Writers of the Rio Grande

Michoacan’s Crisis Crosses Borders

Editor — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:41:13 +0000

May 19, 2013
Politics News
Michoacan’s Crisis Crosses Borders

When former Mexican President Felipe Calderon escalated the so-called drug
war after taking office in late 2006, he chose his home state of
Michoacan as the testing ground of the Mexican army’s central role in
the government’s strategy. Now, more than six years and thousands of
deaths later, Michoacan is seeped in violence, immersed in multiple
crises and beset by charges of a virtual melt-down of government
authority.

Like Calderon before him, current Mexican President
Enrique Pena Nieto, overseeing the first Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI) presidential administration in 12 years, is weighing
decisions on Michoacan that will impact not only the native land of
many U.S. immigrants but also likely reflect, shape and re-define his
administration’s broader national policies in the next five-and-a-half
years.

A simmering political crisis, marked by April’s sudden
departure of PRI Governor Fausto Vallejo and at least his temporary
replacement by Jesus Reyna, took another twist last week when senators
representing the conservative National Action Party (PAN) announced they
would seek legislative action to “disappear” state powers, i.e.
forcibly sack the governor in Michoacan, as permitted by the Mexican
Constitution.

Among the PAN senators pushing the resolution was
Felipe Calderon’s sister, Maria Luisa Calderon, who ran unsuccessfully
against Vallejo for the governorship in the controversial 2011
election.

Given the PRI’s power in the Mexican Congress, the
dissolution of state powers is highly unlikely but the parliamentary
rhetoric served to recast national attention on the Michoacan crisis.
Another PAN senator, Jorge Luis Preciado Rodriguez, asserted that state
officials were “overwhelmed” by delinquency and that remedies might
include putting the military in charge of security in the manner of
Ciudad Juarez a few years back.

In fact, a quasi-militarization
of state security was well underway last week when interim Governor
Jesus Reyna appointed General Alberto Reyes Vaca as the new man in
charge of state security. In turn, General Reyes named three army
colonels as his close collaborators.

The announcement of Reyes’
appointment was quickly followed by a visit by General Salvador
Cienfuegos Zepeda, Mexico’s new defense secretary. In a meeting with the
governor and other high-ranking state officials, General Cienfuegos
said President Pena Nieto assured the support of the armed forces for
unspecified “solid and cohesive actions” aimed at protecting the
population while delivering “certainty” and “tranquility.”

Earlier
insisting that the Pena Nieto administration would soon take action in
Michoacan, Interior Under Secretary Luis Enrique Miranda Nava denied
that a lack of “governance” shrouds the embattled state.

Although
criminality and violence have long been a constant in Michoacan, recent
developments in the Tierra Caliente region have pushed the situation to
the brink

Since the beginning of the month, violent
confrontations, food and supply blockades, hangings, and armed
take-overs of some local municipal governments have characterized the
Tierra Caliente, where so-called self-defense groups now operate. Last
week, 18 municipal policemen in the town of Coalcoman whom locals
accused of collaborating with organized crime were nearly lynched before
they were rescued by Mexican soldiers.

Bordering the state of
Guerrero, the Tierra Caliente is the focus of violent disputes between
the Knights Templar and Jalisco New Generation cartels, the latter of
which is alleged to have armed some of the self-defense groups.

In
messages recently circulated on the Internet, residents of
Tepalcatepec, Buena Vista and La Ruana denounced a “terrorist group,”
specifically the Knights Templar, for subjecting the local population to
blockades of vital supplies and burning lime packing houses. Gravely
wounded or sick people perished because road blockades prevented
patients from receiving medical treatment, according to Tierra Caliente
residents. Government officials, the writers added, were in cahoots with
the Knights Templar organization.

Almost like a real-life soap opera, the mayhem is fast turning into a spectacle on YouTube and other social media.

On
the Internet channel, a series of recent videos variously featured
Hipolito Mora, leader of the La Ruana self-defense group, Knights
Templar leaders Servando “La Tuta” Gomez and Dionisio “El Tio” Loya
Plancarte and a masked, anonymous “businessman” railing against the
Knights Templar. In one installment, “El Tio” proposed a “pact of peace
and civility” with Mora in order to avoid “more deaths of innocents,”
but challenged the self-defense leader to a duel if the dialogue did not
bear fruit.

In response, Mora told an interviewer that he had
no problem personally with “El Tio,” but called on the Knights Templar
to leave the population alone. The self-defense movement, Mora said,
consisted of “poor people.”

The Tierra Caliente firestorm is now
emerging as a public issue in the United States, where millions of
immigrants and their descendants with ties to Michoacan reside. Members
of the Michoacan diaspora are appealing on President Obama, the United
Nations, the Pope,and international public opinion to heed the drama
unfolding in the Mexican state.

In an interview with Frontera
NorteSur, Jose Sandoval, a spokesperson for the new U.S.-based movement
called Michoacan for Peace, said Tierra Caliente locals had reached the
breaking point and were arming themselves to defend against the Knights
Templar.

“There’s no work and the (Knights Templar) have the
people threatened,” Sandoval said. “Now people are saying, ‘I am going
to defend myself.’”

Sandoval contended that the underworld group
even charges lime industry workers, who make only 200 pesos a day, a
“protection” fee of 50 pesos and assesses a 20 peso charge for each
local school child. Tens of thousands of people in several
municipalities are impacted by the violence and extortions, he said.

Last
week, Michoacan for Peace organized protests at Mexican consulates in
Los Angeles and San Jose, Sandoval said. In the coming days, the group
plans more protests in the California cities of Fresno, Sacramento and
San Jose, as well as a caravan to the White House and the United Nations
in New York, he said.

According to the activist, Tierra
Caliente residents fear the Mexican army will attempt to disarm the
self-defense groups, which reject laying down their arms. A solution to
the problem will come, Sandoval said, when the Knights Templar pulls
back. “We don’t want any of our people or any of their people dead,”
Sandoval added.

Michoacan’s public security crisis is not the
only one riveting the state. A teachers’ movement against the new
federal education law continued into May, with Michoacan educators
participating in a national protest encampment in Mexico City, while
education students at rural colleges wound down a round of militant
protests for 1,200 guaranteed job slots and against the federal
education reform.

In recent weeks, the students upped the ante
by blockading and threatening to burn a Televisa affiliate in the state
capital of Morelia, seizing scores of buses and commercial trucks and
holding six policemen hostage for several days. The state government
could pursue criminal charges against the students.

Simultaneous
upheavals, for different reasons, had all of Michoacan’s political and
social actors-left, right and center- speaking out about the future of
the state.

PRD Senator Raul Moron Orozco said the current
circumstances require the intervention of all three levels of government
working in unison with the larger society for economic development,
social stability, governance, social peace, and the improvement of the
educational system.

Legendary politician Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a
former Michoacan governor and co-founder of the Party of the Democratic
Revolution (PRD), blamed the contemporary state of affairs on the PAN
presidential administrations of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon.

Currently
serving as the international liaison for Mexico City’s PRD
administration, Cardenas contended that the two ex-presidents treated
delinquency in Michoacan as an isolated phenomenon unconnected to issues
of poverty and education.

On the question of dissolving the PRI-led state government, Cardenas was not supportive.

“I
don’t think such a measure would resolve the problem,” he said. “It
seems to me there should be more development programs and as always an
efficient way of combating delinquency.”

In an unusual letter,
Michoacan’s five Roman Catholic bishops demanded that interim Governor
Jesus Reyna restore order and social peace.

“There is a
permanent feeling of defenseless and desperation, plus anger and fear
because of the complicity, forced or voluntary, of some authorities with
organized crime,” the bishops wrote. “ All of us can attest to these
facts, for which nothing can be done, so as to avoid reprisals and not
expose one’s own life…there is a generalized perception of the lack of
effectiveness of the federal, state and local authorities in
guaranteeing safety, order and the right to free transit…”

The letter was signed by Bishop Alberto Suarez Inda of Morelia and his colleagues from four other dioceses.

Michoacan’s
original peoples are likewise taking decisive actions and demanding
changes. Dozens of communities in the Purepecha highlands have
essentially re-taken control of their own security from the Mexican
state, setting up community police forces and in some cases expelling
local officials.

In a press conference, Abundio Marcos Prado,
leader of the Purepecha Nation, criticized the absence of state legal
reforms in indigenous rights as well as neglect of the educational
system.

While disassociating his organization from the more
radical actions of the education students, Prado emphasized that
indigenous communities still support the movement of their sons and
daughters and are willing to lay down their lives to defend them.

Overall,
indigenous peoples, detect a “worrisome disinterest of the state
government and the pretension of keeping indigenous peoples forgotten
and marginalized,” Prado said.

fnsmsu

Additional sources: El
Sur/Agencia Reforma, May 19, 2013. El Universal, May 16, 18 and 19,
2013. Articles by Dalia Martinez. La Jornada, May 16, 17 and 19, 2013.
Articles by Ernesto Martinez, Emir Olivares, Notimex, and editorial
staff. La Jornada (Michoacan edition), May 15, 16 and 19, 2013. Articles
by Zayin Daleth Villavicencio, Carlos F. Marquez and Enfoque Noticias.
Proceso/Apro, May 14, 15 and 17, 2013. El Diario de Juarez, May 2, 15
and 16, 2013.
Articles by Agencia Reforma, Milenio, El Universal and La Jornada.

El Silencio De Los Pollitos

Editor — Tue, 21 May 2013 04:37:48 +0000

‘El Silencio de los Pollitos” or “The Detainee”by Edgardo May 20th 2013

The detention center rises up from the desert chaparral like an alien mother ship touching down to accept the abject surrender of the pitiful humanoids. Glass front shining on an old military airfield; hiding from sight with humble signage, ensconced at the edge of nowhere where the rural slums and colonias finally end. White non-descript, but somehow all the more menacing with their tiny Homeland Security signs, the prison buses roar on by on a thoroughfare that is called on the border a molcajete road; named after the volcanic mortar and pestle that Mexicans use to grind spices, chiles, and herbs. In other words, pretty rough going. It will certainly grind up, or grind down, a vehicles suspension for sure.

In the small car are the mother of the detainee, her boyfriend, and a neighbor. Passports and identification are taken at the gate to be returned upon exiting, and soon the trio are walking through the corridors of detention, long and narrow, somewhat like a covered airport ramp or a movie theatre L shaped ramp. These corridors have small numbered and lettered courtrooms off to one side. It was a slow day, most were empty.

In immigration court the judge is the be all and end all of all the determinations that come out of that court, There are no jury trials; his only check and balance is the appeals court that can overrule him. No judge wants to be overruled and in essence be called stupid. It can also damage a career as well. The prosecutor has the right to appeal as well, as no double jeopardy is deemed to apply here. So, whatever the law says, the smart thing for the judge to do is go along not so much with the law, but what is coming down from on high. Also they are appointed by the Justice Department.

So it is not surprising that even given the fact that in over the 6 years some 60.000 Mexicans have lost their lives in the current drug war (according to the Mexican governments own estimates. Many other credible sources have estimated much higher) very few asylum applications have been approved for refugees from Mexico. The official policy of the current administration is to down play or ignore the narco insurgency in Mexico; It also happens to be the policy of the new Mexican administration, and the cartels as well. Since “Silence of the Lambs” is already taken, perhaps it could be named: “El Silencio de los Pollitos.” (The silence of the little chickens)

There are many “desaparecidos” or people who have just vanished in Mexico. There are reasons for this…What do you do with your victims when you are through with them? If no one can find your victim, well that solves the problem, especially if you have an official connection, and need to keep a squeaky clean image. Also bodies littering the street are bound to raise questions and questions are not good. And if there is no body, who’s to say any foul play occurred? They are not “victims” they are just “missing” So all parties to the conflict, various cartels and crime organizations. as well as the security forces, would many times rather “disappear” a problem person rather than leave a body on the street.

Slum for El Siulecio de Los Pollitos

An exception would be if you want to strike terror into a population or opponent; then you can hang your victims from bridges, or leave their decapitated bodies in the gutter. The young man that the people in the small car were going to see did not want any of this to happen to him.

It was a good night, mucha gente, Saturday it was in Diego Negro and if there were any tardeadas or fiestas de los cumplianos, they were long over by 23 hundred hours. They came in like before, scowling and swaggering, but everyone kept dancing and doing whatever it was they were doing. If possible, it was better not to even look at the soldiers and bring attention to oneself, or risk having a glance or a look seem like a possible challenge to authority. Sometimes, it was just a theatrical visit, to let everyone know they were on the prowl, but this wasn’t one of those times. The soldados lined everyone up against the wall frisked the guys, went through the purses of the girls, drugs and knives were confiscated on the spot, the possessor was taken outside, fined of all the cash he had on hand, and was then let go. Perhaps the bar manager was late on his weekly mordida, or perhaps the reten (the company) needed some action. Or perhaps they were actually out to fight the panderillas and the contrabandistas. If so, it was a ham fisted approach that could only do more harm than good. To grab some gato at random, and intimidate and interrogate him for hours led nowhere the vast majority of the time; just down some rabbit trail or smoke hole. But this is the way it was done all over Mexico. Stake outs, wire tapping, infiltration of the gang structure, cultivating informants, and forensic evidence gathering, was not the bailiwick of the police, much less the army. Terror, death threats, beatings and torture were what they knew. And massive displays of force, and strutting around in all their new military toys.

There were two powerful cartels that had been battling over Diego Negro for the last 5 years. At one time they were allied, but not now. They were deadly rivals battling for control of plazas (cities or areas used for smuggling) all up and down the border. One was Los Tapatios, or Los Teos’s, and the other Los Haches or the Huapangos. All the nightclubs in Diego Negro belonged to one or the other. And when one gang gained the upper hand, all the bars would change ownership to that gang. The true owner could stay on sometimes as manager, sometimes not. It was a risky business.

So in this medium size border town, there were four main forces to reckon with., the least of all being the police, who had limited power and were cowed by the other three forces. Ever since the Haches hanged nine of them from the streetlamps Since then they have contented themselves with looking the other way. A certain percentage is allowed to work in more or less actual police functions. The others work for whatever cartel is in charge at the time, and everyone tries not to get killed. A full time job just in that.

The second force was the Military, who although the strongest force physically, were limited by hubris, bureaucracy, very limited intelligence gathering capability and corruption, not to mention the crippling burdensome centralized chain of command, that spit out orders and confusion, at times out of ignorance and incompetence, other times from occult reasons and secret alliances coming from Monterrey or Mexico City, or Washington D.C. or the local Capitan.

The by far most effective and commandeering of the players were the Tapatios and the Huapangos. The gangs had the most capable intelligence gathering, were better armed and financed than any local police by a long shot. The army was like a lumbering not too bright elephant that could be avoided and dealt with in numerous ways

This presents a complicated situation for the citizens of Diego Negro…Kind of like how it used to be in Las Vegas when it was run by various mobs, but much worse. In the nightclub and bar business that had close ties to the T’s and the Haches, there was a possibility of being not just an agent of one of these forces, but of working as well for not just one, but two, three and four criminal gangs. The police, the military, the Tapatios and the Huapangos. In essence becoming a quadruple agent. And there are some that would do just this… many a “dedo” or finger would give information to anyone for a price, in spite of all the dangers involved. The fact is that everyone was a double agent at least under duress and extreme duress.

So for a band manager who booked many a grupo into many a club, the finger of suspicion could always be raised.

111

A young punk in an army uniform jammed a large semi-auto under the detainee’s chin. He was moreno and sureno, maybe from Chiapas. not a day older than 18 and he was shaking with excitement. Either way with a gun to your head held by a calm hijo de la chingada madre or a scared young putito, a pistol jammed to your head is not a good thing, any time of day or night. This wasn’t the first time the detainee had been threatened, He’d been knocked around a bit before and bloodied up some, but now out came a black hood, that cut off all vision and was semi suffocating as well. And he was going God knows where, but wherever it was a half hour or so from the bar.

The detainee knew nothing of drugs and crime. He didn’t want to know that much. Managing the bands, doing some DJ work himself. provided a good living in Mexico and he was content. But when you don’t take a side in a war, all the sides can be against you. Especially in this war of greed and locura.

The army had learned many tricks over the years about interrogations, intimidation, torture, how to get false confessions, and so forth. They had a long tradition of fighting civilians, putting down peasant and student revolts, and had gathered a trove of oppressive techniques from the other Latin American Security Forces. Don’t forget the ever caring friend and benefactor to the north, America had over the course of only a decade or so, gone from advocating human rights, to advocating and practicing just the opposite. Top politicians and military had been schooled in the United States. “The School of the Americas.” They call it something else now. But only the name has changed.

A car stopped in front of him, three more cut off access to the left and right. He was in the sights of two pistols and two “cuernos de chiva” (Ak-47′s). This time it was the “Los Haches” When they go to the trouble of an all out “Levanton” like this, few come back.

The Detainee, against all odds did come back, The next day he crossed the Rio Bravo. Never would he see again the town of his birth. Diego Negro would become like a dream, but a dream that would haunt him the rest of his life. When the sunset fell on the stage of his dreams, The credits would flash and all the roles would reprise before and behind his dying eyes He would recall the loves of that life, and his youth and his home. That so long ago became no more.

Homeland Security runs Immigration now, and the politics of terror run Homeland Security. The rules are dictated by an agenda. Some see only the rules. And the visible agenda is only the cover story, and the real one hides forever from sight. Meanwhile, the asylum seekers look only to survive.

The collateral damage lies where it’s fallen

The great powers fight their wars on foreign soil

Los Huapangos, Los Teos, the predators and prey

Are the expendables. the super power takes the lion share

Rivers of blood may flow, but it will be only from the expendable ones

The parasite in time takes all and searches out a new host…

There is much more blood to drain.

We never knew you,we say

Go away, you are not our broken toy.

(But you are)

Cars and trucks packed with the detainees loved ones

Crawl along the desert shrub

The security overlords roll buses so many

They resemble yesteryears hell bound trains

War is good business

And omelets cry out for broken eggs

And so the band plays on

And the skinny one grows fat on souls

La Santa Muerte to the south

And the suits and dissemblers

They call the gringos tan cabron?

Listen well all above and all below

Because in his own time

The Devil will consume his own

Wooden Rose

Gene Novogrodsky — Tue, 21 May 2013 03:41:27 +0000

“Wooden Rose”

The druggy teen from the Northeast,

Another lost in the border city,

Her friend, woodworker from the capital.

The wooden creamy rose on a wooden stem

On a wooden base.

The woodworker, with red spray,

Writes a name.

She takes the money, gives it to him.

Juarez Mothers Renew International Campaign

Editor — Tue, 14 May 2013 02:46:28 +0000

May 13, 2013

FNS Feature

Juarez Mothers Renew International Campaign

In the sister cities of Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Mother’s Day 2013 had a prolonged calendar life because of cross-border family ties, work schedules and commercial promotions. An international fusion made for a long weekend of parties, sales events and musical tributes extending from the days immediately leading up to the Mexican holiday of May 10 to the U.S. celebration on May 12.

Perla Reyes and Carmen Castillo were two mothers who weren’t celebrating, though.

The Ciudad Juarez women joined other moms from the new organization Madres y Familias Unidas por Nuestras Hijas (Mothers and Families United for our Daugthers) and their supporters in plastering downtown Ciudad Juarez with more than 1,500 posters of disappeared or murdered young women, including Monica Liliana Delgado Castillo, found dead in the Juarez Valley in early 2011, and Jocelyn Calderon Reyes, missing since late last year.

Relatives of the missing suspect their loved ones have fallen prey to human traffickers.

“Many people have things to celebrate in their homes, but there are mothers in this city who have nothing to celebrate,” Imelda Marrufo, coordinator of the Women’s Roundtable of Ciudad Juarez, said as she took a break from the postering.

Marrufo and fellow activists fanned out into the bustling blocks surrounding the downtown Cathedral and the dusty redevelopment project enveloping the zone.

Soon, passerby saw the photos of Janeth Paola Soto Betancourth, Cinthia Jocabeth Castaneda Alvarado, Diana Rocio Ramirez Hernandez, Maria Guadalupe Perez Montes, Jocelyn Calderon Reyes, Maria de la Luz Hernandez Cardona, Idali Juache Laguna, Griselda Murua Lopez, Silvia Arce, and Monica Janeth Alanis Esparza. The poster of a smiling Monica Liliana Delgado, the only one in the particular group whose fate has been officially determined, read: “A Warrior Never Dies.”

Except for 29-year-old Silvia Arce who disappeared back in 1998, all the individuals on the posters vanished from 2008 to 2012, when they were between 13 to 19 years of age. All went missing during the Great Violence, a time when the city was crawling with soldiers, federal police and assorted gunmen. Ironically, many of the missing were born during the years when the disappearance and killing of women in Ciudad Juarez first became an international issue.

Ricardo Alanis, father of university student Monica Janeth Alanis, who was 18 when she disappeared in March 2009, said there were “no leads, no indications” of what might have transpired with his daughter. Last month, Alanis and his wife Olga Esparza were honored by El Paso’s Annunciation House for their persistent activism. Alanis insisted that a lack of “political interest” prevails in clarifying the fates of his daughter and other disappeared persons.

Quoted on Mother’s Day by the state prosecutor’s office, Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission President Jose Luis Armendariz said the top state law enforcement agency was making advances in investigating women’s disappearances by means of a new investigatory protocol. “We recognize there are problems,” Armendariz said, “but let’s all participate more so (disappearances) don’t occur.”

Marrufo credited the current administration of the prosecutor’s office for showing improvements over its predecessors on the gender justice front, but faulted the state agency for coming up short in the “high-risk” disappearances like the ones publicized by Mothers and Families United. She said the state should have specialized units to probe the unresolved cases. “We think the prosecutor’s office should have better trained teams,” Marrufo added.

The posters displayed by Mothers and Families United represent only a small fraction of disappeared girls and women in Ciudad Juarez. While the group covered walls, street lamp posts and telephone boots with pictures of relatives, another group of mothers of the missing and their supporters initiated a 24-hour vigil outside the border offices of the Chihuahua state prosecutor’s office.

Marrufo said her organization knew of 190 women and girls missing in the city since the late 1990s, but acknowledged the number could be short since disappearances began mounting after 1993 if not sooner.

Age, appearance, family and social background, and the location of disappearance form striking parallels between the post-2008 disappeared and their counterparts from earlier years. Many were last reportedly in the city’s downtown core.

Teenager Jocelyn Calderon went missing in the middle of the afternoon on December 30, 2012, while she was presumably headed to the Cathedral to meet a friend. Mother Perla Reyes said the young girl had since been reported seen in different parts of the city, but the information could not be confirmed by relatives.

“We don’t know if it’s true or not,” Reyes told FNS. “My kids are afraid. They cry a lot. My mother is sick. These are hard blows which have affected the entire family.” The Ciudad Juarez resident appealed for help from U.S. neighbors in solving women’s disappearances.

The story of Monica Guillen Delgado Castillo is hauntingly similar to other young female murder victims from ten years ago or more. Both Monica and her mom Carmen Castillo were newcomers to Ciudad Juarez, drawn to the border city from their native state of Durango by a lack of money and the need for work.

Fresh out of high school but unable to pay for college, Monica Delgado had spent only four months in the city when she vanished on October 18, 2010, while presumably catching a downtown bus. According to mom, Monica had a boyfriend but otherwise maintained a very limited social life and spent a lot of time at home.

For a spell, Monica worked on the downtown streets recruiting students for a private English and computer school. According to Castillo, the authorities claimed they later recovered Monica’s body from the rural Juarez Valley about 35 miles from the city on January 20, 2011. Yet the 17-year-old was not immediately identified and instead interred in a common grave.

After months of pressing state authorities about her daughter’s whereabouts, Castillo said officials finally informed her in September 2011 that Monica had been found dead months earlier.

“I don’t believe in the state prosecutor’s office now. They don’t do things right,” Castillo said. “I only believe in divine justice.”

The background to Monica Delgado’s disappearance and reported murder is déjà vu from years ago. The Durango transplant worked for a private school with a business model akin to the old ECCO computer school, where numerous femicide victims from both Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez studied or worked between 2000 and 2003.

The slayings of the ECCO-linked victims were followed by glaring investigatory irregularities, the official concealment of bodies, the mistaken identification of corpses, and the fabrication of scapegoats.

Female murder victims with some sort of connection to ECCO were typically disappeared for weeks or months before being found in clusters of multiple homicide victims in and around Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City. More recently, the multiple remains of girls and young women who vanished from Ciudad Juarez, especially the downtown area, were found in the Juarez Valley. Like the contemporary Juarez Valley cases, the murders from more than a decade ago linger in impunity.

Carmen Castillo said she did not know of the common school background of previous victims until after Monica’s disappearance.

Together with other local and national groups, Mothers and Families United and the Ciudad Juarez Women’s Roundtable demand decisive governmental actions to prevent disappearances from happening in the first place; adequate investigations of pending cases; and greater federal involvement in the issue, among other measures.

The Ciudad Juarez Mother’s Day action was part of a national effort held in coordination with women’s and human rights organizations active in Chihuahua City, Guadalajara, Culiacan and Tecate.

The civil society groups laid out common goals of educating the public about gender violence, re-publicizing the issue of disappeared women and femicide in Ciudad Juarez, and pressuring the authorities to address similar situations across the Mexican republic. A statement issued by the participating organizations declared the campaign will reach 18 nations in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and North America.

Although Ciudad Juarez became notorious decades ago for murdered and missing young women, information distributed by Mothers and Families United and allied groups documented how the issue is a national one. For example, a bulletin issued by the new justice campaign reported 1,184 cases of missing women in the state of Jalisco, home to Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city.

Contrary to the national pattern in which men are the clear majority at 60 percent of the nearly 26,000 cases of disappeared people listed on the National Registry System of Missing or Disappeared Persons, the authors noted that women represent 53 percent of all disappeared cases in Jalisco.

“Undoubtedly, this is one more indication of gender violence in the state of Jalisco,” the bulletin contended.

In their bulletin, the campaign’s members recalled that Mexico is under an obligatory sentence from the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights to prevent, investigate and sanction violence against women.

“This is the first simultaneous action of different actions at the same time,” Marrufo said of the renewed justice campaign in Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican cities. “Every mother and father wants to know what happened to their daughters and have them back at home. This is urgent.”

Frontera Norte Del Sur

-Kent Paterson

Space X: Musings of Border Poet

Gene Novogrodsky — Mon, 13 May 2013 03:34:38 +0000

Editor:

I’ve written three published letters-to-the-editor pieces in the Brownsville Herald
in opposition to Space X, which might be located next to Boca Chica
Beach. Here is a fourth, perhaps my final scream in the dark.

A birder friend told me early this May that the Space X issue boils down to one’s definition of progress.

“Look,
I’ve always wanted to see a space launch, but not at Boca Chica. The
environment, and that includes birding areas, will be permanently
harmed, and that’s not progress.

“I know the other side’s definition of progress, the jobs, science opportunities, South Texas’ growth. That’s not mine.

“Progress means preserving a somewhat unspoiled area for birds, plants, and the narrow, scenic road from the city to the beach.”

He’ll keep driving back and forth to the beach, the beach as it is.

He didn’t say what he’d do if Space X is built, maybe look for some
remaining natural niches in South Texas – before progress claims them.

Eugene “Gene Novogrodsky, mid-May 2013

Space X Thoughts On The Brush

Gene Novogrodsky — Mon, 13 May 2013 02:50:24 +0000

courtesy of the valley catholic

Space X and Thoughts On the Brush

A six-foot long rattlesnake.

“He got too close to the back steps, and I used the shotgun on it,” the home owner way out in the brush, river to the south, bay and channel to the north, says.

“But I feel sorry. It got disturbed when someone bulldozed for a house. It was the snake’s home. It must have gotten confused.

“Walk over to the tree. That’s where I hung it up.”

I do, and it has been tied to a branch; it dangles – limbs above, ground below

The rattlesnake moves near the narrow road to the beach.

I step and look at it.

It returns to the brush.

A fisherman with Missouri plates slows down when he sees me.

I tell him to stop and look at the snake.

He doesn’t.

A friend motorcycles to the beach.

A bobcat runs out of the brush, hits his front tire and bounces into the brush on the other side of the road.

The friend keeps riding to the beach.

Waves, always.
Pelicans, usually.
Gulls, always.
Sea birds, always.

Sunrises over the gulf,
Sunsets over the dunes, and into land.
Rocket scientists,
Fuel trucks,
Concrete trucks,

Tracking computers,
Space rides for the rich,
Supplies for space stations ….

So crawl off, slither off, snakes.

Fly off birds.

Cower bobcats.

Tremble cacti.

Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky, mid May 2013

Choices or “El Gallo y El Cerdo

Gene Novogrodsky — Thu, 09 May 2013 19:48:31 +0000

Choice

What will be:

El grunido del cerdo, o,

El grito del gallo?

Grunt of the pig, or,

Cry of the rooster?

So much evidence for the pig:

Fat-vehicle traffic,

Fast-firing weapons,

Factory jails,

Sweet bribes.

Not as much for the rooster:

Gray dawn,

Soft grass,

Humid silence,

Bent sunflowers.

I walk through and into moments,

Stretching for roosters,

Shrinking from pigs.

: writers of the rio grande

Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky, late-April 2013

In Spanish

Translation by Edgardo and Trinidad Cantu

Que sera?

El grunido del cerdo, o,

El grito del gallo?

Grunt of the pig, or,

Cry of the rooster?

Muchos dicen que el cerdo prevalecera’

El traffico retegordisimo

Armas escupiendo como metrelleta

Prisioneros aprovechados por los ricos bastardos

La mordida como postre chupada

Por los trompos de los puercos…

Y por el gallo?

Ni tanto, muy poco

Madrugada gris y oscuro

Zacate suave

El silencio entre la humidad

Marisoles bailantes

Ando entrando y saliendo cada momento

Anhelando por los gallos

Evitando los marranos

Reflections On Concern

Gene Novogrodsky — Sat, 04 May 2013 17:44:30 +0000

Reflections On Concern
The Writers Of the Rio Grande editor asked me to write about the recent Central American Migrants and Sex Trafficking Conference that the University of Texas Brownsville and South Texas Community College sponsored.

I learned little new.

I hope those in northern Mexico and southern Texas had their eyes and ears opened.

I hope they can recall the theme of the conference: The humans who pass through Mexico from Central America to the United States should not be considered a problem; instead they should be an opportunity for us to become more human.

Just how?

Difficult, given official and unofficial corruption in Central America (Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua) and Mexico, and an often-inhumane United States’ government policy.

I thought of some of my recent pieces: review of the novel Kind Of Kin, a poem, “Spring Blood,” and an essay, “Humanitarianism Thwarted.”

All raised the question of what one does when faced with injustice.

I discussed this with a friend after the Boston terrorist attack.

I said, “Why can we feel when horror is so close? Why can’t we feel when it is afar, like in Pakistan and Afghanistan, earlier in Iraq, caused by American drones? Why can’t we go beyond our immediate, near, blood?”

He didn’t have an answer.

Others have said, “Worry about your own family, help them; you can’t do much for others.”

This circle-the-wagons thinking bothers me, but I do not do much, write a little, give some money, talk, care ….

How lame!

And when thinking about the conference and Boston, I went to a play in Matamoros: El Grunido del Cerdo (Grunt of the Pig), a play about Mexican corruption in 1947, especially in Tamaulipas, with many references to the present.

I left thinking, “What attitude will predominate in Mexico and the United States, el grunido del cerdo, or, el grito del gallo (cry of the rooster)?”

That’s where I am this dry Spring, thinking, and hoping for roosters.

Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky, late-April 2013

Bloggers Break Through Mexico’s Tortilla Curtain

Editor — Sat, 04 May 2013 14:53:58 +0000

Social Media does fill a void. Journalists in Mexico risk death from Cartels, and it is alleged, from government and military as well. Most, if not all have been silenced, many now for years. And it is at it’s worst along the Texas Mexico Border in Tamalipas, and all the Rio Grande. The Tortilla Curtain has descended.

Oddly enough, the Iranians through Press Tv, have done some excellent reporting.

When The Holocaust Comes

Edgardo — Thu, 02 May 2013 19:25:18 +0000

When The Holocaust Comes

When the Holocaust Comes

Background Music courtesy of Nine Inch Nails

Edgar Clinton April 27, 2013

When the Holocaust comes

It comes in its own time

When fuel and flame conspire and in accord agree

“The time has come brother”

We’ve waited long, Now we feast on the

Fools that believe they are human

when they are mere food for our maws

Fuel and flame hide their plans from each other

That in the end

They will come for each other at the last

When all the others have been consumed

In their fires,

When the Holocaust comes

On little cat feet it crouches closer

Through the years

Makes no sound, does not even pant its

Intents to the prey

Invents, exhales a pretense that it has no existence

There’s just the sigh of the wind in the grass

And then….

We know what happens

When the holocaust comes there will be no denying its heat

Call this blistering and bubbling meat

A conspiracy like you did before?

Theory no more, only a fact from hell

When the holocaust comes once more

When the wave of greed and crime

Crush the ones that neither fight nor run

Idiots by their own design, victims of their own minds

That see all, just to deny all they see

They have forgotten the faces of their fathers

…They will remember in their last illumination as they burn

If just for that instant

When the holocaust comes