Border City Protests Grow

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February 5, 2009

Tamaulipas News

Border City Protests Expand

For the second time in less than one week, the streets of the Mexican border
city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, hosted protestors. The February 4 actions
spanned a range of grievances-high food and fuel prices, maquiladora
lay-offs and the presence of the Mexican army in the city located across the
Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas.

Wednesday's demonstrations by taxi drivers and restaurant workers against
the Mexican army closely followed mass protests over the same issue last
weekend. On January 31, as many as 4,000 demonstrators succeeded in blocking
highway access into and out of Reynosa as well as to two international
bridges that connect Reynosa with its sister city of McAllen.

Led in part by neighborhood leader Alicia Nieto, the participants in
Saturday's mobilization included residents of working-class districts,
street vendors, sex industry workers, bar operators, and transportation
industry workers. A banner accused a special unit of the Federal Police of
torturing innocent citizens to extract information about the Gulf drug
cartel for rival Sinaloa drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

"The army and its soldiers used to inspire our admiration and respect," said
Jorge Alberto Garza Rodriguez, secretary-general of a local night club
owners' association. "Now they make us terrified and afraid."

Manuel Benavidez, transportation secretary of the local branch of the
Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Campesinos, a group affiliated
with the PRI political party, accused soldiers of detaining, beating and
robbing commercial drivers. Complaints of such abuses, Benavidez charged,
have not been answered.

In Reynosa, sectors of the population demand the Mexican army and Federal
Police leave their city.

There was no immediate, official comment from the Mexican army about the
latest round of public protests, but Francisco Rivera, a PRI legislator who
presides over the public safety commission of the lower house of the Mexican
Congress, previously said many complaints come from criminals and their
families out to discredit the Mexican military.

Nonetheless, complaints about the military's conduct are growing in Reynosa
and elsewhere in Mexico. Citing Mexican media, the University of San Diego's
Trans-Border Institute recently reported the Mexican armed forces was ranked
Numero Uno in complaints received by the official National Human Rights
Commission (CNDH) in 2008.

According to a January newsletter published by the Trans-Border Institute,
the armed forces accounted for 631 of 5,921 complaints received by the CNDH
from January 1 to December 15 of last year. The figure was nearly double the
number of complaints filed with the CNDH against the military for a
comparable period in 2007. Mostly, the 2008 complaints involved accusations
of illegal home searches, arbitrary detentions and cruel and degrading
treatment.

The bulwark of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's war against drug
trafficking and organized crime, the Mexican military is a major recipient
of US security assistance under the so-called Merida Initiative.

The army and navy pressed ahead with their anti-drug operations in Reynosa
and other parts of Mexico throughout January, a month which witnessed at
least 463 narco-related homicides nationwide. The murder toll was nearly
double the national figure for the same month in 2008.

Back in Reynosa, meanwhile, a combination of high prices, public safety
crises, police and military operations, and mass lay-offs from the export
assembly industry are blending and simmering in a hot political stew.

On February 4, former employees of the Finland-based Nokia company staged a
demonstration outside offices of the federal labor board. The protestors
accused the company of not paying severance packages in accordance with
Mexican law. Among a group of 1,000 workers who were dismissed by Nokia last
November, the jobless maquiladora workers were supported in their protest
by Rebecca Rodriguez of the Center for Border Studies and the Promotion of
Human Rights, an internationally-known human rights advocacy organization
based in Reynosa.

Sources: El Universal, February 4, 2009. Article by Julio Manuel L. Guzman.
El Sur, February 1, 2009. Article by Miguel Dominguez and Agencia Reforma.
La Jornada, February 1, 2009. Article by Julia Antonieta Leduc.
Enlineadirecta.info, January 31 and February 5, 2009. Articles by Hugo
Reyna, David Diaz and Carlos Pena Palacios. Justice in Mexico Project
report, January 2009. Trans-Border Institute (University of San Diego).

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): 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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