by the El Reportero’s staff

The elections for 12 governors, 14 state legislatures and mayors in 15 states in Mexico are the biggest political challenge yet for the government of Felipe Calderon. The Mexican president has deployed troops and federal police to wrest back territory from drug traffickers. But drug-related violence, which is widespread in the country, has prevented many Mexicans from participating in the vote. Many see the elections as a major test of public support for Calderon and his economic and security policies. Al Jazeera’s Tom Ackerman reports. [July 4, 2010]

Should Calderón stand down the troops and negotiate with the drug cartels?

President Felipe Calderón finds himself ever more frequently compelled, not only to defend his anti-cartel strategy, but also to argue against an alternative that has gained the support of influential advocates: striking a pact of coexistence with the cartels, similar tothat which prevailed underprevious administrations.

A mayor of the ruling party has struck such a deal in one of Mexico’s most affl uent municipalities, and claims to have achieved an almost total cessation of violence and most serious crime. Calderón says that this option is both ethically and institutionally unac-ceptable.

What will hap- pen after Torre Cantú’s assassination? On 28 June, Rodolfo Torre Cantú, the main opposition Partido Revolucionario Insti- tucional (PRI) candidate for governor of the violent bor- der state of Tamaulipas, was ambushed and killed along with four other people. The killings shocked Mexico, even though this year’s death toll from gang-related killings is on course to pass 10,000 for the fi rst time.

Why is Brazil do- ing so much better than Mexico?

The record upgrading, y the Brazilian central bank, hardly a body known for hot-headed enthusiasms, of its GDP growth forecast from 5.8 percent to 7.3 per- cent in 2010 shows just how well the Brazilian economy  is doing. Mexico’s economy, by contract may not even hit this year’s growth target of 3.5 percent.

Bolivia exports more natural gas to Argentina Bolivia increased its natural gas supplies to Argentina to 7.4 million cubic meters per day, re- ported the Bolivian state oil company, Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales de Bolivia (YPFB).

Through a press re-lease, the company said this amount is almost all that is required by Buenos Aires.

This greater volume of gas transported is due to the increased demand in the neighboring country because of the season, the message states.

Bolivia and Argentina signed in April an agree-ment for sending 7.7 mil-lion cubic meters of gas per day, until such time as further investments allow the transportation capacity to reach 13 million.

These improvements should go in parallel with the construction of the new Argentine northeast gas pipeline Juana Azurduy through which Bolivia should supply up to 27 mil-lion cubic meters a day dur-ing the 20-year contract.

­ Young people protest at Apple Corporation suicides in China. (photo and text BY DAVID BACON)

Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Americans in San Francisco protest the long hours and bad conditions at the Foxconn factory in southern China, where the Apple iPad is manufactured. They lined up in front of Apple’s flagship store in San Francisco, holding signs with the names of workers at the factory who have committed suicide because of the conditions.

Those conditions include 80 hours of overtime a month, according to the Chinese media. Chinese law limits overtime to 36 hours per month. No one is allowed to talk on the production line, and workers complain of constant high line speed and speedup. Most workers live in huge dormitories, where often 12 people share a room.

The suicides include a man who jumped from a dormitory. He’d worked there for two years. Another man, recently hired, slit his wrists and was taken to a hospital. A woman hanged herself in the bathroom, and a man drowned in a company swimming pool. The latest person committed suicide right after Foxconn’s head, Terry Guo, had visited the factory and taken journalists on a tour.

Apple Corporation was embarrassed by the disclosure of the conditions for the people who make iPhones, iPods and iPads. The company,which has pushed for extra production of the newly unveiled iPad, said it would compensate workers by increasing the money it was paying Foxconn.

­

by David BaconTruthout Report

Thousands of leftwing activists just spent a week at the US Social Forum in Detroit, gathered again under the banner “Another World is Possible!” Among them hundreds added a new subtext: “Another Immigration Policy is Possible!

This theme was especially popular among grassroots organizations in immigrant communities. Today non-traditional worker centers are spreading across the US, including ones for day laborers, domestic workers, farm workers and other low-wage immigrants. Most are Spanish-speaking migrants from Mexico and Central America, but many also come from the Philippines, India, Pakistan, China and the Caribbean.

If anyone should be in favor of immigration reform, these groups should be. Yet instead of embracing the proposals made in Washington by Representative Luis Gutierrez and Senator Charles Schumer, they reject them.

The Social Forum was over by the time President Barack Obama made a speech about immigration policy a week later, but the forum’s message could as easily have been given to him as well. There are no significant differences between Obama’s ideas and those of Gutierrez and Schumer.

These grassroots groups don’t like the proposals for new guest worker programs. They have been fighting raids, firings and increased immigration enforcement for years, and are angry that the Washington proposals all make enforcement heavier. They want the border demilitarized. And they believe any rational immigration reform must change US trade policies that displace people in other countries.

Washington’s proposals for immigration reform all have a similar structure. They assure a managed flow of migrant labor to employers at low wages, through expanded recruitment by contractors in countries like Mexico. Immigrants must work to stay, and those who aren’t working must leave. To force the flow of undocumented workers into this program, the Washington bills all increase penalties for working or crossing the border without visas. And as the carrot, they propose limited legalization for undocumented people cur- rently in the US.

These proposals originally came from large corporations in the Essen- tial Worker Immigration Coalition, and were then supported by some unions and civil rights groups. These groups argued that corporations would never support legalization if they weren’t guaranteed a future fl ow of displaced people.

It’s not uncommon in Washington to hear ar- guments that “Mexicans would rather come to the US as braceros than die in the desert on the border,” or even “Mexicans are so desperate to migrate, they don’t care what kind of visa they have.”

In Detroit, it was obvious that immigrants do care. They don’t want to be used just as cheap labor, and want rights and equality with the people living around them. “We need a better alternative,” says Lillian Galedo, direc- tor of Filipino Advocates for Justice.

Renee Saucedo, who was born in Mexico and today directs the day labor program in San Francisco, says the biggest problem with the Washington con- sensus is that “it continues to mischaracterize migra- tion as a ‘criminal,’ or ‘il- legal,’ issue, rather than as a consequence of economic trade agreements and politi- cal repression that displace millions. Employers want to keep it this way to ensure their supply of cheap, vul- nerable, exploitable labor.”

The Frente Indigena de Organizaciones Binacio- nales, with an indigenous membership on both sides of the Mexico/US border, has historically opposed contract labor, or guest worker, programs. “Mi- grants need the right to work, but these workers don’t have labor rights or benefi ts,” says FIOB’s bi- national coordinator, Gas- par Rivera Salgado. “It’s like slavery.” Many FIOB members are farm workers, and some remember the abuses of the old “bracero” program.

At the same time,Rivera Salgado cautions, “We need development in Mexico that makes migra- tion a choice rather than a necessity — the right to not migrate. Both rights are part of the same solution. But the right to not migrate has to mean more than the right to be poor or the right to go hungry and homeless.” For that reason, after a long consultation process, FIOB announced it would “work to renegotiate NAFTA, be- cause it creates migration by forcing poverty and inequal- ity on the communities we come from in Mexico.”

Immigrant activists in Detroit called for broad legalization that would give papers to all undocumented people. They want the US to make more residence visas available, allowing migrants to choose where to live without making them vulnerable to employers. They opposed trade agree- ments like NAFTA. But most of all, they called for ending the criminalization of immigrants, whether by Arizona’s infamous 1070 law, or through the fi rings of thousands of people for lacking work papers. Over 350,000 undocumented migrants were incarcerated last year alone, in private detention centers.

“We should never fi ght for the rights of some at the expense of others.” Saucedo declares. “Legal- ization would be an empty victory if most immigrants still faced high exploitation, fi rings and raids.

http://www.truth- out.org/another-immi- gration-policy-is-pos- sible60995

By José de la Isla

HOUSTON — A friend with a home on the Gulf Coast pointed in a northeasterly direction. “New Orleans is approximately over there,” he said, meaning about 250 nautical miles away across the Gulf. Down a little to the east is Tampa. More to the southeast is Havana. A little more to the south and southwest are Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and its port city of Tampico, on the Gulf of Mexico..

Following the BP oil-spill catastrophe, many people only began realizing this vast body of water’s relationship to other regional places. My friend says it’s important to know who your neighbors are in the world.

Sometimes, looking at a map is more revealing than popular opinion. Take,for instance, Peggy West, a member of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors,who caused howls when she favored a boycott of Arizona because of its “Ask for Papers” legislation but didn’t seem to know Arizona borders Mexico.

The Arizona Daily Star reported Arizona’s U.S. senator, John Kyl (R)was providing West with a map highlighting in yellow where that state shares the border with Mexico. Needless to say, a video of West’s gaff went viral and brought lots of yucks all around. A Christian website quoted Proverbs 17:28: “Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.

However, I doubt the Bible really meant putting a horseshoe in the boxing glove the way Proverbs was used. Meanwhile, San Antonio’s city council, which resides about 135 miles from the border, passed a resolution condemning Arizona.

The border matter is of course not about objectivity and good public policy. Too many billions of dollars have been spent or squandered, and Border Patrol guards and National Guardsmen deployed over too many years for officials to admit misjudgments. Too many people are wiling to scare themselves out of their wits over it. There is, frankly, too much political capital to be had, even when it comes at the price of many human cadavers in the desert.

A kind of unreality has set in.

Thankfully, an essay in The Independent Review, “If Mexicans and Americans Could Cross the Border Freely,” by Jacques De La Croix and Sergey Nikiforov, is a discussion in this regard. Those who only like to hear the “pro” side of things will get upset hearing what’s rational about what the cons believe. But what is new and refreshing is that the essay takes basic realities, not myths, into account.

In a way Senator Kyl is right. Mexico, the U.S. and Canada are like three books on a shelf right next to each other, unlike books on another shelf, or in another section. Knowing geography is important.

One of the problems with getting neurotic about migrating Mexicans in U.S. territory is that it stunts discussion and reasonable scenarios. In fact, the essayists have the guts to force the argument: the U.S. relationship with Mexico is unique. It does not have to be confused with immigration from Italy or Senegal or “immigration” the way most restrictionists like talking about it.

Thought of geographically,we have migration issues for the three North American neighbors and immigration issues for the rest of the world.

The neighboring nations would benefit from looking at how the European Union protects national borders but allows migrations where neighboring people move about freely. They may set up businesses, seek work, send money home, and stay as long as practical. But European migrants are not entitled to citizenship or voting rights in the host countries.

The writers admit this doesn’t come up because the “American imagination may be dealing mostly in nightmarish caricatures” and less so in practical realities.

But given the reality voids and the silliness of name-calling by grown people, wouldn’t you think a geography lesson would help? Knowing where you are on the map is an advantage and not a fearful experience. As a North American, shouldn’t you have the right to visit, live in and explore your continent where a map is your guide?

[José de la Isla writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. His 2009 digital book, sponsored by The Ford Foundation, is available free at www.DayNightLifeDeathHope.com. He is author of The Rise of Hispanic Political Power (2003). E-mail him at joseisla3@yahoo.com.]CALENDARIO

by the University of Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Bands of chimpanzees violently kill individuals from neighboring groups in order to expand their own territory, according to a 10-year study of a chimp community in Uganda that provides the first definitive evidence for this long-suspectedfunction of this behavior.

University of Michigan primate behavioral ecologist John Mitani’s findings are published in the June 22 issue of Current Biology.

During a decade of study, the researchers witnessed 18 fatal attacks and found signs of three others perpetrated by members of a large community of about 150 chimps at Ngogo, Kibale National Park.

Then in the summer of 2009, the Ngogo chimpanzees began to use the area where two-thirds of these events occurred, expanding their territory by 22 percent. They traveled, socialized and fed on their favorite fruits in the new region.

“When they started to move into this area, it didn’t take much time to realize that they had killed a lot of other chimpanzees there,” Mitani said. “Our observations help to re- solve long-standing ques- tions about the function of lethal intergroup aggression in chimpanzees.”

Mitani is the James N.Spuhler Collegiate Profes-sor in the Department of Anthropology. His co-au- thors are David Watts, an anthropology professor at Yale University, and Sylvia Amsler, a lecturer in anthro-pology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Amsler worked on this project as a graduate stu- dent at U-M.

Chimpanzees (along with bonobos) are humans’ closest living relatives.Anthropologists have long known that they kill their neighbors, and they sus- pected that they did so to seize their land.

“Although some previ- ous observations appear to support that hypothesis, until now, we have lacked clear-cut evidence,” Mitani said.

The bouts occurred when the primates were on routine, stealth “boundary patrols” into neighboring territory. Amsler, who con- ducted field work on this project described one of the attacks she witnessed far to the northwest of the Ngogo territory. She and a colleague were following 27 adult and adolescent males and one adult female.

“They had been on patrol outside of their ter- ritory for more than two hours when they surprised a small group of females from the community to the northwest,” Amsler said. “Almost immediately upon making contact, the adult males in the patrol party began attacking the unknown females, two of whom were carrying de- pendent infants.”

The Ngogo patrollers seized and killed one of the infants fairly quickly. They fought for 30 minutes to wrestle the other from its mother, but unsuccessfully. The Ngogo chimpanzees  then rested for an hour,holding the female and her infant captive. Then they resumed their attack.

“Though they were never successful in grabbing the infant from its mother, the infant was obviously very badly injured, and we don’t believe it could have survived,” Amsler said.

In most of the attacks in this study, chimpanzee infants were killed. Mitani believes this might be because infants are easier targets than adult chim- panzees.

Scientists are still not  sure if the chimpanzees’ ul-timate motive is resources or mates. They haven’t ruled out the possibility that the attacks could attract new females to the Ngogo com- munity.

Mitani says these fi nd- ings disprove suggestions that the aggression is due to human intervention. Lethal attacks were fi rst described by renowned primatologist Jane Goodall who, along with other human observ- ers, used food to gain the chimps’ trust. Some re- searchers posited that feeding the animals might have affected their behavior. The Michigan researchers didn’t use food.-

He cautions against drawing any connections to human warfare and suggests instead that the findings could speak to the origins of teamwork.

“Warfare in the human sense occurs for lots of different reasons,” Mitani said. “I’m just not con- vinced we’re talking about the same thing.

by the El Reportero’s news services

On June 28, Rodolfo Torre Cantú, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) candidate for governor of the border state of Tamaulipas, was ambushed and killed. This is the first time since the Revolution that a gubernatorial candidate has been murdered during a campaign.

The nearest parallel is the murder, in March 1994, of the PRI’s presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio: 1994 was a disastrous year for Mexico, opening with the Zapatista uprising in southern Mexico and ending with more political murders and eventually a catastrophic devaluation.

The victim, Rodolfo Torre Cantú, was the victim of an attack yesterday on his way to the international airport of Ciudad Victoria, in Ciudad Victoria-Soto la Marina road.

His nomination for governor in Tamaulipas was made by Alliance “All Tamaulipas”, formed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the Green Ecological Party of Mexico and New Alliance.

The head of the PRI has demanded a swift investigation of the incident and punishment to those responsible, as the incident also left several seriously injured people.

For the Mexican Government  Secretary, Fernando Gómez Mont, who attended an emergency meeting of cabinet’s national security, the murder of Torres Cantu is a “completely reprehensible act that has aroused public indignation.

For his part, President Felipe Calderon contacted the national leader of the PRI and the governor of Tamaulipas, Eugenio Hernandez Flores, to express his condolences and offer support to the investigation.

Votes are set for the upcoming July 4 in 14 of the 31 states of the Union with the purpose of electing 1,633 public servants,including 12 governors, but as the date approaches, tensions and internal confrontations increase.

Argentine foreign minister resigns after spat with Fernández

Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández swore in a new foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, this week after the previous incumbent, Jorge Taiana, unexpectedly resigned. Taiana was appointed as deputy foreign minister by the President’s husband and predecessor Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) in 2003 and had held the top job for five years. His departure comes just after a major breakthrough to improve ties with Uruguay, and just as a former Argentine ambassador to Caracas testified to congress about an alleged corruption scheme run by the federal planning ministry involving Argentine exports to Venezuela. Timerman had been serving as ambassador to the US

Arrest of Peruvian journalist is political persecution, son says

Peruvian-American journalist, Vicky Pelaez, arrested and accused of spying for Russia in the United States, is a victim of political persecution, says her son, Waldo Mariscal.

Mariscal’s position was reported on the Radioprogramas radio station in Lima by Manuel Avendaño, a journalist with the Spanish- language newspaper El Diario/La Prensa in New York and a colleague of Pelaez. Avedaño said he was surprised by Pelaez’s arrest.

According to news reports in Lima, Pelaez, a well-known veteran journalist, was arrested on Monday evening and accused by the FBI of working for Russian intelligence.

Mariscal considers the accusation to be an act of political persecution and an attempt to silence the column that Pelaez writes for El Diario/La Prensa, Avendaño said.