Annotations for Subject-headings: Borderlands

This is news from Latino USA. I'm María Martin. Hearings have begun on the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. While concurrently in Washington, Latino leaders held a national Latino seminar on NAFTA. Andres Jimenez of the University of California at Berkeley says this is the first time Latino organizations attempt to formulate a common strategy on a major national question because of NAFTA's far-reaching impact on US Latinos.

The impact of job displacement, environmental concerns, and not just protection of spotted owls, but protection of water in the air where people live along the border.

Latino organizations, including the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Puerto Rican Institute for Policy Studies have signed on to a Latino consensus position on NAFTA, which calls for parallel agreements on immigration, job retraining, the environment, and for a North American Development Bank. Other organizations, including the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, accept NAFTA as negotiated.

I'm María Hinojosa. Trade talks are now underway regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. NAFTA perhaps, as no other US economic initiative, will have a significant impact on US Latinos. With us to speak about the future of the controversial free trade agreement are three journalists who cover Washington DC politics: Sandra Marquez of the Hispanic Link News Service; freelance journalist, Zita Arocha; and José Carreño, DC Bureau chief for the Mexican daily, El Universal.

The biggest misperception in this whole thing is that even if NAFTA is a new document, in a way, it is something that is already happening at the border, as well, the people who's in Texas and California can say. Now what is going to happen? I think that there will be a lot of pressures on Mexico and the United States mostly in the environment and labor problems. Congressman Gephardt and a number of other Democratic freshmen went to Tijuana to take a look at the ecological situation there. They came out saying, "No way that way. At least the actual treaty has to be upgraded." We'll see a lot of the arguments in the next few months about it.

In fact, we've seen a lot of arguments already. Sandra, how much has the debate over NAFTA divided the Latino community in particular?

I think there's tremendous division among US Latinos on the issue of NAFTA because primarily, the jobs that are expected to be lost as a result of this agreement are the low-skilled, low-paying jobs that so many Latinos in this country hold. So, there is concern that the jobs that Latinos have are going to be exported to Mexico, but at the same time, Latinos realize that they have this intrinsic link with their Mexican kin across the border. And so, they realize there's tremendous potential that because of Latinos' bicultural skills that they can really tap into this and benefit more so than other Americans in this country.

The Latino population is also divided in terms of convenience. For instance, in Texas, there is a lot of people who's in favor of NAFTA because most of the import-export businesses are going through Texas and of course, they're getting a boost out of it. But in California, for instance, where there is a lot of Latinos in this low end of the industry, they're having a lot of problems, a lot of hesitations about it. So, I think that it is also related a lot with where are the jobs.

I think the Mexican government has realized that US Latinos can be very good promoters of this plan. And they have started a NAFIN fund, a $20 million fund for US Latino business leaders to create joint ventures with business partners in Mexico. And US Hispanic chambers of commerce here in this country have also been leading in terms of creating these trade partnerships and expose and taking people from the United States to Mexico and really helping to create these links.

There's another benefit to Latinos and I think Latinos are beginning to see this, that if the agreement leads in less immigration from Mexico to the United States…from Latin America in general to the United States, then those low-end jobs will not be taken away as easily as they would be if we continue to see hundreds of thousands of people coming across the border every year. There is some resistance on the part of some Latinos for fear that a lot of the low-end jobs will go to Mexico, but at the same time, there is also a realization that there will be benefits long term that will come from fewer immigrants coming over and you know, taking US jobs at the low end.

Thank you very much, Sandra Marquez, Zita Arocha, and José Carreño for joining us here on Latino USA.

Perhaps no other site on the US-Mexico border sees more complaints regarding human rights abuses than the San Diego-Tijuana region. In recent years, the number of complaints of abuses has risen as a number of anti-immigrant groups have organized to protest the number of undocumented immigrants crossing the border. Observers in California, which has lost over 800,000 jobs in the last four years, point to a growing anti-immigrant climate in the state, particularly apparent in the San Diego area.

With us to discuss some of these issues are Muriel Watson of the organization Light Up the Border, which has drawn attention to the issue of the number of immigrants crossing the border by stationing cars with their headlights turned on facing Mexico. And Roberto Martinez, director of the American Friends Service Committee San Diego office. The AFSC has documented numerous cases of human rights abuses in the area. Welcome to Latino USA, both of you.

Thank you.

Muriel, let me start out with you. Would you like to see this border area right here between San Diego and Tijuana and this area here, would you like to see it closed? What would you like to see happen with the border?

I would like to see that border secured and I would like to see good business being transported back and forth between Mexico and the United States. I'm a member of the San Jacinto Chamber of Commerce and they're constantly saying that business is good between Mexico and the United States, but the drug smuggling and the alien smuggling distorts that good business and healthy climate. And unless we secure the border... No, I don't want it closed. I want it secure. I have no objections to legal immigration. But illegal immigration hurts everybody.

Roberto.

Well, before we address illegal immigration, as a human rights office, we're more concerned right now with the increase in human rights abuses by Border Patrol. These last few weeks, we've been receiving at least three to four cases a day of people coming across the border. [interruption]

Well, that's incredible.

Let me say my piece first. [interruption] With their heads split open. Two of them required surgery for internal injuries. We have two shootings right now, one in Calexico and one in MCC Jail right now by Border Patrol. These are all unarmed civilians. This doesn't even begin to address the day-to-day insults and racial remarks that Border Patrol uses on the buses and the trains. And I say this from firsthand experience, I don't say this from third-hand. I interview these people myself. Whether they're undocumented or coming across illegally or not, there still has to be respect for human rights, and then we'll address illegal immigration.

Well, then- [interruption]

What needs to happen on the border then, Roberto?

Well, like Muriel wants the border to become secure, we want Border Patrol to adhere to the policies that are already in place. There's laws right now that call for the respect of the rights and dignity of people crossing the border within IRCA, within the law- [interruption]

How about the immigration laws that are not being respected by Mexican nationals and others from South America? Those laws need to be respected, too. You can't ask for respect for the laws on the one hand and ignore the other laws

Well, see. You have to understand, and I know this is difficult, but hunger and poverty does not understand laws.

We understand that, but what about the Mexican government's responsibility on this?

Well- [interruption]

The host country has a responsibility.

Muriel, do you believe that this country which was built by immigrants and was a country-[interruption]

Hey, there's no denying that.

Do you believe that you can in fact completely closed down any kind of undocumented immigrants coming into this country? Do you think that that's realistic and that it's possible?

Yes, it is, because we haven't been doing it for the last 20 years.

So, how is it possible?

It's possible by the will of the people. Obviously, the Gallup Polls have said they want to put an end to illegal immigration. Those people who would like to immigrate to the United States, many of them want to come to just work. We have those facilities in hand to allow them to work legally, so that they can come back and forth. All of those mechanisms need to be brought forth by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Labor, and to do it legally. There is no reason why we as a nation have to cope with this kind of silent invasion and the abuse that goes on both sides of the border. Border patrol agents are abused too.

But to shoot 15-year-old kids for having a rock, in the back or in the stomach or whatever, you know. [interruption]

Yeah, well, the rock was the first form of execution in written history. And when you've got 15-year-old kids in a pack of 200 throwing rocks at one single Border Patrol agent, his life is in danger. I have friends who were in the helicopter that was shot down by the bandits who didn't want the helicopter flying over that international line. I have Border Patrol agents that are shot at, Border Patrol agents that are rocked. All of these kinds of abuses go on, and Congress just sort of sits back-

Nobody condones that.

At this point, you're saying, Roberto, that there's no accountability... When the Border Patrol in fact violates, as you say, unarmed civilians, there is no one who they must be accountable to?

That's not true.

This was brought out very clearly two weeks ago when they announced the introduction of this bill to create a federal civilian oversight, that there is no system of accountability, no system of complaints.

When you say that no complaints are recognized, every time there is something that goes on as far as the Border Patrol is concerned, depending on the jurisdiction, either the sheriff's investigators take over, or the FBI takes over, or the San Diego police take over.

How many agents have been prosecuted for abusing an undocumented person?

Many of them have. Internally, they have been prosecuted.

How many?

Not one has ever been- [interruption]

Well, you know, prosecution follows through-

Are you saying that no Border Patrol official has been prosecuted for their…

In the dozens of shootings that have taken place over the last 10 years, not one agent has been prosecuted for shooting or killing an undocumented or unarmed civilian. In the abuse types, maybe one or two. The last criminal prosecution was of a Border Patrol agent in El Centro earlier this year for raping and beating a 16-year-old girl. He was sentenced to 24 or 25 years in prison.

How many undocumented immigrants have been shot and killed by the Border Patrol?

Oh, I've lost track. I mean, there was 30 or 40- [interruption]

How many of many have been shot and killed by smugglers and bandits down on the border? We don't have any track of that either.

That-[interruption]

The Border Patrol is just simply a policing arm of the United States government. And like all police agencies, it's suffering the same form of criticism that every other police force in the country is facing. But it is one of the tightest, one of the firmest, one of the most obvious to the public. I mean, they work down there in a fishbowl.

Let's just end up on this point. Is there any point, Roberto and Muriel, where your opposing views can ever come together? You both live in San Diego, you both live in an area that's a border. These things are not going to change overnight. Will you continue to be as far apart as ever or is there anything that can bring together these opposing perspectives? Roberto?

I guess as long as people don't understand why people come here and the poverty that brings them here, and never promote the contributions that Mexican immigrants have made to this state, the 4 billion agribusiness that's sustained on millions of seasonal agricultural workers and just targets the negative part of it, I think we're always going to be opposed to it. But also I think my problem too is that the anti-immigrant sentiment is getting so focused on undocumented problems that I think that if we don't begin to realize that immigrants are the ones that built this country instead of focusing on the negative, I think there we're always going to be poles apart. But I think people have to accept their responsibility for the growing anti-immigrant sentiment. And I think until that is addressed, we're going to continue being on different sides of the fence.

Muriel.

Well, I think what I'm hearing from Mr. Martinez is the fact that he would like to have open borders, and I think that sort of debate has to take place on the floor of Congress. We cannot have a law and then not enforce it. We cannot expect anarchy not to be taking place at those ports of entry. I mean, it's happening in New York State, it's happening in San Francisco, happened right here in San Diego. As long as people seem to feel that they can come to this country without permission, then we're going to have constant anarchy and danger to the people involved and to the law enforcement officers who are put out there by Congress to maintain that law.

Okay, thank you very much. Muriel Watson with the organization Light Up the Border, and Roberto Martinez with the American Friends Service Committee Border Office, here in San Diego. Thank you for Latino USA.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hollywood movies and television commercials often give us quick, concise images of people and places along the US-Mexico border. Going beyond those media-made notions towards real understanding is difficult, even impossible. Without firsthand contact. In the nation's capital, there was an attempt to go beyond those media images of the border. It was part of the Smithsonian Institution's annual Festival of American Folklife. But as Franc Contreras reports from Washington, real, cultural understanding required more than a taste of border foods or the sounds of border music.

[Natural sounds of Washington D.C.] Some young guys from Mexicali were standing in a crowd between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument. They wore baggy pants, some had dark glasses, and others' headbands pulled way down low. To some people, they looked like gangsters, but they're not. They're cholos with a distinctive style of dress that comes straight from the border. Suddenly, they started speaking Spanish out loud.

Bueno, aqui pasa todo los dias la patrulla fronteriza. Que tal si sacamos la lengua?

Border patrol goes through here every day. Let's stick our tongues out at them.

[Natural sounds of Folklife Festival] Then from behind a food stamp where some beans were cooking, A guy came out wearing all white with a pointed hood clan style. [Highlight, natural sounds of Folklife Festival] It was the border patrol chasing down one of the Cholos people watching realized it was a play by a theater group from Mexicali, a border town south of California. The actors were hitting one of the main issues on the border, immigration. Their translator is Quique Aviles.

A lot of people complain that they don't understand because the show is being done in Spanish, but at the same time, that's what life is. When Latinos come here, we don't understand either. So, we were talking about that last night. It's sort of like returning the favor.

A woman walked past us, dressed like the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico. She went past a display where a man was making guitars by hand, past a group of muralists from El Paso who were painting an eagle, and over to a food stand where a Black woman who speaks only Spanish was serving tamales and Tecate beer, and next to her was a woman from Texas.

We're breaking a lot of preconceived ideas, a lot of biases that perhaps have been most influenced by the media.

Cynthia Vidaurri teaches at the Southwestern Borderlands Cultural Studies and Research Center in Kingsville, Texas. She says, the American Folk Life Festival in Washington is an opportunity not only for people who've never seen the border, but also for people who've come here from the border to share their cultures.

The rest of the world perceives us as what the media makes us out to be, the movies, the news, and they're really thrilled to have a chance to say, this is who we are. We are living, breathing human beings that have the same needs as you do. We just take care of those needs in a slightly different fashion.

That sounds fairly straightforward, and some people walked away from here with more understanding about the people of the borderlands, but not without some effort. At one display, Romi Frias of El Paso was trying to explain to some people from Delaware, what a low rider is, you know, a highly stylized car, usually an older model with small thin tires, maybe a mural painted on the hood and lowered about an inch from the pavement.

[Laughter] I tell people that it's really going to mess you up. You're doing about 55 and there's this monster pothole and you've got about an inch clearance. I've got a lot of friends that face that situation and unfortunately hadn't learned the hard way.

Later under a shaded area, there was a storytelling session. It was supposed to be about women on the border. An Indian woman from the Mexican side sat on the left. On the right was a white woman who works for the US Border Patrol in the middle of the two women sat a university professor. He was monopolizing the discussion. Then at another storytelling session about immigration, the professor was taking over again. Some people in the back were saying it was typical. Here's this white male, the expert, not letting the others talk. After the session, I went over to him and learned his name is Enrique Lamadrid, a man of mixed races whose family migrated to the Americas from France and Spain like many others along the border. His family goes back generations. Lamadrid says he saw many surprised people at the folk fest who learned of the amazing cultural diversity along the border.

I mean, just the amazement that you can see in people's faces when they encounter these two black women over here from the black Seminole community. They're Mexicans. So these are really complex cultural entities.

Complex, like the land where they live. The border is often characterized by clashing cultural forces. Lamadrid says People living on the border cross the international boundary daily, but it's no big deal because it's part of their daily life. And he said the people living along the 2000-mile separating line did not come to the border. It came to them. Then he mentioned a series of treaties between the US and Mexico dating back to the late 18 hundreds. It's a complex history, a balancing act, he says, because the needs of border people compete with the national needs of Washington and Mexico City, and the result of that struggle is border culture.

But culture isn't in your blood. Culture is something that you learn. Culture and identities are things that are negotiated and forged every day of our lives as we live our lives out in specific areas of the country.

Lamadrid told me about a sewer line that broke during the festival Sunday morning. Smelly dark sewer water flooded a small area around some of the exhibits. He and the other said it reminded them of some border towns where pollution has become a major problem. But on the day the sewer broke, people taking part in the American Folk life Festival this year continued their efforts to share their life's experiences as the smell and humidity surrounded them. For Latino USA, I'm Franc Contreras in Washington.

Will the predatory Statue of Liberty, devour the Virgin of Guadalupe, or are they merely going to dance a sweaty cumbia. Will Mexico become a toxic and cultural waste dump of the US and Canada? Who will monitor the behavior of the three governments? Given the exponential increase of American trash and media culture in Mexico, what will happen to our indigenous traditions, social and cultural rituals, language, and national psyche? Will the future generations become hyphenated Mexican-Americans, brown-skinned gringos and canochis or upside-down Chicanos? And what about our northern partners? Will they slowly become Chi-Canadians, Waspbacks and Anglomalans? Whatever the answers are, NAFTA will profoundly affect our lives in many ways. Whether we like it or not, a new era has begun and the new economic and cultural topography has been designed for us. We must find our new place and role within this new federation of US republics.

Latino USA commentator Guillermo Gomez-Pena is an award-winning performance artist based in California. In 1991, he was a recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant. Well, what do you think of NAFTA? Give us a call and leave a brief message at 1-800-535-5533.

This is Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture.

[Opening Theme]

I'm Maria Hinojosa. Today on Latino USA, Hispanics and the Catholic Church.

People with a different culture and different values and a different way of expressing wonderful and beautiful Catholicism.

A standoff at the border over aid to Cuba.

We've told them that they will not be arrested, they will not be prosecuted. We will release the bus, that people can go freely. They refuse to budge.

Also, keeping the mariachi musical tradition alive.

It's the most addicting music of all. Once it's in your blood, you'll never get it out.

That's all coming up on Latino USA. But first Las Noticias.

A drama has been unfolding for more than two weeks now in the border town of Laredo, Texas. On July 29th, a group known as Pastors for Peace defied the US trade embargo against Cuba by taking dozens of vehicles carrying food, clothing, medicines, and other aid to Cuba across the US border. But one of those vehicles, a yellow school bus, was stopped by the customs service. Today that bus sits in a federal compound in Laredo. It's occupants refusing to leave the bus and now starting their third week of a hunger strike. From Laredo, Latino USA's Maria Martin reports.

I see a whole bunch of semis waiting in line to go to Mexico, and in the middle of all that mess, there's this little school bus and I feel sorry.

Retired Laredo social worker, Manuel Ramirez sits on a sidewalk near the border wearing binoculars. He's trying to get a better glimpse of the scene across the street, there off to the side of the Lincoln Juarez Bridge. in an enclosed lot where semi-trucks wait to be inspected by the custom service sits a yellow school bus with a sign which reads ‘End The Embargo Against Cuba’. Inside the bus, 12 people ages 22 to 86 wait out the blazing hot August days. They've refused to leave the vehicle and to take any solid food, since the bus was seized by the customs service on July 29th. Among them is Pastors for Peace leader, the Reverend Lucius Walker of Brooklyn.

We see a nation that is threatened, a nation that is not our enemy, with which we are not at war. We were asked by the churches in Cuba to take this mission on and having responded affirmatively to their request, we have come to see for ourselves the importance of what we are doing.

What the Reverend Walker and Pastors for Peace hope to accomplish by their hunger strike and their attempt to take aid materials to Cuba is to call into question this country's 32-year old prohibition against trade and travel to that island. Pamela Previt of the Customs Service says her agency tried to help the aid caravan get through the border smoothly, but that this bus clearly violated US Law.

Customs detained 29 boxes of prescription medication, four computers, and five electric typewriters, which are prohibited items according to the embargo. The group specifically claimed that it was the vehicle itself that was to be exported. And because of that customs seized the bus.

The Reverend Walker says he was actually surprised when the bus he was driving was seized. Even though the group stated they were making the trip to challenge the embargo against Cuba.

They simply were not able to stop it because this was a human wave and a vehicular wave of people who were determined that this is a law that can no longer be enforced.

The law Walker refers to is the Trading with the Enemy Act enforced by the Treasury Department. So far that government agency has not responded to a proposal from the Pastors for Peace to allow someone from the World Council of Churches to escort the yellow school bus to Havana. On the 10th day of the hunger strike, there was a rally, in Laredo to support the hunger strikers and an end to the embargo against Cuba. A microphone was passed across the fence and the strikers told the crowd they were prepared to stay indefinitely.

We are all determined to stay on the school bus until the school bus goes to Cuba.

Cuba is not perfect, the government's not perfect, but it's way better than what they have in Latin America. And I realize that…

That among the 12 people on hunger strike is 32 year old Camilo Garcia who left Cuba four years ago.

And I decided that I will do everything I can to help the revolution to survive, and I will stay in here as long as it take no matter what it take, even if it take my life. So what?

The 100 degree heat, the exhaust fumes and the liquid only fast are taking their toll on the health of the hunger strikers. Doctors brought in by the Customs Service and by Pastors for Peace are monitoring the group's health condition regularly. For Latino USA, I'm Maria Martin reporting.

When Congress reconvenes in September, they'll be taking up the merits of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. But free trade isn't just about consumer goods, and many artists and intellectuals are talking about a parallel structure to NAFTA, one that would deal with ideas and culture. Commentator Guillermo Gómez-Peña calls it a free art agreement for cross-cultural dialogue.

Mexican and Caribbean cultures can offer the North their spiritual strength, political intelligence, and sense of humor in dealing with crisis, as well as experience in fostering personal and community relations. In exchange, North American artists and intellectuals can offer the South more fluid notions of identity and their understanding of experimentation and new technologies. US and Canadian artists of color, in particular, can offer Latin America sophisticated discourse on race and gender. Through trilingual publications, radio, video and performance collaborations, more complex notions of North American culture could be conceived. This project must take into consideration the processes of diaspora, hybridization, and borderization that our psyches, communities and countries are presently undergoing. Chicanos and other US Latinos insist that in the signing of this new trans-American contract, it is fundamental that relationships of power among participating artists, communities, and countries be addressed. The border cannot possibly mean the same to a tourist as it does to an undocumented worker. To cross the border from north to south has drastically different implications than to cross the same border from south to north. Trans-culture and hybridity have different connotations for a person of color than for an Anglo-European. People with social, racial or economic privileges are more able to physically cross borders, but they have a much harder time understanding the invisible borders of culture and race. Though painful, these differences must be articulated with valor and humor. In the conflictive history of the north-south dialogue and the multicultural debate, American and European sympathizers have often performed involuntary colonialist roles. In their desire to help, they unknowingly become ventriloquists, impresarios, flaneurs, messiahs, or cultural transvestites. These forms of benign colonialism must be discussed openly without accusing anyone. Their role in relation to us must finally be one of ongoing dialogue and a sincere sharing of power and resources. As Canadian artist Chris Creighton Kelly says, "Anglos must finally go beyond tolerance, sacrifice, and moral reward. Their commitment to cultural equity must become a way of being in the world. In exchange, we have to acknowledge their efforts, slowly bring the guard down, change the strident tone of our discourse, and begin another heroic project, that of forgiving, and therefore healing our colonial and post-colonial wounds.

Commentator Guillermo Gómez-Peña is an award-winning performance artist based in California.

I'm Maria Hinojosa. In El Paso, Texas, the border patrol continues its increased presence on a 20 mile stretch of the US border with Mexico. The border patrol says its so-called "Operation Blockade" is cutting down on illegal entries into the United States, but some in the border cities of Juarez and El Paso say the operation is also deterring many people from coming into the United States legally, either from fear or because they're heeding the call for a boycott on US businesses. And as Luis Saenz reports, Operation Blockade is taking a heavy toll on El Paso's downtown merchants, many of whom depend heavily on shoppers from Mexico.

The music in this downtown storm might be festive, but for downtown merchants, the mood is anything but. They say their business is dropped by as much as 90% and they're blaming the blockade conducted by the border patrol.

It's a ghost town. It's a ghost town. It's very bad. We've been like this for almost what? Three weeks? Yeah. This is our third week, so it is affecting everybody in downtown. All the merchants here are very upset right now. I don't know what's going to happen.

¿Cómo está-(unintelligble 0:07:32) ¿Qué estilo busca? No se olvide que aquí le ponemos iniciales gratis. Tenemos especial de ‘blockade.’ (laughter)

Jaime Advice has been selling sunglasses in downtown El Paso for the last five years. He depends heavily on people from Juarez who come across to buy his glasses, but today even browsers are scarce. He says the government should take a closer look at what the blockade is doing to the border economy.

Pues debe haver un poquito más de calidad humana en estas cosas. Se pierde mucho la confianza de las dos cuidades hermanas que siempre se ha dicho es Cuidad Juarez y El Paso.

There should be a little bit more human quality in these things, he says, "You lose a lot of confidence. Juarez and El Paso have always been sister cities. It doesn't appear that we're part of the same family."

As the blockade entered its third week, some community leaders on both sides of the border are realizing how much the two cities depend on each other and are calling for a meeting to talk things out. Adrian Gonzalez Chavez is the director of tourism in Juarez.

Estamos tratando de abrir el diágolo-

She says, "People should not say, 'Don't go to El Paso,' or, 'Don't go to Juarez,' but rather see what can be done to treat American and Mexican citizens justly."

Para dar un trato justo tanto para la cuidadana americana como al mexicana.

The director of the Juarez Chamber of Commerce says, "People need to recognize the interdependence both cities and jointly seek solutions to problems including that of illegal immigration and the border's economic viability."

Tenemos este librito con todas las especiales y tenemos cupones-

Meanwhile, merchants are doing what they can to attract customers, but even on a good day, some say businesses down about 70% from what it used to be. One Mexican shopper told us, "Many people are staying away because they think they may have their passports confiscated at the border crossing. If you have all your documents, you have nothing to worry about," She says.

Meanwhile, border patrol agents are continuing a massive show of force along a 20 mile stretch of the US Mexico border. Border Patrol Chiefs Sylvester Reyes says, "Operation Blockade is accomplishing what it's sent out to do: cut down on the number of arrests of undocumented immigrants." Since the blockade began, the arrest of illegal immigrants have fallen 80%. Chief Reyes says, "Operation Blockade will go on indefinitely." That's bad news for some merchants who say if business continues to drop, they can't go on indefinitely. For Latino USA, I'm Luis Saenz in El Paso, Texas.

Well, the good news right now for the administration is that it's not hemorrhaging or losing as many votes as it was say about a month ago. The bad news is that it's not picking up very many votes either.

As the countdown continues for a mid-November congressional vote on NAFTA, the Clinton administration is stepping up its campaign to promote free trade. The President is trying to convince those still undecided members of Congress, including those in the Hispanic caucus, to get on board. NPR reporter Richard Gonzalez has been following the free-trade debate.

What they're trying to do is convince Congressman Esteban Torres that they can meet his demands for a North America Development Bank. This would be a bank, funds for which would be used for border and environmental clean-up and for communities away from the border who might be impacted by the North America Free Trade agreement. The problem is that these negotiations are very fragile, but it could also explode and come to nothing.There's a possibility that Congressman Torres, Congressman Xavier Becerra, Congresswoman Roybal-Allard and maybe two or three others might come over to the Pro-NAFTA side. But it's still too early to say. There's the deal in the works, but a deal has not been finalized.

Some of the Puerto Rican and Cuban American Congress members are also still undecided regarding the free trade agreement.

Border Patrol spokesperson, Doug Mosher says that technically Operation Blockade ended on November 2nd, but that the enhanced patrols would continue indefinitely. Border Patrol spokesperson, Doug Mosher says that technically Operation Blockade ended on November 2nd, but that the enhanced patrols would continue indefinitely.

We still have enhanced manpower at all the major crossing points in a 20-mile area between roughly Ysleta, Texas and Sunland Park, New Mexico. So the strategy still continues.

Catholic bishops in El Paso say that Juarez, Mexico and Las Cruces, New Mexico recently called for a moratorium on Operation Blockade, to give people in border communities in both countries time to adjust to the impact of the operation on their economy, said the Bishops.But Doug Mosher of the Border Patrol says the number of apprehensions at the border are up by 80% since Operation Blockade began. That's a success, he says, and there are no plans for a moratorium.

It's a permanent initiative and it's something we're going to be doing from here on out. So, that's the word we're getting at, is it no longer is a special operation, it's a permanent activity.

Doug Mosher of the Border Patrol in El Paso.

[background music] Pancho Villa, a name out of Mexican history, the subject of corridos, a hero or a villain, depending on your perspective. Well, on November 3rd, an episode of the public television program, the American Experience takes a look at this controversial figure in American and Mexican history in a documentary called The Hunt for Pancho Villa. With us from Austin, Texas to talk about the production is the director of the Hunt for Pancho Villa, an award-winning filmmaker, Hector Galan. Welcome to Latino USA Hector.

Thank you Maria.

Hector, as we've said, the name of Pancho Villa really is familiar to so many people on both sides of the borders. Certainly to me as a Mexicana, it was seeing him all over in so many posters, este, throughout Mexico and the United States. But what inspired you and writer Paul Espinoza to develop this project, the Hunt for Pancho Villa, and to add even more information about this mystique of the character Pancho Villa?

Back in college in the seventies, it seems like, or even in our homes, we all had posters, and as you mentioned of Pancho Villa, who represented something to us as Chicanos. Some of us do understand and know a little bit of the story of his life, but to most people in America it's more of a caricature. We see a lot of the restaurants and some of that imagery, stereotypical Mexican imagery with Pancho Villa as a bandit and so forth. So that was one of our motivations to really bring this story to the American public who don't have much knowledge about who Villa was and what role he played in history. So we were just discussing this about four years ago. And we had worked on one project, Los Mineros, on the Mexican American minors coming into Arizona from Chihuahua at the turn of the century and their struggle for equality. And we said, why don't we do a story on Pancho Villa? And let's try to understand what happened in the raid when Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico. And that's really how it began. Just through a conversation.

[crickets] March 9th, 1916, Columbus, New Mexico, three miles from the US-Mexico border. [hoofbeats]

A little after midnight, they came across the border, about 600 of them, to attack the town.

[hoofbeats] [gun clicking and firing, gunfire, shouting]. Viva Pancho Villa!

Tell me, este Hector, what do you think is the most outstanding characteristic or trait that you learned about Pancho Villa throughout this process of making the film and that you think others will learn as they watch the film?

Well, that's a difficult question because Pancho Villa is a very complex character. I had my own ideas, which were those of the mythic hero, those of the Centaur of the North, if you will. But actually he had many more skills than just the romanticized ideas that I had. And that is as a statesman, as a good person and also a very complex personality where some of the witnesses that we encountered in Mexico who were with Villa, who knew Villa told us he would just turn immediately on people and could be capable of bloodshed at a moment's notice.

I think these things and their suddenness and yet their complexity is something that I learned as we were in the process of doing this film. And it's interesting too, because the witnesses that we talked to are not just the Mexican witnesses, because we did film in Chihuahua, most of the principal photography is in Chihuahua, but on the US side of the border and those people's understandings and misunderstandings of the man. We were able to track down witnesses who were there during the Columbus raid in 1916 and their concept of who the man was, and of course Americans looking at Pancho Villa would only see, especially those that were attacked, a bloodthirsty bandit, and can't get beyond that. But to the poor and the down-trodden of Mexico, he represented a hero.

Se le comparan aquel entonces como el Robin Hood…[transition to English dub] He was seen as a Mexican Robin Hood of this region, the north of Durango and the south of Chihuahua, because it was said that he helped the poor by taking from the rich [transition to original audio]…a los ricos.

[rooster] One of Villa's wives described how his early life shaped his character. He and all his people had to work like slaves from daylight to dark on the hacienda where he was born. He grew up suffering the cruel…

It must have been interesting for you and your writer, Paul Espinoza, to tackle the image of Pancho Villa. Considering that he's such an important icon in the Chicano community in the United States. Did you have some issues about that, about actually having to uncover this person who you had probably at one time admired and thought was the perfect man?

Well, that's a very interesting question, Maria, because as part of the series, we do have an executive producer, Judy Creighton, who's based in New York, and when we would show her our rough cuts, we would go there and we would view them and she would say to us that the film is very emotionally confusing because we don't know who to root for. And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that we're Latinos, we're Chicanos, and at times we're looking at it from American perspective, and at other times we're looking at it from a Mexican historical perspective as well.

And so that was a real interesting situation for both of us, especially discovering some of the more say, negative incidents that Villa was involved with and as well as trying to balance it with some of the more negative American perspectives of Mexicans in general. Because Villa is just one person they can point at but a lot of the feelings along the border against Mexicans weren't... They had their own stereotypical negative views of Mexicans, and we know that as a story too. So as Chicanos, it was very, very interesting to go through that process. I think eventually what we came up with is a very balanced picture on both sides.

Pues muchas gracias and congratulations, felicidades, on yours and Paul Espinoza's production, The Hunt for Pancho Villa. Speaking to us from Austin, Texas, Hector Galan. The premier of The Hunt for Pancho Villa will be on November 3rd on public television stations across the country.

Gracias Maria.

Gracias.