By: Lee Siu Hin
June 1998
Sometimes I do wonder: isn't why is it that most people who live in Los Angeles know a lot about New York City 3000 miles to the east, or Vancouver 2000 miles north of LA, but almost know nothing about Tijuana, Mexico-just 150 miles south from here? Recently, I met an old friend from San Diego, she regularly goes to Tijuana for weekend shopping, tequila and gambling. I ask her: "From Tijuana to Matamoros over two thousand miles long US-Mexico border, do you know what really happens?"
"No, I really don't, but who cares?" she replied,
"You are wrong, we should! We have responsibility to know what happens on our border."
So I told her some facts and incidents-ask your self, do you know all of these?
INS's cleansing campaign against border migrants: INS militarization of the border received wide criticisms from many human right organizations. Anti-migrant operations after operations remind us that this is a "War" against our southern neighbor; such as "Operation Gatekeepers" in San Diego-Tijuana border, "Operation Rio Grande" in Brownsville-Matamoros border and "Operation Hold the Line" at El Paso-Juarez border.
INS officials praise these actions and say they help stop the flow of undocumented immigrants to the US and promise to increase the number of Border Patrol Agents -from more than 6,300 in 1997 to additional 1,000 agents by year the 2,001. But none of then actually admitted the facts of the hundreds of cases involving INS/Border Patrol/military brutality against migrants across the border.
The numerous human rights cases cited in recent Amnesty International report include the May 20 1997 killing of 18 year old Ezekiel Hernandez, an US citizen from Redford, Texas by a member of a US army Marine Patrol Cpl. Clemente Banuelos while he was engaged in a Covert surveillance operation near the border.
The 1,185 migrants who died between 1993 to 1996 attempting to cross the border-not even including ten more who died this month in southern Texas due to the record-breaking heat wave.
So what is the INS solution? Like CIA-set up a propaganda radio station! At El Paso, Texas, INS quietly funded KLAQ, FM-95.5 who advise immigrants from south of the borders to stay home (Mexico) to avoid disease. It became a joke from both countries, giving the station a nickname "Radio Migra"-which not going to work!
Drugs: The Government "War on Drugs" at southern border did little to stop the flows of narcotics into the country, from Tijuana to Juarez cartels expand as fast as Microsoft's Windows. In recent years, some adults use their children and maids to smuggle drugs and weapons across the border. In addition, it has been an open secret that federal agents and border police from the both countries are paid-off by the drug cartels to close their eyes on border drug trafficking. More alarmingly, some major US banks had been involved in drug money laundering. Rep. Maxine Waters recently disclosed the details on US Department of the Justice's investigation into America's biggest financial institution-Citibank, connections with the laundering tens of millions of dollars for Mexico's Juarez drug cartel and former Mexico President's brother Raul Salinas.
Covert campaigns against activists: The Federal Government also prosecutes people in the US. For many years, Pastor for Peace carried tens of tons of humanitarian aid to Cuba from the US to Mexico-an active challenge on US ban on Cuba. The government responded by sending hundreds of INS, FBI, CIA and DOJ agents with additional local polices, highway patrols and military to seal-off the border, confiscate their aid materials and arrest the activists one-by-one. In 1994 at Laredo, TX the INS agents confiscated a school bus driven by the Pastor for Peace activists, the bus was to be donated to a Cuban church but the US government considered it was a "military weapon". Passengers of the bus-most of them were senior citizens refused to leave and started a 40-days long hunger strike until the INS finally let them go. In 1996 the San Diego border was ordered to close on a weekend's mid-afternoon for few hours to prevent the Pastor for Peace activists from carrying aid materials to cross to Mexico.
And again I ask my friend: why US government could spend millions of dollars to against unarmed migrants and activists at the border when allowing most nitrous elements from the border to stay untouched? And why do some Californian Republicans vote to against immigrants but quietly bring thousands of Mexican workers to Imperial Valley to work temporarily at their corporate farms like slaves?
"Well.. I know what you mean" she replies,
"But there's still more.." I continue to tell her more stories:
Rapes and killings on the desert: For the past five years in Juarez, Chihuahuae, a killing spree targeted young female migrant workers took over a hundred lives in this mid-size NAFTA-border town. Although several Mexican killers have been arrested- the murders still continue. One such convicted killer was an Egyptian chemist Sharif-Sharif, he is a Juarez resident but according to the local press, he used to live in the US and had convicted twice of sexual assault in Florida during 80's. Many people believe serial killers from this country also are involved in the Juarez killings, but the possibility received little attentions from both sides of the border. Mexican human rights advocates concluded that the NAFTA did not increase respect for Mexicans or human rights awareness: "Women (migrant workers) have not become liberated, they just have a double workload". The Mexico's female migrant workers in American eyes will be always a cheap factory workers or disposable sex toy who they can trash day or night!
Environments you can trash: Five miles south of Sierra Blanca, the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority has already sunk $60 million into the project to plan to built a nuke trash can near US-Mexico border. Environmentalists from Mexico strongly oppose the proposed low-level radioactive waste dump, Siting the 1983 US-Mexico's La Paz Accord, which sought to prevent the border from becoming more polluted. Environmental groups are afraid the nuclear waste will contaminate the soil and underground water under the proposed dump-which will affect many Mexican and US border towns. "We will not permit the air, the water in our region to be contaminated with radioactive waste," said Richard Boren of the Environmental Alliance of the Bravo. "The border will not become a dumping ground for the US." Mexicans in Juarez accused the US and Texas government's, decision to built the waste site near the border nothing but environmental racism.
In Tijuana, the Hyundai assembly plant was found 260,000 tons of toxic waste illegally buried next door to two heavily populated communities and less than 100 yards from the Tijuana aquifer. Recently a group of girls from Juarez's elementary school, wearing white T-shirts and blue jeans, danced to a poem set to rap music in front of the US consulate at Juarez. The poem, called Mexico in Danger, stated: "Auxilio! Socorro!/Nos vamos a morir/Si ese basurero/se va a construir (Help! Help! We're going to die if they build that dump)."
"It terrible.so what should be done?" she asked, "Think globally, act locally! Always!" I answered, "Ask yourself, can you close your eyes when Mexico becomes America's corporate slave camp and toxic trash can. Or when we go to Wal-Mart to buy cheap goods, we are actually fatting corporate America, exploiting Mexicans and sweat shop labors all across the world?" I suggested to her that the next time she goes to Mexico, to not go to tourist spots, but go to visit factories, farms and activists from both countries, here's some suggest web sites:
The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR): http://www.nnirr.org/
SouthWest Organizing Project:
http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/feature/hitech/swopinfo.html
Weekly News Update on the Americas:
http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html
CORPORATE WATCH:
http://www.corpwatch.org/
Campaign for Labor Rights Home Page:
http://www.compugraph.com/clr/
"Steps by steps is important!", I added.
"Well.I totally agreed with you and I will think about it." She said. Finally the time is getting late and she need to drive back to San Diego.
KPFK reporter Siu Hin Lee, with John Martinez, Sheila Gibbons and several others will team up for the next several months to file series of in-depth cross border reports from San Diego-Tijuana to El Paso-Juarez. Focusing on hidden problems on border crossing and INS brutality, labor movements, environmental issues and drug trafficking-especially the little known killing spree which targeted young female migrant workers at Juarez that at least 138 had been killed so far.