to correctŠ. We'll take our lumps and move forward."
The complaining workers were "bad apples," he added.
Advocates with California Rural Legal Assistance, which has filed suit on behalf of more than 50 workers, point instead to systemic problems that arise when human labor becomes an importable commodity. Employees entirely dependent on the sponsoring company are unfamiliar with the law and unlikely to complain, they say.
"Unlike workers in any other part of the free market, who have the ability to vote with their feet, these workers don't," said Mark Schacht of the rural legal group's foundation, which plans to propose state legislation to strengthen worker protections.
"These guys get delivered when the employer wants. They get taken away when the employer wants, and they are subjected to a regime that has elements of un-free labor."
Sierra-Cascade's seedlings are grown in Northern California and Oregon, then trimmed and shipped to warmer climates. In 2004, Memmott said, an immigration review indicated that 80% of the company's workers were undocumented.
"Last year, we couldn't fill our trim shed at all," Memmott said. "We figured that this year we weren't going to wait and see."
Memmott recruited in the state of Chihuahua and in neighboring Sonora, which has achieved relative prosperity from ranching and multinational assembly plants known as maquiladoras.
Some learned of the jobs through friends. Some saw fliers. Rigoberto Talamantes Flores and his wife, Alicia Punuelas Ledezma, both 42, of Nuevo Casa Grande, Chihuahua, heard a radio pitch. "We thought we would come, because of the illusion that it would alleviate some of the economic pressures on us," said Flores, who shuttered his shoeshine shop to make the trip.
They said they were told the pay would be $9 an hour - the legally required rate under the program - plus production bonuses. Nowhere in the solicitation, workers said, was any mention of the high work quota. That was disclosed only in the contracts handed out at night in Susanville, where the bus dropped off 200 visa holders before taking the Tulelake workers farther north.
Disappointments multiplied upon arrival. The site of the nation's largest World War II Japanese internment camp, Tulelake sits in a desolate volcanic basin of rich soil. Road signs warn motorists not to run down migrating fowl, more numerous here than humans.
"We were cramped so close together that our legs would knock when we put on our shoes," Reyna Amelia Tarango Ponce, 45, whose husband closed his Chihuahua brake shop to come north, said of the dormitories.
At first, couples were housed with single women - until a man was accused of a sexual assault during the night. Foreman Javier Chavez fired the accused worker and installed wooden barriers to split the room.
The eight-hour days that workers say they were promised, and for which they were paid, quickly stretched to 10 - and longer, with the bus ride to the trim shed, where they stood in the cold for up to an hour waiting to begin.
Breakfast at first consisted of bread and coffee; after a few weeks the food did improve when Memmott changed cooks. Come payday, many workers were unable to cash their checks in the tiny town, whose bank is closed Saturdays and charges $15 for the service.
"We have nothing - not even enough to buy soap," said Valle, who, without change for the laundry machines, spent Sundays scrubbing clothes under a cold outdoor spigot and drying them on the fairgrounds' chain-link fence.
The gloves, aprons and boots that advocates say are required by law - to protect workers from such hazards as icy plants and knife blades - were not provided, though some workers purchased them.
Attorneys for the workers say the production quota is unreasonable and should have been disclosed during recruitment. Memmott says he showed them a video and told them: "It's going to be cold. It's going to be hard work."
Many others make the grade, he said. Most are domestic hires - experienced migrants from the poorer farming states of Oaxaca and Michoacan. The working conditions, housing, wages and food are no better or worse than what they are used to, said 28-year-old Alejandro Ramirez of Zamora, Michoacan. "Those on the contract, they were made certain promises," he said. "But for us, it's pretty good."
On a recent morning in the company's trim shed, 18-year-old Federico Hernandez of Oaxaca moved with a spasmodic rhythm, his hands twitching and his feet dancing as he separated plants at the roots. Working this way, he said proudly, he could trim 1,200 plants an hour and make a decent wage.
But a lack of experience hampered many of the visa holders.
It was a Oaxacan laborer from the Central Valley who took pity on the visa holders. The worker called an activist in Oaxaca, who in turn contacted an organizer at the Fresno office of the rural law group. That organization alerted regulators and dispatched attorneys to Tulelake.
Memmott said his company is cooperating with the U.S. Department of Labor. In response to the agency, he said, the laundry machines now operate without coins and the kitchen is serving healthier fare.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Industrial Relations' Division of Labor Standards Enforcement has notified SierraCascade that it is violating labor law by failing to pay overtime after eight hours, to ensure rest breaks and a 30-minute lunch break, and to compensate workers for time in transit and waiting to begin work.
They "intend to correct the issues we've addressed and pay restitution to their employees," said Dean Fryer of the Department of Industrial Relations.
The pending lawsuit alleges, among other violations, that the company, through false representations, enticed the workers across an international border.
Memmott attributed the problems to the program's learning curve. Sierra-Cascade had planned to provide couples the more private housing in nearby Newell, he added. But when fewer guest workers arrived than anticipated, the company opted to save the cost and time of busing them farther.
Next year, he said, the company might seek some more-experienced workers farther south in Mexico. Advocates, however, say they may petition the U.S. Department of Labor to block Sierra-Cascade from using the program.
The company has pledged to make workers whole. Still, some damage cannot be undone, workers said. In Mexico, where age discrimination is pervasive, Valle is certain he will never get his maquiladora job back.
"Twelve years to quit for the American Dream, which is now a nightmare," he said.
lee.romney@latimes.com
Times staff writer Sam Quinones contributed to this report.
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
Ruling: Classes divided by race
Ruling: Classes divided by race
At Preston Hollow, principal tried to appease affluent parents, halt white flight, judge says
09:14 AM CST on Saturday, November 18, 2006
By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News
For years, it was an open secret at North Dallas' Preston Hollow Elementary School: Even though the school was overwhelmingly Hispanic and black, white parents could get their children into all-white classes. And once placed, the students would have little interaction with the rest of the students.
The result, a federal judge has ruled, was that principal Teresa Parker "was, in effect, operating, at taxpayer's expense, a private school for Anglo children within a public school that was predominantly minority."
Judge Sam Lindsay's opinion paints an unflattering picture of the elementary school and a principal who was so desperate to appease the school's affluent white parents that she turned back the clock on school desegregation 50 years.
In April, Hispanic parents sued, claiming illegal segregation. The three-week trial concluded in late August. On Thursday, Judge Lindsay declared that the school's principal violated the rights of minority children by assigning them to classrooms based on race.
The judge ordered Mrs. Parker to pay $20,200 to Lucrecia Mayorga Santamaría, the lone named plaintiff, who sued on behalf of her three children.
Although the judge did not find the Dallas school district liable for Mrs. Parker's actions, he strongly criticized DISD administrators for being "asleep at the wheel."
"The court is convinced that several of the area superintendents knew, or should have known, about the illegal segregation at Preston Hollow," the judge wrote in his 108-page ruling.
The district has until Jan. 17 to remedy the segregation at the school. Mrs. Parker did not return messages left at her home and school Friday.
District spokesman Celso Martinez said Mrs. Parker would remain the school's principal "until further notice."
Mr. Martinez said the school has undertaken steps to comply with the court order, namely relying on student language scores to place students.
"The truth is we have initiated quite a few changes at the school already," he said. "We need to compare those changes with the court order. We may well be in total compliance."
However, when asked if there are still classes at Preston Hollow containing only white students, Mr. Martinez replied: "That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that."
Desegregation plan
In 2003, a federal judge released the district from its court-ordered desegregation plan. That plan, however, focused on the allocation of resources and treatment of black students. In the 30 years the district operated under the order, whites fled and Hispanics have grown to become the majority. Blacks make up less than a third of the district; whites about 6 percent.
Preston Hollow's unwritten policy of clustering whites together was known for years among parents and teachers, according to testimony. In fact, Mrs. Parker's subordinates ˆ including teachers and her assistant principal ˆ raised concerns about it multiple times. One even wrote a letter to Superintendent Michael Hinojosa about it. Those complaints fell on deaf ears, the judge wrote.
"I began to see something very strange," Ms. Santamaría said in Spanish. "The difference was that the Anglo students would go to lunch together while the Latinos went with the Asians and the African-Americans." That, she said, raised a question in her mind "because the children don't know what segregation is."
Once the Hispanic families sued, Mrs. Parker tried to cover her tracks, according to testimony. For example, on the day an investigator was to observe classes at the school, Mrs. Parker "reshuffled" the student's classroom assignments, according to assistant principal Robert McElroy.
Mrs. Parker also asked members of her staff to sign confidentiality agreements about how students were assigned to their classes, and paperwork detailing the classroom assignments was destroyed under mysterious circumstances, according to the judge's ruling.
Principal uncooperative
The judge also took exception to Mrs. Parker's apparent unwillingness to cooperate with the court. At one point during the trial, the judge noted, Mrs. Parker testified that she didn't know whether Preston Hollow is a predominantly white neighborhood.
"The court finds it astounding that Principal Parker, who has served at Preston Hollow for five years, would testify that she knows nothing about the ethnic makeup of the immediate neighborhood surrounding her school."
The school's attendance zone is mostly north of Northwest Highway, east of Preston Road, south of Royal Lane, and just east of North Central Expressway. It includes affluent, mostly white single-family homes, as well as middle-class homes and apartments that are predominantly minority.
The judge also had sharp words for the district's attorneys, who argued that segregation would cause no harm to the minority students because their teachers used the same curriculum as those teaching white students.
"The court is baffled that in this day and age, that [DISD relied] on what is, essentially, a 'separate but equal' argument," the judge wrote.
Mr. Martinez, the district spokesman, said the district doesn't believe Mrs. Parker was segregating students, but he acknowledged that classrooms at the school need to be better integrated.
"It's our opinion that we were not segregating students at all," Mr. Martinez said. "In fact the judge found that we were not violating the constitutional rights of anybody. Do we need to integrate the classrooms? Yes, and we're doing precisely that."
Although the judge ruled against the school's principal in her personal capacity, he did not find the district, its trustees or Mrs. Parker liable in their "official capacities."
David Hinojosa, the parents' attorney from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said he apparently didn't convince the judge that the district knew the segregation was happening.
"You just have a certain legal standard you have to meet, and unfortunately, the court didn't find that," he said. "We might appeal the issue if need be ... but we got the ultimate relief we wanted. The parents wanted to stop the segregation that was going on there."
PTA chief criticized
Judge Lindsay also criticized Meg Bittner, the school's PTA president, who wanted to lure more affluent white families out of private schools and back to Preston Hollow.
More white families would result in a healthier PTA, she testified, bigger fundraisers and, ultimately, more money for the school. The best way to lure back white families, teachers and others testified, was to put white children together in the same classrooms.
Teacher Janet Leon told the court that "neighborhood classes" were predominantly made up of white students because "the people who live in the Preston Hollow neighborhood, who are the majority being white, would want their children grouped together."
To aid in the recruitment of more affluent whites, the school's PTA created a brochure for parents that featured almost all white students. Hispanic parents had shown up at the school the day photos were being taken for the brochure, but the principal blocked their entry into the classroom where the photos were being taken, the judge's ruling states.
Additionally, the PTA, in conjunction with the school, held separate open houses and kindergarten recruitments for white parents. And when PTA members gave prospective parents tours of the schoo, they were never taken down the "Hispanic halls" where the minority classes were housed, teachers testified.
Mrs. Bittner and other PTA officers did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.
Sergio Chapa of Al Día contributed to this report.
E-mail kfischer@dallasnews.com
At Preston Hollow, principal tried to appease affluent parents, halt white flight, judge says
09:14 AM CST on Saturday, November 18, 2006
By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News
For years, it was an open secret at North Dallas' Preston Hollow Elementary School: Even though the school was overwhelmingly Hispanic and black, white parents could get their children into all-white classes. And once placed, the students would have little interaction with the rest of the students.
The result, a federal judge has ruled, was that principal Teresa Parker "was, in effect, operating, at taxpayer's expense, a private school for Anglo children within a public school that was predominantly minority."
Judge Sam Lindsay's opinion paints an unflattering picture of the elementary school and a principal who was so desperate to appease the school's affluent white parents that she turned back the clock on school desegregation 50 years.
In April, Hispanic parents sued, claiming illegal segregation. The three-week trial concluded in late August. On Thursday, Judge Lindsay declared that the school's principal violated the rights of minority children by assigning them to classrooms based on race.
The judge ordered Mrs. Parker to pay $20,200 to Lucrecia Mayorga Santamaría, the lone named plaintiff, who sued on behalf of her three children.
Although the judge did not find the Dallas school district liable for Mrs. Parker's actions, he strongly criticized DISD administrators for being "asleep at the wheel."
"The court is convinced that several of the area superintendents knew, or should have known, about the illegal segregation at Preston Hollow," the judge wrote in his 108-page ruling.
The district has until Jan. 17 to remedy the segregation at the school. Mrs. Parker did not return messages left at her home and school Friday.
District spokesman Celso Martinez said Mrs. Parker would remain the school's principal "until further notice."
Mr. Martinez said the school has undertaken steps to comply with the court order, namely relying on student language scores to place students.
"The truth is we have initiated quite a few changes at the school already," he said. "We need to compare those changes with the court order. We may well be in total compliance."
However, when asked if there are still classes at Preston Hollow containing only white students, Mr. Martinez replied: "That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that."
Desegregation plan
In 2003, a federal judge released the district from its court-ordered desegregation plan. That plan, however, focused on the allocation of resources and treatment of black students. In the 30 years the district operated under the order, whites fled and Hispanics have grown to become the majority. Blacks make up less than a third of the district; whites about 6 percent.
Preston Hollow's unwritten policy of clustering whites together was known for years among parents and teachers, according to testimony. In fact, Mrs. Parker's subordinates ˆ including teachers and her assistant principal ˆ raised concerns about it multiple times. One even wrote a letter to Superintendent Michael Hinojosa about it. Those complaints fell on deaf ears, the judge wrote.
"I began to see something very strange," Ms. Santamaría said in Spanish. "The difference was that the Anglo students would go to lunch together while the Latinos went with the Asians and the African-Americans." That, she said, raised a question in her mind "because the children don't know what segregation is."
Once the Hispanic families sued, Mrs. Parker tried to cover her tracks, according to testimony. For example, on the day an investigator was to observe classes at the school, Mrs. Parker "reshuffled" the student's classroom assignments, according to assistant principal Robert McElroy.
Mrs. Parker also asked members of her staff to sign confidentiality agreements about how students were assigned to their classes, and paperwork detailing the classroom assignments was destroyed under mysterious circumstances, according to the judge's ruling.
Principal uncooperative
The judge also took exception to Mrs. Parker's apparent unwillingness to cooperate with the court. At one point during the trial, the judge noted, Mrs. Parker testified that she didn't know whether Preston Hollow is a predominantly white neighborhood.
"The court finds it astounding that Principal Parker, who has served at Preston Hollow for five years, would testify that she knows nothing about the ethnic makeup of the immediate neighborhood surrounding her school."
The school's attendance zone is mostly north of Northwest Highway, east of Preston Road, south of Royal Lane, and just east of North Central Expressway. It includes affluent, mostly white single-family homes, as well as middle-class homes and apartments that are predominantly minority.
The judge also had sharp words for the district's attorneys, who argued that segregation would cause no harm to the minority students because their teachers used the same curriculum as those teaching white students.
"The court is baffled that in this day and age, that [DISD relied] on what is, essentially, a 'separate but equal' argument," the judge wrote.
Mr. Martinez, the district spokesman, said the district doesn't believe Mrs. Parker was segregating students, but he acknowledged that classrooms at the school need to be better integrated.
"It's our opinion that we were not segregating students at all," Mr. Martinez said. "In fact the judge found that we were not violating the constitutional rights of anybody. Do we need to integrate the classrooms? Yes, and we're doing precisely that."
Although the judge ruled against the school's principal in her personal capacity, he did not find the district, its trustees or Mrs. Parker liable in their "official capacities."
David Hinojosa, the parents' attorney from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said he apparently didn't convince the judge that the district knew the segregation was happening.
"You just have a certain legal standard you have to meet, and unfortunately, the court didn't find that," he said. "We might appeal the issue if need be ... but we got the ultimate relief we wanted. The parents wanted to stop the segregation that was going on there."
PTA chief criticized
Judge Lindsay also criticized Meg Bittner, the school's PTA president, who wanted to lure more affluent white families out of private schools and back to Preston Hollow.
More white families would result in a healthier PTA, she testified, bigger fundraisers and, ultimately, more money for the school. The best way to lure back white families, teachers and others testified, was to put white children together in the same classrooms.
Teacher Janet Leon told the court that "neighborhood classes" were predominantly made up of white students because "the people who live in the Preston Hollow neighborhood, who are the majority being white, would want their children grouped together."
To aid in the recruitment of more affluent whites, the school's PTA created a brochure for parents that featured almost all white students. Hispanic parents had shown up at the school the day photos were being taken for the brochure, but the principal blocked their entry into the classroom where the photos were being taken, the judge's ruling states.
Additionally, the PTA, in conjunction with the school, held separate open houses and kindergarten recruitments for white parents. And when PTA members gave prospective parents tours of the schoo, they were never taken down the "Hispanic halls" where the minority classes were housed, teachers testified.
Mrs. Bittner and other PTA officers did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.
Sergio Chapa of Al Día contributed to this report.
E-mail kfischer@dallasnews.com
Friday, November 24, 2006
For this week Nov. 27th
Here's the list of articles we will be discussing this week. Please scroll down for the articles. Some are posted here in their entirety, for the rest you'll need to click on the link. You will need to reall all articles for your final paper/exam. Peace.
Week of Nov. 27th
1) Snodgrass Godoy. “Health, Wealth & Trade: CAFTA & Medicine” [found at "Revised Syllabus post", need to scroll down this webpage]
2) “Fraying of a Latin Textile Industry” The New York Times
3) “Will Mexico Soon Be Tapped Out?” Los Angeles Times
4) Taking Aim At Immigration In Texas
5) On Education
6) Haiti
Week of Nov. 27th
1) Snodgrass Godoy. “Health, Wealth & Trade: CAFTA & Medicine” [found at "Revised Syllabus post", need to scroll down this webpage]
2) “Fraying of a Latin Textile Industry” The New York Times
3) “Will Mexico Soon Be Tapped Out?” Los Angeles Times
4) Taking Aim At Immigration In Texas
5) On Education
6) Haiti
Monday, November 20, 2006
Taking Aim at Immigration in Texas
In control of every statewide office, Republicans are targeting illegal immigrants by proposing to cut their benefits and even deny citizenship to their U.S.-born children
By CATHY BOOTH THOMAS/DALLAS
With the Democrats in charge in Washington, conservatives in Texas are wasting no time on a pity party. Republicans, after all, are still in the majority here, controlling every statewide office and the Legislature as well as the top courts. To press that advantage, conservatives plan to put their imprint next year on a variety of issues ranging from abortion to school vouchers. Their biggest push by far, however, will be passage of a host of bills dealing with illegal immigrants, including one that just might challenge the 14th Amendment, which defines citizenship and requires states to provide civil rights to anyone born on U.S. soil.
The opening salvo in the fight was made this week by Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas which is nearly 40% Hispanic. Despite protests in the streets and threats of lawsuits and boycotts, the city council voted to make English the official language and fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. In Austin, meanwhile, Republicans began trooping into the state Capitol with stacks of bills aimed at cutting off benefits to illegal aliens, taxing their remittances south of the border, and requiring proof of citizenship at the voting booth. The harshest bill would deny welfare and other benefits even to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens — rights supposedly given them under the 14th Amendment. Latino groups, who were only recently being wooed by Republican candidates, were left aghast at the onslaught, calling it "a hate campaign" against immigrants and "anti-human being" to boot.
John Colyandro, director of the Texas Conservative Coalition, told TIME that he expects "quite a bit of legislation" on illegal immigration to pop up in 2007 — and not just in Texas. "Because Congress did not pass a comprehensive reform bill on immigration, more and more states are going to step in like Arizona," he says. Arizona voters last month passed measures denying illegal immigrants access to state-subsidized benefits like child care as well as the right to bail and punitive damages in lawsuits. In the Texas Legislature, Colyandro expects a broad array of legislation targeting benefits to illegals, as well as voter verification of citizenship, employer sanctions for hiring illegal aliens, and additional funding for border security. He says the two extremes of the current immigration debate — deporting all illegals or granting amnesty to all — are "unworkable and frankly intolerable." He adds: "Somewhere between the two are workable solutions and that's where our focus will be in the Texas Legislature in January."
Just how far are conservatives willing to go? Far, according to a bill pre-filled this week by Republican state Rep. Leo Berman, who serves a onservative constituency in the east Texas town of Tyler, "the rose capital of the nation." Under Berman's bill, children born in Texas to illegal aliens would be denied state unemployment or public assistance benefits like food stamps as well as professional licenses. In Texas alone, he argues, there are an estimated two million illegal aliens whose U.S.-born children get these benefits, which go largely un-reimbursed by the federal government. "This is costing us a fortune," Berman argues. Although he had to back down on plans to deny education and health care (the feds require it), the central tenet of his bill remains: to challenge the automatic birthright of citizenship given to children of illegal aliens — all the way up to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
How could Texas deny benefits to U.S. citizens, even if they were born to illegals? Berman notes that the 14th Amendment was a late edition to the constitution, written after the Civil War to assure citizenship for the children of slaves. The courts later extended the amendment to include the children of illegal immigrants. But times have changed, he says. "There are 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S. who have benefits that most U.S. citizens don't have," says Berman. "One of the most lucrative benefits is that pregnant illegal aliens can give birth in a U.S. hospital free of charge and be rewarded with citizenship while breaking the most basic of U.S. laws." To pay for all that free hospital care, he wants to tax all money transferred south of the border by individuals at 8 % (citizens could apply for reimbursement). The fee could raise $240 million a year, he estimates.
The larger issue for both Berman and Colyandro is carrying on with the conservative agenda now that Washington is in Democratic hands. "The American people expressed extreme disappointment in the Republican Congress but they certainly did not make a turn to the left," argues Colyandro, pointing to conservative-oriented ballot issues on property rights, gay marriage and quota elimination that survived even as the South Dakota abortion ban went down in defeat. In Texas, three new abortion bills have already been filed, including one that would immediately invalidate state law permitting abortions if Roe v. Wade were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. "The Republicans didn't fare badly in Texas so we have to preserve the Republican and conservative message," says Berman. "We'll be carrying the banner, probably for most of the U.S."
Hispanics in Texas plan to challenge the Farmers Branch ordinance in the courts and will battle bills like Berman's on every front. "This is a dark time for Latinos," says Rosa Rosales, a San Antonio resident and newly elected president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). "Can you imagine blaming children, trying to deny them medical care?" LULAC's former president, Hector Flores, who lives in the Dallas area, claims such conservative measures are "DOA on arrival" with the winds of change blowing through Washington. "These odious types of ordinances target Hispanics because of our growth. It is a hate campaign. That's not the American dream that we learned about in school," says Flores. What's need instead, he says, is comprehensive immigration reform to regulate the flow of people, not just from Mexico but other countries. "Bottom line: this is up to federal government not the state legislature."
By CATHY BOOTH THOMAS/DALLAS
With the Democrats in charge in Washington, conservatives in Texas are wasting no time on a pity party. Republicans, after all, are still in the majority here, controlling every statewide office and the Legislature as well as the top courts. To press that advantage, conservatives plan to put their imprint next year on a variety of issues ranging from abortion to school vouchers. Their biggest push by far, however, will be passage of a host of bills dealing with illegal immigrants, including one that just might challenge the 14th Amendment, which defines citizenship and requires states to provide civil rights to anyone born on U.S. soil.
The opening salvo in the fight was made this week by Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas which is nearly 40% Hispanic. Despite protests in the streets and threats of lawsuits and boycotts, the city council voted to make English the official language and fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. In Austin, meanwhile, Republicans began trooping into the state Capitol with stacks of bills aimed at cutting off benefits to illegal aliens, taxing their remittances south of the border, and requiring proof of citizenship at the voting booth. The harshest bill would deny welfare and other benefits even to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens — rights supposedly given them under the 14th Amendment. Latino groups, who were only recently being wooed by Republican candidates, were left aghast at the onslaught, calling it "a hate campaign" against immigrants and "anti-human being" to boot.
John Colyandro, director of the Texas Conservative Coalition, told TIME that he expects "quite a bit of legislation" on illegal immigration to pop up in 2007 — and not just in Texas. "Because Congress did not pass a comprehensive reform bill on immigration, more and more states are going to step in like Arizona," he says. Arizona voters last month passed measures denying illegal immigrants access to state-subsidized benefits like child care as well as the right to bail and punitive damages in lawsuits. In the Texas Legislature, Colyandro expects a broad array of legislation targeting benefits to illegals, as well as voter verification of citizenship, employer sanctions for hiring illegal aliens, and additional funding for border security. He says the two extremes of the current immigration debate — deporting all illegals or granting amnesty to all — are "unworkable and frankly intolerable." He adds: "Somewhere between the two are workable solutions and that's where our focus will be in the Texas Legislature in January."
Just how far are conservatives willing to go? Far, according to a bill pre-filled this week by Republican state Rep. Leo Berman, who serves a onservative constituency in the east Texas town of Tyler, "the rose capital of the nation." Under Berman's bill, children born in Texas to illegal aliens would be denied state unemployment or public assistance benefits like food stamps as well as professional licenses. In Texas alone, he argues, there are an estimated two million illegal aliens whose U.S.-born children get these benefits, which go largely un-reimbursed by the federal government. "This is costing us a fortune," Berman argues. Although he had to back down on plans to deny education and health care (the feds require it), the central tenet of his bill remains: to challenge the automatic birthright of citizenship given to children of illegal aliens — all the way up to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
How could Texas deny benefits to U.S. citizens, even if they were born to illegals? Berman notes that the 14th Amendment was a late edition to the constitution, written after the Civil War to assure citizenship for the children of slaves. The courts later extended the amendment to include the children of illegal immigrants. But times have changed, he says. "There are 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S. who have benefits that most U.S. citizens don't have," says Berman. "One of the most lucrative benefits is that pregnant illegal aliens can give birth in a U.S. hospital free of charge and be rewarded with citizenship while breaking the most basic of U.S. laws." To pay for all that free hospital care, he wants to tax all money transferred south of the border by individuals at 8 % (citizens could apply for reimbursement). The fee could raise $240 million a year, he estimates.
The larger issue for both Berman and Colyandro is carrying on with the conservative agenda now that Washington is in Democratic hands. "The American people expressed extreme disappointment in the Republican Congress but they certainly did not make a turn to the left," argues Colyandro, pointing to conservative-oriented ballot issues on property rights, gay marriage and quota elimination that survived even as the South Dakota abortion ban went down in defeat. In Texas, three new abortion bills have already been filed, including one that would immediately invalidate state law permitting abortions if Roe v. Wade were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. "The Republicans didn't fare badly in Texas so we have to preserve the Republican and conservative message," says Berman. "We'll be carrying the banner, probably for most of the U.S."
Hispanics in Texas plan to challenge the Farmers Branch ordinance in the courts and will battle bills like Berman's on every front. "This is a dark time for Latinos," says Rosa Rosales, a San Antonio resident and newly elected president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). "Can you imagine blaming children, trying to deny them medical care?" LULAC's former president, Hector Flores, who lives in the Dallas area, claims such conservative measures are "DOA on arrival" with the winds of change blowing through Washington. "These odious types of ordinances target Hispanics because of our growth. It is a hate campaign. That's not the American dream that we learned about in school," says Flores. What's need instead, he says, is comprehensive immigration reform to regulate the flow of people, not just from Mexico but other countries. "Bottom line: this is up to federal government not the state legislature."
ON EDUCATION
2 of 2 additional Required articles for week of Nov. 27th
ON EDUCATION; For Hispanic Parents, Lessons On Helping With the Homework
New York Times November 1, 2006
By JOSEPH BERGER
Published: November 1, 2006
Claudia Crisostomo cannot help her three children with homework, nor can
she read to them at bedtime. Those are among the pretty prescriptions
educators favor for getting parents involved in schooling.
But the reality for Ms. Crisostomo, who came to the United States from
Mexico 17 years ago, is that she works laundering uniforms on a shift that
starts at 3 p.m., just as her children -- Eduardo, 10; Erica, 9; and
Jasmine, 6 -- are coming home from school.
''I don't have time,'' she said. ''I work, and I have to cook and clean.''
It is also not easy for Ms. Crisostomo to attend PTA meetings or see
teachers if her children are slipping. Even if she can arrange a morning
appointment, she does not have a car, cannot rely on the sparse bus
service in this city about 60 miles north of New York City, and so would
have to take a cab to school, a pinching $16 expense. It is not clear
anyway how much help Ms. Crisostomo could provide her children with their
homework. Her schooling ended at sixth grade and her English is weak.
Parental involvement is a buzzword in education, a recommended cure for
high dropout rates, poor test scores and almost everything else that ails
schoolchildren. But for immigrant parents, helping their children absorb
lessons in an inscrutable language in a strange country has always been a
distinctive challenge.
Hispanic children now make up 18.6 percent of the nation's public and
private school children, and many of those are immigrants or children of
immigrants. Their dropout rates and test scores trouble policy makers, so
educators have been focusing on what parents can do to help their children
thrive in school and what obstacles they face, among other approaches.
''It's a huge issue,'' said Dr. Pedro A. Noguera, director of the
Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University. ''Many
Latino parents are working a lot, so their ability to get involved is
limited. There's the language barrier. In many Latin American countries
there's a tendency to defer to authorities in school, an assumption that
educators know what they're doing.''
Long-established middle-class American parents, he said, take for granted
that they are ''critical consumers, making sure their kids are getting the
right teachers and the right classes.'' But, he said, ''many immigrants
parents don't understand that this is a role they need to play.'' For
those who immigrated without proper papers, the problem is ''compounded by
legal status; any time you engage public officials there's anxiety that
you can be discovered.''
Here in this city of 30,000, where 36 percent of the school population is
Latino, most of them Mexican immigrants, the school district is working
hard to help parents immerse themselves in school from kindergarten on.
Carmen Vazqueztell, the district's director of bilingual education, runs
six workshops a year for parents, instructing them on monitoring homework
and reading to children in Spanish, then having the children paraphrase
the stories. Peter Gonzalez, the district's bilingual liaison, pinch-hits
for parents and helps students do homework.
The city of Newburgh offers parents a smorgasbord of adult English
classes, though long workdays or homes with several children make getting
to such classes a heroic effort.
According to Richard Fry, senior research associate with the Pew Hispanic
Center, 12 percent of the country's Hispanic 15- to 19-year-olds are not
attending high school, while the number for whites is 5 percent; for
blacks, 7 percent; and for Asians, 2 percent. The number for immigrant
Hispanic children is three times that for Hispanic children born in the
United States. Ultimately, said Melissa Lazarin, a senior policy analyst
for education reform with the National Council of La Raza, the Hispanic
civil rights organization, 50 percent of Latino children will never
graduate high school.
Despite the obstacles, it is crucial that parents get involved in school,
said Mariela Dabbah, a consultant on issues of concern to Latinos. She
recently wrote ''Help Your Children Succeed in School: A Special Guide for
Latino Parents.'' ''If the administration feels the parents aren't
interested, the administration does less for kids, so it's a vicious
circle,'' she said.
In Newburgh, Hispanic immigrants have found many ways to keep children on
track. After all, exposing their children to a fine education is one of
the reasons many of these immigrants braved deserts and rivers to enter
the United States.
''We want them to go to college; we don't want them to end up like us,''
said Laura Jurado, a mother of three who launders uniforms.
Emilio Pinado, a Honduran who works until 2 a.m. in a Gap warehouse, cuts
his sleep short to make sure his daughter Emily, 11, eats a breakfast of
pancakes or cereal, then sees her off on the bus. His wife left him, but
his niece watches Emily when he is not around and helps with homework.
Martin Bustos, a Mexican immigrant, works two jobs, in a factory that
makes shower curtains and at the U.P.S. warehouse at nearby Stewart
International Airport.
But when a teacher needs to hand out a report card personally, Mr. Bustos
drops his wife off at school in his minivan, though like other immigrants
she must bring a child along to translate, a situation that can place the
child in an awkward bind.
WHEN parents do get involved, the decisions they make can be pivotal --
few more so than whether to put youngsters in bilingual classes or the
English as a second language classes that quickly immerse students in
English. Patricia Ortega, the head of Newburgh's bilingual parents
advisory council, recalled how teachers advised her to put her son
Jonathan, then in first grade, in English-only classes.
''For three months all he brought home was drawings, and I was worried he
was falling behind academically,'' she said. She took it upon herself to
move Jonathan to bilingual classes, where he flourished, she said. He
eventually attended the University of Miami in Florida for three
semesters, though he joined the Army and is now in Afghanistan.
''When we have problems is when our children leave the bilingual
program,'' she said. ''They go into class with a teacher who speaks only
English, and then parents lose communication with the school entirely.''
ON EDUCATION; For Hispanic Parents, Lessons On Helping With the Homework
New York Times November 1, 2006
By JOSEPH BERGER
Published: November 1, 2006
Claudia Crisostomo cannot help her three children with homework, nor can
she read to them at bedtime. Those are among the pretty prescriptions
educators favor for getting parents involved in schooling.
But the reality for Ms. Crisostomo, who came to the United States from
Mexico 17 years ago, is that she works laundering uniforms on a shift that
starts at 3 p.m., just as her children -- Eduardo, 10; Erica, 9; and
Jasmine, 6 -- are coming home from school.
''I don't have time,'' she said. ''I work, and I have to cook and clean.''
It is also not easy for Ms. Crisostomo to attend PTA meetings or see
teachers if her children are slipping. Even if she can arrange a morning
appointment, she does not have a car, cannot rely on the sparse bus
service in this city about 60 miles north of New York City, and so would
have to take a cab to school, a pinching $16 expense. It is not clear
anyway how much help Ms. Crisostomo could provide her children with their
homework. Her schooling ended at sixth grade and her English is weak.
Parental involvement is a buzzword in education, a recommended cure for
high dropout rates, poor test scores and almost everything else that ails
schoolchildren. But for immigrant parents, helping their children absorb
lessons in an inscrutable language in a strange country has always been a
distinctive challenge.
Hispanic children now make up 18.6 percent of the nation's public and
private school children, and many of those are immigrants or children of
immigrants. Their dropout rates and test scores trouble policy makers, so
educators have been focusing on what parents can do to help their children
thrive in school and what obstacles they face, among other approaches.
''It's a huge issue,'' said Dr. Pedro A. Noguera, director of the
Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University. ''Many
Latino parents are working a lot, so their ability to get involved is
limited. There's the language barrier. In many Latin American countries
there's a tendency to defer to authorities in school, an assumption that
educators know what they're doing.''
Long-established middle-class American parents, he said, take for granted
that they are ''critical consumers, making sure their kids are getting the
right teachers and the right classes.'' But, he said, ''many immigrants
parents don't understand that this is a role they need to play.'' For
those who immigrated without proper papers, the problem is ''compounded by
legal status; any time you engage public officials there's anxiety that
you can be discovered.''
Here in this city of 30,000, where 36 percent of the school population is
Latino, most of them Mexican immigrants, the school district is working
hard to help parents immerse themselves in school from kindergarten on.
Carmen Vazqueztell, the district's director of bilingual education, runs
six workshops a year for parents, instructing them on monitoring homework
and reading to children in Spanish, then having the children paraphrase
the stories. Peter Gonzalez, the district's bilingual liaison, pinch-hits
for parents and helps students do homework.
The city of Newburgh offers parents a smorgasbord of adult English
classes, though long workdays or homes with several children make getting
to such classes a heroic effort.
According to Richard Fry, senior research associate with the Pew Hispanic
Center, 12 percent of the country's Hispanic 15- to 19-year-olds are not
attending high school, while the number for whites is 5 percent; for
blacks, 7 percent; and for Asians, 2 percent. The number for immigrant
Hispanic children is three times that for Hispanic children born in the
United States. Ultimately, said Melissa Lazarin, a senior policy analyst
for education reform with the National Council of La Raza, the Hispanic
civil rights organization, 50 percent of Latino children will never
graduate high school.
Despite the obstacles, it is crucial that parents get involved in school,
said Mariela Dabbah, a consultant on issues of concern to Latinos. She
recently wrote ''Help Your Children Succeed in School: A Special Guide for
Latino Parents.'' ''If the administration feels the parents aren't
interested, the administration does less for kids, so it's a vicious
circle,'' she said.
In Newburgh, Hispanic immigrants have found many ways to keep children on
track. After all, exposing their children to a fine education is one of
the reasons many of these immigrants braved deserts and rivers to enter
the United States.
''We want them to go to college; we don't want them to end up like us,''
said Laura Jurado, a mother of three who launders uniforms.
Emilio Pinado, a Honduran who works until 2 a.m. in a Gap warehouse, cuts
his sleep short to make sure his daughter Emily, 11, eats a breakfast of
pancakes or cereal, then sees her off on the bus. His wife left him, but
his niece watches Emily when he is not around and helps with homework.
Martin Bustos, a Mexican immigrant, works two jobs, in a factory that
makes shower curtains and at the U.P.S. warehouse at nearby Stewart
International Airport.
But when a teacher needs to hand out a report card personally, Mr. Bustos
drops his wife off at school in his minivan, though like other immigrants
she must bring a child along to translate, a situation that can place the
child in an awkward bind.
WHEN parents do get involved, the decisions they make can be pivotal --
few more so than whether to put youngsters in bilingual classes or the
English as a second language classes that quickly immerse students in
English. Patricia Ortega, the head of Newburgh's bilingual parents
advisory council, recalled how teachers advised her to put her son
Jonathan, then in first grade, in English-only classes.
''For three months all he brought home was drawings, and I was worried he
was falling behind academically,'' she said. She took it upon herself to
move Jonathan to bilingual classes, where he flourished, she said. He
eventually attended the University of Miami in Florida for three
semesters, though he joined the Army and is now in Afghanistan.
''When we have problems is when our children leave the bilingual
program,'' she said. ''They go into class with a teacher who speaks only
English, and then parents lose communication with the school entirely.''
HAITI
1 of 2 additional Required articles for week of Nov. 27th.
Miami Herald
Tue, Nov. 14, 2006
HAITI
Crime wave provokes vigilante killings in Haiti village
As a crime spree hit a small Haitian village this summer, residents struck back and lynched two suspects.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
PLICHE, Haiti - The peasants bound the wrists of the neighbor they suspected of two murders in this remote mountain village, and herded him to the side of a deserted dirt road.
As the man wept, they grilled him about his alleged crimes. Then they handed him a shovel, forced him to dig his own grave and hacked him to death with machetes and picks.
''It was a lot of blows,'' recalled Renold Cherestant, 34, a Pliché resident and radio reporter who witnessed the lynching, one of two in this region in late July of alleged gang leaders suspected of leading a monthslong crime spree.
The killings illustrate not only the growing outrage of Haitians with the illegal armed gangs that have long terrorized the capital city of Port-au-Prince, but the vulnerability of even remote and usually peaceful parts of this troubled Caribbean nation.
It also points to the challenges facing President René Préval, six months in power, as he struggles to return security to a country with a small and ineffective police force, dysfunctional justice system and decades of political and economic upheavals.
In the past two years, an unprecedented spate of for-ransom kidnappings and other violent crimes has transformed life in the capital, where private security firms now flourish and well-to-do businessmen and government officials ride in bullet-proof vehicles with armed guards.
''What people want is peace,'' said Brinó Benice, 50, who moved from Port-au-Prince to Pliché in hopes of finding the security that eludes both rich and poor in the capital. ``There are areas in the country that are still peaceful, but there are areas where we are seeing increased violence.''
Benice and others in the Pliché area believe their recent crime wave is related to a summer spike in violence in Port-au-Prince that forced the Haitian government and U.N. peacekeepers to beef up security in the capital. Neighbors said the two Pliché lynch victims ran groups of young thugs who moved from the capital.
U.N. FORCE
Scores of blue-helmeted U.N. troops were redeployed from the countryside to the capital to help bolster the National Police, 32 additional street checkpoints were established and 11 more armored vehicles were sent to patrol the capital, said Edmond Mulet, overall head of the U.N. mission here.
The focused attention appears to be paying off. Police have entered previously no-go parts of Cité Soleil, the capital's main slum and stronghold of gangs well armed from the spoils of Haiti's political upheavals. Kidnappings are trending down, and a campaign to disarm the gang members has netted about 110 people who turned in guns in exchange for food grants and job training.
But there remain occasional clashes between U.N. peacekeepers and residents in Cité Soleil, as well as street protests by university students opposed to the presence here of some 9,000 U.N. military and police personnel. Friday night, gunmen killed two Jordanian peacekeepers.
''This is still a very fragile situation; it's wait-and-see,'' Mulet said.
Préval says the September lynching of a suspected kidnapper in the Port-au-Prince slum of Bel-Aire, and the two in Pliché, show Haitians are fed up with the ``weakness of the justice system.''
''If there was a justice system, it would not have arrived at this point,'' he told The Miami Herald in an interview.
But fixing the problems won't be easy.
The National Police claims it has 7,476 agents -- others estimate 4,000 -- in the nation of eight million. New York City, which has the same number of residents, has 37,000 police officers.
All agree that police are under-equipped, poorly trained and often corrupt.
A report last week by the Washington-based International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent think tank monitoring Haiti, called for vetting police officers and urged the U.N. force here be expanded from 1,700 to 1,900 officers and include anti-gang, SWAT and organized crime experts.
It also noted that millions of dollars have been spent in the past decade on reforming Haiti's justice system, still mired in corruption and a huge backlog of cases. Meanwhile, the country's laws are antiquated and the judges are underpaid.
''You cannot do a stand-alone police reform. You have to do it parallel to a justice reform so when the police do pick up people for violating the law, there is a judiciary that is going to deal with the cases on the merits and not based on who knows whom, or who paid whom,'' said ICG Haiti analyst Mark Schneider.
Crime, he added, is not going to go away. But the government can restore the population's faith so that ``they can look at the police and the justice system as the answer.''
The residents of Pliché, 85 miles southwest of the capital, know all too well the reality of Haiti's understaffed police force. When the crime spree in their village began, they say, they met with police and a government prosecutor.
''The insecurity was bad. The people could not sleep at home, they were afraid. They could not come to church,'' said The Rev. Ignace Coissy, a Catholic priest who took part in the meetings.
PATROL REQUESTED
Residents asked for a police patrol in the Pliché area and perhaps even their own police station. They were told neither was possible.
''I don't have a car, a motorcycle or even a bicycle,'' said Tertilian Adelson, the officer in charge of the police station in Cavaillon, responsible for Pliché and its surroundings. Cavaillon is a several-hours walk from Pliché on a mountain road.
''There are times I borrow money, or take my own money to borrow a motorcycle to go to the mountain to check on the population,'' Adelson said, adding that his station has only six officers, including himself.
Adelson, who confirmed the two vigilante killings in Pliché, said that after the incidents authorities immediately opened an investigation. It has gone nowhere, he said.
''They've hidden the information,'' he said. ``They are afraid to talk. They believe if they talk, there will be arrests and the bandits will return.''
Residents say one of the men lynched was a prison escapee known as Theophile. He and the other victim, known as Rigaud, led several gunmen. In the killings' aftermath, other gang members have left and peace has returned to this cocoa and coffee farming community.
But Coissy, the priest, cautioned that the situation can quickly change.
''It's a dynamite that can explode at anytime,'' he said. ```The situation in the country is out of control. The misery, the crime. Things like this will happen more and more as long as people's conditions don't improve.''
© 2006 MiamiHerald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miami.com
Miami Herald
Tue, Nov. 14, 2006
HAITI
Crime wave provokes vigilante killings in Haiti village
As a crime spree hit a small Haitian village this summer, residents struck back and lynched two suspects.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
PLICHE, Haiti - The peasants bound the wrists of the neighbor they suspected of two murders in this remote mountain village, and herded him to the side of a deserted dirt road.
As the man wept, they grilled him about his alleged crimes. Then they handed him a shovel, forced him to dig his own grave and hacked him to death with machetes and picks.
''It was a lot of blows,'' recalled Renold Cherestant, 34, a Pliché resident and radio reporter who witnessed the lynching, one of two in this region in late July of alleged gang leaders suspected of leading a monthslong crime spree.
The killings illustrate not only the growing outrage of Haitians with the illegal armed gangs that have long terrorized the capital city of Port-au-Prince, but the vulnerability of even remote and usually peaceful parts of this troubled Caribbean nation.
It also points to the challenges facing President René Préval, six months in power, as he struggles to return security to a country with a small and ineffective police force, dysfunctional justice system and decades of political and economic upheavals.
In the past two years, an unprecedented spate of for-ransom kidnappings and other violent crimes has transformed life in the capital, where private security firms now flourish and well-to-do businessmen and government officials ride in bullet-proof vehicles with armed guards.
''What people want is peace,'' said Brinó Benice, 50, who moved from Port-au-Prince to Pliché in hopes of finding the security that eludes both rich and poor in the capital. ``There are areas in the country that are still peaceful, but there are areas where we are seeing increased violence.''
Benice and others in the Pliché area believe their recent crime wave is related to a summer spike in violence in Port-au-Prince that forced the Haitian government and U.N. peacekeepers to beef up security in the capital. Neighbors said the two Pliché lynch victims ran groups of young thugs who moved from the capital.
U.N. FORCE
Scores of blue-helmeted U.N. troops were redeployed from the countryside to the capital to help bolster the National Police, 32 additional street checkpoints were established and 11 more armored vehicles were sent to patrol the capital, said Edmond Mulet, overall head of the U.N. mission here.
The focused attention appears to be paying off. Police have entered previously no-go parts of Cité Soleil, the capital's main slum and stronghold of gangs well armed from the spoils of Haiti's political upheavals. Kidnappings are trending down, and a campaign to disarm the gang members has netted about 110 people who turned in guns in exchange for food grants and job training.
But there remain occasional clashes between U.N. peacekeepers and residents in Cité Soleil, as well as street protests by university students opposed to the presence here of some 9,000 U.N. military and police personnel. Friday night, gunmen killed two Jordanian peacekeepers.
''This is still a very fragile situation; it's wait-and-see,'' Mulet said.
Préval says the September lynching of a suspected kidnapper in the Port-au-Prince slum of Bel-Aire, and the two in Pliché, show Haitians are fed up with the ``weakness of the justice system.''
''If there was a justice system, it would not have arrived at this point,'' he told The Miami Herald in an interview.
But fixing the problems won't be easy.
The National Police claims it has 7,476 agents -- others estimate 4,000 -- in the nation of eight million. New York City, which has the same number of residents, has 37,000 police officers.
All agree that police are under-equipped, poorly trained and often corrupt.
A report last week by the Washington-based International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent think tank monitoring Haiti, called for vetting police officers and urged the U.N. force here be expanded from 1,700 to 1,900 officers and include anti-gang, SWAT and organized crime experts.
It also noted that millions of dollars have been spent in the past decade on reforming Haiti's justice system, still mired in corruption and a huge backlog of cases. Meanwhile, the country's laws are antiquated and the judges are underpaid.
''You cannot do a stand-alone police reform. You have to do it parallel to a justice reform so when the police do pick up people for violating the law, there is a judiciary that is going to deal with the cases on the merits and not based on who knows whom, or who paid whom,'' said ICG Haiti analyst Mark Schneider.
Crime, he added, is not going to go away. But the government can restore the population's faith so that ``they can look at the police and the justice system as the answer.''
The residents of Pliché, 85 miles southwest of the capital, know all too well the reality of Haiti's understaffed police force. When the crime spree in their village began, they say, they met with police and a government prosecutor.
''The insecurity was bad. The people could not sleep at home, they were afraid. They could not come to church,'' said The Rev. Ignace Coissy, a Catholic priest who took part in the meetings.
PATROL REQUESTED
Residents asked for a police patrol in the Pliché area and perhaps even their own police station. They were told neither was possible.
''I don't have a car, a motorcycle or even a bicycle,'' said Tertilian Adelson, the officer in charge of the police station in Cavaillon, responsible for Pliché and its surroundings. Cavaillon is a several-hours walk from Pliché on a mountain road.
''There are times I borrow money, or take my own money to borrow a motorcycle to go to the mountain to check on the population,'' Adelson said, adding that his station has only six officers, including himself.
Adelson, who confirmed the two vigilante killings in Pliché, said that after the incidents authorities immediately opened an investigation. It has gone nowhere, he said.
''They've hidden the information,'' he said. ``They are afraid to talk. They believe if they talk, there will be arrests and the bandits will return.''
Residents say one of the men lynched was a prison escapee known as Theophile. He and the other victim, known as Rigaud, led several gunmen. In the killings' aftermath, other gang members have left and peace has returned to this cocoa and coffee farming community.
But Coissy, the priest, cautioned that the situation can quickly change.
''It's a dynamite that can explode at anytime,'' he said. ```The situation in the country is out of control. The misery, the crime. Things like this will happen more and more as long as people's conditions don't improve.''
© 2006 MiamiHerald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miami.com
Monday, November 13, 2006
Revised Syllabus
M/LAT 12
Revised Syllabus
Week of Nov. 13th
Maquilas and NAFTA
Immigration Forum
See website for required articles.
Week of Nov. 20th
“NAFTA’s Promise and Reality.” Carnegie Endowment Report
OR
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/nafta1.pdf
“Mexico’s Corn Farmers see their livelihoods wither away” SF Chronicle. Or here:
Mexico's Corn Farmers...
See website for required articles.
Week of Nov. 27th
Snodgrass Godoy. “Health, Wealth & Trade: CAFTA & Medicine”
“Fraying of a Latin Textile Industry” The New York Times
“Will Mexico Soon Be Tapped Out?” Los Angeles Times
See website for additional required articles.
Week of Dec. 4th
“U.S. Cities Rise in Violence Along Border with Mexico” The New York Times.
“State of Siege: Drug-Related Violence and Corruption in Mexico – Unintended Consequences of the War on Drugs.”
Week of Dec. 11th
Work on Final Paper.
Week of Dec. 18th.
Final Paper Due.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
For Next week, Nov. 13-15th
This monday we will finish our discussion of Maquiladoras and NAFTA, as well as get started on the immigration questions from the handout. We will be having a forum on immigration based on the readings and your answers Wed. and Friday.
Please write your response for Monday on the following required articles/essays/reports on immigration:
1.
"illegal Immigration
"Illegal Immigration"
2.
"2006 National Survey of Latinos: The Immigration Debate"
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/68.pdf
Please write your response for Monday on the following required articles/essays/reports on immigration:
1.
"illegal Immigration
"Illegal Immigration"
2.
"2006 National Survey of Latinos: The Immigration Debate"
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/68.pdf
