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Maclovio Rojas

Deregulation in California = Corporate Terrorism!

Bolivia Tensions Mount

Duro workers' struggle

Argentine groups ready protests for FTAA meeting

Dioxin Poisons Inuit

Other Border News

Colonia Maclovio Rojas, Tijuana, BC, Mex
by Juan Pazos

Dear colleagues;
Rumor has it Pres.Fox passed final sentence on Maclovio Rojas, ratifying the legitimate owners of this community occupied for 13 years are instead OTHER rich & powerful albeit absent people. Legal magic is turning the citizens of Maclovio into delinquents, confirming the Fox future to be no more than a new pair of reins, boots & riding mount. The 167 hectars of earth in which the Town is based testify to this fundamental "change" of operation. What will be the future of the homes, sport schools, fields, farms, stores and other businesses that no longer cardboard and which today define to the Town. Maclovio Rojas has deep foundations and it is not going to disappear so easily. The Aguascalientes cultural center, women's center & a clinic already exist; the hundreds born & mourned there also give the pueblo life. Popular Wednesday & Sunday street markets earning for hundreds of small vendors & families from all over Tijuana supplement miserable maquiladora wages. Between snowcones & mangos, pizza & tacos, the market is full of life from the Town and its earth streets, ample streets, drawn up in a General Plan that indicates the exact position of each lot you can find in Community Center. Perhaps it will be erased until the name change can happen but that's not likely.
Proposed, constructed & governed by the community without help from Fox's designated owner, Maclovio finds its future marked by PAN state govt from principles that fail to recognize their own creation of all types of impediments to development, perhaps an example that good govt can arise within the chaos created by bad govt. Likewise, Maclovianos had to create their own electrical network & infrastrutcturethat advanced the town and which resembles a capricious giant spiderweb. Also the water system that descends to the Town was created by residents' own necessity & talent from an enormous steel tube aqueduct supplying Tijuana & NAFTA factories.It's been an enormous screwup ignoring the basic needs of this population and refusing a drop of mercy to the town. But clandestine development exists despite these services have been repeatedly denied.
During the last 2 years, I gone there trying to understand the reasons for this situation in which a community of almost 2.000 families & 10.000 people live. Maclovio so exemplifies what's happening all along the border region from Matamoros to Tijuana; it is rapidly being duplicated in the rest of the world. The wall around Maclovio Rojas is a Deaf War that doesn't use expensive bombs and has no publicity. In the courts, the Town fights with lawyers to defend land rights already purchased with 37.5million pesos from the Federal govt in 1994 under the Agrarian Reformation. A gigantic copy of the reciept exists as proof for all that care to see it in the Town's Communitarian Bank offices. Would be owners disputing the validity of these rights & demanding return of the land have risen to more than 5 and will likely win the legal battle because the influence of the poor is little.
The Town was baptized with the name of Maclovio Rojas Marquez as a symbol of the fight & honor of a Oxaca Indian organizer of the workers of San Quintin who was assassinated. Oxaca is also the roots & charisma of the main leader of the town, Hortensia Hernandez. She has defined this movement from a principle promoted by the women. Along with Artemio Osuna, they have created this unique community in the Tijuana zone that represents a battle front, not just of land problems but global factories and the endless social problems that whip the region's families. The repression which they have suffered in their work has been enormous in the 13 year struggle, with numerous months of prison & judicial demands. They have not suffered alone; other members of the Union of Possessionaries directorate of the Town Maclovio Rojas Marquez de Tijuana, legal name of the civil association which with legal statutes designate the Town's democratic form, have also suffered. Hunger strikes & 2 marches on foot from the Town to Mexicali to demand their leaders' liberation from imprisonment give testimony of this movement's character.
The 167 hectareas are on the free highway of Tijuana to Tecate next to one of the biggest factories in N.America. It is greed, not chance, bitterly forcing people from their streets. The city of Tijuana hastily made this zone's transfer of "poor agrarian lands" to " lots of quoted urbanization". The speculative value generated from privilieged geographic situation begins to recognize the new urban & industrial development of Boulevard 2000. Globalization finds in the 167 hectars of Maclovio an enormous pocket. It won't be the first time that soldiers appear in the Town to begin the evacuation. Last time, people confronted them and they retreated. It's uncertain this time what will happen. They continue trying to keep their homes. So endures Maclovio Rojas!

Utility Deregulation As Corporate Terrorism Against The People

Published on Wednesday, April 11, 2001 in the Boulder Daily Camera Activist

Harvey Wasserman Chides Power Companies
by Susan Glairon

Utility deregulation in California is an "act of corporate terrorism," and news media have ignored the real story, activist Harvey Wasserman said Tuesday in a talk for the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder.

"It is the biggest event since Three Mile Island," Wasserman said. "The media has not got one wit of the real story of what happened in California."
The author and radio commentator spoke to a packed hall at Macky Auditorium as part of University of Colorado at Boulder's Conference on World Affairs. The talk was titled "Our Fake Energy Crisis: What Really Happened in California."

"The phone's been ringing off the hook with people asking how to get off the utility grid," said moderator Robert Noun, the director of community and public affairs for Natural Renewable Energy Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energy's laboratory for renewable energy and energy-efficiency research.

California residents endured four days of rolling blackouts in January and March and have faced staggering utility bills. Last week, the state Public Utilities Commission approved rate increases up to 46 percent for Pacific Gas & Electric and SoCal Edison, the state's largest and second largest utilities.

News media stories have blamed skyrocketing wholesale power prices and the state's 1996 deregulation law, AB 1890, which prohibits utilities from passing those increases to customers. Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison have said they lost more than $13 billion since June, and they're having difficulties buying power because of poor credit.

Last week California's largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, filed for bankruptcy.

But California's 1996 deregulation law was written by corporate lawyers of California's utility companies, Wasserman said.

As part of the law, California struck a deal with the state's three largest utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, he said.
The state paid them billions of dollars to subsidize stranded costs ÷ the money invested in nuclear plants that would make it impossible for those utilities to produce electricity cheaply enough to compete in a open market dominated by inexpensive natural gas, Wasserman said. He said that money was laundered to those utilities' parent companies.

"Going bankrupt the utility companies are still ahead," Wasserman said. "Bankruptcy means they're protected. You can't get at them. They've been morally and spiritually bankrupt for years; they might as well be financially bankrupt."

A referendum was put on the ballot to repeal deregulation, but the utilities spent $40 million to defeat the it and deregulation proceeded, he said.
"Anyone who suggests nuclear power as a solution to this problem belongs in a padded cell," Wasserman said.

Susan Glairon is the Camera's Business Writer.
Copyright 2001 The Daily Camera

Support The Struggle Of
Maquiladora Workers
And Farmworkers Of
San Quintin
Baja California!

Support The Fight For
Immigrant Rights, Workers'
Rights, And Environmental
Protection Against
The Attack Of
Corporate
"Globalization"!

Support the delegation
of the EZLN from Chiapas
to Mexico City!

Stop the FTAA
US/Mexico Border Action Project is urgently asking you for your support in the fight for immigrant rights, workers' rights, and environmental protection against the attack of corporate "globalization"!

Activists in the US and Mexico will make an historic demonstration of international solidarity at the US/Mexico border on Saturday 21 April 2001 in defense of human needs against corporate greed!

When President George W. Bush meets with the heads of state from North and South America (except Cuba) at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, Canada to renew Washington's push for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) this April, a treaty designed to spread the corporate agenda of free trade, privatization, and cuts in social spending to almost the whole western hemisphere will be discussed in secret meetings behind closed doors. At the same time, tens of thousands of trade unionists and activists are expected to converge in Quebec City to protest against the FTAA!
Those of us near the US/Mexico border are thousands of miles away from Quebec.

But the conditions we live in and see around us speak volumes about what's wrong with corporate globalization and privatization. Corporations are free to move their investments across borders, but ordinary people are denied the same freedoms. Immigrants seeking work in the US face horrific violence and intimidation both at the border and while living and working in the US. Workers are forced to endure appalling conditions here, whether in the sweatshops of Los Angeles, the maquiladoras of Tijuana, or the tomato fields of San Quintin.

Californians have been made acutely aware of the miseries and chaos caused by free markets and deregulation. Schoolchildren in Oakland practice "Blackout Drills" and residents of San Diego and Inglewood face skyrocketing utility bills thanks to the deregulation of California's electricity system.

These horrors are why we want to speak out right here at the US/Mexico border and say NO to sweatshop working conditions, NO to poverty wages, NO to racist immigrant bashing, and NO to the FTAA!

Under the FTAA, corporations would have the right to file "violation of free trade" complaints that could force governments to repeal labor and environmental laws or face economic sanctions. In other words, the right of corporations to make profits anywhere in the hemisphere is more important to the supporters of the FTAA than the rights of workers to earn a living wage or the rights of children to breathe clean air.

We don't have to let them get away with this! The 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO)–where tens of thousands of workers and students came together to speak out against globalization — exposed the ugly reality of sweatshops, poverty, and pollution that lies beneath the sweet talk about "free trade".

Seattle inspired millions of people who want an alternative to the madness of globalization.

The April 21 border action is another exciting development of the anti-globalization movement that has taken on a life of its own since the Seattle protests. We need to organize international solidarity to fight back against the international plunder promised by the FTAA.

Please help us take this critical step in fighting corporate greed. If you have any questions, please contact us:

for English contact Mary Welz at (323) 462-4229
mwelz@earthlink.net

for Spanish
contact Rodrigo Argueta
at (323) 264-0504
cdmla@latinmail.com

It's our globalization
versus theirs!

2001 Border Actions Committee
Tel: (626)403-2530

Send e-mail to:
BorderActions@aol.com

Please Subscribe to Border01 List Group!

Send request e-mail to:
Border01-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Tensions Mount in Bolivia
April 9, 2001
By VANESSA ARRINGTON, Associated Press Writer

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - Coca farmers, union activists and others set out Monday on a 250-mile march from Cochabamba to La Paz, demanding salary increases, the easing of coca leaf eradication and reversing privatization of state companies.

They plan to arrive April 23, joining marchers from a separate protest by coca farmers from Los Yungas, near La Paz, where coca eradication started up this month.

The protesters have threatened to start road blockades throughout the country on April 25 unless the government responds to their demands.

Government officials dubbed the movement a "narco-march," and Government Minister Guillermo Fortun said there is no way that those marching from Cochabamba will arrive in La Paz, nor will they be allowed to begin the road blockades.

The same sectors involved in the march triggered the protests that spread violence in April and September last year, leaving 20 dead and more than 170 wounded.

This time the government appears better prepared, and already sent troops to Achacachi, the Andean center of discontent during last year's protests. But organizers of the protest also appear in better shape with a broader base of support.

The embattled Banzer government President Hugo Banzer has been facing increasing pressure in recent days. School teachers and health workers shut down many schools and all but the emergency rooms of some hospitals throughout the country the first week of the month, and the union activists staged protests that snarled traffic throughout La Paz last Thursday.

The U.S. Embassy closed two hours earlier than usual Monday after reports that it would be the target of a protest. Police sealed-off streets around the embassy and posted some 30 officers guarding the building. About 50 students arrived chanting anti-U.S. slogans but there were no confrontations.

Duro workers' struggle for Justice in the Maquiladoras

from Global Exchange

March 6, 2001

On Friday, March 2nd in a government-run union election, the workers at Duro Bag Company in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas, Mexico were robbed of their legal, constitutional and human right to be represented by a union of their own choosing. The election was blatantly undemocratic. The final vote of 498 to 4 replaced the current company-dominated union, the Paper, Cardboard, and Wood Industry Union with a similarly company-dominated union, the Regional Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC), a union that had provided about a hundred thugs to terrorize Duro workers in the weeks before the election. The workers had attempted to win representation for their local independent Union of Duro Bag Workers. Over 150 of them were fired for organizing over the ten months of their struggle. The Mexican government had refused to order a secret ballot election on neutral grounds despite an agreement with the U.S. government last summer to do so in union elections. Thirty-nine election observers from Mexico, the U.S. and Canada including clergy, human rights and union representatives stood outside the plant gate all day. They were refused admittance to observe the proceedings. Media from local and international press also asked for admittance into the plant but were kept outside with the observers.

Significance of the Duro workers' struggle

The attempt of the Duro Bag workers to win a real union was supported through an international campaign by The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM) to pressure the Mexican government, Duro Bag and Duro's largest customer Hallmark. CJM is a San Antonio, Texas-based coalition of North American labor, religious and human rights organizations. CJM Executive Director, Martha Ojeda, herself a former maquiladora worker, said, "With this shockingly undemocratic election, the new Fox administration has made it crystal clear that it has no intention of reforming Mexico's corrupt system of government and company-dominated unions. Despite Fox's promise to 'put a human face on the global economy,' we now know he will oppose any attempts by maquiladora workers to improve their sub-poverty wages and deadly working conditions. In fact, this represents a step backward from promises made to NAFTA partners by the previous government to move toward secret ballot union elections. Moreover, this election demonstrates the repression and fraud that multinational corporations are willing to use, that the CROC is now replacing the declining CTM, and that in future attempts to organize their own unions the workers are going to be fighting with gangsters." One of the international observers, Judy Ancel, an educator from Kansas City and member of the CJM Board of Directors said, "A number of the foreigners wanted to know what the Spanish word for "Shame" was. I think we were all appalled at the total lack of pretense of even minimal fairness in this election." She added, "As the Bush, Fox, and Chretien administrations of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada prepare to push for NAFTA expansion to the entire Western Hemisphere, I think the Duro case will haunt the debate. It is a clear example of NAFTA's utter failure to improve the lives of workers."

For more information contact the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras 210-732-8957 or cjm@igc.org

Argentine groups ready protests for FTAA meeting
April 3, 2001
Reuters
By Missy Ryan

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Argentine groups ranging from labor unions to student organizations said Tuesday they were preparing a rough welcome for ministers arriving in the capital this week for talks on a pan-American free-trade deal.
Trade officials from 34 countries are meeting this week in Buenos Aires to sketch out plans for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The FTAA would be the world's largest free-trade zone.
The agreement would facilitate free trade among the hemisphere's 783 million people and could represent 40 percent of the world's gross product. It will be a key issue at the Summit of the Americas set April 20 to 22 in Quebec City, Canada.
Rodolfo Daer, head of Argentina's largest labor movement, General Labor Confederation (CGT), said the agreement had not written in the participation of unions, which could secure workers' rights.
"It doesn't exist on the agenda," Daer said.
Social, environmental and nongovernmental organizations argue the FTAA will grease the palms of big business while chipping away at living standards for millions of Latin Americans.
More than 100 groups from Argentina and other Latin American countries are expected to stage nonviolent protests, organizers said. Officials are expected to meet Thursday through Saturday.
"Because the deal links countries with different labor standards, the danger is that there will be pressure to lower those standards. This is something the governments of all these countries should be worrying about," Daer said.
Daer's CGT is planning a march in central Buenos Aires Wednesday and other unions say they will stage demonstrations and information sessions.
"We fully reject the FTAA and its contents because it would mean a loss of national identity for Argentina and all participating countries," said Marta Maffei, head of main teacher's union in Argentina.
Many Argentines believe the economic opening undertaken in the last decade is behind the chronic double-digit unemployment rate of recent years.
Unions had planned a general strike for Thursday and Friday but those plans were scrapped after the government pledged to pay "unemployment insurance" to more than 200,000 impoverished families.
But hostility toward the FTAA remains.
"We don't believe this is a project about integration but a project about economic subordination," said Julio Piumato of the maverick Teamsters' union.

DIOXIN AFFLICTING INUIT TRACED TO THE U.S., CANADA AND MEXICO
from Native Americas
Winter, 2000

High concentrations of dioxin in the Arctic, a cause of health problems among the Inuit, have now been traced to specific sources in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

A study, "Long-Range Air Transport of Dioxin from North American Sources to Ecologically Vulnerable Receptors in Nunavut, Arctic Canada," was conducted for the Montreal-based North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (NACEC) by the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, Queens College, City University of New York. The study covered a one-year period beginning in July 1996. This report is the first to use weather patterns, pollution data and corporate emissions records to track dioxins through the atmosphere to the Arctic from specific sources across North America, said Barry Commoner, the pioneering ecologist and expert on dioxins, who co-authored the report. The text of the study is available on the Internet [http://www.cec.org].

This study compiled 44,091 specific dioxin sources, of which 16,729 were in Canada, 22,439 in the U.S. and 4,923 in Mexico. Nine of the top ten contributors of dioxin deposited in Nunavut were in the U.S., including three municipal waste plants in Minnesota, Iowa and Pennsylvania; three cement kilns in Michigan, Missouri and Nebraska; two iron plants in Indiana, and a copper smelter in Illinois. Some have since reduced or eliminated their dioxin emissions.

The study used the remote and pristine Nunavut territory, which has few local sources of dioxins, to show how dioxin travels to pollute areas far from where it is emitted. A range of toxic chemicals of global concern, including dioxin, DDT and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), all known as "persistent organic pollutants" (POPs), break down extremely slowly in the environment and are linked to cancer, birth defects and other neurological, reproductive and immune-system damage in people and animals. Many of these chemicals act as endocrine disruptors, causing deformities in sex organs as well as long-term dysfunction of reproductive systems.
The Arctic has become an unintentional dumping ground for PCBs, dioxin and agricultural chemicals made from organic chlorine compounds by industries at the lower latitudes. The compounds are swept into the Arctic by prevailing winds, diffusing quickly and easily in the atmosphere. Nearly every animal and plant on earth now contains trace levels of these toxins.
Airborne toxic substances are absorbed by plankton and small fish, which are then eaten by dolphins and whales and other large animals. The mammals' thick subcutaneous fat stores the hazardous substances, which are transmitted to offspring through breast-feeding. Sea mammals are more vulnerable to this kind of toxicity than land animals, so these persistent organic pollutants pose a particularly acute health threat to people who eat whales and dolphins. These compounds remain in the body for months or even years. In ecosystems, they tend to concentrate or "bioaccumulate" in animals at the top of the food chain-in the bodies of large meat-eaters such as marine mammals, bears, raptors and human beings. Large herbivorous land animals, such as caribou, also are affected.

Native people whose diets consist largely of sea animals-whales, polar bears, fish and seals-have been consuming alarmingly high chemical concentrations. Abnormally high levels of dioxin have been detected in Inuit mothers' breast milk. The bodies of Inuits on Arctic islands, thousands of miles away from the sources of the pollution, have the highest levels of PCBs ever found, apart from victims of industrial accidents. Some Native people in Greenland have more than 70 times as much of the pesticide hexaclorobenzene in their bodies as temperate-zone Canadians.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier grew up in an Inuit community in remote northern Quebec, unaware that toxic chemicals were becoming part of her body at disproportionate levels. "As we put our babies to our breasts we are feeding them a noxious, toxic cocktail," Watt-Cloutier, a 46-year-old grandmother and vice president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference told the Toronto Star. "When women have to think twice about breast-feeding their babies, surely that must be a wake-up call to the world."

-Bruce E. Johansen

Photos from San Quintín

by Fred Lonidier