LAREDO -- The official welcome for the Logistics and Manufacturing Symposium here last week was delivered by Mayor Raul Salinas, who gave a rousing endorsement of his booming border city. "Laredo is open for business. Make sure you enjoy this safe and wonderful city," he told the assembled customs brokers, manufacturers and transporters, American and Mexican, and all involved in the auto industry. Salinas spoke with passion about the importance of cross-border cooperation and friendship, and Nuevo Laredo Mayor Benjamin Galvan offered similar sentiments. The two mayors then shared a hearty "abrazo." [continues 1474 words]
In Ciudad Juarez, the most dangerous and sinister city of the Western Hemisphere, the Plaza de Armas is one of the few public spots where ordinary people still congregate. The tiny park sits below the cathedral, eight blocks from the international bridge. It is an oasis of calm, community and shade trees in a city where more than 2,000 people have been killed by drug violence this year. When San Antonio Express-News photographer Jerry Lara and I visited the plaza about noon Sept. 16, Mexico's Independence Day, it was brimming with human life, from old vaqueros in white straw hats to young lovers entangled on the benches. [continues 1041 words]
EL PASO -- The year was 1969, and as suburban American teenagers explored the exotic possibilities of the $10 lid -- about an ounce of marijuana, seeds, stems and all -- Vietnam vets were coming home as addicts and inner cities were being hit by heroin epidemics. In June that year, President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse "a serious national threat," and the mass media images of stoned Woodstock hippies that followed in August reinforced his warnings. The broad enforcement program he launched soon became known as "the war on drugs," and grew to become a multibillion-dollar effort focused on interdiction, destruction of foreign crops and harsh penalties for even minor offenses. [continues 1031 words]
In court documents made public Tuesday, the sheriff of Kleberg County was portrayed as a drug user, an intimate of local dealers and the force behind a plot to take control of the Kingsville City Commission. The allegations against Tony Gonzalez were the most detailed yet in an ongoing political and legal brawl that pits him and other Kingsville elected officials against the local chief of police and city manager. The sheriff did not respond to several calls for comment. He previously issued general denials to having drug dealers as friends and being involved in attempts to control the City Commission. [continues 550 words]
DEL RIO - Nearly four decades later, lawyer Arturo Gonzalez can still clearly picture the polite, dark-haired East Coast disc jockey who showed up without notice at his Pecan Street office back in late 1963. "He introduced himself as Bob Smith, and he wanted to know who was the owner of radio station XERF," recalls Gonzalez, 94, who at the time sold advertising contracts in the United States for the super-powered station in nearby Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. "I said 'What can you do?' and he said 'I'm a radio announcer and I can sell whatever you have to sell.' And I think he was on the radio station that same night, selling baby chicks - 100 for $2.98," Gonzalez said, chuckling. [continues 1624 words]
