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For the third time in a year, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez failed in her bid to repeal a 2003 state law that allows undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. 
The 2012 New Mexico State Legislature adjourned this past week without approving repeal legislation supported by Republican Martinez and sponsored by State Rep. Andy Nunez, a former Democrat from Hatch. Nunez represents a rural district in southern New Mexico’s Dona Ana County that has long depended on both documented and undocumented labor from Mexico. 

As the legislative session picked up stream in January, the New Mexico State House overwhelmingly passed Nunez’s HB 103 on a vote of 45-25. Democrats casting affirmative votes for repeal included Dona Ana County’s Joseph Cervantes, member of a prominent farming family. 

“It is necessary for the public peace, health and safety that this act take effect immediately,” Nunez’s bill stated when it was introduced.

But repeal boosters were soon stymied in the New Mexico State Senate, which instead voted 27 to 15 for a measure sponsored by Democrat Tim Jennings, who also represents a district in southeastern New Mexico where many immigrants work and live.  The Jennings bill, SB 235, would still have allowed undocumented residents to get driver’s licenses, but it imposed stricter residency requirements, anti-fraud verifications and fingerprinting for the first time. At the end of the session, both sides held their ground and  legislative death was the winner. Given the balance of immigration politics in the New Mexico State Legislature, the outcome jibed with pundits’ predictions that first-term Governor Martinez, who was unwilling to compromise on the issue, would get nowhere with her latest repeal effort. 

An Associated Press report published during the legislative session was widely quoted as proof of pro-repeal advocates’ contentions that the state driver license issuing system was rife with fraud and abuse, making it an easy channel  
for immigrant smugglers to acquire phony identification for people living outside New Mexico. 

A closer reading of the story revealed that the Associated Press estimated that about three percent of the driver’s licenses in question granted from 2003 to 2011, or 2,662 licenses, were issued to 10 or more people at 170 specific addresses, thus raising suspicions of fraud. Nonetheless, the press agency conceded that it did not have a smoking gun. 

“The licensing patterns found by the AP don’t conclusively prove fraud-tenant turnover in rental property, for example, could account for some licenses. And there can be legitimate reasons for multiple licenses issued at the same address” the story said, citing a case in which 56 licenses went to foreign military personnel stationed at Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo. 

The Associated Press piece did not delve into details on how the  97 percent of the licenses presumably acquired correctly by state residents were being used.  

On a broader note, the driver’s license issue continued to stir up a hornet’s nest in cyberspace, just as it had for much of 2011. Pro-repeal partisans laced many postings with politically-charged and/or outright racist language and symbolism . 
“The Democrats who refuse to change the law are catering to ILLEGALS and should be brought up on charges of treason against the United States,” fulminated one commentator on an Albuquerque commercial news site. “democRATS continue to pander to Illegals,” another posting thundered.  

A website called Legislators-for-illegals.com posted the names, addresses and pictures of anti-repeal lawmakers in the form of targets. It also depicted President Obama and Attorney General Holder dressed in stereotypical “Frito Bandito” Mexican clothing and tossed in pictures of chimpanzees and head-burying ostriches above the two officials. 

On the other hand, pro-driver’s license forces built up a coalition of about 50 immigrant, labor, community and religious organizations from across the state. Immigrant advocates rallied hundreds of people from 15 New Mexico counties, and lobbied legislators to oppose the repeal drive and support the Jennings bill. 

Besides supporting the ability of people who have worked for many years in this country to get to work or school and transport their families for routine and emergency needs, the coalition affirmed that licensing all drivers regardless of immigration status bolsters the public safety register and gets more people insured in a state long notorious for its high rate of uninsured motorists. 

“This is the only piece of legislation that takes serious steps against fraud while keeping all residents of New Mexico licensed and insured,” Marcela Diaz, coalition activist, said of the Jennings legislation. Diaz is also the  executive director of Somos un Pueblo Unido, a statewide immigrant and labor rights organization. 

Attracting national attention and support from civil rights and pro-immigrant organizations, the anti-repeal movement was likewise endorsed by the Santa Fe City Council, the Santa Fe County Commission and the Town of Taos Council. 

It remains to be seen if Governor Martinez or other repeal supporters will attempt to gain political traction with the driver’s license controversy in the 2012 elections, or whether the issue will finally fade and politicians focus on other pressing issues of concern to the voters. As Frontera NorteSur was going to press,  Governor Martinez had not yet issued a formal statement on the fate of repeal in the 2012 session of the New Mexico State Legislature.

Additional sources: Light of New Mexico, February 16, 2012. Article by Gwyneth Dolan.  Santa Fe New Mexican, February 16, 2012. Associated Press, January 25, 2012. Article by Barry Massey. Krqe.com, January 28 and February 16, 2012. KOB/Associated Press, February 8, 2012. 

Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University 
Las Cruces, New Mexico

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The bill – which was approved by the upper house or Senate in December with a vast majority and will now be debated by the Chamber of Deputies – aims to create a domestic gas trading system able to cap and cut carbon emissions.

But federal representatives of the north-eastern top-mining state of Coahuila, where 95 percent of Mexico’s coal reserves are found, will allegedly promote “modifications” to the law to help mining company based there.

“The intention is to avoid imposing taxes that can constitute a disadvantage to productive sectors such as coal mining,” read one email.

According to it, the governor of Coahuila Ruben Moreira Valdez is aware of the strategy, having stated during a press conference that jobs in the coal mining sector “must be protected”.

In its statement, Anonymous denounced the mining companies and unions, suggesting they are working together “to steal our minerals with a value over $200,000,000 and forcing our miners to work in extreme danger conditions”.

Read more: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/299704/20120216/anonymous-opmexico-opgreenrights-conspiracy-coal-mining.htm#ixzz1n49ijDmG

Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) talked to Lou Dobbs on The Fox Business Network about the release of a Mexican fugitive suspected of embezzling millions. Hector Hernandez Javier Villarreal was arrested in Tyler, Texas; and, after several government agencies got involved, he was released by an order from the State Department.

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Josefina Vazquez Mota, candidate of the ruling PAN, doesn’t hesitate to play the so-called gender card at chosen times. She trails the leader by a wide margin.

By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Mexico City – ”I will be the first woman president of Mexico.” Thus declared Josefina Vazquez Mota on the night this month when she was officially crowned the incumbent party’s candidate in upcoming national elections.

A former congresswoman and education minister, Vazquez Mota, 51, has eagerly embraced her historic position as Mexico’s first female presidential candidate for a major political party. In a contest where she trails the leader by a wide margin, she does not hesitate to play the so-called gender card at chosen moments.

In a meeting with foreign journalists last year, she said she was confident that traditionally machista Mexico was ready for a female leader.

“We have won many campaigns for many men. The moment has come to win campaigns for ourselves,” she said, grouping herself with Chile’s Michelle Bachelet and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff.

Yet it’s a fine line that Vazquez Mota must tread because she represents a party, National Action, or the PAN, that is very conservative on many of the social issues considered most important to women. In that same meeting with journalists, she made it clear that she hewed to the heavily Catholic PAN’s opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

“What a dilemma for feminism,” Elia Baltazar, the founder of a grass-roots advocacy group for journalists, said in an online forum about the newly minted candidate. “There is not a single line in her discourse that is committed to the many unresolved issues facing women in this country.”

Instead of pursuing an agenda of progressive women’s causes, Vazquez Mota will cast herself as a more traditional “everywoman” who appeals to homemakers and female working stiffs.

Her supporters hope that voters will find her comforting and reassuring at a particularly tumultuous time in Mexican history, when a bloody drug war waged by President Felipe Calderon, of the PAN, has killed more than 50,000 people in slightly more than five years.

Her background reinforces the more consoling image: One of seven siblings, she is married to her first boyfriend, someone she has known since she was 14. They have three daughters aged 17 to 24 (two named after the Virgin Mary) who seem to evince wholesomeness.

In a country where family relations are still revered, “she wants to show that she can take care of Mexicans the way she takes care of her family, that she can make them feel safe,” said Mexican political scientist Rodolfo Hernandez Guerrero, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Ultimately, it is not her sex that will prove her greatest obstacle to victory in the July 1 vote. She is saddled with the legacy of an increasingly unpopular government. The rival InstitutionalRevolutionary Party, or PRI, and its handsome candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, lead in the polls by a double-digit margin.

“This is not about gender,” PRI national chairman Pedro Joaquin Coldwell told reporters after Vazquez Mota’s nomination. “This is about continuity, and not wanting more of the same.”

The PRI ruled for seven decades with a heavy hand until losing the presidency in 2000 to the first PAN president, Vicente Fox. The PRI is intent on returning to the pinnacle of power.

It is just possible that the candidacy of a woman holds enough novelty that Vazquez Mota can portray herself as a real alternative to the PAN that has governed through two terms. Not an easy case to make, given her own participation in those governments.

Though she may often appear demure and forever adorned with a red-carpet smile, she also knows how to play rough-and-tumble politics, say both admirers and detractors.

“I have watched her negotiate with” members of all major political factions, including her own, Guadalupe Loaeza, a veteran social commentator most often associated with the left, wrote in a surprisingly laudatory column. “And never did I see her lose her head. Because she understands that they are adversaries, not enemies. She debates with a crushing diplomacy and, most important, she knows how to listen.”

Nor has Vazquez Mota escaped the scandals that dog many a politician in Mexico. Newspaper exposes claim that millions of pesos were diverted from the Social Development Ministry when she headed it in the first half of the 2000s, and funneled into PAN campaigns. (No formal charges ever came of the allegations, and she has not directly addressed the matter.)

Analysts say Vazquez Mota will have to fine-tune her campaign platform quickly to move beyond the short-on-specifics platitudes that dominated the internal PAN primary. And she will have to formulate a security policy confronting drug cartels that differs from Calderon’s much-criticized military strategy — while seeming to remain loyal to the party leadership.

Vazquez Mota has told interviewers that her decision early on to work as an economist and enter politics, instead of staying home to raise her children, was scandalous to her parents and extended family. Even today, she said, there is a strong current of machismo that demands more of women in any role they assume.

The toughest question she’s faced, she told El Universal newspaper this week, was “How are you going to command the army if you’re having menstrual cramps?”

“Or, they ask you if you have the courage to face crime,” she said. “My answer is that courage is not a matter of gender.”

She also says that her role as homemaker and mother keeps her “grounded” and “in touch with reality.” She used that notion to score points against Peña Nieto, who recently was unable to state the price of the ubiquitous tortilla, and then clumsily explained the omission by saying he was not “the señora of the house.”

“I am the señora of the house,” Vazquez Mota said. “Like so many señoras, without whom a home would not be a home.”

wilkinson@latimes.com

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Money laundering (Photo credit: @MSG)

Written by  Christopher Looft

AlterNet / By

The weird tale of Julian Assange just got weirder: the WikiLeaks founder will appear in cartoon form on the 500th episode of “The Simpsons,” airing today. According to reports, Assange recorded his voiceovers from “a secret location” over the summer, although since he is currently on house arrest in a British mansion, it’s not hard to imagine that said location was the horse stable (or the panic room).

The Simpsons has been running since 1989, the longest-airing scripted prime-time show in television history, and for Assange to appear on a milestone episode is a perfect capper to a powerful stint as a political and cultural force. Renowned for having a distinct liberal bent, “The Simpsons” was probably the first animated cartoon with an explicit political perspective since Looney Tunes was running war propaganda storylines in the 1940s. But in 15 years, the show has never had a political figure as controversial as Assange guest as him or herself. Oh sure, it’s had plenty of famous cameos—Hollywood icons like Ernest Borgnine and Elizabeth Taylor, cool musicians like Sonic Youth and 50 Cent, an abundance of stars from the sports world (in the early years), an abundance of stars from the cooking world (in the later years). Stephen Hawking and Stephen Jay Gould have repped for science, Jasper Johns for visual art, Amy Tan for novelists. But in a legacy of political relevance (and good humor) that wanes and waxes depending on the year (and collection of writers), Assange’s appearance signals a return to form, and perhaps the most dramatic political statement the show has ever made.

He is one of the most prominent political figures “The Simpsons” has ever scored. It’s not hard to imagine why: when the show portrays real people in politics (Nixon or Liddy, Clinton or Bush), it tends to be taking the piss out, and a politician would need a pretty solid notion of his or her importance to step into such a situation willingly. Case in point: the only elected American official ever to appear on an episode of “The Simpsons” as himself was Rudy Giuliani, in the 2007 episode “Stop or My Dog Will Shoot”—but his clip was pulled from the final cut after it was announced he would run for president in 2008. (That didn’t stop the show from using another actor to spoof him during the campaign.) In 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared, but only briefly, as a character welcoming the family to his country.

Even acknowledging the hazards, it’s curious that some of the politicians whose ideologies are more aligned with those of “The Simpsons” writers haven’t shown up. Al Gore has been portrayed plenty of times through the years for his deadpan style, his presidential run, and later, for his dedication to global warming awareness. But the only Gore who’s actually guest-voiced his own character on a Simpsons episode has been Vidal, in 2006’s “Moe’N’a Lisa,” when he spoofed his own novels (saying Burr was based on a commercial for Eskimo Pies).

Beyond those few, the majority of explicitly political people ever to have appeared on the Simpsons have been news anchors, pundits, or news-anchor-pundit-comedians: Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, Charlie Rose, Larry King, Dan Rather and, arguably, your boy Rupert Murdoch. Of all these men, Olbermann and Murdoch, arch-rivals to the death, run a close race as to whose appearance was funniest and most wry. In the case of Olbermann, he appears in Marge’s nightmare, naming her “The Worst Person in the World” for TiVoing through commercials. But Murdoch wins by a hair: having been taken down numerous times over the years by Simpsons writers — who can forget, “Fox News: not racist, but number one with racists!” He actually wrote his own line: “’I'm Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire tyrant, and this is my skybox.” You can cut the irony with a knife.

Assange’s spot came about after Simpsons creator Matt Groening heard that Assange wanted to appear. The plotline, according to early accounts: the Simpsons discover the town of Springfield is secretly planning to kick them out, so they embark on a self-imposed exile to a shadowy place where they discover Assange is their Ned Flanders-esque neighbor. Executive producer Al Jean toldTVsomniac, “He invites them over for a home movie and it’s an Afghan wedding being bombed.”

This scene seems to exemplify what “The Simpsons” does best: uses the guise of humor to illuminate some dark, horrific truth about America’s cultural and political situation—not the other way around. The fact that this episode – the 500th — will probably be one of the most-watched and that it illuminates the ongoing and pressing issue of drone strikes and intracountry terrorism in relation to the Afghan war is precisely why the show has remained relevant for such an unlikely length of time. “The Simpsons” is a vibrant program, but it would be impossible without its inherent touch of cynicism. The Assange scene also underscores why Wikileaks is important—how would we know of such heinous crimes without whistleblowers?—and it will reportedly not touch on what producers call his “legal situation,” but the underlying point is made.

Of all the celebrity guest appearances on “The Simpsons,” the closest in tone and honesty to Assange’s upcoming spot is likely that of Michael Moore. In 2003’s “The President Wore Pearls,” Moore’s character (as himself) joins a school union strike in solidarity with Lisa Simpson. Then, in 2004’s “Bart-Mangled Banner,” Moore was wrongly imprisoned at the “Ronald Reagan Reeducation Center”—a spoof of Guantanamo, in a plotline modeled after the provisions of the PATRIOT Act. In those episodes, some of their best, “Simpsons” writers used an outspoken and strong political figure as a lens with which to view our present.

“The Simpsons” spoofs and inverts a flawed nation, where doughnut-craving dolts runs nuclear plants, bratty prankster kids are allowed to run free, and evil, wart-afflicted imperialists are omniscient and all-powerful. And yet, a wry eye can tear it down and see the essence of it. As Homer Simpson once eloquently put it, “Facts are useless. You can use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.” 

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Across the Rio Grande and over numerous desert land crossings, the golden scraps of U.S. throwaway society head south. Used clothes, appliances, cars and other commodities  are shipped to the huge, second-hand Mexican market where low wages guarantee steady sales. And during the last five years or so, a new market has opened up for used lead-acid batteries.  

Now an international environmental agency headquartered in Canada is investigating the business amid reports from  citizen advocacy groups and the media that have raised red flags.  

In a landmark 2011 report, the U.S.-based group  Occupational Knowledge International and its Mexican partner Fronteras Comunes (Common Borders) explored the ecological and public health risks of lead-acid batteries sent from the  U.S. to Mexico, where at least 21 plants extract lead for recycling purposes. 

Becoming scarcer in its natural state, lead is in great demand for auto batteries, cell-phone networks and- ironically- even solar energy technologies. According to the Occupational Knowledge International /Fronteras Comunes report,  U.S. exports of lead-acid batteries to Mexico shot up from practically nothing in 2006 to 237,389 tons in 2010. An estimated 20 million lead-acid batteries  enter Mexico every year. Exports surged after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency toughened air quality standards for airbone lead in 2008. 

In their study, the two green groups raised serious issues about the adequacy of Mexican environmental standards and legal oversight of a toxic substance linked to serious developmental problems in children.  Concern over the environmental and human health costs of lead-acid battery recycling has now extended to the environmental side commission established under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). 

The Montreal-based North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) announced this month that it was beginning a probe of the used lead-acid battery trade in the three NAFTA member nations. 

In a statement, the CEC Secretariat warned of the dangers  conncected to lead pollution. “Even in small doses, exposure to lead dust and vapors in lead-contaminated air, water, or soil has been associated with nervous system impairment in fetuses and young children, resulting in learning deficits and lowered IQ,” the CEC Secretariat said. 

The CEC’s decision to compile documentation on the burgeoning lead-acid battery trade followed recent stories in the U.S. and Mexican media which were  triggered by the Occupational Knowledge International/Fronteras Comunes report. 

The report  noted irregularities such as lax emissions reporting by some licensed extraction plants, and pointed out that Mexican limits for ambient concentrations of lead are 10 times higher than in the U.S. Additionally, the Mexican workplace exposure standard for lead exposure is three times greater than the U.S. limit, the study stressed. 

Citing a New York Times piece, the Mexican news agency Notimex reported that the patio of an elementary school near the Industrial Mondelo plant in the state of Mexico registered lead levels of 2,000 parts per million,  an accumulation five times greater than the allowed level in the U.S. According to Notimex, unnamed Mexican environmental officials voiced concern about the lead pollution reports but argued that they lacked the resources, personnel and technical capacity to monitor a new industry spread across the country. 

The CEC said  it expected to complete the lead-acid battery investigation this year,  and encouraged any “interested persons and organizations” to contact the Secretariat in order to provide relevant information or be included in an upcoming consultation process. 

The findings will then be forwarded to the CEC Council, which is made up of cabinet-level environmental authorities from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.  The CEC said its (non-binding) recommendations will focus on improving  lead-acid battery management,  especially as it relates to “vulnerable populations” in Mexico. 

Additional Sources: Notimex, December 9, 2011. Ecoamericas.com,  June 2011

Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University 
Las Cruces, New Mexico

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UFCW Canada and the Agriculture Workers Alliance are calling on all activists to support an international campaign to stop the Mexican government from reaching across Canada’s border to violate our labour laws, our Charter, and the human rights of Mexican migrant workers in Canada.

Here are the facts. There are serious allegations that migrant farm workers in British Columbia are being blacklisted for voicing their support for the union and trying to exercise their basic Human Right to organize and bargain collectively.
 

Charges have been filed with the B.C. Labour Board  that the federal government of Mexico and its Vancouver consulate conspired with two British Columbia agriculture operations to blacklist Mexican seasonal migrant workers from returning to Canada this season because they were union sympathizers.

The evidence includes leaked documents that indicate blacklisting activity.  The charges were filed by UFCW Canada Local 1518 — the union that migrant workers at Floralia Farms and Sidhu Nurseries voted to join. In addition to the blacklist, the Mexico consulate has also told workers at B.C. farms to stop visiting union-run support centres operated by the Agriculture Workers Alliance.

What does Mexico say to all of this? Mexico and its Vancouver consulate have claimed diplomatic immunity.

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In a February 10 press conference, non-governmental human rights organizations demanded that Ciudad Juarez Police Chief Julian Leyzaola straighten out the behavior of officers or step down. Representing more than a dozen organizations, the activists announced they had documented 23 cases of alleged torture committed by local police during the month of January alone. In one of the incidents, a man named Jose Cruz  Sierra was allegedly tortured to death. Among the groups making the denunciation were the doctors and nurses organized in the Citizens Medical Committee and the Women’s Roundtable.

Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico

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