Mexico Week In Review: 11.05-11.11

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 11.05-11.11
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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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GOV'T AGREES TO EXTRADITE FORMER GOVERNOR TO U.S.

Mexico's government announced that it has agreed to extradite a
former state governor to the United States to face charges he helped
traffickers ship drugs to the U.S. market. Mario Villanueva, who was
governor of the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo from 1993 to 1996,
served six years in prison in Mexico for money laundering but was
cleared in this country of drug trafficking and organized crime
charges. He was released from prison in June after finishing his
sentence but was immediately re-apprehended on the extradition
request. The U.S. alleges that Villanueva offered aid or protection
to traffickers who smuggled 200 tons of cocaine into the United
States. Prosecutors said Villanueva received $500,000 for each of
several shipments he aided.

While other former Mexican governors have been suspected of having
links to the drug trade, Villanueva would be the first one ever
extradited to the United States. Defense lawyer Horacio Garcia said
authorities had notified Villanueva - who is currently being held at
a Mexico City prison - that the Foreign Relations Department had
decided to approve the extradition. In a press statement, the
department said Villanueva has 15 days to appeal the decision, and
Garcia said he plans to do so. Villanueva claims that the U.S.
charges are essentially the same ones he has already faced - and been
acquitted of - in Mexico. He contends his extradition would subject
him to being tried twice for the same offense. President Felipe
Calderón has shown greater willingness to extradite drug suspects to
the U.S. since taking office in December.

Source: Associated Press: 11/07
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'POORER THAN WE THOUGHT'; FLOODS BARE ECONOMIC DIVIDE

Roofs rot underwater, stretched out by the thousands over miles and
miles. But it is the roofs jutting just above the brown, stinking
floodwaters that truly make the heart ache. Those roofs are makeshift
homes now, refuges to weary men, women and children too scared to
leave behind what little they have. The streets below are liquid
highways clotted with dugout canoes, but the people up on the roofs
and in the fetid second-story rooms just watch them go past. "They'd
take everything if I weren't here," Manuel Vazquez said as he clung
to a railing above his waterlogged Villahermosa home. "I'm resigned
to staying here." When the Grijalva River turned vicious over the
weekend, when it slipped over its banks and ran wild across the state
of Tabasco, its brown waters exposed a socioeconomic divide far
deeper than its channel. The flood that President Felipe Calderon
called "one of the worst natural disasters in Mexican history"
swallowed a place called Gaviotas Sur. It has long been a place where
Villahermosa's poor hacked through flood-prone jungle to clear space
for cinder-block shacks and corrugated metal lean-tos.

The rich and middle class of this city live north of the river. The
rest live south of it, in Gaviotas Sur, or as some here call it, "the
Bronx." In much the same way as the ruined Lower 9th Ward in New
Orleans forced the United States to face its class divide after
Hurricane Katrina, Gaviotas Sur is exposing uncomfortable truths in
this boggy Gulf of Mexico state. "The message is that we are poorer
than we thought," said Raul Abreu Lastra, a native of Tabasco and
founder of a Mexico City think tank, Fundacion Idea, which examines
poverty and education. "We have thousands of people living down by
the river who shouldn't be living there."

The perilous nature of life here crystallized last week. Torrential
rains battered Tabasco, swelling the rivers that crisscross Mexico's
most perpetually soggy state. By early Friday, the Grijalva, which
runs through downtown Villahermosa, and other rivers were cascading
over their banks and filling low-lying areas, such as Gaviotas Sur.
The homes of as many as 1 million people have been destroyed or
heavily damaged in the days since by floodwaters that rose as high as
19 feet. Water levels have subsided in many areas. Still, Gov. Andres
Granier estimated that the flooding has caused $4.7 billion in damage
to homes, banana fields and cattle ranches. The death toll has been
low -- three killed, 24 missing. But the widespread displacement and
misery rivals the worst of the natural disasters, including
hurricanes, that Mexicans have seen in years.

Tabasco is Mexico's fourth-poorest state, with 59 percent of the
population living below the poverty line, according to Mexico's
National Center for Policy Evaluation and Social Development. But the
river made the poverty less obvious, separating its day-to-day face
from people living in better conditions on the other side. For those
not willing to swim, the only way into Gaviotas Sur now is by boat.

Emma Alvarado Rodriguez flagged a ride on a boat donated by an oil
services company and pointed to the deepest corner of Gaviotas Sur.
She had been coaxed out of her home by Mexican military crews over
the weekend. On Monday, she took a canoe and made it up to her roof
line, only to be startled by what she said was a tlacuache, an
opossumlike marsupial that plays a role in many indigenous legends.
Terrified, she jumped into her canoe and left. On Tuesday, she tried
to make it back with her two sons. The oil company boat passed over
streets that had buckled under the force of the water, leaving slabs
of asphalt tilted toward the sky, forming mini-waterfalls on city
streets. The stench of rotting animal carcasses was in the air; sun
beating down on spilled oil made murky rainbows in the water. Her
ears were assaulted by the whines and howls of stranded dogs, some
left tied to posts and struggling to keep their mouths and noses
above water. "I still can't believe it," she said.

Source: Chicago Tribune: 11/08
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FOOD COSTS CAN'T BE REINED IN SAYS CENTRAL BANK

Mexico's central bank Governor Guillermo Ortiz said policy makers can
do little to stem rising food prices, and future interest-rate
decisions will focus on stopping the spread of inflation to wages and
other costs. Increases in the price of wheat, milk and other food
items pushed Mexico's inflation rate above the bank's 2 percent to 4
percent target band in eight of the past 12 months. The five- member
board led by Ortiz unexpectedly raised the benchmark interest rate on
Oct. 26 to 7.5 percent from 7.25 percent, the second increase this
year. "There's little central banks around the world can do to
prevent food prices from rising," Ortiz, 59, said in an interview in
Miami. "But we can react to avoid second- order effects."

Banco de Mexico said in a report last week that inflation will
probably climb to as high as 4.5 percent during the second and third
quarters of 2008 because of food costs and new taxes lawmakers
approved in September. The report added it would take about two years
for the inflation rate to fall to around the central bank's goal of 3
percent. Ortiz said rising food prices so far haven't spread to other
prices in the economy, and the central will stay "vigilant." "If in
Mexico one excludes food and energy from the inflation index, to make
it comparable to the U.S., inflation is around 3 percent," Ortiz
said. "The entire inflationary jump of the last two years comes from
food."

Ortiz, who as finance minister in the late 1990s helped Mexico emerge
from a currency devaluation that bankrupted local banks, said the
biggest threat to Mexico's economy would be a U.S. recession caused
by a decline in home values and sales. He told a conference of Latin
American bankers he is "worried" because he still doesn't see signs
that the U.S. subprime market slump is about to end. "Crises bottom
when you have sufficiently low prices so that you have interested
buyers on the other side," Ortiz said in the interview at the
Intercontinental Hotel in Miami. "I don't see this process concluding
in the near future." He said it's too early to assess whether
Citigroup Inc. and other U.S. banks that have subsidiaries in Mexico
and in the region will curtail Latin American lending to make up for
subprime debt writedowns. Citigroup runs Mexico's second largest
bank, Grupo Financiero Banamex SA.

Source: Bloomberg: 11/05
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BORDER NEWS I: GOP PUSH FOR MONEY FOR US-MEXICO FENCE

Republicans cried foul after Democrats cut money for a fence along
the U.S.-Mexico border from a defense-spending bill. The $3 billion
in fence money, aimed at seizing "operational control" over the
southern border, is likely to pass later in the year as part the
Homeland Security Department's spending bill. The money would pay for
additional Border Patrol agents, vehicle barriers, border fencing and
observation towers. It also would be used to pursue immigrants who
had entered the United States legally but overstayed their visas.

The border security money was included in Bush's broader immigration
bill that collapsed in June. It was to be financed by fines and fees
on illegal immigrants. After that measure fell apart, Republicans
moved to attach the border security plan to the homeland security
measure and succeeded by an 89-1 vote in July. That vote was so
impressive that it became clear that Bush's promised veto of
Democrats' homeland security budget would be easily overridden by
Republicans eager to demonstrate toughness on immigration. That led
Senate Republicans to add the fence money to the defense-spending
bill in September.

Democrats stripped the money from the defense bill at a House-Senate
negotiating committee leading to an outcry among Republicans. "It is
clear across the country that the American people want to secure our
borders first," said Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C. "They want to
enforce our laws. And this really is an amazing thing that's happened
today." The White House has signaled Bush will accept the additional
$3 billion, even though it also exceeds his budget. The border fence
idea was the GOP's chief immigration initiative of last year, pushed
hard by House conservatives as an alternative to the Senate's
immigration bill.

Source: Associated Press: 11/07
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BORDER NEWS II: MIGRANT DEATHS MARKED

In El Paso, Texas, about 30 activists marked Day of the Dead on Nov.
1 by hanging 450 white wooden crosses on the border fence along the
American Canal, where at least 15 people drowned this year trying to
enter the US. Some crosses held the names of dead migrants, while
others were blank to represent those who have not been identified.
The event was organized by the Border Network for Human Rights, an El
Paso-based grassroots group that keeps track of migrant deaths.
According to the Border Network, 371 migrants died this year on the
US-Mexico border, including 25 in El Paso and New Mexico. Border
Patrol officials in El Paso recorded 27 deaths in this sector.

Later in the evening on Nov. 1, community members gathered at the
Chamizal National Memorial for a candlelight vigil in the memory of
migrants who died. "This is the day that we mourn our dead and demand
a change in the policies that caused those deaths," said Fernando
Garcia, executive director of the Border Network. Garcia pointed out
that migrant deaths increased after 1993, when new border policies
forced migrants away from urban areas into more remote and riskier
crossing areas. The crosses were scheduled to stay up until Nov. 3.

The Human Rights Coalition, an Arizona immigrant rights group,
documented 237 deaths along the Arizona-Mexico border between Oct. 1,
2006 and Sept. 30, 2007. The figures exceed the previous fiscal year,
when 205 bodies were recovered. The totals represent the number of
deaths reported by coroners in Pima, Yuma and Cochise counties over
the federal fiscal year. At least 51 of the migrants who died in
Arizona were women. The Human Rights Coalition compiled the data with
the help of Arizona authorities, multiple foreign consulates and the
Binational Migration Institute. The Border Patrol reported 186
migrant deaths in Arizona through August of this year.

Source: Immigration News Briefs: 11/04
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OAXACA: ANNIVERSARY PROTESTS

State and municipal police arrested some 20 people on Nov. 2 in
Oaxaca city, the capital of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca,
during protests marking one year since federal security forces ended
militant strikes and occupations there. In 2006 strikers from Section
22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) and community
activists in the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO)
occupied most of downtown Oaxaca and paralyzed the state government
for five months. Thousands of Federal Preventive Police (PFP) agents
took control of the city on Oct. 29, 2006, two days after an outbreak
of violence that left three people dead, including US independent
journalist Brad Will.

This year APPO supporters marched to the Cinco Senores crossroads,
near the Benito Juarez Autonomous University of Oaxaca, and started
to construct barricades from rocks, a tractor trailer and a milk
truck at Universidad and Ferrocarril Avenues and Eduardo Vasconcelos
Boulevard. Police agents with riot equipment and firearms arrived at
7 am and drove back the protesters. Some activists were arrested,
along with several passersby. Two people from alternative
media--Roman Lopez, a camera person for Kaos en la Red, and Abel
Sanchez Campos, an announcer for Radio Calenda--were detained
briefly. Painter Niceforo Urbieta, who was imprisoned in the 1970s as
a supporter of the rebel Union of the People, was also arrested.
State governance undersecretary Joaquin Rodriguez Palacios later told
relatives and lawyers for the detained that the state was holding 17
people for "administrative faults" but would release them shortly.

The protest commemorated the anniversary of what activists call the
"Victory of All Saints"; on Nov. 2, 2006, strikers and supporters had
forced PFP agents to withdraw from the area around the university,
whose radio station was the main outlet for the APPO. The protest
this year was also part of traditional Day of the Dead observances on
Nov. 1 and Nov. 2; activists were commemorating 27 strikers and
supporters they said were killed in 2006 by police agents and
paramilitaries.

Source: Weekly News Update- Nicaragua Solidarity Network Of Greater
New York: 11/04

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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: 11.05-11.11
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