Student conference to explore U.S. policy in Mexico

Students and faculty of UTEP will gather Oct. 13 and 14, along with local activists and nationally renowned speakers, at the El Paso Natural Gas Conference Center to discuss the effects of U.S. policy in Mexico.

BASTA (Border Activist Summit for Teaching and Action), sponsored by the student organizations Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) and Miners without Borders, will feature a series of panel discussions, student presentations and student-activist training in topics such as immigration, drugs, guns and legislative action.

"The purpose of the border summit is to educate students and expose them to experts who come from around the U.S. and Mexico to explain these issues and why students should care," said David McKenney, sociology graduate student and president of Miners Without Borders. "They will also show students how they can become active and how they can affect legislation."

One of these issues is the violence resulting from the drug war in Mexico and its consequences worldwide.

"This war is not something that one country is dealing with, but is something that multiple countries are confronting," said Colin Goddard, survivor of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre and assistant director of federal legislation for the Brady campaign to prevent drug violence.

According to Goddard, the U.S. policies that allow cartels to arm themselves are part of the problem.

"There is no registration of firearms in this country, so that when guns leave stores there is no name associated with the gun and it can just go," Goddard said. "There are steps we can take to make it more difficult for these people to gain these guns, but we don't do it because it interferes with the profits gained from those in the business of selling guns in the U.S."

Adam Isaacson, director of the Regional Security Policy Program at the Washington Office on Latin America, said the drug war has spread along the Americas and affects people around the world.

"Most of the cocaine that the United States consumes comes from Colombia, Bolivia and Peru; the marijuana comes from Mexico and Canada," Isaacson said. "People between the ages of 12 and 30 are more likely to be involved in the drug system, creating connections with other groups and leading to the violent war that has killed so many."

According to Isaacson, the lack of government intervention is another contributing factor to the violence resulting from the drug war.

"You have the drug problem because there are vast areas of the countries in which drugs are produced where there is no government," Isaacson said. "One of the great problems resides in the fact that there is no government to stop them – little to no government intervention."

While the United States can offer political asylum to the victims of the drug war, it is a long process that is given to less than two out of every 100 people who request it.

"A person must be able to prove that he fled his country due to credible fear in order to get political asylum in the U.S.," said Ruben Garcia, director of the El Paso Annunciation House. "This credible fear must exist in one of five areas: religion, race, membership in a social group, political opinion or culture."

Isaacson said that until the United States' demand for drugs is reduced, the problem will continue to exist.

"It appears that things won't become any better before they become worse. The U.S. is recognizing that this is a problem that they will have to address," Isaacson said. "What could change are the level of violence and the nature of the groups that are doing the organized crime if our demand for drugs is reduced."

This, along with other topics, will be discussed at the summit, which is the first of its kind at UTEP.

"I'm really looking forward to attending the conference," said Paulina Reyes, sophomore linguistics major. "I believe there are some important issues that need to be addressed and this will be a good opportunity to do so."

Diana Arrieta may be reached at prospector@utep.edu.