2005 was Year of the Border
By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN
Associated Press Writer

TUCSON -- For Arizona, 2005 was the year of the border. Or more accurately, the latest year of the border.

For years now, anger and frustration have been mounting over the steady flow of illegal immigrants crossing into Arizona, the busiest illegal entry point on the U.S.-Mexico border. But 2005 was a year when even more people than usual seemed to be paying attention.

State legislators pushed measures aimed at cracking down on human smugglers and illegal immigrants, large groups of citizens began desert patrols, the governor declared a state of emergency in the state's four border counties and the federal government made a renewed push to gain control.

Meantime, migrants kept slipping in by the thousands and a record number died while crossing the brutal Arizona desert. According to federal officials, more than half of all the illegal immigrants caught along the country's 2,000-mile border with Mexico during the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 were apprehended in Arizona.

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Sex tourists under fire in Tijuana
By Pablo Jaime Sainz
UNION-TRIBUNE
January 2, 2006

TIJUANA – A nonprofit group based in the United States is sponsoring a campaign of advertisements and billboards across Tijuana that targets foreign visitors looking for sex with children.

Messages, written in big letters in English and smaller ones in Spanish, are direct: "Exploit a child sexually in this country and you will go to jail in yours." A man behind bars appears in a photo.

Another ad, bearing the sad face of a child with dark hair and eyes, reads: "I am not a tourist attraction and it's against the law to turn me into one."

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Zapatistas leave jungle for tour of Mexico designed to reshape summer presidential election

By Ioan Grillo
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LA GARRUCHA, Mexico – The Zapatista rebels kicked off a 6-month tour of Mexico on Sunday, leaving this jungle village of ramshackle huts aboard rickety trucks and buses in an effort to reshape one of the country's most-heated presidential races.

Thousands of supporters waited for hours, then cheered wildly as the movement's ski-masked spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos, roared through La Garrucha on a black motorcycle. With a Mexican flag affixed to the back of the bike and EZLN, the initials of the movement's military arm, painted in red on the front, Marcos took his place at the head of the caravan, which will travel to all 31 states and Mexico City.

Identified by Mexico's government as a former university lecturer, Marcos has said the tour will allow Zapatista leaders to reach out to leftist groups across the country, creating a national movement that will "turn Mexico on its head.

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U.S., Juárez domestic abuse rates about equal

Louie Gilot
El Paso Times

Juárez women are victims of domestic violence at about the same rate as American women despite the aura of violence obscuring the Mexican border city, a new study found.

That's not to say the experience of a battered wife in Juárez is identical to that of a battered wife in America, Staudt said.

"What's different is the institutional system. In the United States, women can pick up the phone, dial 911 and get help very quickly," she said.

Seventy percent of the women interviewed in Juárez did not trust the police, and only 20 percent reported the abuse to the authorities, even though most knew laws protect victims.