Category: Uncategorized

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

In the Rio Grande Valley, opposition to the for-profit immigration detention centers and to the Border Wall is growing. Some resistance is growing in this occupied territory.

A rally is scheduled at the Raymondville detention center on Saturday, August 11th at 5 pm. It is a public announcement that those who gathered 80 strong to protest there in June have not disappeared. In fact some will also speak against the detention center at the Willacy County Commissioners’ Court on Monday morning, two days later.

It seems a few sad Willacy County leaders, depressed about the declining economy, want to sell more of Raymondville’s future to the prison-industrial complex for a little more porridge. They propose to expand the present gloomy detention center by 50%. Can’t they propose a medical facility, a branch of a college, a brightly painted skate park, something nice? Why more dungeons?

Further resistance news

In opposition to the Border Wall, there will be a festival held in Mission on August 25th. (It’s at the La Lomita Mission nearby Pepe’s on the River at 5 p.m.) The community rally will be followed by an “ecumenical procession” to the Rio Grande. There will be free pontoon rides celebrating the river and a piñata shaped like a wall for the kids to break.

Also on August 25th, the “Hands across el Rio,” 1250 mile, 16 day protest against the Border Wall will begin in El Paso. It will work its way down the river to Brownsville and Boca Chica on September 8th and 9th.

I cell-phoned Jay Johnson-Castro of Del Rio — find his website at “Border Ambassadors” — and he updated me about how well “Hands” is coming together. He told me about an energetic Mexican congresswoman, Maria Dolores Gonzalez-Mendivil, who is organizing for the Laredo-area event. There really are hands across the river for friendship, compassion and cooperation, and against military walls.

More news

Last Wednesday, McAllen’s Hispanic Chamber of Commerce held a public forum against the Border Wall. The Monitor reported the meeting:

“Homeland Security is set to build 370 miles of border fence along the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of 2008, a significant portion of which has been slated for the Valley. Many politicians paint the barrier as a means of stemming illegal immigration. They also say a fence would help prevent terrorists from entering the country. But opposition to the plan has been fierce here in the Valley. McAllen’s Mayor Richard Cortez and others at Wednesday’s forum touched on economic, philosophical and human rights reasons not to build the fence.”

I phoned Jay Johnson-Castro of Del Rio who came down for that Hispanic Chamber event:

Author: How’d it go?

Johnson-Castro: It was a phenomenal meeting, with about 100 people. A variety of concerned groupings were vocal there: environmentalists, groups involved in the protection of immigrants, business people, the mayor’s office and some expert attorneys on constitutional law.
This meeting set the basis for a collective legal challenge to the wall. I found it very encouraging: this was not just talk but a call to action. And soon there will be a legal fund to keep things moving. A legal challenge is vitally important. As one attorney said, we must do something because there is a man on the loose with the ability and intent to break all of our laws and traditions, and that man is Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security.

Author: I know the press was there; I hope Washington listens.

Johnson-Castro: Well, Senator Cornyn had an assistant there, who got an earful. As you know he voted for the fence and now is helping to get money for it.

Author: Although he set himself up as a sort of “mediator” on the wall issue a few months ago, I think Cornyn is on Chertoff’s side. Anything else about the meeting?

Johnson-Castro: There were two exciting moments when shows of hands were called for. When it was asked how many thought we should allow the wall, no hands went up from anywhere in the room. And when there was call for hands on whether we should legally challenge the wall, it was clearly a hundred vigorously for the challenge and no one against it. I got a chance to push the “Hands across el Rio” project which will be starting in about two weeks. It will unite us as a border region.

Author: Yes, I know there is activity all along the border. I read about the Mexican congresswoman organizing in Nuevo Laredo.

Johnson-Castro: And the Valley should be proud too of the leadership it is showing.

Author: I call it a resistance movement.

Editor: And my goodness, if you’re down at the Valley Chamber of Commerce, don’t forget to call it a ‘professional’ resistance movement!

The body of Enrique Perea Quintanilla, publisher of the magazine Dos Caras, Una Verdad – or Two Faces, One Truth – was found Wednesday on a dirt road about 15 kilometers (10 miles) from Chihuahua City, said Eduardo Esparza, a spokesman for the state prosecutor’s office.

Media groups say Mexico is one of the most dangerous places in the Western Hemisphere to be a journalist, largely because of their reports on drug traffickers. Since 2004, 10 journalists have been killed, including Perea Quintanilla, and another has disappeared.

Police say organized crime behind journalist’s death in Mexico. OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ. Associated Press. MONTERREY, Mexico. See: special report from CPJ, Committee to Protect Journalists, Dread on the Border (Feb. 2006)

Dollars go South to purchase “food, clothing, and other basic needs.”

Mexico Remittances to Surge 20%, Central Bank Says (Update1)

Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) — Mexico will receive almost $24 billion in remittances from abroad this year, a 20 percent rise from a year ago, as the number of Mexicans working in the U.S. increases, said an official at the country’s central bank.
Jesus Cervantes, the Bank of Mexico’s director of economic measurement, said remittances will rise from $20.6 billion in 2005. The 2006 estimate is more than six times the $3.7 billion in remittances in 1995.

“We’re going to live with these increases for the next few years because for many Mexicans it’s very attractive to emigrate to the U.S.,” Cervantes said in a telephone interview.

An estimated 400,000 Mexican cross into the U.S. in search of higher paying jobs and many send money back to their families in transactions that for many years have averaged more than $300 each, Cervantes said.

The inflow of billions of dollars from Mexicans living abroad has helped keep the Mexican peso strong against the dollar and has driven consumption growth, said Alonso Cervera, an economist at Credit Suisse in New York.

The Mexican currency gained 5.5 percent to 10.85 pesos per dollar yesterday since it slipped to a low this year of 11.4806 pesos on June 19 amid concern that rising world interest rates would reduce demand for riskier emerging-market assets.

Private Consumption

Private demand rose 6.4 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the highest growth rate since the fourth quarter of 2000, in part because money received from abroad is used immediately to buy food, clothing and other basic needs, Cervera said.

“That money is not saved,” Cervera said. “That money is being spent and it’s one variable that has explained the pace of growth of private consumption.”

Unlike oil and export revenue, which can fluctuate with crude prices or can be affected by a slowdown in the U.S. economy, remittances have shown constant growth over the years, Cervera said. Unless the U.S. government takes drastic measures on immigration, such as deporting Mexicans already living and working in the U.S., the amounts will continue to grow, he said.

“The remittance story is a solid one for many years,” he said.

The Mexican government has encouraged competition among financial companies that provide services for sending money home, which has caused costs to drop by about a third, Cervantes said. In 1999, Mexicans paid an average of $28.50 to send home $300. The cost is now an average of $10 and will continue to drop as more Mexicans open bank accounts on both sides of the border, Cervantes said.

Some banks are offering free transfers of money for customers with bank accounts, he said.

“The big reduction in the cost of sending remittances already took place, but there’s still room for more reductions as new technologies are incorporated,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Thomas Black in Monterrey at tblack@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 10, 2006 11:14 EDT