TOP BORDER NEWS OF THE DAY
by the Frontera NorteSur staff
Thurs., April 30: Hunger Strike Against Sierra Blanca Continues
Juarez's City councillor and president of the Green Ecologist Party, Jose Luis Rodriguez Chávez denounced the "policy of lies" used by the Texan Governor George Bush and the apathy of the Mexican Government in the Sierra Blanca issue.
Rodriguez Chávez, started a hunger strike two weeks ago, to protest against the project located about 16 miles from the border at Sierra Blanca.
Source: El Diario
Wed., April 29: City Tries to Control Street Commerce
The city of Juárez announced a project to regulate "informal" commerce Tuesday, and is now seeking to achieve a consensus on it with business organizations.
The proposal would charge the city's Commerce Directorate to "watch, control and inspect the behavior of commercial activity," according to El Diario.
Officials of the National Chamber of Commerce (Camaco) spoke out against the proposed changes. They favor unreliable people and harm established commerce, according to Camaco vice-president José Luis García. A provision of the proposed regulations would include the participation of "moral persons" in street vending. Camaco would prefer companies participate in street vending, according to the vice-president .
Camaco is not displeased with the street vendors, Luis García said, but with municipal policies that harm established businesses.
Source: El Diario
Tues., April 28: Almost Half of Police Use Their Own Guns
The Directorate of Police only provides firearms for 60 percent of its forces, while the other 40 percent use their own weapons, Juárez director general of police José Luis Reygadas Seyffert told El Diario Monday.
Those who use their own firearms do not contribute their personal weapons to the force for fear they will not get them back if they leave, Reygadas Seyffert told the paper. He was responding to an effort by the Mexican military to prevent police from using high-caliber weapons reserved for Army and Navy use.
The police armory in Juárez contains 680 side arms and 300 long arms, which could provide weapons for all officers if used in three shifts, but with agents working for 12 hour shifts, it is impossible to to do so, according to Reygadas Seyffert.
He expects to receive 420 new firearms, with which he can equip all his personnel, Reygadas Seyffert told the newspaper.
Source: El Diario
Mon., April 27: Opening of Book Fair Draws Crowds
"An unusual success for a city in which reading is not (like the nightlife) a high-priority pastime," is what El Diario called crowds of almost 2,000 visiting the fourth Book Fair of the National Instititute of Anthropology and History (IV Feria del Libro INAH) in Juárez Saturday and Sunday.
The 1998 fair is a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Don Juan de Oñate's journey up the Camino Real from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Author Humberto Payán, of Chihuahua, presenting his book "Oñate, Conqueror of New Mexico," is among 60 publishers offering texts, periodicals, informative discs, videos and other resources to fair goers.
Other features of the fair include academic forums on Apaches, Comanches, and other northern tribes, a tribute to Mexican story-songs called corridos, with participants from northern Mexican states and the southwestern United States, a binational librarians' meeting and a forum on border crossings between Mexico and the United States.
Source: El Diario
Fri., April 24: More Polling Places Approved for Next Election
The organization in charge of elections in Chihuhua Thursday approved 79 special polling places for the next election, in an agreement called "illegal" by the National Action Party (PAN), and partially legal by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), according to El Diario.
The General Assembly of the State Electoral Institute (IEE) approved the change because of a "common feeling" that the "blind criteria" of the election laws did not determine conditions of distance and geography, IEE secretary general Jorge Neaves told El Diario.
The claims of the PRI and PAN are part of their electoral strategy, Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) representative Gabriel Contreras told the paper. The PAN was trying to reduce the number of special polling places in the rural and mountain areas, where the PRI captures more votes, according to Contreras.
Source: El Diario
Thurs., April 23: Toll Roads Planned
Municipal planners promoted a plan for privatized construction in Juárez of "Vías Urbanas de Cuota," urban roads that would require a previous payment from travellers, Wednesday in Mexico City, according to El Diario.
The Municipal Institute of Investigation and Planning (IMIP) projected three new sections of road adding more than 30 kilometers and requiring a $310 million investment, the paper said.
The new roads would use a pre-paid "smart card" to measure travel and automatically deduct the correct amount, according to José María Fernández, person in charge of the project for the IMIP. It would be the first use of such a system in Mexico, although models were already funcitoning in California and on the east coast of the United States, he told El Diario.
The project would facilitate transit in Juárez, help the economic potential of the city, and reduce pollution from cars on crowded roads, according to María Fernández. It would not take public resources to construct, and after a predetermined period to recoup private investment, the roads would become property of the city, he said.
City officials were promoting the project at an event in Mexico City organized by la Cámara Mexicana de la Industria de la Construcción, the Mexican national chamber of commerce, to bring national and international investors into urban projects throughout the country, according to El Diario.
Source: El Diario
Wed., April 22: Women Question Governor on Violence
Chihuahua Gov. Francisco Barrio Terrazas encountered a group of family members of murdered women and members of the Independent Committee on Human Rights in Chihuahua while leaving an official forum Tuesday, and they questioned him on his handling of the crimes, according to El Diario.
"Why the ineptitude and the overlapping of the authorities in these cases?" Judith Galarza Campos, representative of the committee, asked Barrio Terrazas. The authorities' descriptions of the murdered women as prostitutes or drug addicts so that the public does not demand more action was also intolerable, Galarza Campos told the paper.
The governor was visibly annoyed and engaged in a tense discussion with Galarza Campos when she tried to ask for more economic resources to investigate the disappearances and murders, according to the paper. Already this year seven women have disappeared, bringing the total to 114 since 1993, Galarza Campos told El Diario.
The governor was willing to meet privately with relatives of the disappeared, according to an official press release, but not on the sidewalk where he encountered the group Tuesday morning.
"It is necessary to make a formal meeting and not in the sidewalk," the press release said.
"We have already had many closed talks," Galarza Campos told El Diario.
Source: El Diario
Tues., April 21: Grieving Mother Weeps Before Attorney General
The mother of a young woman missing since Friday implored authorities to look for her daughter while on her knees during a meeting between Chihuahua state Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez and women's groups Monday, according to El Diario.
It was "one of the most dramatic moments" of the meeting, in which Chávez Chávez also announced that his office will be calling in two experts to investigate the series of disappearances and murders of young women in Juárez, the paper said.
"To know a different point of view," was the purpose of bringing in the criminologists, who he did not name, according to Chávez Chávez.
"Surely he will contribute elements to allow us to advance quickly in the investigations, and that is the idea," Chávez Chávez told the meeting, while also praising the efficency of investigators currently working on the case.
The mother of María Sagrario González Flores, 17, a maquila worker who has been missing since Friday, pleaded with the Attorney General to look for and find her daughter, according to El Diario.
"She requests justice, and first of all they have the right, that does not go away, to make a case, even though they are humble people," Mujeres por Juárez president Victoria Caraveo told the paper. Other group members called for action on the part of the owners of the maquila factories at which many of the women worked and a stop to the accusations of "double lives" they said authorities often described victims as leading, El Diario said.
Source: El Diario
More on crimes against women in Juárez.
Mon., April 20: Seven Seek PRI Nomination for Mayor
Seven aspirants Sunday presented themselves as candidates for the nomination of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for the Municipal Presidency, akin to the mayorship, of Juárez, according to El Diario.
Former federal representative Miguel Lucero Palma, ex-president of the Chambers of Commerce and Construction José Eleno Villalba Salas, the ex-municipal director of Public Transportation Andrés Carbajal Casas, former professor and teacher Brígido Hernández Ojeda, Héctor Chacón Alderete, another former federal representative, Héctor González Moncken, and Jorge Ignacio Olivares Romero registered as pre-candidates with the Municipal Commission for the Development of the Internal Process of the PRI, the paper said.
Source: El Diario
Fri., April 17: City Councilor Starts Hunger Strike
Juárez City Councilor and member of the Partido Verdé Ecologico de Mexico, the Mexican Green party, José Luis Rodríguez Chávez started a hunger strike Thursday.
Rodríguez got temporary permission to be absent from his office for 90 days, in his place city councilor Vanesa Karina Espejo Chávez will substitute for him, according to El Diario.
Rodríguez Chavez started the strike at the Córdova international bridge, to protest against the establishment of a nuclear waste disposal site in Sierra Blanca, Texas, about 16 miles from the Mexican border, according to El Diario.
Source: El Diario
Thurs., April 16: Migration Operatives in Maquilas
In next days the National Institute of Migration (INM) will develop a series of operatives with the purpose of detecting foreigners working illegally in Mexico, and to make owners of transportation lines aware of the risk of transporting undocumented passengers, according to Ricardo Vázquez Santiesteban, regional delegate of the INM.
Delegates verified and discussed the performance of the INM and how it could be more effective in its monitoring actions, during the state meeting that took place at the capital Tuesday, explained Vázquez Santiesteban.
INM delegates also analyzed an increase in the number FM3 forms, the permits to foreigners who work in Mexico. In the same token, the delegates agreed to initiate an operaton to inspect that foreigners working in assembly plants have correct documentation.
Source: El Diario
Wed., April 15: Man and his son kidnapped in Palomas
A man and his son, 13, from Bachíniva, Chihuahua, were kidnapped April 8 in the town of Palomas, NM only the minor has been released, according to El Diario.
State police authorities suspect that Octavio Aragonés Bojórquez has been assassinated, since they found blood traces and gun caps in the place were they were kept in captivity. Police agents believe that the man had a "debt" with drug dealers.
On April 4, Alfredo Aragonés, his friend Arnaldo Coss Solís and his son Alfredo Aragonés, were outside the hotel San Carlos in Palomas. Two men driving a Dodge Ram van of recent model, white with a blue strip, took Alfredo and his son to a distant place outside Palomas.
In there, one of the individuals threaten to kill his father if he did not give them their money. Alfredo, the son was also threaten, but later they left him leave.
The minor presented the denounce before the Public Ministry, according to El Diario. State police agents visited the place where father and his son were kept in captivity, but did not find his father.
Police authorities have knowledge that one of the kidnappers has his address in Silver City, NM according to El Diario.
Source: El Diario
Tues., April 14: Red Balance Increases
The "red balance" (saldo rojo) of deaths in Chihuahua already has surpassed the number for the same period in 1997during the week leading up to Easter, the traditional first week of vacation in Mexico, the chief of the State Unity of Civil Protection, Oscar Martín Naciff, told El Diario.
In the week before Monday, 26 people died this year, compared to 17 in 1997.
The statistics include highway deaths and drownings, but not deaths from crimes, such as murder, Naciff said.
Warning signs on the exits of highways, where the Federal Highway Police, the Red Cross, emergency clubs and municpal police joined together, did not work, Naciff said.
"They have served us to shorten the time of responding and arriving to the sites of the accident or problems in which passers-by were involved, but in the results with reduction of wrecks, they have not had influence," Naciff told El Diario.
Source: El Diario
Mon., April 13: Permission to Work in Mexico Increases
In the last three years, permissions to foreigners that want to work in México has increased, reported the National Institute of Immigration (INM).
One of the reasons is the assembly plants or maquiladora industry expansion, people from U.S. and Canada come to Mexico to work or to consult for the 540 maquilas located in Juárez, said Ricardo Vázquez Santiesteban, regional INM delegate.
Some of the requierements to get a permission are to have a valid passport, photographs, fill format FM3, and make a payment. The permission is granted for a year, and can be renewed annually four more times.
Source: El Diario
Fri., April 10: No Open Election for PRI in Juárez
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) will not be holding elections open to both party members and sympathizers to pick candidates for the municipal presidencies in Juárez, Chihuahua and five more of the largest cities in the state, PRI state president Jorge E. Sandoval told El Diario yesterday.
The party will choose candidates in these cities by decision of the Political Council or by use of a convention, Sandoval told the paper.
PRI organizations in the other 60 municipalities of the state will hold open elections, in which non-party members can vote, to pick candidates for their municipal presidencies, according to El Diario. The municipal president is similar to a city mayor in the United States.
Source: El Diario
Thurs., April 9: Citizens Can Check Their Voter's Registration
Chihuahuan voters can check the accuracy of their registration to vote, after Municipal Electoral Assemblies throughout the state began exhibiting the documents Wednesday morning, according to El Diario.
Political parties can also inspect the copies of the list their representatives on the State Electoral Institute (IEE) delivered Wednesday.
Voters with incorrect or incomplete registration information can solicit rectification of that information before the Federal Register of Electors. They have from April 12 to April 25 to take this action, according to an IEE bulletin, El Diario reported.
Source: El Diario
Wed., April 8: 13 Dead on Chihuahuan Highways, Drivers Urged to Check Cars Before Traveling
Highway deaths reached 13 in Chihuahua through Monday, during the "vacation season" before Easter, and the Federal Highway Police urged travelers to check their cars for safety before leaving, El Diario reported Wednesday.
Travelers should check the brakes, lights, rims, windshield wipers, suspension and turn signals on their vehicles before leaving on holiday trips, police told El Diario. While traveling, travelers should use their seatbelts, avoid driving while drunk, respect the speed limits, drive no more than four hours at a time, try not to drive at night, bring emergency equipment and refrain from littering, police told the paper.
The Secretariat of Communications and Transportation was also carrying out a "preventive medicine" operation, called Delta 30, to check the physical and mental states of drivers, according to the paper.
Source: El Diario
Tues., April 7: Juárez Banks to Close Thursday and Friday
Wednesday will be the last day banks and stock brokers in Juárez will be open this week, according to El Diario.
Some banks inside shopping centers will remain open, however. Automated teller machines and Internet and other electronic banking services will also continue, the paper said.
The holiday comes during a week in which many Juárenses celebrate the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, and the events surrounding them. Bank workers got the days off in an agreement between instituitions represented in the National Commission of Banks and Values (Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores) and union representatives, according to El Diario.
Maquila workers are also expected not to work Thursday and Friday. Many offices of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), which provides health services, will also be closed, although hospital and emergency services will remain open, IMSS official Arturo Rubio Avita told El Diario.
Source: El Diario
Mon., April 6: US and Mexico Plan to Create Money Laundering Network in the Americas
For the first time, governments of Mexico and United States will present a bilateral initiative to the Summit of the Américas to start a "Unit of Financial Intelligence" against "money laundering," reported El Diario.
The summit will be in the middle of April in Santiago, Chile.
News of the initiative came as Gen. Barry McCaffrey, U.S. director of anti-drug programs, arrived in Mexico City to attend the Fifth Conference of the High Level Joint Contact Group (Grupo de Contacto de Alto Nivel, or GCAN). The group coordinates an antidrug strategy between the two nations, reported El Diario.
At the moment, authorities from Mexico and United States have a computerized system(software) which let them know names, accounts and banking states of individuals, companies, societies or institutions, that could be bound to illicit activities, according to the paper.
Mexico has never been in agreement with mechanisms of evaluation of this nature, commented Juan Rebolledo Goutm, Mexican undersecretary for North America and Europe. Gout wiill participate in the fifth meeting of GCAN, today, April 6 at Mexico City, according to El Diario.
Source: El Diario.
Fri., April 3: City Hall Declares War on 14 Night Clubs
In common agreement, city councillors of Juárez will petition to the State Department of the Interior to revoke the licenses of fourteen nocturnal centers.
According to inspectors of the Directorate of Commerce, these establishments have incurred serious violations.
Some of the violations included: operating outside schedule, making immoral acts, allowing minors inside the businesses, presenting or displaying pornographic videos, presenting nudity, and working without documentation.
Town Councillor Martha Adriana Durán expressed that the City Council agreement will benefit juarenses, and will avoid the entrance of minors to those places.
Source: El Diario
Thurs., April 2: Families Blockade Panamerican Highway
Residents from "Jardines del Aeropuerto" and "Eco 2000," blockaded the Panamerican Highway Wednesday, demanding a solution to alleged fraud of which they said they were the victims.
The highway blockade lasted for about 55 minutes, and caused confusion and problems to hundreds of travelers and transportation commerce, according to El Diario.
The residents, most of them teachers, accused the Federal Institution Fovissste of switching credits to the private bank even when their credit agreement was with Fovissste, said educator Fernando Fuentes.
There will be more similiar blockades during next week, the holy week break, if their demands are not heard, threatened Manuel Olivas leader of the National Agricole Workers UNTA.
Source: El Diario
Wed., April 1: Unscrupulous Businesses in Juárez
It is suspected that a pharmacy in Juárez owned by an EL Paso man is responsible for the selling of Rohypnol, known as the "date-rape" drug, according to El Paso Times.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohypnol pills were introduced into the United States during the past five years, according to charges unsealed Tuesday by federal investigators.
Authorities in Juárez claimed that the sale of the drug Rohypnol is being discontinued, published El Paso Times on March 26.
Rohypnol is the brand name for a sleeping pill often slipped into a drink or otherwise used to render a person unconcious and susceptible to assault.
Source: El Paso Times