Featured

By Neil Harvey
Who will benefit from binational development along the New Mexico-Chihuahua border? This question has arisen once more with the announcement in mid-July of the construction of a new assembly plant in San Jerónimo, an area adjacent to New Mexico’s Santa Teresa port of entry. Foxconn (the trade name for Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry) will operate the plant and claims that it will eventually employ around 20,000 workers when the project is completed in three to four years. This kind of development has drawn praise from local politicians and mainstream media on both sides of the border, with Doña Ana County well positioned to attract supplier companies to the proposed Santa Teresa industrial parks.
Given the current economic problems of Ciudad Juárez and southern New Mexico, it is easy to see why the Foxconn announcement has generated such interest. The violent battles between rival drug cartels in Juárez have particularly damaged the city’s small and mid-sized businesses as the number of visitors and consumers from the U.S. has declined. Many businesses are closing down or relocating, increasing the need for new jobs. It seems that the maquiladora plants are becoming a kind of enclave economy that offer employment, but on conditions determined by global competition (including low wages and the lack of union representation).
On the New Mexico side, persistently low income levels also provide an incentive to attract new investments through binational development plans. This is the argument used, for example, by supporters of the Verde Realty Group’s proposal to establish two industrial parks and a residential area at the Santa Teresa site that is located immediately opposite the San Jerónimo area on the Mexican side of the border. Verde has developed strong ties to the Mexican business owners who now stand to gain from the arrival of Foxconn. For example, the owner of much of the land in San Jerónimo is Eloy Vallina, who, until last year, sat on the board of Verde. Vallina, together with Pedro and Jorge Zaragosa, two of the most powerful business leaders in northern Mexico, participated in the New Mexico-Chihuahua Trade Commission established by the governors of the two border states in 2003. These connections have been documented by several well-known journalists, including Eileen Welsome and Debbie Nathan (see www.pasodelsur.com).
The problem with this model of binational development is that it fails to take into account the long-term needs of border communities. This is most dramatically evident in the case of Lomas del Poleo, a colonia on the western edge of Ciudad Juárez that will be directly impacted by development at the San Jerónimo-Santa Teresa maquila zone. Although Lomas del Poleo is not situated exactly at this site, it is located in the area that the Zaragosa Group would like to develop as part of a connection between the newly constructed Camino Real and the port of entry at Santa Teresa. As noted in previous articles in Grassroots Press (Oct./Nov. 2007, Feb./March 2008 and April/May 2008), residents of Lomas del Poleo are claiming legal rights to the land they have occupied since the 1970s. The same land is claimed by the Zaragosas because of the potential commercial value of this area as binational plans, such as the San Jerónimo-Santa Teresa complex, begin to materialize. Violent dispossession has been used to intimidate local residents, as witnessed by two of the Doña Ana County commissioners, Dolores Saldaña-Caviness Saldana and Oscar Vásquez Butler, in March 2008. They heard testimonies and saw videos that attest to the heavy-handed tactics of the Zaragosas and their hired guards (see video of their visit to Lomas Del Poleo at www.grass-roots-press.com).
Although some criticized the visit of the two commissioners to Lomas del Poleo, they were simply doing what we may expect of elected officials in a border state – namely, to gain a deeper understanding of all the consequences of binational development plans, for all people involved. Broader attention to such matters had the initial positive impact of reducing the daily harassment and aggressive actions of Zaragosa’s guards. However, the underlying issue has not gone away. The legal claims of residents to the land have still not been recognized by the courts.
Then, on June 20, one of the government-appointed lawyers working for residents in Lomas del Poleo, Carlos Javier López Avitia, was assassinated after leaving the Agrarian Court in Chihuahua City. It is unlikely that the culprits will be found, and his clients are left vulnerable once more to the lack of legal response to their claims. Since December 2007 other residents have argued that López Avitia failed to keep their cases updated and therefore weakened their chances of gaining a legal solution. As a result, they hired an independent lawyer, Bárbara Zamora, to support them. Zamora is a well-known human rights and agrarian lawyer who has litigated on behalf of indigenous and peasant groups in contentious land conflicts in other areas of Mexico. At the time of writing, the residents and Zamora are awaiting confirmation of a date to present their claims at a federal court in Chihuahua. In the meantime, support groups on both sides of the border are raising funds to help pay for the legal costs faced by residents.
The announcement of the Foxconn plant therefore comes at a moment where the future of colonias such as Lomas del Poleo is at stake. By bringing the reality of a new maquila zone that much closer, the incentives for the Zaragosas and their political allies to evict the residents of Lomas del Poleo will become greater.
Must border development inevitably entail dispossession of low-income communities and depletion of local natural resources? Elected officials and citizens on both sides of the border have argued that we need a new approach to binational development, one that takes into account the long-term needs and existing land rights of all communities, not just those of the powerful industrial groups. The arrival of Foxconn will not make this issue go away, but, on the contrary, will demand closer scrutiny of how resources, including land, water and tax revenues, are being used — and for whose benefit.

Neil Harvey is director of the Center for Latin American and Border Studies, New Mexico State University. He can be reached at nharvey@nmsu.edu

Commentary

By Steve Klinger.

From today’s Democracy Now! the following news account describes a research initiative that could have wide-ranging implications:

US Military Funds Mind Reading Researching

The US military has issued $4 million in grants to university researchers to study ways to read people’s thoughts. According to the Associated Press, the military says the research could someday lead to a gadget capable of translating the thoughts of soldiers who suffered brain injuries in combat or even stroke patients in hospitals. But critics say such mind-reading technology could be used during interrogations. The project is a collaboration among researchers at the University of California, Irvine; Carnegie Mellon University; and the University of Maryland.

Hmmm… I heard a test version of the gadget was tried on President Bush but produced no results.

This would be in keeping with the cerebral activity shown by the following statement he issued last week after Russia invaded the sovereign space of Georgia:

President Bush: “With its actions in recent days, Russia has damaged its credibility and its relations with the nations of the free world. Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the twenty-first century.”

Uh, excuse me, Mr. President, but there’s a little problem with that statement.

A country that damaged its credibility and relations with the nations of the free world?

Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the twenty-first century?

How about invading and occupying a sovereign nation and overthrowing its government and killing untold thousands of civilians on the basis of forged and non-existent evidence of perceived aggression and links to terrorism? How’s that for damaging your credibility and pursuing a foreign policy based on bullying and intimidation?

At least the Georgians actually conducted a military operation that provoked Russia.

What is George Bush’s excuse? When the vegetarian version of the mind-reading gadget becomes available maybe we’ll find out.

Local

The next PVA meeting will be:

Thursday, August 28
Munson Senior Center
6 pm

Please note the special start time — many of our members will want to be home, at Obama Headquarters, or at some other venue around town to see Senator Obama’s acceptance speech, which is scheduled for 8 pm.

But — lots of action before that at the PVA meeting!  Bill McCamley and Nathan Small will present their brand new City-County Energy Initiative, we will hear from our fine local candidates, and — as always — much, much more.

Border

By David Evans.

“As president you can rally democratic forces without seeming to recreate the crusader mentality associated with your predecessor. The way to do that is by strengthening regional institutions and by urging democratic friends within the developing countries to take the lead. You should be honest in stating that political liberty is no guarantee of prosperity and that free elections are just the beginning of the democratic process. Democracy promotion fits well with efforts to alleviate poverty and also improve the climate for global peace. This is the right agenda for you to set and will help you in addressing a broader challenge: how to inspire the world to join with you and our country in a common cause.”

Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright has carefully prescribed a remedy for the nation’s current foreign policy ills in Memo To The President Elect: How We Can Restore America’s Reputation And Leadership (HarperCollins: NY; 2008). “True threats to civilization come from ideas that are both powerfully seductive and profoundly wrong,” she writes. “Such ideas compress all of life into a simplistic pattern that identifies a supposed source of evil against which to unite, and creates a flattering self-image for those otherwise unsatisfied with their lot.”

Secretary Albright continues, “You will assume power at a moment when America has lost influence while others have gained it. For the first time in history, our leadership is needed in the world but in many places not wanted. Any efforts you might make to lay out a plan for organizing the globe will meet resistance — and understandably so. Given the events of the past eight years, we can hardly dictate to others what they should think, feel, and fear; we should suppress our impulse to scold; your first responsibility is closer to home — to heed what we do and stand for, and what norms we set for ourselves.”

Strong historical perspective informs Memo To The President Elect. America’s dynamism and flexibility are displayed in a brief comparison of leadership after the world wars. After the first, “inward and backward looking men” would not acknowledge change. Steeped in nostalgia, they dreamed of an imaginary past in which the world stood still and America was isolated from it. After the second, leaders with “a capacity to adjust to new information” emerged, even though “the significance of events was steeped in ambiguity,” as Dean Acheson put it.

A decade of insecurity in the 1950s was lessened by the election of JFK, who “understood that America must practice effective diplomacy on every continent. An early supporter of independence for colonies in Africa and Asia, he was considered a hero in such places as Algeria, Kenya, and Indonesia…. Kennedy’s eloquence seemed to exemplify an America sure of its direction and skilled in the art of bringing others along,” Albright writes.

A former National Security Council member and U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Albright sees Iraq as a tragic blunder, noting our neglect of our allies and our over-reliance on the military. She presciently observes that freedom has more than one meaning. While Americans equate freedom with democracy, “Arab populations relate it to their own sense of personal and cultural identity.” Thus, talk of a democratic transformation was viewed as a threat to independence. “Iraq was avoidable. It has warped many aspects of U.S. foreign policy while devouring resources that could have been invested more wisely elsewhere,” Secretary Albright notes.

She wisely observes, “If you were to put an Iraqi doctor, a Palestinian schoolteacher, an Israeli farmer, a Lebanese businessperson, an Iranian student and an American GI in the same room, you would likely discover that they see right and wrong differently, but with equal logic given the contrasts in where they live and in what they have experienced. To acknowledge this is not to fall into moral relativism — as ideologues might suggest — but rather to take the first step toward a coherent diplomatic approach to the Middle East.”

Chapters are devoted to background on diplomacy in the Middle East, Asia, Russia and South Asia. Each contains useful insight, and a vital poverty reduction program by Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto is nicely summarized. Especially commendable is the chapter on New Foundations, which quotes one economic historian  (Kevin O’Rourke, Europe and the Causes of Globalization, Dublin, Trinity College): “Contrary to popular belief, the most impressive episode of international economic integration which the world has seen to date was not the second half of the twentieth century, but the years between 1870 and the Great War.”

Secretary Albright captures the absolute primacy of diplomacy in observing, “In that era, political stability and technological change caused trade to expand and capital markets to become integrated to an unprecedented degree. This was particularly the case in Western Europe, where Great Britain and Germany were major trading partners and Lloyd’s of London insured the German merchant marine. These cozy arrangements nevertheless failed to check nationalist passions, leading to a level of destruction that was also without precedent. World War I was a disaster for business interests in all of Europe — except for the manufacturers of armaments and tombstones.”

The reviewer will profile historical and contemporary peacemakers in future editions of Grassroots Press.

Environment

A report released Aug. 5 by the Environment New Mexico Research & Policy Center shows that if rates of water consumption stay constant and the Southwest’s ever-growing population trends continue, the region will be using twice as much water in 2040 as it does today.

“Water is a precious commodity in our desert state, but rapid population growth, excessive water consumption, pollution and drought put New Mexico’s future in jeopardy,” said Environment New Mexico Advocate Lauren Ketcham.

The report, Using Water Wisely: Southwest Data Shows the Promise of Efficiency, analyzes water saving opportunities in six southwestern states—New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Texas and Utah. The report finds that the Southwest could save as much as 5.7 million acre feet of water each year by using existing technology and adopting proven, effective best practices in the agricultural, residential, electric generation and industrial sectors:

Agriculture - Agriculture accounts for 71% of water consumption in the Southwest. Because of the region’s reliance on flood and sprinkler irrigation, farms in the Southwest apply 11% more water to their crops, on average, than the U. S. as a whole.

- Although microirrigation, or drip irrigation, can be used on the vast majority of crop types, it is only applied to 0.3% of irrigated land in the Southwest, compared to 6.8% of irrigated crops outside of the Southwest.

- By shifting from sprinkler and surface irrigation to microirrigation, the Southwest could save 2.9 million acre feet of water every year.

Residential - Our homes are responsible for 15% of the Southwest’s water consumption. Outdoor uses, such as lawns and gardens, use more water than all indoor uses combined.

- Xeriscaping incorporates local, low-water use plants, appropriate landscape design, microirrigation and water-conserving mulches to achieve beautiful, but low maintenance outdoor landscapes.

- By switching from water intensive outdoor plants, like Kentucky Bluegrass, to Xeriscaping, the Southwest could save 2.7 million acre feet of water each year.

Electric Generation - Two percent of water in the Southwest is consumed by cooling processes in the generation of electricity, predominantly by coal-fired power plants.

- Clean, renewable energy uses little, if any, water and would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which threaten to further diminish the Southwest’s water supply through reduced snow pack and increased drought.

- If the Southwest got 20% of its electricity from renewable sources, the region could save 140,000 acre feet of water every year.

Industrial - Water used by business and industry accounts for 3% of the Southwest’s water use.

- Denver, Colorado’s incentive and rebate program offers rebates to business for installing pre-approved water saving equipment, like low-flow toilets, and also pays businesses $4500 for each acre foot of water they save, up to $40,000. It is estimated that the program will save 4,650 acre feet of water each year.

- Reducing industrial water use by 2% would yield a 25,000 acre feet water savings each year.

“There is vast potential to reduce water consumption from every sector in the Southwest. By making these investments now, we can help to ensure New Mexico will have water for future generations,” said Ketcham.

The report also offers policy recommendations that could help to achieve these water savings, including:

- Tax credits for farmers installing microirrigation systems, to help offset the initial investment costs. Drip irrigation is already used extensively by New Mexico’s vineyards, and increasingly by New Mexico’s chile-growers, although investment costs have been prohibitive for many farmers.

- End “Use it or Lose it” disincentives by allowing farmers to lease water to other users that has been freed up by more efficient irrigation practices.

- Reward Xeriscape conversion. A program in Las Vegas, Nevada, for example, pays homeowners $1.50 per square foot of turf converted to Xeriscape.

- Adopt state-wide block rate structures for water, where water prices increase as consumption increases. The cities of Alamogordo and Santa Fe already have strong block pricing policies in place.

- Adopt strong Renewable Electricity Standards (RES), which require utilities to generate a certain percentage of their electricity from clean, renewable sources. New Mexico’s RES requires that 20% of electricity be generated from solar, wind and other renewables by 2020.

- Reward businesses that achieve verifiable water savings through more efficient water use. Luna Laundry, a commercial full service laundry in Santa Fe, for example, has installed an AquaRecycle system that reduces their water use by 80%, by recycling and reusing water.

“Improving the efficiency with which we use water in the Southwest can alleviate our water scarcity problems. From watering lawns at home to watering crops in the field, significant opportunities to save water exist throughout the Southwest. A comprehensive set of water-efficiency policies is the single best step Southwestern states can take to ensure adequate water for ourselves and our environment,” concluded Ketcham.

Environment New Mexico is a state-wide environmental advocacy group working to protect New Mexico’s air, water and open spaces. For a copy of this report, go to www.EnvironmentNewMexico.org