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 Editorials | Issues | April 2007 
US-Mexico Border Activism in Full Throttle
 Kent Paterson - Frontera NorteSur
With spring in the air, activists from different social movements are once again taking their struggles to the streets in the Paso del Norte region. On March 31, hundreds of people participated in a march and rally in El Paso, Texas, in commemoration of the annual Cesar Chavez Day. Moving through the historic Segundo Barrio, marchers from farm worker, labor, student, and neighborhood organizations chanted slogans and carried signs in support of worker and immigrant rights, and against the El Paso City Council's downtown revitalization plan that could displace low-income residents.
Halting at the Border Agricultural Workers Center near the US-Mexico borderline, participants heard speakers, listened to mariachi music and dined on tacos made with the corn tortilla, a Mexican staple that has become the symbol of a widening struggle for food sovereignty and economic justice.
March 31 is now celebrated in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, as the Day of the Taco. A prominent banner reading "Justice for Immigrants" was draped from the center, which is located across the street from a US government facility where undocumented immigrants are deported to Mexico.
Among the speakers was Silvestre Galvan, who is known as one of the historic "Dorados" of the United Farm Workers of America co-founded by Cesar Chavez. Describing how his relatives left Ciudad Juarez to pick cotton decades ago, Galvan said that his family first met Chavez in 1962 and joined the budding labor leader for what turned into years of farm organizing battles that raged up and down California's San Joaquin Valley.
Holding aloof a Virgin of Guadalupe standard that was once carried to the California state capital of Sacramento, Galvan said that Chavez's efforts eliminated 12-hour workdays for farm laborers, resulted in the winning of break and lunch times, and led to wage improvements. Much remains to be done, the veteran activist added.
"We continue in the struggle. The struggle is not over," Galvan said. "There are people and politicians who say that the struggle is over. What a surprise we give them when we conduct these marches."
Carlos Marentes, the long-time leader of the El Paso-based Border Agricultural Workers Union and Bracero Project, criticized the exclusion of farm and dairy workers from the new minimum wage hike passed by the Democratic Party-dominated New Mexico State Legislature and signed into law by Governor Bill Richardson last month. Many farm workers who live in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez labor in southern New Mexican fields.
"History repeats itself," Marentes said, adding that farm workers have been systematically excluded from labor legislation dating back to the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in the 1940s. "We will keep fighting. It's up to us," Marentes said. "For many years we have relied that changes will come up from the farm workers and their families and the communities themselves,"
Irma Montoya, the director of La Mujer Obrera, an organization of former garment workers, called for greater consideration of the rights of women workers. Montoya sketched out a community development plan that La Mujer Obrera is implementing to revitalize El Paso's old garment district and establish the envisioned "Mexican Town" in an area of the city that suffers from trade-driven industrial decay.
Scheduled to kick off next November, La Mujer Obrera's plan involves the opening of a 40,000 square-foot warehouse to house micro-enterprises that will commercialize goods from producers across the border. A museum, commercial kitchen, media center, and trading company round off the community incubator, which Montoya defined as the "prototype" of what could become a larger development plan.
"There are different plans here in El Paso. There is the Paso del Norte Plan, the development of Fort Bliss, the School of Medicine. But none of them include limited English-speaking women workers. Our plan is the only one that will give space to all the Mexican community," Montoya said.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Ciudad Juarez schools began the two-week Easter and Holy Week holidays in the wake of a strike by thousands of teachers that shutdown dozens of schools last week, according to the local news media. The teachers were protesting the Mexican Congress' passage of a new law that extends by ten years the minimum retirement age eligibility for about 2.5 million federal workers enrolled in the national ISSSTE system. It's likely the teacher protests will resume in one form or another after the scheduled resumption of classes later in April.
Protests and other events dedicated to a host of issues are planned for both Ciudad Juarez and El Paso in the coming weeks. On April 10, the anniversary of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata's murder, former bracero guest workers and their allies will stage a march in Ciudad Juarez to oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and to demand compensation from the Mexican government for money that was supposed to be paid to the onetime US farm labor contract workers upon their return to Mexico decades ago.
In El Paso, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles will give an open air mass April 14 in support of immigrant rights. Some groups are busy organizing additional pro-immigrant and pro-labor actions for May 1 and May 2. Billed as the second Great American Boycott in remembrance of last year's massive pro-immigrant legalization protest in the United States, the May Day action will refocus attention on the unresolved issue of legalizing millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States.
Still in the process of organization and definition, the May 2 protest in Mexico, which could feature a national work stoppage, is expected to protest the new ISSSTE law as well as the Calderon Administration's economic policies in general. Surveying the movement upsurge, veteran labor leader Marentes said that student, campesino, worker and anti-war movements are breaking out all over the place. "We are entering into an era of social transformation, and all of us are part of that change," Marentes added.
Kent Paterson is the Editor of Frontera NorteSur. FNS can be found at http://frontera.nmsu.edu/.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico |
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