Donated shoes rejected at Mexican border

written by: Adam Chodak , 9NEWS Northern Reporter created: 4/28/2008 4:54:34 PM
Last updated: 4/28/2008 5:26:07 PM




Donated shoes rejected at Mexican border. 9NEWS at 4 p.m. 04/28/08




LOVELAND - Last month, 9NEWS told you about Jeanette Rojas' effort to "save soles." This month, that effort suffered a severe blow at the Mexican border.


Rojas, a senior at Mountain View High School in Loveland, had hoped to bring close to 900 pairs of new shoes to the Tarahumara Indians of Chihuahua. It had been a dream of hers since she was 10 years old.

She reached that number through donations in and around Loveland. Her title of Miss Loveland Valentine didn't hurt.

The plan was to drive down to Chihuahua with her family and all the boxes full of shoes during her Spring Break.

However, when they reached the border a woman from Mexican customs wouldn't let Rojas and her family cross with the shoes saying Mexico wasn't accepting anything from the United States, according to Rojas.

"It was like someone slammed a door in my face," she remembered.

They dropped the shoes off in El Paso, Texas and continued on into Mexico to see family, but the absence of the shoes was present the entire time.

"I couldn't go downtown and see these girls begging and knowing I had shoes for them and not be able to give it to them because a woman told me I couldn't," she said.

Rojas and her mother called the Mexican consulate when they returned. The consulate in Denver said there was no ban on American goods, but did speculate that the shoes were refused because many of them were made in China.

Mexico has restrictions on goods made in China, one of Mexico's chief rivals in the world of cheap labor.

Rojas expects to have the issue resolved soon so she can take all shoes out of her basement and return this summer to hand over the gift she's been waiting 8 years to give.

"There's still going to be that little kid there waiting for his Buzz Lightyear shoes," she said, "He's still going to get them, I'm just going to have to work a lot harder at it."



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