Fox defends handling of incident with US
MEXICO CITY (EFE) – As this election year kicks off and tensions with Washington rise over immigration, the government of President Vicente Fox is defending itself against opposition claims that it has been “spineless� in responding to the slaying by a U.S. law enforcement officer of a young Mexican emigrant just north of the border.


“The government of Mexico is awaiting the results of the investigations so that, once their conclusions are known, the measures deemed appropriate are taken,� presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar told a press briefing Wednesday.

Guillermo MartÃÂ*nez, 18, was shot in the chest on U.S. soil last weekend as he and four companions were seeking to unlawfully enter the country from Mexico. He died Dec. 31 at a hospital in Tijuana.

One of the people accompanying MartÃÂ*nez said the young man was shot at close range by an agent of the U.S. Border Patrol, whose San Diego office eventually confirmed that one of its officers had fired his gun, purportedly after the Mexican threw rocks at him.

The main opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, said Tuesday that Fox should “act with greater energy and determination� both in this matter and on the broader issue of protecting Mexican immigrants in the United States.

Thus far, the PRI said, Fox’s administration had shown itself “lukewarm and spinelessâ€? in the MartÃÂ*nez case. The PRI, which saw its 71-year grip on Mexico’s presidency end with the conservative Fox’s victory at the polls in 2000, called on the government to “demand intervention by international bodiesâ€? in the face of the “barbarous methodsâ€? employed by U.S. authorities to discourage undocumented im-migrants.

Aguilar said Wednesday that Mexico “is carrying out several different actions through diplomatic channels, demanding a detailed and exhaustive investigation of the events and the corresponding assignment of res-ponsibility.�

The Mexican Foreign Ministry formally demanded such a probe in a diplomatic note presented Tuesday to the U.S. State Department.

Fox’s spokesman said that Mexico “will not relent in its defense of the rights of compatriots who emigrate to the U.S.,� and “will continue insisting on the quest for a migration accord that allows a legal, orderly mi-gration with full respect for the workers’ rights.�

U.S. efforts to stem the flow of illegal immigrants, including proposed construction of walls or high fences along much of the border with Mexico, have fanned indignation here among civic organizations, the Roman Catholic Church and President Fox, who last month called the measures “shameful.� Fox, as the end of his six-year term draws nearer, has adopted harsher language in his criticism of prospective border barriers, directing his ire not just at the U.S. Congress, but at the Bush administration as well.

Fox is a former state governor with a penchant for cowboy boots, ranches and horses, traits that created an affinity between him and George W. Bush that was played up in the first years of the century. But the rapport between the two has suffered from what is seen throughout Mexico as a failure by U.S. citizens to appreciate all the hard work done in that nation by millions of Mexicans living there.

“What they have decided in the United States Congress, together with the (Bush) admi-nistration, seems to us a terrible signal,� Fox said Dec. 18 in his home state of Guanajuato at an event to mark the International Day of the Migrant.

He was referring to approval by the U.S. House of Representatives of a bill that envisions building 700 miles of fences along the border with Mexico, makes illegal immigration a crime – it is currently a civil offense – and calls for prosecuting U.S. citizens who aid undocumented migrants.

The measure will not be taken up by the Senate until early this year. “To us that wall seems shameful, to us it seems a wall of that magnitude should not exist in the relationship between Mexico and the United States.

Walls were left behind in the last century. Walls were torn down by the citizenry itself, they were torn down by the quest for freedom and democracy,� Fox said, citing the 1989 toppling of the Berlin wall.

The 2005 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, saw a record 456 deaths among undocumented migrants trying to cross the Mexican border into the United States, with most of the victims drowning in the Rio Grande or succumbing to dehydration in the Arizona desert.

While pro- and anti-immigration advocates in the United States debate the economic impact of the large and growing Mexican presence north of the border, there is no disputing the importance to Mexico of remittances from its U.S.-based sons and daughters, who sent some $20 billion home last year.

Remittances constitute Mexico’s second-biggest source of revenue after oil exports.


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