Border College Fills US Nursing Jobs

Seizing on a US demand for nurses, some Mexican institutions of higher education are stepping up their training of new health care professionals. In Nuevo Laredo , for instance, the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas (UAT) is turning out more and more graduates for the US job market. Francicso Cadena Santos, UAT nursing faculty director, said 11 of his school's recent graduates are planning to work in New York soon.

"The only thing they are lacking is an accredited English class that a teacher from the Technological Institute of Monterrey will give them here," Cadena said. According to Cadena, a dozen UAT nursing graduates are already working in the United States- five in the neighboring city of Laredo , Texas , and seven others in San Diego , California .

Cadena said UAT graduates in the United States earn an initial wage of $35 dollars per-hour during the course of eight-hour work shifts. Cadena added that the Mexican nurses receive work visas and are eligible to bring their families too. The nursing school supervisor said more men are now attracted to the nursing profession. Three of the eleven new nurses that anticipate heading to New York are males, Cadena said. An ongoing shortage of US nurses is fueling a boom in the UAT nursing school's student enrollment. According to Cadena, the number of students enrolled in his school's nursing program shot up from 120 students to 750 students during the last three years.

Source: Enlineadirecta.info, August 28, 2006 . Article by Gaston Monge.

Woman Presidential Candidate Steps Up Campaign

Taking the offensive, female presidential candidate Patricia Mercado Castro completed a campaign swing through northern border cities in the state of Tamaulipas late last week. The only woman candidate in the Mexican presidential race, Mercado met with small groups of people and passed out leaflets in the cities of Matamoros , Rio Bravo and Reynosa . While campaigning on Mexico 's Cinco de Mayo holiday last Friday, Mercado, the candidate of the Alternative Social Democrat and Farmer party, spoke out on migration, organized crime, drug laws, international relations, and the heightening tensions in Mexico 's political landscape.

Mercado took swipes both at the administration of President Vicente Fox and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of rival candidate Roberto Madrazo for allegedly inflaming the political scene and whipping up a climate of fear in the weeks leading up to the July 2 elections. Speaking in Matamoros , Mercado called on all the presidential candidates to sign a non-aggression pact.

In Reynosa , the well-known feminist applauded the movement of Mexican migrants in the United States but lamented the spread of violent confrontations inside Mexico , including San Salvador Atenco in Mexico state, where a bloody clash between protestors and police last week left one 14-year-old youth dead and scores of people injured and arrested.

"While we celebrate today with Mexicans on the other side, we also cry for the dead in Atenco," Mercado said. "The citizenry is the only (force) that can mediate in this incendiary politics," Mercado added. "The political parties don't contribute anything and don't have the negotiating capacity to solve these differences."

On other matters, Mercado proposed a regional development strategy for North America , the free transit of people within the zone, and a new drug policy decriminalizes individual drug usage while channeling resources toward more effective law enforcement. After returning to Mexico City , Mercado declared May 6 she was in favor of decriminalizing marijuana use. She disputed claims that decriminalization will lead to more widespread drug abuse.

"We have to recognize that Mexico is already a consumer nation," Mercado said. "What we have to recognize is that we don't have any quality control." Mercado attacked US anti-drug policies, charging that they have led to more violence in Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Registering fourth in the latest presidential election polls, Mercado is focusing her campaign strategy on winning over the large number of undecided voters. The new Alternative Social Democrat and Farmer party's game plan is to win congressional seats, assure registration for the next round of elections and emerge as a pivotal player in the Mexican Congress where only a few votes could be decisive on sticky issues. Given a possible tightening race, especially between Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN) and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Good for All coalition, the goal is not a pipedream.

Back in Reynosa , meanwhile, unidentified members of Mercado's party said they were considering filing a political espionage complaint with the Federal Electoral Institute. Party sources were quoted as saying that members of the PRI and PAN parties showed up at a Mercado campaign event in Reynosa 's Hotel Mansion Real for the sole purpose of spying on Mercado and other candidates of the Alternative Social Democrat and Farmer party.

Sources: El Universal May 6, 2006 , articles by Paola Zarraga and the Notimex news agency. Enlineadirecta.com, May 6, 2006 . Article by Hugo Reyna. La Prensa ( Reynosa ), May 6, 2006 . Article by Jesus Rivera.

Transforming Salty Waters

Confronted with long-term water supply problems, the state of Texas is turning to the sea as a possible future source. The Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) recently announced it will construct a pilot desalinization plant this year on the Gulf of Mexico east of the border city of Brownsville . Expected to be in service by next August, the plant will be built to turn about 380,000 liters of salt water into fresh water every day. According to the TWDB, $1.3 million dollars have been appropriated for the experimental project.

Two years ago, Republican Governor Rick Perry recommended that Texas look at desalinization plants as one answer to drought. The Brownsville plant will be the first phase of a project that could result in the construction of at least 5 desalinization facilities on Texas ' Gulf Coast . Officials will monitor the results of the Brownsville experiment to gauge the economic costs of a water-saving desalinization strategy. TWDB official Jorge Arroyo said that Brownsville was selected as the site of the pilot project because of the Lower Rio Grande Valley 's dependence on the Rio Grande as a water source.

Stricken by drought earlier in the decade, the Valley was a focus of contention between Mexico and the United States over allocation of the Rio Grande 's water resources. Last year, Mexico paid off a long-standing Rio Grande water debt to the United States , but long-term water shortages in uncertain climatic conditions are encouraging examinations of new, possible water sources like the Gulf of Mexico .

Source: La Jornada/Notimex, April 21, 2006 .

Sand, Surf and Sex

Anticipating an avalanche of visitors to state beaches during the next two weeks, Tamaulipas health state authorities began distributing tens of thousands of free condoms on Saturday, April 8. The condom distribution will take place mainly at information modules operated by the Tamaulipas State Health Ministry at the popular Miramar , Bagdad and La Pesca beaches. More than one million people are expected to jam Tamaulipas beaches during the Easter holiday season.

Gerardo Flores Sanchez, state AIDS program coordinator, said the purpose of the condom giveaway was to prevent the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases during the vacation period. According to Flores , trained personnel will be present at the distribution points to explain the proper use of condoms to interested persons.

The condom giveaway has already drawn its share of critics. Francisco Joel Rodriguez Dominguez, a representative of the National Parents Union, sharply criticized the Health Ministry's program. "They are promoting loose behavior on the beaches of Tamaulipas, turning them into sex paradises when the beaches should be places of fun for families," Rodriguez said. But Flores justified the condom distribution as a sober public health program. "It is serious work and not about distributing condoms as if they were popcorn or sales flyers," Flores said.

Alfonso de Leon Perales, a member of the conservative National Action Party and the secretary of the health commission of the Tamaulipas state legislature, also defended the condom program. Denying it was meant to promote promiscuity, the congressman called the giveaway a “healthy measure” to protect public health.

Source: enlineadirecta.info, April 8 and 9, 2006. Articles by Roberto Aguilar Grimaldo and Jesus Hernandez Garcia.

Safe Mexico Program Fails to Curb Violence

Being a journalist, cop or teenage bride can be risky business in the border city of Nuevo Laredo , Tamaulipas. On Friday morning, March 10, Ramiro Tellez Contreras, the director of the command and control center (C-4) of the Tamaulipas public security council in Nuevo Laredo , was gunned down outside his home in a publicly-built housing project. Less than one hour later, Tellez died at a hospital in the presence of his young daughter. The C-4 complex Tellez supervised is in charge of maintaining the street cameras set up to monitor criminal activity on public streets.

A veteran of police work, Tellez also worked a second job as a radio host for station EXA 95.7 FM. A member of the Union of Democratic Journalists, he was the second Mexican journalist to be murdered in as many days. On Thursday, March 9, writer and photographer Jaime Olvera Bravo was shot to death in front of his son in La Piedad, Michoacan, a state which like Tamaulipas is confronted with an escalating wave of violence connected power struggles over control of the illegal drug export market. In 2005, another Nuevo Laredo radio journalist, Guadalupe Garcia, was murdered by an assassin suspected of having ties to organized crime. In January 2006, reporter Jaime Orozco Tey was critically wounded in a gun and grenade attack on the El Manana newspaper offices.

Ramiro Tellez's slaying was just one of many that have visited Nuevo Laredo in recent days. In early March, authorities recovered the tortured bodies of 23-year-old Ruben Estrada de la Cruz and 20-year-old Monica Muro. In another incident, state police commander Victor Berrones and state police agent Norberto Vazquez Eguia were killed in an ambush that also left two other officers wounded.

Early on the morning of March 4, three teenage friends who had just left the Eclipse night club were shot one block from International Brige 1 that connects Nuevo Laredo with Laredo , Texas . Roberto Moreno Cardenas and Jose Carlos Ruiz were wounded in the attack, but 17-year-old Natalia Berlanga Barraza, who was celebrating her recent wedding, died. The teenager had consummated her marriage to 20-year-old Marco Polo Arredondo just days prior to her untimely death. An emotionally devastated Arredondo was then forced to spend his honeymoon identifying his bride's body at the San Jose Hospital .

Since January 1, at least 46 people, many of them very young, have been murdered in Nuevo Laredo , a city of about 500,000 people. The death toll is staggering in light of the Fox Administration's Safe Mexico program in the city. Established last June, Safe Mexico deployed federal troops and police to supposedly curb narco-related violence. Nine months later, a growing number of Nuevo Laredo residents judge the anti-organized crime campaign an outright failure.

In fact, a case could be made that Nuevo Laredo has grown more violent since the implementation of Safe Mexico. The border city recorded the murders of 182 people in 2005, a dramatic leap from the 68 murders documented in 2004 by the Reynosa-based Center for Border Studies and the Promotion of Human Rights. The figures don't include people who were abducted by suspected drug traffickers and never seen again. If current murder rates continue, 2006 will be an even more violent year than 2005.

Pressed by reporters after the Tellez murder, Nuevo Laredo Mayor Daniel Pena vowed that "we're going to do all we can do that is within our power" to turn back the violent tide. According to Tamaulipas Governor Eugenio Hernandez, the federal Public Security Ministry is reviewing the Safe Mexico program and could announce revisions and the allocation of additional resources in the coming days.

Betty Flores, the mayor of neighboring Laredo , recently commented that authorities on both sides of the border are working hard to cut down on the violence in Nuevo Laredo . Declining to give details, Flores said, "I have the privilege of being informed about how the actions will unfold, but it is something that cannot be publicized."

Mayor Flores added that the violence in Nuevo Laredo is "nothing" compared to cities in the United States like Baltimore , Maryland , which is somewhat larger than Nuevo Laredo and where at least 268 people were murdered in 2005. What Mayor Flores did not mention was that many of the Baltimore murders and other high-crime cities like Oakland , California , were linked to the drug trade. Indeed, a long bloody trail stretches along the coke, reefer and poppy routes from South America to Mexico to North America 's big cities.

While Laredo 's mayor is downplaying the violence on her border, officials from Mexico 's Federal Electoral Institute are not-at least privately. A recently-written document from the agency charged with organizing the July 2006 elections warned that voting in at least 8 precincts in Nuevo Laredo could be at risk if narco-violence and gang activity are not controlled.

Sources: Proceso/Apro, March 11, 2006 . Article by Gabriela Hernandez. El Universal/EFE/Notimex, March 7, 9 and 10, 2006. Univision, March 10, 2006 . Tiempo de Laredo, March 7, 2006 . Article by Miguel Timoshenkov. March 5, 2006 , Laredo Morning Times. Article by Vicente Rangel and Celina Alvarado. enlineadirecta.info, February 28 and March 4, 2006 . Articles by Nora Alicia Hernandez and editorial staff. WJZ.com, December 30, 2005 . derechoshumanosenmexico.org

Armed Commando Attacks Newspaper

Nuevo Laredo 's El Mañana daily newspaper is vowing to continue publishing in the aftermath of an armed attack. On Monday evening, February 6, at least three masked gunmen burst into the newsroom located in Tamaulipas state across the border from Texas and began firing AK-47 rifles and AR-15 rifles. Thirty or more shots were fired and one grenade set off before the attackers, shouting insults, escaped in two vehicles along with other presumed accomplices. More than two dozen reporters and other workers who were in the newsroom when the assault happened quickly hit the ground. Veteran reporter Jaime Orozco Tey, 40, was hit in the lungs and back several times by bullets.

Orozco was transported to the hospital, where he remained in critical condition. Another reporter, Osvaldo Rodriguez, was struck by flying glass. Orozco serves as the vice-president of the Nuevo Laredo Journalists Association. He is the father of two young daughters.

El Mañana's editorial staff called the attack "another page in the book of violence that is becoming terrorism." Said the daily, "It's another attack against a newspaper that only seeks to inform, not hurt anyone."

The El Mañana attack was yet another violent incident linked to organized crime that involves the growing use of grenades. In recent weeks, attackers also have utilized grenades against suspected rivals and police in the states of Michoacan and Guerrero. On the same evening of the El Mañana attack, attackers exploded two grenades at the home of Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, police chief Hector Omar Maganda, injuring a guard.

Michoacan and Guerrero are the southern front in a drug cartel war for the control of drug import and export routes stretching from the Pacific Coast north to the US-Mexico border. Although grenades are reserved for the exclusive use of the Mexican armed forces, no government officials have publicly explained where and how the cartels are obtaining their grenades.

Despite military and police deployments in Michoacan, Guerrero and Tamaulipas under the federal goverment's Safe Mexico anti-organized crime operation, gangland violence has been on the rise since January 1. In Nuevo Laredo , for instance, 25 people have been murdered since the beginning of this year. On the same day El Mañana was assaulted, two other suspected murder victims were found dead in Nuevo Laredo .

The El Mañana attack marked a brazen escalation in a violent campaign against the press in Tamaulipas state. Reynosa 's Center for Border Studies and the Promotion of Human Rights has documented 46 attacks from November 1999 to May 2005 against Tamaulipas journalists, including verbal attacks, beatings with fists and baseball bats, shootings, car burnings, kidnappings, disappearances, and murder.

In 2004, El Mañana's editorial director, Roberto Javier Mora Garcia, was knifed to death in front of his home in a crime whose circumstances are still questioned. One of two men arrested for the homicide, a US citizen, was later murdered in a Tamaulipas state prison. Last year, radio journalist Guadalupe Garcia was shot outside the Nuevo Laredo station at which she worked. After struggling with her wounds for days, Garcia died in a hospital.

Just days prior to the attack on the El Mañana newsroom, the newspaper hosted a Nuevo Laredo conference about drug trafficking and self-censorship organized by the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Representatives of 40 border press outlets attended the meeting. In the wake of the shooting and greande attack, the IAPA demanded that President Fox take energetic measures to stem the violence.

The armed assault in Nuevo Laredo drew the condemnation of President Vicente Fox. Speaking in Sinaloa state, President Fox declared that organized crime would not bring the Mexican government and society to its knees and vowed to "redouble our force, redouble our efforts" against criminal activity. President Fox added the Federal Office of the Attorney General was taking over the investigation of the El Manana attack.

However, El Mañana's executive editor, Ramon Dario Cantu, earlier expressed skepticism about any one being held accountable for the assault on his newsroom. "What's the point of investigating?" Dario questioned. We know it was an assault by drug traffickers." Dario added the newspaper will tone down its coverage of drug trafficking to safeguard the lives of journalists and other employees.

In its editorial pages, El Mañana expressed some surprise at the attack, noting the newspaper already practiced self-censorship because of the atmosphere of impunity surrounding attacks against journalists. "Since the murder of Roberto Mora, we saw that the authorities were surpassed by organized crime and there were no guarantees for journalists," said El Mañana. The newspaper also used the occasion to call for new a new drug policy thaat focuses more on education and prevention and explores the legalization of "soft" drugs. In the meantime, El Manana noted the illegal drug export business surges ahead in Nuevo Laredo

"Six thousand trucks cross here every day and the North American authorities only physically check 50 or 60. That makes this plaza as important as Tijuana or Ciudad Juarez ," El Mañana said.

Sources: Enfoque Nacional, February 7, 2006. El Mañana, February 7and 8, 2006, articles by editiorial staff and Mario Hugo Rivera. Laredo Morning Times, February 7 and 8, 2006. Articles by Miguel Timoshenkov and Vicente Rangel. El Universal, February 7 and 8, 2006. Articles by Jose Luis Ruiz, editorial staff and the Notimex news agency. El Sur, February 7, 2006. Article by Brenda Escobar. Proceso, February 7, 2006. Article by Gabriela Hernandez