One of the brilliant novelist of out time, and a true bridge of understanding that ran both ways between
Mexico and the United States.

Carlos Fuente Dead at 83
New York Times

Carlos Fuentes on Drug War

                          

Mi voto es mi voz

By ten o’clock in the morning this past Tuesday, May 1st, 350 people had quietly filed into the McAllen Convention Center. Some had small American flags, others had stickers that proclaimed “Mi Voto es Mi Voz” (my vote is my voice’), and some had two or three toddlers in tow.

They had come to participate in the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network’s candidates’ forum, “un foro educativo”, an “educational forum” meant to help the candidates understand the issues that were most important to us.

A couple of dozen candidates soon took their seats, looking confident and attentive. The lone woman candidate, someone who had changed party affiliation just two weeks ago, sat on the edge of her seat, smiling brightly and waving her hand at the crowd. She had been a local TV news personage and looked ready to go live.

The questions, I felt, were good ones. They had been created from several groups that work on the issues that dramatically affect the lives of our families: immigration, housing, health care, jobs, and education.

A young woman was in charge of asking the first question. She began with a preamble—the issue was so outrageous as to require some explanation. She noted that undocumented citizens could not obtain a Texas driver’s license, and that this was a huge problem—for everyone. “There is no public transportation here, so you really do have to drive a car to go to work or to school. But if a person can’t get a driver’s license, how do the rest of us know if they can even see (reminding us that a driver’s test requires a vision screen)? How do we know if they have studied the rules of the road? And if you are a responsible person and want to purchase car insurance, if you don’t have a license it becomes so very expensive.” She continued for a bit more and then she looked up at the candidates and said, “So what is your plan to change that law?” And remained at the podium, looking them in the eye as one by one they answered the question.

The morning was long but people stayed attentive. The questions went to the heart of the matter—our community simply wanted to be treated fairly, and we are not. We pay higher taxes than anyone else in the state, and yet our schools are horribly underfunded. We want our children to grow up as healthy and happy as anyone else’s, but health insurance is out of reach when they do get sick (half of Hidalgo County’s residents have no health insurance), and, if our children want to exercise and stay healthy—well, the schools lock down the playgrounds after hours, there are few parks, and no sidewalks. Our hardworking family members who do find work are paid half of what someone doing the very same job gets in Austin.

The questions were about justice, simple justice. What I found troubling is that most of the candidates could not correctly pronounce the word “injusticia,” while some of the others didn’t bother using the term—they seemed to think everything was hunky-dory in our neck of the woods.

In the evening, a second event was held, this one in Brownsville. There was less of a crowd, but it was a school night and there weren’t as many candidates on the slate. All the same, 75 more folks filed into their seats and listened as the candidates fielded the questions.

I found myself sitting next to an eighteen year old whom I have known since she was three years old. She was to graduate in a couple of weeks and was thrilled. “I want to become a registered nurse, although I would really like to do research and discover medicines that people need.” I asked her what she thought about the forum and she beamed, “I love to listen to this, but I get so mad when they don’t answer the question.”

A question that was not asked that night (because we didn’t yet know to ask it) was the candidates’ opinions on a decision by the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems to raise tuition rates. The universities seemingly felt pushed into a fiscal corner when Governor Perry refused to allow any state programs to access the “rainy day” fund—a pool of money that has now reached $ 9 billion. Perry supporters claim that the fund is for emergencies (in the past the fund has been regularly tapped to meet budget needs—such as education)—and that educational shortfalls do not qualify as an emergency.

This decision may well leave my young friend’s dreams withering in the blazing sun of Texas politics. Her family cannot afford the tuition at the local university as it is, and were counting on student loans and grants—but these have been cut as well.

At the end of the evening, I gave her a hug and wished her well.

I went out into the warm evening, practicing, over again, the word “injusticia.”

I had no trouble with the pronunciation–nor the concept.

                          

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Border News On Writers of the Rio Grande

Recently two retired Mexican generals were arrested on suspicion of cartel involvement. Mexican Generals have been involved before, but now with the army involved in small time policing and cartel fighting, corruption has spread to the lower ranks as well.
The Mexican terrorist seems to have outstripped every other terrorist group in the world for sheer savagery and in your face effrontery to the regime of the state. The Arabs, the Iranians, the Africans are coming in a poor second. The Mexican cartel member fights only for bling and material possessions, in essence for greed. Is this an indictment of the modern world built only on the fake values of consumerism and constant and continuous stimulation, and what passes for entertainment?
All across America there is an epidemic of official corruption. There are many indictments of border officials all the time. There is a story here. The greater story is what the US federals get away with. Click on the “Fast and Furious coverage.” We have heard so much about the Mexican “culture of impunity” but it seems that we have outdone them by a long shot. Like the old saying goes: “If your going to steal, steal a lot. If you steal enough, you are the government!”
I would like to give the word out on the official response to all the failed policies, but there is none. The tame, domesticated mainstream media doesn’t ask, and the ones that will ask are not invited, or if they do get in a question, they risk tasering or worse. The truth is there is no cogent or coherent response, or plan of action for success.
One of the things not reported, is the almost universal condemnation of America’s failed drug war by Latin American leaders, current and former. With millions of citizens incarcerated, over a trillion dollars spent over thirty years on the drug war, hundreds of thousands killed, countries invaded, a next door neighbor country falling apart because of it, you would think this would be newsworthy. But noooo, it’s back of the paper, one paragraph stuff.
Also look at the Mexican Presidential debate. You’ll get an eyeful.
The UT El Paso middle weight boxing match was quite a story. Find the simple but compelling truth behind the brouhaha.
Predictions for the future:
More of the same. The PRI will win the Mexican Presidency, they will try to put the toothpaste back in the tube, but it won’t work. this however is the belief of a large number of the citizenry. The good old days of government cartel cooperation can’t be returned to. Criminality pays well in Mexico, and it is a relatively lucrative and secure career, compared to what it is in other countries. Even if drugs were decriminalized, legalized and taxed, the cartels have many other sources of income. Without a real system of justice, Mexico is sunk.
Also in the border news…
The phenomena of poor economic refugee Mexicans self deporting from the United States and the influx of Middle Class and Professional refugees will continue. Running a business, especially in Northern Mexico, is going from problematical to impossible. Kidnapping, extortion, pay-offs etc. are only getting worse. Curiously, the maquiladoras and the globalist investments in the high end tourist trade and resorts is just fine. These are essentially foreign enclaves into Mexico itself. Part of a global control game of chess, where we never see the game masters true faces. At least two of the major cartels in Mexico are part of the chessboard as well. Look at the Real News clip on Border News for more of this.

Border News

                          

Flipping past the now, the years stacking ….

Why was my first baaseball glove a first-baseman’s mitt?
Yellow-brown, I never got the knack of catching with it.

My mother would laugh, and then add,
“Trouble catching, and you throw like a girl.”

My first library card, given on a snowy late afternoon in the mountains,
Felt more like mine, more fitting.

My mother never said a word about the black-lined card, filled with inky blue due dates.

Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky, mid May 2012

                          

Jess explains: “You never really know what the big picture is to a situation – sometimes the meaning is veiled. It can seem really bad, but then later you can look back at the same moment and feel so grateful it went that way; I love that about life. Sometimes things are just really hard and really painful, but also beautiful.”

We can never escape the emotions of love, loss, joy or pain, so Jess Klein courageously and honestly writes all about them in each of the 10 songs on her new release. Klein’s no holds barred album is set to hit the streets April 10, 2012. Read More>>

Get a copy of “Behind The Veil” and Click Here>>

                          

Representatives of the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) scouted out downtown Ciudad Juarez last week in anticipation of a possible loan package. The tour was promoted by the Chihuahua state and Ciudad Juarez municipal governments as part of a $50 million investment drive to revive the Mexican border city’s long decaying downtown core.

The visit’s purpose was to obtain bank support for rescuing “public spaces and historic buildings that have architectural value and that will give another image to the first section of the city,” said Everardo Medina, under-secretary of public works for the Chihuahua state government. According to Medina, the buildings include La Fiesta, the Victoria Theater and the iconic Juarez Market on Avenida 16 de Septiembre.

“The Juarez Market is a place where tourists came to hear mariachis, to eat and to buy curios,” Medina said. “We are seeking to improve the zone so visitors feel safe and count on ample parking.”

Overall, the downtown renovation project envisions new pedestrian walks, schools and medical facilities, Medina added.

Launched during previous municipal administrations, Ciudad Juarez’s downtown redevelopment was stalled by the ferocious violence and economic crisis that hammered the city after 2008. In the election year of 2012, however, the Institutional Revolutionary Party-led state and municipal governments are reaching out to the private sector and international lenders to complete an aggressive make-over of downtown Ciudad Juarez.

A $10.3 million baseball stadium that will host the Juarez Indios team is currently under construction and expected to be finished by next September. Sited on the edge of downtown, the 13,500 fan-capacity stadium will seat more people than neighboring El Paso’s Cohen Stadium, and include tourist shops, food stands and other amenities. Once open for ball, the sports park “will represent an icon for the world to see that Juarez is standing tall,” according to Chihuahua Governor Cesar Duarte.

Less certain is the fate of the historic Josue Neri Santos Gymnasium also in downtown Ciudad Juarez. Although the Calderon administration’s Todos Somos Juarez (We are all Juarez) program has reportedly invested millions of pesos in refurbishing the building, a group of unnamed businessmen are purportedly proposing a new convention center for the site.

The gym is located in the same zone where rumors of new casinos down the pike have circulated during the past two years. Two small gaming establishments are located on nearby Avenida Juarez that leads across the border to El Paso. Ciudad Juarez Mayor Hector “Teto” Murguia said last week that no final decision has been made about the future of the gymnasium property.

Downtown revitalization parallels a renewed push to turn Ciudad Juarez into a mecca for medical tourism. Together with government tourism promoters, members of the health care and insurance industries are apparently wagering that the Obama Administration’s Affordable Health Care Act, which could be tossed out or greatly diluted by a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision, won’t significantly reduce the ever-soaring cost of U.S. health care.

Demetrio Sotomayor, Chihuahua state undersecretary of tourism, said last week that upcoming meetings will craft out medical tourism packages that could bring in $200 million in revenues to Ciudad Juarez.

Sotomayor said that U.S. residents arriving for medical treatment could also partake in excursions around Ciudad Juarez, to the Salamayuca sand dunes south of the city and even to the Paquime ruins in the northwestern part of Chihuahua state. The packages will include all travel transfers from El Paso and within Mexico, Sotomayor stressed.

The Mexican official insisted that the raging violence that has claimed more than an estimated 10,000 lives since 2008 was on the downturn.

“The level of violence in the tourist centers and on the avenues where we traditionally attend patients is not happening as in previous years,” Sotomayor said. “Visitors are returning and there is a reactivation of economic activities.”

Some business community leaders concur with Sotomayor that U.S. visitors are gradually returning to a city they abandoned in droves in recent years. For instance, Carlos Riquelme Canales, president of the Ciudad Juarez branch of the Mexican Hotel and Motel Association, estimated that U.S. customers now account for about 10 percent of the guests in local lodgings.

While homicide rates have dipped since 2010, the Ciudad Juarez press routinely reports fresh murders, frequently several killings each day.

In contrast to the years when spectacular shoot-outs and massacres occurred in popular businesses and on heavily-transited streets, a process of “violence ghettoization” could have taken hold, with most killings now reported in low-income neighborhoods like Tierra Nueva, La Chavena, Colonia Aztecas and others where gangs battle for control of the street-level drug trade, continue to extort small business people and carry out revenge attacks. In many ways, the ongoing violence is similar to the “other side of the tracks” violence that steadily eroded working-class areas of the border city but stayed out of more affluent areas prior to the eruption of the 2008 “narco” war.

Additional sources: Norte, May 10, 11 and 12, 2012. Articles by Salvador Castro. El Diario de Juarez, May 10 and 12, 2012. Articles by Martin Coronado and editorial staff. Lapolaka.com, May 12, 2012. El Paso Times, April 11, 2012. Article by Alejandro Martinez-Cabrera.Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American
and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription
email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu

                          

49 dumped in Mexico Drug War
Edgardo

No one yet has been able to make any sense to me of American Foreign policy. A few people die halfway around the world, and we bomb them and invade. The same country then kills thousands of Black Africans, Hillary Clinton doesn’t even peep. Mexico has well over 50,000 dead working on 100,000, and Homeland Security could care less. The United States is the retail outlet for every cartel member in Mexico. Cartel Members include politicians, army officers, police, either actively, or tacitly involved . Their huge retail outlet is the United States. So don’t think the be-headers and killers are not here…they are.

Remember, the criminals that do the best and make the most money are the ones in suits that go to big charity galas, and are well thought of by the uninformed public  and have PR firms working for them. The common criminals and enforcers that do the dirty work, and take all the risk always get the short end of the stick.
There is no one with clean hands. God give us sense to escape from this web of lies and net of deception

Yahoo News May 13 2012
Official: 49 bodies left on Mexico highway

More on Border News

                          

Little daylight in the outside rain.
He fills out the Mother’s Day card.

She sits across.
Their children’s cards will come.
Her mother is dead.

And how often have we said,
“Big deal, cartel teens are killing cartel teens,
No one else, just criminals against criminals.”

But pause, this Mexican Mother’s Day,
And those killing and dead have mothers -
On this, yes, this Mexican Mother’s Day.

He puts the card in the envelope,
Delivery later,
He a son ….

Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky, mid-May 2012

                          

Mothers of women and men missing in Mexico embarked May 8 on a national march/caravan that will culminate in protests and meetings in the nation’s capital this week. Like last year’s caravans organized by poet Javier Sicilia and other relatives of violence victims, the mobilizations will remind Mexicans of the deep emotional wounds and unhealed psychological scars that devour families of forcibly disappeared persons.

Named the “March of National Dignity: Mothers Looking for their Sons and Daughters and Searching for Justice,” the protest is led by 300 women demanding clarification of the fates of between 600 and 700 relatives who went missing during the administration of outgoing President Felipe Calderon.

“For some it has been years, for others months or days, of walking alone, of clamoring in the desert of the hallways of indolent and irresponsible authorities, many of them directly responsible for (disappearances) or complicit with those who took (loved ones) away,” the mothers’ group said in a communiqué.

Among the many organizations supporting and/or endorsing the march are the Network of Human Rights Defenders and Families of the Disappeared, Women’s Human Rights Center, Justice for Our Daughters, Paso del Norte Human Rights Center, United Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila, and the Catholic Archdiocese of Saltillo. Solidarity actions, including protests at Mexican embassies, are planned this week in the United States, Canada, Honduras and El Salvador.

March contingents will depart from the northern border states of Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon, wind their way through the Mexican heartland of the Bajio and arrive in Mexico City as Mother’s Day celebrations get underway. The Mexico City activities include a May 10 march to the Angel of Independence monument, where the names and stories of the disappeared will be made public.

Senator Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, a pioneering human rights activist who organized Mexican mothers into the Eureka Committee to demand the return of children forcibly disappeared by government forces during the Dirty War of the 1970s, has been invited to address the Mexico City protest.

On Mother’s Day 2012, many Mexican mothers have “nothing to celebrate,” stressed Norma Ledezma, co-founder of Justice for Our Daughters in Chihuahua City. “As families, we want to take this occasion to tell society not to forget that in Mexico there is home with a plate and a seat empty…”

Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon have been among the hardest-hit places in the violence that has steadily gnawed away at the fabric of Mexican society. In all three states, so-called narco-violence, femicides and threats and attacks against Central American immigrants passing through Mexico to the United States have registered extremely high volumes. Recent headlines include the discovery of at least 12 murdered young women outside Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, and the revelation that nearly 800 skeletal remains collected in the state of Chihuahua since 2007, mostly of men, remain unidentified by authorities.

The Chihuahua state prosecutor’s office lists 213 women missing in the state since 1993, with about 123 cases in Ciudad Juarez alone. But non-governmental organizations estimate a higher number. A review of the official list reveals a spike in cases after 2008, the year when widespread narco-violence broke out and thousands of army troops and federal police were deployed in Joint Operation Chihuahua and its successors.

While the international press usually homes in on stories about Ciudad Juarez, which borders the United States, alarming episodes of violence have increased in the state capital of Chihuahua City in recent weeks. In addition to a familiar pattern of disappearances, women’s murders and constant homicides, violence has erupted in very public places, even in broad daylight. Recent incidents include shoot-outs and/or mass slayings outside a Wal-Mart, inside an Applebee’s restaurant and at the Colorado Bar, where 15 people were gunned down on the evening of April 20. A suspect, Javier Arturo Hernandez Najera, is reportedly in custody for a crime committed by multiple shooters.

Three members of a ‘60s-style rock combo that regularly performed at the Colorado Bar were among the victims of the massacre. Relatives of the ill-fated members of “Freddy’s Friends” described the musicians as hard-working men who held day jobs, were devoted husbands and fathers and uninvolved with the intrigues of organized crime.

“It isn’t easy to deal with how this came down,” the son and daughter of guitarist Juan Luis Vazquez were quoted. “You get used to hearing about the violence, four dead over there, 13 over here, and you get used to it even though it touches you. It’s ugly but you get used to it. Now we ask ourselves: Why them?”

Across Mexico, thousands and thousands of people are asking the same question.

Alma Garcia, representative of United Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila, told the press that the mother’s march will insist on getting answers to pressing questions. Garcia said the caravan will demand that Mexican government officials comply with United Nations recommendations on forced disappearance, create a “program of internal attention” and, above all, undertake “immediate searches for the disappeared.” Garcia’s movement also demands the creation of a national data base of disappeared persons, the formulation of investigative protocols and the appointment of a special prosecutor for disappeared persons.

Since the 1970s, mothers and their supporters have launched distinct movements related to forced disappearance in various parts of Mexico- with minimal results.

In Ciudad Juarez /El Paso, the International Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons pressured the Zedillo and Fox administrations into successively naming several special prosecutors charged with uncovering the truth about nearly 200 disappeared people, mainly men, who vanished in the Mexican border city during the 1990s. On another front, the Fox administration created a special office within the federal attorney generals’ office to investigate and prosecute Dirty War disappearances.

A central player in both the Dirty War and narco-war chapters who was widely said to have first-hand knowledge of the whereabouts of victims of forced disappearance, retired army General Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro, was shot dead in Mexico City last month. The former military official was assassinated as a truth commission assembled by the Guerrero state government began forming to investigate the Dirty War disappearances.

After 1997, victims’ relatives and women’s activists succeeded in getting first the Chihuahua state government and then the Mexican federal government to establish special law enforcement divisions officially dedicated to probing femicides and women’s disappearances in Ciudad Juarez. Fifteen years later, the cases have passed through the hands of almost as many prosecutors.

In 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights handed down a judgment ordering Mexico to thoroughly investigate the disappearances of young women. As a signatory to the Court, the Mexican government is obliged to follow the verdict.

Despite a slew of measures arising from civil society pressure over the decades, few cases of forced disappearance have been cleared up and no credible prosecutions have ensued.

As old cases piled up, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission documented 5,400 new cases of disappeared persons- both men and women-from 2006 to 2011, though non-governmental organizations speak of 10,000 or more people forcibly disappeared during the same time frame.

A recent report from the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances contended that not all the latest cases could be attributed to organized crime operating alone. “On the contrary, state participation in forced disappearances is also present in the country,” the report stated.

Last year, Javier Zuniga of Amnesty International compared forced disappearance in Mexico with the situation that prevailed under the military dictatorships of South America during the 1970s.

“We have walked alone in the middle of stares and stigmatizing commentaries, and we have been treated like lepers, marginalized and condemned to the worst pain a human being could live: not knowing the whereabouts of our sons and daughters,” the new mother’s movement declared. “But now we are not alone. We have found hundreds of mothers and we unite our clamor and our love to recover our loved ones and bring them home.”

Additional sources: El Diario de Chihuahua, May 8, 2012. El Heraldo de Chihuahua, May 7, 2012. Cimacnoticias.com, May 7, 2012. Articles by Patricia Mayorga and Gladis Torres Ruiz La Jornada, May 5 and 8, 2012. Articles by Leopoldo Ramos, Lilia Ovalle and Luis Hernandez Navarro.

La Jornada (Guerrero edition), May 4, 2012. Article by Rodolfo Valadez Luviano. El Paso Times, May 2 and 6, 2012. Articles by Alejandro Martinez-Cabrera and Lourdes Cardenas. Frontenet.com, May 5, 2012. Cronicadechihuahua.com, April 30, 2012. Proceso/Apro, April 28, 2012 and May 7, 2012. Articles by Marcela Turati and Juan Alberto Cedillo.

Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American
and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription
email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu

                          

It started when Little Red Riding hood stepped out
into the dark wood, her black buckled shoes

displacing spring’s first fallen leaves.
Didn’t you hear the story? The wolf smelled her

skin and pollen breath amidst the thick midnight
air. He lured her in with the curl of canine tongue, plucked

her blushing petals, and ate her center whole.
She was lucky, the huntsman heard her moan

and snatched her body from the jaws
of that big bad wolf. Didn’t you hear the story?

Then why did you part the night air
with your naked flesh? Cast away your veil

of petals, unlatch the front door? The tale
was carried on hurried breaths to reach

your little ear, a warning. But still you opened
up and let him see the moonlight

reflecting off your bare shoulder. The fang marks
on your lips tell me the wolf

is after you. The hickies on your neck
tell me you’re guilty, too. The ground is littered

with the fallen poppy petals, shed like scarves
from spring’s early blooms. Step gently

with your buckled shoes, and pray
a burly huntsman will hear your cries, too.

First Published in The Breakwater Review