Publications and Documents

1999	The Maquiladora Reader (American Friends Service Committee) -- The Maquiladora Reader explores how grassroots activists are facing one of the most important trends in globalization: the proliferation of maquiladoras, the foreign- (mostly U.S.-) owned assembly plants along the Mexico-U.S. border. Through more than two dozen readings culled from a variety of sources, The Maquiladora Reader reveals the determination and creativity of maquiladora workers as they seek to improve their wages and working conditions, protect their communities from health and environmental hazards, and build cross-border relationships with unions, religious groups, community organizations, and others. (131 pages)
12/98	A Job or Your Rights: Continued sex discrimination in Mexico's maquiladora sector (Human Rights Watch) -- In violation of Mexican labor law, maquiladora operators oblige women to undergo pregnancy testing as a condition of work. This report documents how companies demand that women produce urine specimens for pregnancy exams and how maquiladora doctors and nurses examine women's abdomens or require them to reveal private information about menses schedule, birth control use, and sexual activity as a means to determine pregnancy. "This is flagrant sex discrimination that these corporations would never dare to defend or practice in their own countries. When corporations say that this discrimination is permissible under Mexican labor law, they are in fact hiding behind Mexico's own negligence." said Regan Ralph, executive director of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch (82 pages) (See press release.)
8/96	No Guarantees: Sex discrimination in Mexico's maquiladora sector (Human Rights Watch) -- At least half of the Mexicans employed in assembly plants, are women, and the income they earn supports them and their families at wages higher than they could earn in any other employment sector in northern Mexico. These women workers routinely suffer a form of discrimination unique to women: the maquiladoras require them to undergo pregnancy testing as a condition of employment and deny them work if they are pregnant; if a woman becomes pregnant soon after gaining employment at a maquiladora, in some instances she may be mistreated or forced to resign because of her pregnancy. (58 pages)
1/1/94	NAFTA (Organization of American States) -- The complete text of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1/1/94	NAALC -- A review of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation.

Personal Accounts of Maquiladora Workers

Maquiladora Workers Demand a Living Wage -- This article is written on the basis of an interview with "Maria," a maquiladora worker in Tijuana who does not use her real name for fear of retaliation. In this interview she gives a detailed accounting of the amount of money her family earns and also the amount they need to spend for basic necessities.

Testimony of Auto Trim Workers in Matamoros and Valle Hermoso -- Three workers graphically describe the "quality" of workplace health and safety in one of Mexico's maquiladoras. These testimonials offer glimpses into the eddects of poorly enforced OHS regulations.

Standing up for Health Rights on the Job: Two Courageous Women Win Charges Against US-Based Firm -- Toxic Fumes that sent forty-five women maquiladora workers to an emergency room a little over a year ago might have been just another routine accident in Tijuana's Limon Industrial Park. But two of the injured workers, Lidia Pérez Farias and Paula Mata Orduña, were determined hold the San Diego-based medical manufacturer operating the maquiladora, accountable.

Radio and Newspaper Reports

1/22/01	Diplomat: Mexico to ask Bush to solve 'intolerable' border violence -- Mexico will bring up a "broad agenda of immigration issues" during U.S. President George W. Bush's planned visit in February, and may ask for an end to border-sealing operations, Mexico's top diplomat said Monday.
7/31/00	NAFTA's Bittersweet Boom -- For more than a half-century, Jalisco's rural youth had little choice but to head north and sneak across the border into the United States for work.
6/13/00	Labor Turns Out for Amnesty: 20,000 March for Amnesty in Los Angeles -- Immigration amnesty for people crossing the border without papers is hardly a new idea in California. In fact, the first one came with San Francisco's earthquake and fire of 1906, which destroyed the records keeping track of immigrants brought from China to work on the railroads.
7/20/99	An Uneasy Partnership: Promise and peril in growth of trade between California and Mexico (San Francisco Chronicle) -- California's economic future can be glimpsed throughout the huge San Diego research building of Sony Inc., where teams of blue-jeaned, twentysomething inventors design the next generation of television technology. It can also be found just a few miles south, across the Mexican border in Tijuana, where thousands of Sony factory workers assemble parts brought from San Diego and Asia, turning them into the glitzy new TVs coveted by consumers throughout America.
7/20/99	NAFTA's Report Card On the Environment Checkered at Best (San Francisco Chronicle) -- The Tijuana River empties into the Pacific Ocean here, and most of the liquid flowing between its banks is water. No longer is the river simply a toxic mix of raw sewage and industrial wastes, polluting ocean waters and beaches for many miles to the north and south. Large new sewage treatment facilities have been built on both sides of the border, in a path-breaking attempt by the U.S. and Mexican governments to join forces to clean up the border area's chronic environmental mess. Their work has a long way to go, however. The river, which crosses the border from Mexico six miles from the ocean, still is foul-smelling and carries plenty of sewage dumped illegally from Tijuana's shantytowns and maquiladoras.
5/27/98	Mexico Labor Union (realaudio on NPR's Morning Edition) -- Carrie Kahn of member station KPBS reports on a workers' strike in Tijuana, Mexico, for better pay and improved conditions. Labor representatives say that the Mexican government's refusal to recognize the union - at the Korean-owned Han Young assembly plant - highlights weaknesses in workers' rights under the North American Free Trade Accord. (3:20)
2/17/98	Unionization Under Nafta (realaudio on NPR's Morning Edition) -- Carrie Kahn of member station KPBS reports from Tijuana on the struggle between workers and management at a Korean factory over unionization and how the employees are citing NAFTA in their favor. (5:35)
1996-1999	David Bacon Photographs & Stories: Mexico -- Bay Area journalist and photographer David Bacon has written articles on the worker's strike at the Han Young Plant in Tijuana, the struggles of people who have immigrated to California, as well as many other subjects. His photographs have been featured in many national exhibits.

Information and Publications by the Maquiladora Industry

Tijuana Economic Development Corporation -- A bi-national organization that is dedicated to attracting maquiladora business to the Tijuana area. This site includes many statistics about maquiladoras.

Maquila Inc. -- This corporation has been providing information to the maquiladora industry for over a decade with publications such as Who's Where in Mexico and The Maquiladora Supplier Handbook. (map)

Maquila Guide -- This directory can be used to find manufacturers, facility locations & capabilities and to find companies that supply products & equipment to maquiladora plants.

Solunet: Info-Mex, Inc. -- The Complete Twin Plant Guide is a resource publication that gives a direct line to suppliers and manufacturers in the maquiladora industry. These listings describe the Mexican operation as well as the American or foreign parent company, and provide vital information about contact personnel, products, SIC codes, square footage, number of employees, and other essential data for doing business with the Maquiladora plants.

Twin Plant News -- A monthly industrial trade magazine focusing on the operations of major companies in the United States and the maquiladoras in Mexico. Readers include maquiladora managers and their staff, engineers and the management teams of the maquiladora's parent corporation - most of which are in the Fortune 500.

Shelter Companies

• Cal Pacifico
• Collectron
• Grupo Americas
• Made In Mexico
• Mexico Direct Business Services

Government Resources

INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática / National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Information) (en Español)

NAFTA Homepage (U.S. Department of Commerce - International Trade Administration)

More Links

Borderlines Borderlines is a monthly publication produced by the Interhemispheric Resource Center, a private nonprofit research and policy institute located in Silver City and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Documents

3/01	Causes and Trends in Migrant Deaths along the U.S.- Mexico Border, 1985-1998 (University of Houston - Center for Immigration Research) -- Undocumented migrants who seek to enter the United States without inspection often take risks to cross the border undetected. Tragically, these risks sometimes lead to the death of the migrant: by drowning, in auto-pedestrian accidents or vehicle collisions, by heat stroke or hypothermia, or other causes. The Center has released a new study, Causes and Trends in Migrant Deaths along the U.S.- Mexico Border, 1985-1998. This study uses vital registration mortality data for counties at and near the southwest border of the United States to get a longer view of mortality during undocumented migration than has been common during recent debates about this issue. The study finds that deaths from weather-related causes (hypothermia and hypothermia) have risen dramatically since 1995. By 1998, deaths from these causes were nearly three times as common as they were when undocumented migration crested in the mid-1980s. The report also reminds that undocumented migration has always been dangerous, and that fluctuations in temperature and river flow are an important part of the explanation of variations in border dangers and deaths. The findings suggest the need to re-think the emphasis on the new border control initiatives of the 1990s as the sole cause of current mortality patterns, and to look to immigration policy rather than border control policy as the solution to the current problems at the border.
10/21/98	Citizen Enforcement Submission Before the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (Environmental Health Coalition & Comité Ciudadano Pro Restauración del Cañón del Padre) -- The purpose of the EHC/Comité Citizen Enforcement Submission is to request the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) to prepare a factual record to determine if Mexico has failed to effectively enforce its environmental law in regards to the cleanup of Metales y Derivados (Metales), an abandoned lead smelter in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. Petitioners also request the CEC to prepare an independent report to promote the protection of human health and the environment and to facilitate enforcement cooperation between governments as allowed under article 13.
1/99	Consultative Opinion: International Court of Environmental Arbitration and Conciliation (The Green Channel) -- In view of the request for an opinion drawn up by the Lawyer Mr Domingo Gutiérrez Mendivil as to whether or not the waste and dangerous substances deposited by ALCO PACIFICO DE MEXICO, S.A. de C.V. in the "El Florido" Ranch in Tijuana and transferred to the CYTRAR deposit located in the town of Hermosillo, Sonora must be returned to their country of origin, namely the United States of America, we hereby make known our view thereon. (25 pages)
1/1/94	NAAEC -- The complete text of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation

Newspaper, Journal, and Radio Reports

6/16/01	NAFTA agency ripped for not taking action on Tijuana toxic site (Copley News Service) -- Border activists yesterday criticized an environmental monitoring agency created by NAFTA for failing to take any significant action more than a year after it began investigating a Tijuana toxic waste site.
12/3/98	Tijuana-San Diego NGOs File Border's First CEC Complaint (borderlines) -- The abandoned Metales and Derivados battery recycling plant in Tijuana as become the topic of a the border area's first ever citizen complaint to the Commission of Environmental Cooperation (CEC). On October 21, 1998, the Tijuana based Comité Ciudadano Pro-Restauración del Cañon del Padre A.C. and the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) of San Diego submitted a claim to the NAFTA-created institution charging Mexico with negligence in handling the site, ignoring the effect of potential soil and water contamination on nearby communities, and failure to pursue the extradition of the facility's owner to Mexico.
10/21/98	International help sought for Tijuana lead waste cleanup (San Diego Union Tribune) -- The fine brown sand sits piled up on Otay Mesa, mounds of toxic waste from a lead smelter abandoned by its American owners. A concrete block fence built to contain the waste is crumbling. A tarp placed over the slag is torn. More than four years after the Mexican government shut down the smelter, Metales y Derivados, 6,000 metric tons of lead slag remain on the site, posing a serious health risk to hundreds of Tijuana residents living below, environmental advocates say. Claiming Mexico has failed to enforce its own laws and safeguard the site, two groups today are taking their battle to an international arena, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation in Montreal.
10/21/98	Mexico Environmental Storm (realaudio from NPR's All Things Considered) -- Carrie Kahn of member station KPBS reports from Tijuana on an effort by Mexican and American activists to use the North American Free Trade Agreement to compel Mexico to clean up an abandoned lead smelter that is polluting parts of the border city. NAFTA's environmental side agreements were supposed to lead to greater enforcement of environmental laws in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Critics say the side agreements' complaint process is of little use, because it cannot lead to fines or other sanctions. An author of the side agreements admits they can do little more than expose a government to embarrassing media coverage. (6:00)
9/17/98	ALCO Pacifico & CYTRAR Update (borderlines updater) -- 1. Hermosillo Toxic Waste Dump Opponents Forcibly Removed From Plaza 2. Agreement on Joint NGO-Government Inspection of Dump Derailed: Will CYTRAR be Relocated? 3. The Alco Pacifico Angle: Tijuana Dump Continues to Spark Controversy 4. Permanent Vigil in Plaza was Peaceful: Other Vigils Have Been Allowed Without Police Intervention
5/19/98	Toxic Waste Dump Seen As Health Threat: Hermosillo Residents Take a Stand (borderlines) -- Hermosillo, the bustling capital of the Mexican state of Sonora, lies a few hours drive south of Nogales, Arizona. Currently one of the biggest struggles for environmental justice along the U.S.-Mexico border is taking place here. It's a battle over the dumping of toxic waste and the right of communities to safeguard their health. The outcome could have far-reaching repercussions.
7/99	Hazardous Waste Management on the Border: Problems with Practices and Oversight Continue (borderlines) -- The explosive growth of manufacturing industries in Mexico's border area has led to a concomitant growth in the amount of hazardous wastes being generated and disposed of in the region. Cyrus Reed of the Texas Center for Policy Studies takes a critical look at the state of hazardous waste management in the borderlands--what it is today and what it could become tomorrow.

Government

Commission for Environmental Cooperation

More Links

Border Information and Outreach Service: Hazardous Wastes -- A listing of websites for over 30 organizations doing work related to hazardous waste in the U.S.-Mexico border region.

Women's Rights / Human Rights

Casa de la Mujer / Grupo Factor X (Español / English)

Frente Indigena Oaxaqueño Binacional

Labor

American Friends Service Committee: Mexico-U.S. Border Program Maquiladora Project

Campaign for Labor Rights - Mexico (Han Young Articles)

Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (Email)

Corporate Watch: La Linea - Gender, Labor and Environmental Justice

Support Committee for Maquiladora Workers - (Han Young Email)

Sweatshop Watch

United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America: Mexican Labor News and Analysis

Health and Environment

Border Ecoweb

California/Baja California Binational Health Council

Environmental Health Coalition

Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network

U.S.-Mexico Border Health Association

Documents

1/00

A Report of the US-Mexico Border Program: Documented Abuses on the Southern California Border with Mexico (American Friends Service Committee) -- The mandate of the U.S./Mexico Border Program of the American Friends Service Committee is to monitor and document human rights and civil rights abuses in the border area. This report necessarily contains only a small percentage (32) of the total number of abuse complaints received by telephone, from walk-in clients, through referrals from other agencies, from hospital visits, or because they are on the scene when a violation occurs. The AFSC staff follows up on each and files a formal complaint when possible. Very few victims of abuse are able to afford attorneys to take their cases and unfortunately, many complaints, though valid, cannot be pursued because victims/witnesses--undocumented workers, legal residents and U.S. citizens--are forced to leave the area or because families and individuals are too traumatized to pursue the issue.

5/98

United States of America: Human Rights Concerns in the Border Region With Mexico (Amnesty International) -- This report describes the findings of Amnesty International's research into human rights concerns along the United States' southern border with Mexico, primarily recent allegations of ill-treatment and brutality by officers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), in particular the Border Patrol, the law enforcement branch of the INS. According to the US Justice Department in 1998, the INS now has more armed federal agents with arrest power than any other federal agency in the country. (56 pages)

Press Releases

3/13/00	Amnesty International-USA Calls the Strategy of Diverting Migrants into the Mountains and Desert a Human Rights Violation (Amnesty International-USA) -- At its annual meeting in March 2000, the U.S. section of Amnesty International overwhelmingly passed a resolution recommending to its world-wide parent organization that "the deaths of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border be included" in its campaign to expose and prevent human rights violations by the U.S. government. Amnesty International-USA "does not take issue with the sovereign right of the United States to police its international borders, but insists that it do so in a manner which complies with its international human rights obligations." The resolution goes on to say that the Gatekeeper strategy is an abuse of the right to control the border "in that it maximizes, rather than minimizes, the risk to life."
2/15/99	ACLU and CRLAF File Petition Charging That Deadly U.S. Border Enforcement Strategy Violates International Human Rights Law (American Civil Liberties Union - Press Release) -- The United States is deliberately driving illegal border crossers into mortal harm's way in violation of international human rights law, charges a petition to be filed today with the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights by the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation's Border Project. The petition asks the Commission to find that Operation Gatekeeper -- a four year border enforcement strategy that forces illegal entrants out of San Diego and into treacherous desert and mountain areas to the east --breaches the OAS Charter and American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. If the commissioners find that the United States has abused its right to protect its borders, they can urge that the Border Patrol desist from conducting border enforcement in a manner that ensures that migrants, let alone hundreds of them, will die.
4/15/99	U.N. Human Rights Panel Asked to Investigate Migrant Deaths on U.S. Border (American Civil Liberties Union - Press Release) -- The United Nations Human Rights Commission will consider a request by the Oceanside-based California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties to condemn Operation Gatekeeper, an increasingly deadly strategy employed by the U.S. Border Patrol along the California-Mexico border. The request comes on the heels of some of the heaviest fatalities since Operation Gatekeeper was launched four and-a-half years ago. The death toll is 389, and counting. Most of the migrants have died of exposure in the mountains and desert into which they have been pushed by Operation Gatekeeper. A total of 16 migrants died during Easter Week -- eight of hypothermia in the Tecate mountains on Good Friday, alone.

Radio and Newspaper Reports

5/24/01	12 illegal immigrants die in Arizona desert (New York Times) -- Twelve illegal immigrants who crossed the Mexican border perished as they tried to traverse barren Arizona desert in 115-degree heat and reach a highway, the Border Patrol said yesterday. Eleven more were rescued, and the authorities were searching for others. It was the largest number of illegal immigrants to die at once in the Southwest desert in recent years, and a stark reminder that as the Border Patrol has cracked down on better-known crossings into California and Texas, more and more people seeking to slip into this country are turning to the vast, unpatrolled deserts and deserted mountains in Arizona.
5/17/01	Mexico to give survival kits to border jumpers (San Francisco Chronicle) -- If they can't stop illegal immigration to the United States, officials of the new Mexican government say their citizens at least shouldn't die in the process of trying. So starting next month, the administration of President Vicente Fox will distribute up to 200,000 survival kits to those planning to immigrate illegally to the United States this summer.
12/11/00	Activists Want Abuses on Border Stopped (Tuscon Citizen) -- Activists denouncing what they see as human rights violations along the U.S.- Mexico border are mobilizing to halt the buildup of law enforcement in the Southwest and take down the border walls.
12/11/00	Activists Urge Border Solutions (Arizona Daily Star) -- More than 600 activists from around the United States and Mexico found broad agreement during a weekend conference in Tucson that the border region must be de-militarized, immigration laws reformed and economic globalization humanized.
9/00	As the U.S. military melds with civilian police agencies, the first casualties are immigrants (Resource Center of the Americas) -- The death toll along California's border with Mexico has reached 567, according to the American Friends Service Committee. Most of the victims have drowned in irrigation canals or fallen to exposure in the area's deserts and parched mountains. All were trying to evade Operation Gatekeeper, a six-year-old blockade that has tripled the number of armed U.S. Border Patrol agents in San Diego to 2,400 and erected a 10-foot-tall wall stretching more than 14 miles from the Pacific Ocean.
9/00	Border blockades spark hate crimes, vigilantism (Resource Center of the Americas) -- Andrés Román Díaz, 66, waters plants six days a week at a nursery in Carmel Valley, just northeast of here. His $5.75 hourly wage helps support his wife and youngest son in the southeastern Mexican state of Guerrero and his two granddaughters in Tijuana. The nursery is within walking distance of a secluded canyon where he and another son have built their home, a shack with two mattresses and some candles.
7/16/00	Crossroads (San Francisoco Chronicle) -- Few Americans have seen the black steel fence running for miles up and down rugged canyons on parts of the U.S.-Mexico border, but it's the most visible aspect of one of the most ambitious public works projects in U.S. history.
11/28/99	U.S. policy on Mexico border irks rights aide (Associated Press) -- The United States is endangering the lives of immigrants by forcing them to use more dangerous border crossings, and the United Nations plans to ask for consultations with the U.S. on the policy, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said yesterday. Robinson criticized the U.S. policy -- which involves heavy patrolling of traditional immigration routes and leads immigrants to cross through deserts or mountains -- at a news conference marking the final day of a five-day fact-finding tour of Mexico that included a visit to the border city of Tijuana.
10/98	Bordering on Futility (San Francisco Chronicle) -- This series of nine articles explores many of the reasons of why people immigrate from Mexico to California. The Other Side of the Law - Despite all U.S. efforts to curb it, immigration is rising Dreams Don't Die With Border Crackdowns - Risks are great, but migrants keep crossing Crossing Into Rural Poverty - Law sets California towns, migrants adrift Growers Hire Illegals the Legal Way - With contractors Family Ties Across the Divide - Immigration policies can't beat networks of relatives NAFTA Gives Mexicans New Reasons to Leave Home Frustrating Search for Solutions - Workplace called key to immigration control Fierce Debate On Flow of Legal Migrants - Congress has squelched moves to cut numbers Why Proposed Crackdowns on Immigrants Never Happened
4/19/99	Illegal Entry (realaudio on NPR's Morning Edition) -- Carrie Kahn of member station KPBS visits a Mexican town that recently buried two men who died trying to cross illegally into the United States. Earlier this month, eight people died in the mountains as they tried to cross illegally from Mexico into California. The rate of deaths on the border has increased in the past five years, and has given rise to measures like Operation Gatekeeper -- a border patrol crackdown aimed at sealing off well-traveled, flat land crossing points between the coast and the rugged mountains and desert to the east. (8:45)
4/19/99	Death Rates of Immigrants Who Are Illegally Trying to Enter the United States Continue to Rise (text of National Public Radio's Morning Edition) -- People trying to get into the United States illegally are turning to increasingly risky methods of entry. Earlier this month, eight people died in the mountains as they tried to cross from Mexico into California. Such deaths have been on the rise in the past five years. That's when Operation Gatekeeper began, a border patrol crackdown aimed at sealing off well-traveled flatland crossing points between the coast and the rugged mountains and deserts of the East. The idea was that such hostile terrain would be a natural deterrent to illegal immigration, but the flow has not stopped. And since 1994, more than 380 people have lost their lives in the effort. Last week, Carrie Kahn of member station KPBS traveled to central Mexico and heard the stories of three of those people.

Organizations

• American Civil Liberties Union - San Diego
• American Friends Service Committee - San Diego
• California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation
• Stop Gatekeeper

11/2/00	The Hidden Toll (LA Times) -- Wednesday, a priest blessed nearly 600 crosses that have been erected at Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church in downtown Los Angeles to honor those who have died on the U.S.-Mexico border in the San Diego area since 1994--from the extremes of weather and at the hands of those who prey on migrants.
9/3/00	Hundreds march to demand governments do more to help immigrants (AP) -- Hundreds of people marched here Sunday to demand the United States and Mexico do more to stop the deaths of scores of Mexican migrants killed each year trying to illegally enter the United States.
7/16/00	Border Prayer Vigil Is Staged For Immigrants (San Diego Union-Tribune) -- Lourdes Arias dreams of a day when the concept of borders changes. "I'd like to see this wall transformed, not as a border that divides us but as a place where we can find communion," said the immigrant activist, who works with Casa del Migrante in Tijuana.
7/3/00	Group Casts Light On Lost Immigrants (San Diego Union-Tribune) -- Maria Elena Gomez and Lupe Aragon cried and held each other as they listened to the names of the dead called out from a podium at the San Diego Convention Center yesterday.
11/3/99	Oran obispos por migrantes muertos (La Frontera de Tijuana) -- Más de 200 personas se reunieron en torno de líderes religiosos, tanto católicos como luteranos, para pedir por las almas y las familias de los 451 personas que fallecieron en su intento por cruzar hacia Estados Unidos.
10/1/99	Protestan contra Operación Guardián (La Frontera de Tijuana) -- Un total de 444 velas fueron prendidas frente al edificio Federal en San Diego. En cada una de ellas se podía leer los nombres de cada uno de los migrantes que han muerto a causa de la implantación del Operativo Guardián.
5/17/99	Zedillo Says Mexico Has Bright Future (San Francisco Examiner) -- Though still plagued with poverty and social inequality, Mexico has much to offer California in economic, cultural and educational terms, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo told a San Francisco audience. (Note reporting on demonstrators carrying crosses protesting Operation Gatekeeper.)
5/3/99	Bay Area Celebrates Cinco de Mayo (San Francisco Chronicle) -- For many people at San Jose's Cinco de Mayo parade yesterday, it was a time to celebrate -- to dance, to cheer, to yell "Viva Mexico!" But for Pablo Ruiz, it was a time to remember Mexicans who died while trying to cross the border into the United States. Carrying two large crosses with the names of four people who died trying to enter the country illegally, Ruiz marched in the drizzle with a parade contingent protesting the Immigration and Naturalization Service's aggressive efforts to staunch the flow of undocumented immigrants across the border.
11/3/98	Activists in Tijuana Mourn Dead Migrants (Los Angeles Times) -- Human rights activists and church leaders assailed government policies on both sides of the U.S-Mexico border Monday during a Day of the Dead remembrance for undocumented migrants who have died entering California in defiance of a 4-year-old U.S. crackdown on illegal crossings. A mile-long row of 340 white crosses, most bearing the names, ages and home states of illegal immigrants who activists said have died since 1994, were planted along the Mexican side of the steel border fence near Tijuana's Rodriguez Airport. Many of the wooden crosses were marked simply "No identificado."
11/3/98	Border memorial in Tijuana also a protest (San Diego Union-Tribune) -- Raul Purata slowed his van yesterday along busy Boulevard Aeropuerto, reading one by one the names on a nearly mile-long row of white wooden crosses. Each of the crosses, erected a few feet from the corrugated steel border fence separating Mexico from the United States, bore the name of a would-be illegal migrant who had died since the beginning of Operation Gatekeeper four years ago.
11/98	Mile of remembrance and protest (American Friends Service Committee) -- It was a dramatic and poignant sight: a single, mile-long line of white, wooden, four-foot high crosses with stark, black lettering. The crosses stood, wind-blown and sun-baked, on the Mexican side of the arid scrub land along the Mexico-U.S. border. On one side of the line of crosses ran a road just west of the international airport in Tijuana, Mexico; on the other side was the forbidding corrugated metal fence that marks the border between Mexico and the United States at the southern edge of San Diego, California.
9/11/98	Tijuana billboard to tally border-crossing deaths: Sign designed in S.D., slams Border Patrol (San Diego Union-Tribune) -- Migrant-worker advocates are erecting a billboard today in Tijuana, designed to keep a running tab on the number of illegal immigrants who die trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border between California and Baja California.