This group of Texas University students went to Mexico with the intent of encouraging Mexican workers to demand better working conditions from their employers. This tour was sponsored by Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera (Austin So Close to the Border), a left-wing pro-labor organization.
ATCF mission: ATCF seeks to address conditions of social and economic injustice along the Texas/Mexico border particularly as they affect women and communities of color, and to find community-driven alternatives through transnational solidarity and fair trade. We believe that our environment, our communities and human dignity are sacred and must be respected in the movement for social justice.
ATCF claims this was an educational tour. Well, the students on this tour did get a good education on how Mexico deals with a bunch of gringo troublemakers.
Now here is a no-brainer: Even if your cause is just and correct, as it most likely was in this case, you do not go to a foreign country to rile up the locals!
Filled full of idealism by Marxist professors, these educated idiots are lucky they didn’t get thrown in one of those nice Mexican jails ….. or get shot.
ACUNA COALHUILA: 8 AMERICANS DEPORTED
Mexican border officials deport U.S. citizens on eve of Obama’s visit
Borderland Beat
May 3, 2013
Minutes after midnight on April 28th, eight U.S. citizens from Austin, Texas, were deported from Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, a Mexican border town opposite Del Rio, Texas. The Mexican government’s action comes a few days before President Obama’s visit to Mexico on Thursday to redefine the U.S.-Mexico relationship.
“We have organized these tours for 14 years and have never experienced anything like this. We are shocked and outraged,” said Judith Rosenberg, board president of Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera (Austin So Close to the Border), a local non-profit.
The deported citizens were on an educational tour organized by ATCF to Ciudad Acuña to visit the offices of the CFO (Border Workers Committee), a community-based organization that defends worker and women’s rights on the Mexican side of the border.
As they were sitting down to have lunch, the delegation was surrounded by armed police, taken to the Mexican immigration office, detained and questioned for 9 hours, then deported to Del Rio.
“We were never given a clear explanation of what charges and penalties we faced. We were not provided a legal translator and were pressured to sign some document under threat of being detained for up to 90 days in Saltillo, Coahuila,” said one deportee, a student at the University of Texas at Austin.
“We got a different kind of educational experience than we expected” said one of the other deportees, Reverend Kate Rohde of Wildflower Church in Austin. “If the Mexican Government is putting this kind of pressure on church ladies and students from the U.S., just for listening to workers, it is obvious that the Mexican workers we met receive much worse treatment from their government when they ask for humane working conditions and wages.
We hope that President Obama will raise the issue of worker justice and independent unions when he meets with Mexico’s President.”
The group sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama asking for their assistance in this matter.
2 comments:
They are lucky they were not thrown in jai, or simply beheaded.
I was a guest of the Ensenada Jail in the mid 80's after a night of heavy drinking I thought it would be safer to sleep in my car then to try and drive back. I woke up to an officer taking me into custody. I was placed into their version of the drunk tank and in the morning I was released. The surprise to me was that I had about $200 in my wallet and when I was released I still had my money. I was not disrespectful, I did exactly what they told me to do and when I left they shook my hand and told me to be safe. I did not have the bad experience that others have had in Mexico, I was lucky and I am sure these "kids" would not have been as lucky as I was...
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