Mexico Week In Review: 11.26-12.02

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 11.26-12.02
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Published since 1994, 'Mexico Week In Review' is a service of the
Committee of Indigenous Solidarity (CIS).  CIS is a Washington, D.C.
based activist group committed to the ongoing struggles of Indigenous
peoples in the Americas.  CIS is actively supporting the struggles
of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico while simultaneously combating
related structures of oppression within our own communities.

To view newsletter archives, visit: 
http://lists.mutualaid.org/pipermail/mexico-week/

"Para Todos, Todo; Para Nosotros Nada"
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PEMEX: OIL LEAK MIGHT TAKE MONTHS TO FIX

An oil platform leak that has spilled thousands of barrels of crude 
into the Gulf of Mexico could take several months to repair, state 
oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos said. Since a drilling rig slammed 
into a production platform Oct. 23, killing at least 21 workers, a 
total of 11,700 barrels of oil - about 420 a day - have seeped into 
the gulf, Pemex Assistant Director for Exploration and Production 
Pedro Silva Lopez told reporters invited to fly over the site with 
company and environmental officials. Pemex previously estimated the 
spill at nearly 13,000 barrels.

A fire was still raging at the damaged well, about 20 miles offshore 
from the port of Dos Bocas in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, but 
only faint traces of crude could be seen shimmering on the water. The 
company plans to install a new valve assembly to replace a damaged 
one on the well, but Silva said officials are not sure that will stop 
the leak. If it doesn't, another procedure to block the damaged well 
could take as long as four to five months to complete, said Carlos 
Morales, Pemex's director of production and exploration. Silva said 
at least two beaches in the Gulf coast states of Tabasco and Campeche 
have been affected by the oil spill, but the full extent of the 
damage has not been determined.

The spill is far smaller than a major disaster like the 1989 Exxon 
Valdez supertanker spill that released about 260,000 barrels, or 11 
million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound. Each 
barrel of oil contains 42 gallons. Pemex is losing about 5,700 
barrels of oil a day in production at the offshore platform. The 
company expects the average daily production this year to finish 
slightly above 3.1 million barrels, said Jesus Reyes, 
director-general of Pemex. The company's daily output in 2006 was 
3.26 million barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information 
Administration. Pemex has promised both internal and external 
investigations of the collision in high seas between the platform and 
a drilling rig operated by a subcontractor.

Source: Associated Press: 11/29
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MORE NAFTA FALLOUT - SUGAR WORKERS HAVE TAKEN OVER MILLS

Mexico's sugar-cane workers said they shut down all of the country's 
mills demanding an increase in prices from the mills ahead of the 
opening of the Mexican market to U.S. sugar on Jan. 1.

The workers took control of the mills at 5 a.m. on November 30, 
Catarino Bastin, a spokesman for 106,000 sugar cane workers in 15 
states, said in a telephone interview from Mexico City. Farmers and 
workers are asking for a 6 percent increase in the price paid for the 
crop. "The mills are intransigent," Bastin said. "We are not going to 
stop until we get the price adjustment." Calls today and yesterday to 
the Sugar and Ethanol Chamber of Commerce, which represents the 
mills, weren't returned. The workers prevented any cane from being 
processed this morning. Juan Cortina, president of the Sugar and 
Ethanol Chamber of Commerce, said in an interview with Mexico 
City-based Radio Formula today that workers blocked the mills.

Workers and farmers are concerned that the raw sweetener, which has 
fallen 28 percent at Mexico City's main market in the last year, will 
drop more on Jan. 1, when the North American Free Trade Agreement 
opens the Mexican market to U.S. sweetener. Mills have been 
negotiating a price for the 2007-2008 crop for 11 weeks. Talks 
moderated by the federal government have been unsuccessful, Bastin 
said. Before today, Mexico's sugar cane farmers had blocked the 
delivery of 3 million metric tons of the crop to mills, said Carlos 
Blackaller Ayala, president of the National Sugar Cane Union, which 
represents cane farmers.

Mexico was the sixth-largest producer of sugar cane in 2005, 
according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United 
Nations. Mexico produced 50.1 million metric tons of sugar cane last 
year, according to its National Statistical Agency. The country's 
mills produced about 5.1 million metric tons of sugar during that 
period.

Source: Bloomberg: 11/30
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BORDER NEWS: ONE DEATH PER DAY ON BORDER

One person dies every day on the Mexican northern border while trying 
to reach the US looking for a job, noted President of the National 
Commission of Human Rights Jose Luis Soberanes. Soberanes referred to 
data approved by Washington in which 4,745 Mexican citizens died in 
that attempt during the last 13 years, although emigrants' 
organizations say the number is more like 10,000.

A report of the commission pointed out that many people cross the 
border and nobody hears from them again, highlighting that 560 bodies 
were found in a deserted cemetery. To cross the border at present 
means to live three or four days in deserted areas, to swim in 
polluted waters which are potentially mortal and fight hypothermia 
and dehydration. Soberanes also denounced that they are persecuted by 
US border soldiers and mentioned cases like the 17-year old Victor 
Mandujano who they shot to death and Dario Miranda who was shot 12 
times in the back.

Source: Prensa Latina: 11/26
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FLOOD DISASTER ATTRIBUTED TO UNFINISHED LEVEE PROJECT

State officials admitted major flood control projects are still 
unfinished, resulting to the inundation of one million homes in 
Tabasco and claiming at least 33 lives. At the center of an ongoing 
investigation is a $190 million levee project that was supposed to 
hold backwaters. The project is part of the Integral Project Against 
Flooding launched in 2003. Following the 1999 flood that caused $375 
million damage, the project was launched to construct 110 miles of 
levees and 120 miles of drainage canals throughout the length of the 
Grijalva, Carrizal and Samaria Rivers.

Gilberto Segovia, spokesman of the National Water Commission for its 
Tabasco area, said 70 percent of the projects were built. The 
original plan placed a 2006 deadline for the completion of the 
projects, partially built out of a $3 million kitty donated by 
Mexican oil firms and raised over 4 years. Former Tabasco Governor 
Manuel Andrade extended the completion deadline to 2012. The Saint 
Tomas Association, a non-governmental organization, said the money 
was spent to pay contractors, gasoline for private vehicles and on 
cigarettes and baked products. Tabasco Representative Moises Dagdug 
believes there was a lot of corruption involved handling the funds.

Another former Tabasco Governor Roberto Madrazo Pintado denied 
corruption allegations, saying during his administration 74 miles of 
levees and 62 miles of drainage systems were put in place. Segovia 
pointed to the unprecedented levels of rainfall that caused the 
flooding. The average rainfall on October was only 15 inches, but 
according to the National Water Commission 30.5 inches of rain were 
recorded in Tabasco, 12 inches fell on October 28-30.

Source: All Headline News: 11/23
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TEACHER LEADER BEATEN

Mario Zavala Navarrete, a leader of alumni of the Raul Isidro Burgos 
de Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College in the southern Mexican state of 
Guerrero, reported that he was assaulted by armed, masked assailants 
the night of Nov. 22. He said they followed him in a white van as he 
was heading home to Tixtia on a public bus after leaving the college. 
They caught him when he left the bus and beat him unconscious.

The alumni have been demanding 75 rural teaching posts. Some 800 
teaching students occupied the state legislature in the state 
capital, Chilpancingo, on Nov. 14 to support the alumni's demands 
[see Update #923]. The protesters blamed a subsequent confrontation 
with the police on Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo, of the 
center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), who refuses to 
meet with the students or discuss their demands. On Nov. 23 a group 
of 90 teaching students greeted Torreblanca as he appeared in Mexico 
City to inaugurate a Guerrero state office in the Coyoacan section. 
"Ayotzi lives, the struggle continues," they chanted as the governor 
entered the office. Meanwhile, 15 busloads of students and alumni 
demonstrated in Ciudad Altamirano, Guerrero, to demand the removal of 
state education secretary Jose Luis Gonzalez de la Vega.

Source: Weekly News Update- Nicaragua Solidarity Network Of Greater 
New York: 11/25
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MORE ON PLAN MEXICO

Details of Plan Mexico are slowly beginning to emerge in the context 
of heated Congressional debates.  Plan Mexico, renamed the Merida 
Initiative by politicians anxious to distance the proposal from Plan 
Colombia, would provide US$1.4 billion in high tech equipment and 
training to Mexican security forces working on drug interdiction and 
"anti-terrorism" security.  The plan, negotiated behind closed doors 
over several months by the Calderon and Bush administrations, does 
not require approval by the Mexican Congress, but will require 
passage by the US Congress.  From the US perspective, Plan Mexico 
provides US security and intelligence forces with new influence in 
the Mexican army and intelligence services.  The first US$500 
million, tentatively scheduled to arrive in 2008, would be 
distributed as follows: 41% to the Army, 20% to the Navy, 14% to the 
federal Attorney General, and 7.8% to the Secretary of Public 
Security.  The rest is destined for Cisen (the army's intelligence 
service), immigration services and the customs department.  An 
additional US$133 million will come directly from the Bush 
administration and is not subject to US Congressional approval.  Most 
of the funds will go directly to US corporations that provide high 
tech surveillance equipment, training and maintenance.  The Plan 
includes significant changes in Mexico's judicial, penal and policing 
systems.  The US will enjoy unprecedented influence in the daily 
performance of immigration authorities and will have real time access 
to Mexico's intelligence services, and the plan contemplates a 
reorganization of Mexico's intelligence services under the direction 
of US authorities.

Source: Mexico Solidarity Network Weekly News Summary: 11/19-25
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MEXICO-JAPAN SEX TRADE EXPOSED

Mexican federal officials are beginning to look at the export 
business of "sex slaves" to Japan. Reports from the International 
Organization for Migration, the Organization of American States (OAS) 
and other agencies indicate that at least three thousand Mexican 
women could be in Japan working involuntarily in the sex industry. In 
a recent interview with the Mexican press, Susana Chiarotti, director 
of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of 
Women's Rights, said the victims are deceived by employment ads in 
Mexico, kidnapped by human traffickers and then sold to the Yazuka, 
the Japanese mafia.

"They are lured with glamorous-sounding employment offers connected 
to the entertainment industry, to work in a bar or in an artistic 
production," Chiarotti said. "(Women) are promised very high salaries 
and never told what is really going on: their passports are taken 
from them and they pass hours and hours enclosed in a room where they 
have sex with dozens of persons." Ads promising grants for study 
abroad or work in the entertainment industries of Japan and Australia 
are commonly posted on the streets of Mexico City, especially in the 
youth-popular Condesa and Zona Rosa districts. Chiarotti charged that 
the human trafficking network could not flourish without the 
connivance of some officials in Mexico and other Latin American 
countries.

"We didn't realize it, but in (Japan) the demand for Latin women is 
especially great, particularly for Mexicans," said Sadot Sanchez 
Carreno, coordinator of the National Human Rights Commission's human 
trafficking program. According to Sanchez, his agency has signed an 
agreement with the United Nations to document the intercontinental 
sex trade, while the Federal Public Security Ministry has opened a 
legal investigation.

The Japanese government, meanwhile, is turning a blind eye to the 
international sex trafficking on its shores, contended two Japanese 
researchers. "Japanese authorities refuse to recognize the greater 
part of trafficking cases, because the victims don't report this 
crime to the police or because if they do they risk being processed 
as illegal foreigners and deported," said Kanane Tsutsumi of the 
Women's University of Kysuhu and Sumiko Honda of Fukuoka's Asian 
Feminine Center.

In a report on human trafficking in Latin America, the OAS noted that 
the Japanese government grants 120,000 entertainment visas every 
year, mainly to women. An estimated 1,700 women from Mexico and other 
Latin American countries are kidnapped annually for the Japanese sex 
industry, according to figures compiled by the OAS and other 
international organizations.

Sources: Milenio.com: 11/18; Frontera NorteSur (FNS): 11/20

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The above articles were originally published and copyrighted by the 
listed sources. These articles are offered for educational purposes 
which CIS maintains is  'fair use' of copyrighted material as 
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

end: Mexico Week In Review: 11.26-12.02
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