Author: mopress

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

By Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr.

All across this country, folks are rejoicing over the latest decision coming from ICE, of the Department of Homeland Security, under the direction of the Obama administration, to begin a transformation of immigrant detention policies . . . starting with T. Don Hutto.

When it comes to the end of children being imprisoned on American soil, right here in Texas, this victory is more that just about T. Don Hutto.

After the suffering of thousands of children and their families, this decision to quit imprisoning innocent children in a privately run “for profit” prison, is a victory, for not only the children, but, for the small group of “we the people” who engaged in the confrontation of human dignity over human cruelty, a group that grew to thousands around the country.

It is also a victory for the hundreds of thousands of other innocent immigrant children in this country that would have been victims of ICE fulfilling the blueprint of Operation Endgame. By exposing the conditions of T. Don Hutto, the entire system of federal corporatism.

While we rejoice all across this country, we do well to realize that there is more to do. Because Hutto has violated every one of those international rights of children, for over two years, the Hutto grassroots citizens have featured Rights of the Child at our Hutto walks and vigils for over two years now.

That is why a growing group of these same grassroots citizens that came together to fight for the freedom of the children imprisoned in Hutto, have launched a new campaign. They have formed a new group, known as Rights of the Child USA.

Rights of the Child USA is therefore organizing for a major networking initiative…to build an alliance of hundreds of organizations from around the country . . . to promote the ratification of the UN Rights of the Child. Why?

On November 20th, 1989, the UN held the Convention on the Rights of the Child . Rights of the Child was adopted in 1990. That same year, the US Congress voted to ratify the Rights of the Child. Yet, President George H.W. Bush refused to sign the legislation.

Under President Bill Clinton, the Rights of the Child was never important enough to get it ratified. Under George W. Bush, thousands of immigrant children all across this country were victims of some of the harshest treatment, imprisoned “for profit” by the Bush cronies, and deported by the hundreds of thousands.

Untold hundreds have died under the policies of Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, DHS and ICE.

November 20, 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet, with the exception of Somalia, the United States is the only country in the world that has refused to ratify the Rights of the Child.

Rights of the Child USA is planning a major event to be held this coming November 20th . . . and has every confidence that the Obama Administration, that just chose to end the imprisonment of innocent immigrant children “for profit” in T. Don Hutto, will also ratify the international Rights of the Child.

If you and-or your organization would be interested in joining this movement and supporting legislation to ratify the Rights of the Child, or know of others who would, please feel free to contact Border Ambassadors as well as share the following contact information.

Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.
jay@villadelrio.com
(830) 734-8636

By Ralph Isenberg
Special to the Texas Civil Rights Review

This will be my first attempt to communicate a message since mid-2008 when the pressure of fighting the government became too much for me to handle and my own experiences with immigration, although behind me, started to haunt me. This is better known as post traumatic stress.

Time does heal most wounds and I am slowly feeling comfortable enough getting back into the fight.

For families having immigration trouble, the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas is now a facility of the past. Families will be placed in a facility more suited for their detention or not even detained at all.

It took an amazing effort of people, the majority of which have nothing in common and do not even know each other, to come together and demand change. The struggle lasted about three years and the result is good.

The result confirms that we as Americans are good people with a heart. There is reason to celebrate and this is not the time to blend negative thoughts into what is truly wonderful news.

I contacted several families of Hutto and know they share in the celebration. So many of the families now reside back in their homelands away from the place they want to call home. Yet, they still celebrate the news for they know that their experience was not in vain.

Thousands of future families will no longer have to endure what they endured. The families of Hutto are the true heroes that must be acknowledged first.

For every situation there must be a lesson to be learned. History will judge those that implemented the policy that created Hutto. History will judge those that supported the concept for nothing more than financial gain. History will judge those that worked inside Hutto. History will judge the community of Taylor, Texas. History will not be kind.

History will not judge those of us that became involved for I suspect we are what I call a “living history” and we will continue to look not to the future, but to the present, to find the next Hutto that deserves attention. We do this knowing that already there is plenty of work to be done.

So let us celebrate what is truly remarkable news and move on. Blessed are those that make the peace.