While waiting for a government office to open more than 4,000 military conscripts began throwing stones at homes, attacking neighborhood residents and burning cars in the early hours of January 24. The riot began near 2:00 a.m. in the Matamoros Modelo neighborhood and area residents are now demanding the firing of the chief of police, the fire chief and the city military recruiter. The disturbance lasted at least four hours as police allegedly stood by and watched, refusing to intervene. Material damage appears to be significant and the investigator in the case has yet to finish evaluating the damage. At least ten complaints have been filed relating to damaged homes and businesses and stoned and burned cars. The mayor of Matamoros spoke with the people that had been affected by the riot and has promised to pay them reparations.
While with the mayor, Modelo residents demanded the firing of the Secretario de Seguridad Pública (local police chief) and the commander of the Cuerpo de Bomberos (firefighters) because their employees did nothing to intervene in the disturbance. Neighborhood residents also asked for the termination of the head of city military recruitment because the same violence broke out last year, although to a lesser extent, when recruits were brought together in the neighborhood.

Source: El Mañana, January 25, 2001. Article by Felipe Valle, Efraín Martínez and Norberto Lacarriere.
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The seven migrants later told Beta that their final destination was Los Angeles, California.
In another event Beta agents rescued a group of 20 migrants, including a pregnant woman, that was lost in the desert, also in the Cuesta de La Rumorosa area. Agents said that the group, led by its "polleros" was crossing into the US when it encountered Border Patrol agents. The group then went back into Mexico where it was abandoned by the polleros. Once again the group tried to cross to the US but again encountered Border Patrol agents and returned to Mexico. At this point the group was walking lost in the desert until it was discovered by Beta agents. The pregnant woman in the group was sent by Beta to the Red Cross because she complained of not feeling well due to the hours she had spent walking in the desert.

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Mexico reached an agreement with the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corp. enabling the agency to finance investments in Mexico for the first time, the top OPIC official said.
The breakthrough comes just two days before OPIC President and chief executive George Munoz leaves his post with the end of the Clinton administration. Munoz, a Mexican-American raised less than a mile from the Mexican border in Brownsville, Texas, said the agreement will fill a gap left in the U.S.-Mexico trading relationship since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect seven years ago.
"One of the downsides of Nafta... is that it really did not address the support of small businesses in the U.S. and how we were going to help finance them so they could be successful in their ventures in Mexico,'' Munoz told Bloomberg News. OPIC ``will not support any business that will shut down in the U.S. and re- open in Mexico,'' he said.
Small and medium-sized U.S. companies with a net worth below $250 million will be eligible for OPIC loans of between $100,000 and $200 million. Joint-ventures between U.S. and Mexican companies are also eligible. Once Mexico reaches additional agreements with the U.S. government, OPIC could also offer loan guarantees and insurance for U.S. investments that cover political and foreign exchange risks, Munoz said.
Largest Client
OPIC began operations in 1971. Its portfolio of loans, guarantees and insurance encompass transactions worth $17 billion. Mexico could potentially become OPIC's largest client, surpassing Brazil and Russia, which each account for about $2 billion of the agency's portfolio, Munoz said.
With Mexico now eligible for OPIC financing, the only Latin American country still outside the U.S. agency's reach is Cuba, where U.S. investors are barred by law from investing.
Mexico remained off-limits to OPIC for three decades because the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for 71 years, considered the agency's requirement that countries promise to respect foreign investors' rights an infringement on its ``national sovereignty,'' Munoz said.
Under President Vicente Fox of the National Action Party, who took office last month, ``Mexico has become much more receptive to the kinds of programs that we offer,'' Munoz said.
Mexico has pushed past Japan to become the No. 2 U.S. trading partner, after Canada. U.S. exports to Mexico grew 32 percent in the first 10 months of 2000 to $92.8 billion, while imports from Mexico climbed 26 percent to $113.8 billion, according to data released by the U.S. Commerce Department.
The relationship could grow even closer, Munoz predicted. ``There's going to be more merging of our economies that will make Mexico probably our No. 1 trade partner'' in the long term, he said. The Mexican economy ministry had no immediate comment.

Bloomberg

There were 242 murders in Ciudad Juárez in the year 2000, 51 of them considered to be narco-related slayings. These numbers are up from 1999's 176 murders, an increase of 37.5%. The number of drug-related murders was also up according to El Diario but no figure was given for 1999. Intentional homicides are investigated throughout Mexico by state-level, law enforcement agencies unless there is a drug component to the murder in which case it may be sent to the federal level for investigation by the Procuraduría General de la República (Federal Attorney General's Office, PGR). In Cd. Juárez, men's murders are investigated by the Departamento de Homicidios while almost all women's murders are investigated by the Fiscalía Especial para la Investigación de Homicidios de Mujeres.
The Fiscalía Especial investigated the killings of 27 women in the year 2000. Of these cases 12 were classified as crimes of passion, five were drug-related, four were sex crimes, one was the result of a fight, three were revenge killings and two murders were related to robberies.
Two women's murders were not sent to the Fiscalía Especial because they were thought to be linked to organized crime. One of these was the case in which a female prison guard was found dead in a field with a male, city police officer. According to the director of the Policía Judicial del Estado, Raúl Lira Gutiérrez, the increase in the number of murders does not mean that the problem "has gotten out of the hands of authorities."
Lira also stated that narcomurders, "are not serious for society," as the victims were people involved with organized crime. Regarding his agency's investigations, Lira said, "We are not passive in regard to these executions, we keep working on them, and we have lines of investigation for a majority of the cases. There is no predominate cause for these killings such as revenge or drug trafficking."
Source: El Diario, December 29, 2000. Article by Armando Rodríguez.

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Reuters
MEXICO CITY (Feb. 15) - President Bush makes his first trip abroad since his inauguration when he holds a one-day meeting with his Mexican counterpart Vicente Fox Friday at the Mexican leader's ranch in Guanajuato state.
Here is the background to some of the key issues they are likely to discuss.
MIGRATION AND THE BORDER
Mexico and the United States share a 2,100-mile border, one of the longest and busiest in the world. Some 310 million people and 87 million vehicles cross each year, legally or illegally.
Some 1.5 million Mexicans are arrested each year trying to cross illegally, most looking for a better life than in Mexico where at least 40 percent of the country's 97 million people live in poverty.
Hundreds of Mexicans drown or die of exposure or dehydration as they try to escape detection by U.S. Border patrol and, more recently, posses organized by U.S. ranchers.
Despite the hazards, up to 300,000 Mexicans succeed in crossing illegally into the United States each year, helped by traffickers who charge up to $1,500 per person.
Once in the United States, they find employment mainly on farms, in hotels, restaurants and supermarkets.
An estimated 8.2 million Mexicans live in the United States, about one-third of them illegally. They send home some $6 billion in remittances to their families annually. Most live in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, San Francisco, San Jose and Chicago.
Influential U.S. lawmakers, among them Sen. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican, have said they believe Bush would support legislation that would allow Mexicans to be employed legally as "guest workers" in the United States.
DRUGS AND CERTIFICATION
Mexico has repeatedly criticized the annual ritual under which the United States unilaterally "certifies" whether other nations are doing enough to fight the illegal drug trade.
Fox's government has said it would like certification replaced by a multilateral system of reviewing whether countries are pulling their weight in the fight against trafficking.
U.S. lawmakers have recently proposed legislation which would suspend the certification process for two years while efforts are made to establish a multilateral system.
The United States is the largest consumer of narcotics in the world while Mexico is a leading producer of marijuana and methamphetamines. Mexico is also a major transit route for Colombian shipments of cocaine to the United States.
It is estimated that 180 tons of cocaine worth some $18 billion were shipped into the United States from Mexico in 1998, helping to enrich Mexico's powerful drug cartels.
Mexico's role in feeding the U.S. drug habit has meant that more Mexicans have easy access to narcotics at affordable prices. The number of drug users rose sharply in the 1990s.
Mexico's Health Ministry says that 2.5 percent of Mexicans have taken illegal drugs at least once in their life while more than 400,000 are habitual consumers.
TRADE RELATIONS
Mexico's economy is already starting to feel the effects of the slowdown in the U.S. economy since some 90 percent of Mexico's exports go to the United States.
Since joining the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada, Mexico has become the United States' second largest trade partner with 90 percent of its exports going north of the border. Mexico shipped more than $120 billion of goods to the United States in 1999 and imported $105 billion from its northern trading partner.
Mexico's economy is expected to grow 3.8 percent in 2001 after growing by around seven percent in 2000.
President Fox has said he would like to see NAFTA evolve into an economic partnership along the lines of the European Union but the response from Washington has been cool.
14:08 02-15-01

Delphi and Lear corporations have both reduced employment in their border plants by not replacing workers that leave their jobs, according to a recent article in Ciudad Juárez's El Diario newspaper. Xóchitl Díaz, a Delphi Automotive Systems spokesperson, said that Delphi stopped contracting new employees in June, 2000 which has reduced the number of workers at the company from 80,000 to 75,000. Most of the job loss is in Cd. Juárez and Matamoros, she said. Antonio Durán, a human resources assistant at Lear Electrical Systems de México S. de R.L. de C.V., said that Lear has stopped replacing departed workers as well. In addition to this measure, Lear signed an agreement with its workers so that on January 19, 2001 it can close some of its production lines and move those workers to other facilities. The companies' employment-reduction measures are a reaction to the slow down of the US economy and auto sales there. Delphi, formerly part of GM, still sells 68% of its product to GM. Lear has a close tie to Ford.

Source: El Diario, January 6, 2001. Article by María Eugenia Arriaga.
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The director and the assistant director of the Procuraduría General de la República (Federal Attorney General's Office, PGR) in Chihuahua have been arrested along with 15 agents under their command. The arrests of director Norberto Jesús Suárez Gómez and assistant director José Manuel Díaz Pérez were for their alleged involvement in a scheme to buy Díaz a higher position in law enforcement for US$500,000. It is believed that this money would be earned back by selling protection to drug and/or contraband traffickers.
El Diario interviewed members of the Chihuahua Congress all of whom were glad to hear of the arrests. PAN Representative Ortuño Gurza emphasized that the arrest of corrupt police agents was long over due as previously they had been transferred rather than punished. Sergio Martínez Garza of the PRI supported the strong, forceful measures taken against the agents. Luis Pável Aguilar of the PRD stated, "we hope that this is the beginning of clean out and complete restructuring of the PGR and not just an action to quite voces of protest."
Also in line with Fox's promise to end government corruption was this week's removal of 41 of 47 Mexican customs officials including Walter González of Ciudad Juárez. González acknowledged to El Diario that he had been removed from his position and was only awaiting his replacement. He told the Cd. Juárez newspaper that "Secretary Gil Díaz wants people in whom he has absolute confidence and changes were made for this reason."
The customs administrators were let go because during the year 2000 the flow of contraband into Mexico was carried out with impunity and often with the support of customs.
Source: El Diario, January 3 & 4, 2001. Articles by Roberto Ramos and Lucy Sosa.

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19,000 Juárez Homes Steal Electricity from Utility Approximately 19,000 Ciudad Juárez families illegally obtain electricity by running wires called "diablitos" from their homes to the cables of the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE). While the practice is highly dangerous those that steal power from the utility say that they can not afford to pay for electricity or that power lines do not yet reach their communities. The number of homes illegally obtaining power from the CFE has doubled since 1996 according to the utility. Between January and August, 2000 833 house fires were attributed to the dangerous hook ups when illegal wires heated up or short circuited and came into contact with combustible material.
These figures would suggest that about one of every twenty illegally-wired homes catches fire per year. On December 31, 2000 much of the Anapra neighborhood celebrated the New Year in darkness when electricity thieves overloaded the system, according to Juan Duarte, a CFE service executive. Power was not restored until 11:47 on January 1, 2001. Regarding the inability of many to afford electricity, a widow living in the Rancho Anapra neighborhood stated, "They charge us a lot for light, the last time I was billed 1,000 pesos (US$100). How am I going to pay this if we can barely feed ourselves? I prefer that they cut our service and that we hang off of the lines in front like everyone else on our block." The Alderete Gutiérrez family has had electricity for the past 14 years--all of them thanks to a "diablito" connection. However, in contrast to people that do not want to pay for electricity or cannot afford to, the Aldretes live in the Lomas de Poleo neighborhood where there is no power infrastructure.

Source: El Diario, January 3, 2001. Article by Edith Caballero.
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