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Reynosa

RBD - Rebelde
RBD music, videos and more below. The actors, who play the members of this band, are also in a real band, abbreviated as RBD to distinguish it from the show.

Across the bridge from Hidalgo (US 281, a few miles south of McAllen, Texas) is the recently spruced up (at least the square and streets toward the bridge) town of Reynosa. Regretably the tile faced building had it's façade redone, and the Chinese restaurant changed their old typewritten Menu that once featured "Shrimp with Mobster Sauce".

The re-tiling of the square and the new benches, with their matching street lamps, and kiosks are the work of a local woman engineer whose taxi-driving father was a former prize fighter.

The Streets of Reynosa
A WALK DOWN PINATA ROW

"As I walked out in the streets of Reynosa,
as I walked out in Reynosa one day,
I stumbled down into an uncovered manhole;
but that's what you get when you walk like a Jay."

Who can forget those timeless lyrics? My tattered, bullet-riddled Sidekick's Songbook says that it was Trad Ballad that wrote it. Trad, a prolific songwriter if ever there was one, seems to have written just about everything from Greensleeves to Frankie and Johnnie. Last week, when I found myself walking down those (semi) legendary streets, I decided to take notes and a few snapshots to share with my friends at Texas Escapes.
First time visitors to Mexico should be warned that Mexico (as a developing country) is a work in progress. It is in a perpetual state of construction. While half of the country appears to be freshly-painted, the other half is usually in need of a new coat of paint. This imbalance is corrected every six years when national elections are held and every flat, upright surface in Mexico is covered in bright red, white and green paint.
No Hay Dos

Mexico is many things - but one thing it is not is a "nanny-state." The government doesn't see the need to spend a lot of money on barricades and warnings. Fancy-schmancy signs for live electrical wires, open trenches or washed-out bridges simply aren't needed. Mexicans are firm believers in the dictum of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and to first-timers, it may seem as if there's a program in place to "strengthen" as many people in as short a period of time as possible.

Like most visitors, I crossed into Reynosa from Hidalgo, Texas.* Soon after clearing the bridge and being ignored by the Mexican customs guards, I immediately encountered construction. The main street leading to the town square was being repaved with a snazzy faux-flagstone surface and although it was nearly finished, electrical wires for underground utilities and (what appeared to be sharpened) rebar jutted menacingly from the curb. I considered taking a detour, but remembering Yogi Berra's sage advice about the fork in the road - I took it.

As I headed uphill to downtown, I was pleased to see one of my favorite Chinese restaurants still in business. I'm sure the old typewritten menu that proudly offered "shrimp with mobster sauce" was gone. The door still had its aging sign from the "eat my species" school of signage. You're probably familiar with these signs. They're the ones where cows proffer you burgers, pigs smile while barbecuing their offspring and chickens gleefully serve their dismembered kin with a side order of slaw. In this particular case a fish of Asian ancestry offers some diced and stir-fried relatives.

This part of Reynosa (on the east side of the town square) is made up of restaurants, drugstores and nightclubs. The once-numerous liquor stores have have melted away to just a few. Businesses on the west side of the square are mainly corner groceries, beauty salons, doctor's offices and residences. These eventually give way to tire repair businesses, body shops and pinata factories.

I passed the square (as busy as ever) and started downhill toward my destination. The streets were blocked with water-delivery trucks, telephone repair trucks and street repair vehicles. Like the situation with paint - half of Mexico seems to be undergoing repair while the other half is awaiting it. Sidewalks were split and cracked or missing altogether. "When in Mexico, do like the Mexicans." So I started walking in the street.
Paper mache pinata, Tinker Bell pinata. Batman Pinata
An apprehensive Tinkerbell hopes to be bought before the Batmen are finished. TE photo, March 2006
Pinata City
Soon I started having the eerie and uneasy feeling that I was being watched. I could feel scores of eyes following me down the street. It was a little like the Twilight Zone episode where mannequins got to spend one day a year among the living - but here it was the eyes of pinatas that were upon me.

Tip: The best quality pinatas are recognized by their ability to follow you around the room (or down the street) with their eyes.
"I was young and I needed the money."

If you still think of pinatas as little donkeys - you're showing your age. The last donkey pinata rolled off the assembly line in 1963. The government promised to retrain the laid-off workers to work on more modern models, but the old pinata-dogs were too set in their ways and hung up their paste pots. They just couldn't adjust to the likes of Bart Simpson.

The new generation of Pinata makers now take their cues from popular culture. Smurfs, Ninja Turtles, the stars of 101 Dalmatians and the aforementioned Bart have all posed for pinatas.

If you've ever wanted to cudgel a Smurf, pummel Batman, or cuff around Little Nemo (I would strongly suggest that you seek professional help), but although Pinatas can be a way to release pent-up aggression, most pinatas are still purchased for children. The papier-mâché effigies can be made just about anywhere there is adequate space to construct and hang them. The factories are usually found in the poorer parts of cities - where rents are cheaper.

Mexico, Reynosa - - Pictures
Reynosa, city, northeastern Mexico, in Tamaulipas State, a port of entry on the Río Grande, opposite Hidalgo, Texas. A road junction on a railroad, it serves an agricultural area growing cotton, sugarcane, fruit, corn, and livestock and is a center for oil refineries, cotton gins, and sawmills. The name is sometimes spelled Reinosa. Population (1995) 337,053.

In the "Zona Rosa" of Reynosa you can find a great variety of:
restaurants
bars
nightclubs
stores
Approximately 10 km from the Reynosa City, is found the Tourist Park "Las Playas"

Reynosa is located 322 km from CiudadThe Cathedral of Guadalupe in Reynosa Victoria in the State of Tamaulipas by the federal highways 101 and 97 in Mexico.
Reynosa is a commercial city, where you can find all kind of handicrafts from different parts of the world.
In Reynosa you can visit interesting places such as:
The Cathedral of Guadalupe Click Here! Click Here! Click Here! Click Here! Click Here! Click Here! Click Here!
Plaza Principal Click Here! Click Here! Click Here!
Plaza Niños Heroes
Plaza de la Republica
Plaza de Toros
Mercado Zaragoza
Mercado Guadalupano

Reynosa, Mexico: The Scars of Free Trade

Toxic materials found in open-air, illegal garbage dumps around Reynosa.
Proposed International Trade Agreements Fail to Protect Communities and the Environment

Two years ago, Sarahí Alvarez Mendoza, now age 9, was playing outside her home in Reynosa, Mexico when a tragic fall changed her life.

Sarahí tumbled into a ditch that a US-owned costume jewelry factory used to dump and burn toxic waste. The accident burned her horribly and she still needs periodic surgery to accommodate the normal growth of her right leg.

Unfortunately, Sarahí's tragedy is not unique, but it is certainly avoidable. The United States - Mexican border is one of the world's most polluted regions, because US and other foreign companies that operate factories there, called maquiladoras, are allowed to poison the air, water and soil, often without punishment. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) encouraged a flood of corporate investors, but did nothing to require compliance with labor and environmental standards. And now the Bush administration wants to expand NAFTA throughout Latin America and the Caribbean by enacting the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).1

Since her accident, Sarahí and her family have been plagued by bureaucracy, surgery and medical bills they can hardly afford. But what pains them most is that the factory, Maquila Works, S.A., and its US owner, Edward Pichirillo, continue to poison Sarahí's neighborhood without punishment or accountability. Even though the family reported the incident to the authorities, they have yet to see the problem resolved. Instead the family has been faced with a bureaucratic maze incapable of delivering justice.

"There are so many victims in this case - a little girl, her family and this community," says Omeheira López, director of the Center for the Study of Border Issues and the Promotion of Human Rights, the organization assisting Sarahí and her family. "The problems caused by NAFTA are exacerbated by official corruption."

When NAFTA was enacted 10 years ago, proponents said environmental laws would be strictly enforced under the scrutiny of a new international commission. But the "investor protections" in NAFTA allow companies to sue countries if local laws get in the way of profit making.2 After 10 years of NAFTA, corporations still don't have to take responsibility for their pollution. Instead of protecting communities along the border, NAFTA has endangered communities' health and safety.

Despite the failure of NAFTA to protect communities, the Bush administration is making the same promises when it promotes the FTAA, an accord that would eliminate all trade barriers among 34 countries in the hemisphere. The FTAA's weak environmental regulations would leave communities like that of Sarahí's at risk throughout the continent.3

We can do better. We can promote fair trade, not just free trade. For Sarahí's sake, and the sake of other children like her, the Bush administration should ensure that new rights for global businesses should be matched with enforceable responsibilities for community rights and environmental protections.

Overview of Holiday Inn Reynosa, Mexico

More Photos

The Holiday Inn Reynosa is the most modern hotel in Town. It is strategically located in the Goldend Zone heart, only five minutes from the Hidalgo, Tx. International Bridge, 25 five minutes from The Reynosa International Airport. Walking distance to downtown, Government Offices, Hospitals and Medical Zone, Commercial Areas, Cinemas, Discotheques, Bars and Restaurants. Holiday Inn Reynosa has 140 luxury rooms, 2 Junior suites and a Magnificant Presidencial Suite with Jaccuzzi and Terrace. Each room is equipped with Air Conditioning and Heating. High Speed internet access, refrigerator, safe box, coffe maker, hair drier, electronic door lock, smoke and fire detection. The Holiday Inn Reynosa also offers Non-Smoking rooms and Handicap rooms. To be relaxed, our indoor Swimming Pool, Jacuzzi and Fitness Center will keep you in good shape. At our Business Center you will find secretarial assistance, fax, photocopier, computer and high speed internet service. In Agave Restaurant-Bar you will findthe best of the Mexican Cousine, and you will enjoy your favorite drink inside of the pleasant atmosphere and where the warm service is the main ingredient. In the Convention Center your bussines meetings, seminars, exhibitions and social functions, audiovisual equipment, as well as our professional staff, will make your event a complete succes. Capacities from 50 to 1000 people.

Monica Quintero

adriana obregon

Carolina Villalpando

REYNOSA, MEXICO: CITY OF PROMISE AND POVERTY

By Chad Broughton

Thirteen years ago Atanasio Martínez, then 25 years old, stepped onto a bus, leaving his family and home in the state of Veracruz, to come north to Reynosa.

Out of work, Martínez recalls thinking on the day-long bus trip to the border, “What will I do? What will happen to me?” Now 38, Martínez is married with four children, ages 12 to 17, and owns a 600 sq. ft. home. After thirteen years working on a wheel chair assembly line, Martínez makes $290 per month.

“It is difficult,” Martínez said. “It would be stupid to say it isn’t, right? One has to adapt.” To make ends meet, both he and his wife must work, he said.

When he reflects on his move, Martínez has mixed feelings. “Neither was I hurt by it or benefited. The work here is a little more stable, but to be satisfied, really OK, [I would say] no.”

Martínez is one of 70,000 workers employed in over 150 assembly factories in Reynosa, known there as “maquiladoras” or “maquilas.” Maytag, which already operates two subassembly factories in Reynosa, plans to open side-by-side refrigerator production there soon.

As factories have located in Reynosa, the city has grown rapidly. According to government statistics, Reynosa’s population doubled in size from 1980 to 2000 along with the border industrial boom. While government statistics peg the population at 461,795 in 2002, municipal officials—using other government databases—estimate the actual population to be around 1.2 million.

Because of the arrival of companies like Maytag, Reynosa—like Tijuana, Cuidad Juarez and other borders cities—has exploded in the last several decades from a modest town based largely on agriculture and petroleum into a global production center. While rapid economic growth has increased possibilities and prospects for many, Reynosa finds itself beset with major social and infrastructure problems and persistent poverty.

It is clear that the Maytag departure will be devastating to Galesburg and its residents, especially those who work at the plant. But will Maytag’s arrival—and the industrialization of Reynosa more generally—benefit the people there?

A City of Contrasts

The luxuries of modern American consumer culture and dire poverty exist alongside each other in stark contrast in Reynosa. Likewise, ultramodern, clean and efficient factories are located within sight of grim shantytowns, containing homes constructed ingeniously out of cinder blocks, wood from discarded factory pallets and scrap, corrugated tin.

Like Galesburg, Reynosa has Burger King, Pizza Hut, and even an Applebee’s. Around the main plaza downtown, there is a large Nike Factory Store, a Subway restaurant, an Internet café, and a movie theater showing first-run American movies. Both spotless, new American SUVs and rundown, small pick-ups, sometimes carrying ten men in the bed, circle the hectic main plaza. Outside of the central downtown area, there are large strip malls with Blockbuster Video stores, several American hotel chains, and large combined supermarkets and retail stores. The most popular is Soriana’s, which sells everything from stereo systems and imported German beer to soccer balls and corn and flour tortillas. Cell phones are common and many middle-class residents have Internet access in their homes.

Many on the border feel they have to fight popular stereotypes that depict the border as backward and underdeveloped. Mike Allen, president and CEO of the McAllen Economic Development Corporation, which recruits companies to McAllen, Texas and Reynosa, said, “we’re not campesinos, we don’t wear sombreros, and we don’t have horses tied outside the front.”

“A lot of folks have that idea,” Allen continued. “They think of the border and all they think [is]: there’s no water, colonias [poor neighborhoods], nothing going on here. And yet there’s a lot going on here. And the quality of life has improved tremendously.”

Herber Ramírez, secretary of economic development and employment in Reynosa, bragged about the quality of the factories. “They’re brand new buildings,” he said, “fully air conditioned, nice facilities, nice cafeteria, and they sometimes provide better benefits than they do in the States. Surprise!”

While the size, activity and modernity of the city may be surprising to someone who hasn’t been there, so might the extent of the poverty and lack of basic services for many of its residents.

Reynosa has been simply growing out of control, as poor, jobless migrants from southern states like Veracruz come seeking work at the border—or across it. When one city official said Reynosa grows at a rate of “a block per week,” another corrected him: “per day,” he said.

The municipal government, which collects no taxes from the factories, cannot come close to meeting the water, electrical, sewage, medical, and transportation needs of its growing citizenry, especially in the colonias sprouting up on the outskirts of the city, around Reynosa’s nine industrial parks.

In these improvised communities, dogs, mules and chickens roam the landscape and children play amongst the rubble and near pools of water collected in rutted dirt roads. Sometimes living in these conditions is transitory as workers find their feet in the new area and apply for federal housing assistance; other times it is not.

Making Ends Meet

While modern consumer goods and services are widely available in Reynosa, most residents have limited access to them. Less expensive used clothing and flea markets, sidewalk and bicycle vendors, and makeshift convenience shops are spread thickly across the city to provide lower price options. For someone taking home the average line worker’s wage of about 70 pesos (about $6.50) per day, these informal markets are more affordable.

The cost of living in Reynosa is only slightly lower than in urban areas in the United States, making it difficult for a line worker to support his or her family (though many line workers are young and single).

One single mother, Rosa Nuñez, said, “They pay me so little and we can’t make it. One parent should be able to earn enough for his kids, education and fun. That isn’t the way it is. What one parent earns isn’t even enough for your basic monthly food.”

Like the consumer options available, the range of sophisticated gadgetry that is produced in Reynosa’s maquiladoras is remarkable. In addition to Maytag, a number of household names operate in Reynosa including Nokia, Black & Decker, Panasonic, Emerson, Kohler, LG, Bissell, GE and Whirlpool, making a wide range of products, from basic yard equipment to plasma televisions and global positioning systems for upscale cars.

In tandem with sophisticated production processes, the local workforce is accumulating technical and managerial skills in these high-tech factories and in the technical and other types of schools that are popping up. Boosters of the area maintain that there are ample opportunities for advancement, better wages and a better life for the average worker because of the cutting-edge technology of the Reynosa workplace.

In his thirteen years working in the maquilas, however, Martínez says that his wages have only improved at the rate of inflation, and offered minimal opportunities for advancement.

Though there is much uncertainty about the future of Reynosa, Martínez has dreams for his son, who, now in the 11th grade, has already exceeded his educational level and hopes to become an engineer. “It gives me great satisfaction to give him [the opportunity] to study,” Martínez said. “I want for [my children] to have what I couldn’t.”

Sidebar: U.S. FACTORIES MOVE TO THE BORDER

Fifty years ago Galesburg and Reynosa were both small cities of between 30,000 and 35,000. While Galesburg’s population has remained comparatively steady, Reynosa’s has swelled to over a million as southern Mexicans have migrated to the rapidly industrializing city.

In 1965, the Mexican government established the Border Industrialization Program in an attempt to improve the depressed economies in the northern states. This program created maquiladoras, assembly plants that imported components and raw goods from the United States, finished them, and then shipped them back across the border. New communications technology and other advances made it possible for U.S. companies to operate assembly plants distant from corporate headquarters.

Maquiladoras in Reynosa employed only about 1,200 workers in 1975. In 1974, Zenith was the first big U.S. corporation with a household name to move to Reynosa, eventually employing several thousand in Reynosa and, by the early 1990s, nearly 20,000 in several cities along the border.

After the peso was devalued in 1983, it became cheaper for U.S. companies to relocate in Mexico and the maquila boom accelerated. When Mexico entered GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (a free trade agreement association that later transformed into the WTO, the World Trade Organization), the border region became more attractive for American corporations.

While maquila employment in Reynosa increased by a factor of five (from 5,450 to 24,801 workers) during the 1980s, Zenith alone moved 4,165 jobs out of Illinois to Reynosa and Matamoros, another border city, during that same decade, according to a report from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

On January 1, 1994, with the implementation NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the incentives for U.S. manufacturers to invest in Mexico increased and the bargaining power of organized labor in the U.S was further undermined.

Maytag first threatened to leave Galesburg in 1994, forcing state, city and union concessions. While NAFTA is an easy target for blame, the agreement is just one step in a decades-long process of expanding free trade between the United States and Mexico. U.S. corporations like Maytag would likely have moved to border cities like Reynosa even without NAFTA.

Though still a bustling city, Reynosa faces the same challenges that Galesburg has faced in the last several decades: lower-wage competitors.

Stephen Spivey, former business editor of the McAllen Monitor, noted, “The outlook for the maquiladora industry isn’t that good. Even though companies like Maytag are going down there, it seems like Mexico is losing that low-cost advantage. They’re all going to China now. As cheap as Mexico is, China is much cheaper still. I think there’s a lot of concern that the industry is in real trouble.”

While an entry-level wage in Reynosa is typically $6.50 per day, excluding benefits, that same job could be done in China for about $2 per day. Indeed, Mexico has lost literally hundreds of thousands of assembly jobs since maquila employment peaked in October 2000—mainly because of slackening consumer demand in the U.S. and Chinese competition.

Given the whims and demands of global capitalism, the future of Reynosa is as difficult to predict as that of Galesburg.

One prediction seems reasonable, however: companies that produce bulky items, like refrigerators, will continue to seek out low-wage labor and will want to avoid trans-Pacific shipping costs from China to the United States. As a result, companies like Maytag may have a presence in Mexico for some time—and are likely to relocate more of their U.S. assembly plants to places like Reynosa in the near future.



September 27, 2003
The Register-Mail
BRINGING FACTORIES TO REYNOSA
By Chad Broughton
Several decades ago, Mike Allen moved out of the rectory to live in a humble trailer in order to be closer to the impoverished members of his parish in McAllen, Texas. Today, in his spacious and elegant office at the McAllen Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), he still has a weathered picture of himself with several Mexican-American parishioners in front of the trailer.

“This is where I lived.” Pointing to the undeveloped landscape of the picture, he adds, “This is McAllen, Texas!”

Present-day McAllen is much different. It is now a sprawling and bustling metropolitan area—one of the fastest growing in the United States—with about 600,000 people in the county. As president and CEO of MEDC, Allen is the man most responsible for McAllen’s—and Reynosa’s—rapid growth.

Having left the priesthood, Allen shifted to promoting economic growth in the region. In 1988, Allen met with the mayor of Reynosa, who arrived to the meeting in a Chevrolet Suburban with an AK-47 in the back.

“We said, ‘we’ll do the recruiting of the companies, we’ll put ‘em in there; you take care of the infrastructure.” Regarding the assault rifle, Allen quipped, “What do I do with this?”

With a handshake, Allen and the mayor agreed that MEDC would recruit factories to Mexico. Since then, the economies of Reynosa and McAllen have boomed together and have become ever more interdependent, with assembly work on the Mexican side and suppliers and distributors locating on the Texas side to support the assembly operations (called maquiladoras or maquilas in Mexico).

Economic growth in McAllen has generated a great deal of wealth, but some question how much it has done to alleviate the persistent poverty of the area. Stephen Spivey, former business editor of the McAllen Monitor, said, “It’s good, but it’s not channeled in a way that really lifts people up.”

Like the Mexican side of the border, southern Texas has scores of poor, unincorporated communities that lack basic utilities and where families face austere living conditions. In sharp contrast to these impoverished “colonias” are the palm tree-lined, upscale homes of Sharyland Plantation, a new 6,000-acre development in McAllen.

The impact of the boom is even more apparent on the Mexican side of the border. From just a handful of factories in the 70s and 80s, Reynosa now has some 150 factories that employ approximately 70,000 workers. In addition to such names as GE, Black & Decker, Nokia and Whirlpool, Maytag is currently operating two sub-assembly plants in Reynosa, and next year, after Galesburg Refrigeration Products closes, production of side-by-side refrigerators will begin there as well.

Most of the maquilas assemble electrical or electronic products. Black and Decker produces yard equipment that one might find at Lowe’s or Kmart in Galesburg. Workers at LG Electronics—which, when it was Zenith, employed thousands in Illinois—assemble tube and plasma TVs. Palm pilots, cell phones, computer memory chips, digital bar code scanners, heart catheterization kits and Brunswick boats are also made in Reynosa. Automobile global positioning systems, CD and cassette mechanisms, and even seat belts are produced there as well.

Inside the Maquilas

Having never seen the inside of a Mexican factory, one might imagine a lowly lit, dirty, hot and fast-paced assembly line where workers are forced to work long hours. While the pay is very low and work is often extraordinarily tedious, most maquilas are new, air-conditioned, and sparkling clean. Most workers in the maquilas work standard eight-hour days.

In one of the LG Electronics factories, workers wear neat, color-coded aprons, which indicate their job rank. As you enter the shop floor, hanging on the wall are elaborate and colorful charts that keep tabs on the soccer and volleyball tournaments that the factory sponsors for its workers. On other walls hang charts, graphs and statistics relating to LG’s quest to become “the top manufacturer of digital TVs in the Western Hemisphere.”

Further inside the factory, there are long lines of 30 to 45 workers—mostly young women—punching in tiny electronic pieces that will eventually make up a circuit board for LG’s tube televisions. For eight hours, a worker will perform the same task time and time again, contributing her piece to the 6,500 televisions produced each day at the plant.

Though the scale, tidiness and quality control of the operation are impressive at LG, the pay is not. Gloria D. Altamirano, former human resources manager and now part-time consultant at LG, said, “Starting pay is 70 pesos ($6.50) per day during the three-month probationary period.” After that, she said, workers are either let go or given a permanent contract, including a pay increase of 25% and benefits.

Rosa Nuñez, a maquila worker and labor organizer, disputes the company’s claims. Maquiladoras do not follow Mexican labor law or their own stated practices, she said. “In reality workers never get past three months in the plants. After three months, they call you into labor relations and tell you, ‘Your contract is up. Come back in 15 days and we’ll rehire you.’ You lose all your benefits. It’s a trick.”

Nuñez also said working conditions in the maquila are often hazardous and that unions do little to advocate for workers. Though Mexican labor law has many regulations that are meant to protect workers, these laws are violated frequently and businesses are not held accountable. Maytag, she said, is no exception.

Attempts to contact Maytag officials in Reynosa to view the facility were unsuccessful.

Facing Criticism in Reynosa

Mike Allen and other promoters and members of the maquiladora industry have been denounced by people in factory-reliant cities like Galesburg for recruiting jobs from the Midwest. Allen also faces criticism in Reynosa for the social ills that have accompanied the arrival of the factories.

The question opponents often ask is, “Who benefits?”

Arturo Solis, the president of a Reynosa human rights organization, claims that growth has benefited U.S. corporations, big land-owners and developers, the Mexican federal government, and the Reynosa middle class. The poor, the municipal infrastructure and the natural environment have shouldered the costs, he said.

Solis points to one man in particular: “The maquila’s main man. The man who causes

all of Reynosa’s problems: Mike Allen.”

Armando Zertuche, the former secretary of economic development and employment in Reynosa, said economic growth in the region is controlled by the business elite—and largely to their benefit.

“A maquila comes to Reynosa to establish itself and they decide who, when, why, with what union and so on. It’s a marvelous amount of power and control they have.” They pay no local taxes and threaten to leave for China if workers demand higher wages or better conditions, he added.

Because of the looming threat of China, the federal and local governments, and unions conspire to keep wages low and regulations on corporations to a minimum, several critics said.

On this point, Allen and his critics share a similar political and economic perspective, if not a similar moral one.

In defense of the maquiladora industry, Allen said, “Everything boils down to economics. And you can’t fault that. You have to look at everything from the standpoint of what can I do to help a company reduce their cost or minimize their cost. The minute they can make more money somewhere else, they’ll move. They’re not bad people. They’re not evil organizations. It’s just bottom-line economics.”

Sidebar: RECRUITING MAYTAG TO REYNOSA

Mike Allen is proud of what the McAllen Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) has accomplished for McAllen and Reynosa.

“The only way that our community is going to better itself is if we get better quality jobs and we begin to go after companies like Maytag or like Delco and get them to locate here,” he said.

Allen has been criticized in Northeastern and Midwestern cities devastated by factory closures—including Galesburg—for targeting high-wage, blue collar work in their communities. A charismatic and proud south Texan, Allen is used to the criticism and is not shy about dishing it back.

In Chicago on a trip to recruit companies, Allen and his partner, Keith Partridge, were picketed.

“They said that we’re taking jobs from Illinois,” Allen said. “Yeah, we were! There was no question that we were trying to bring them down here to McAllen, Texas. But that’s free enterprise. What we’re trying to do here is raise the standard of living, to raise the wage level of people who live here.”

Defending his recruitment efforts, Allen argues that jobs in the Midwest will leave regardless; his aim is to persuade U.S., Asian and Europe corporations to locate in Reynosa, which will provide opportunities for the unemployed in Reynosa and McAllen alike.

Allen would offer no details about MEDC’s efforts to recruit Maytag from Galesburg to Reynosa, though it typically provides financial incentives that are in part provided by the city.

In April, a Copley New Service article quoted Allen as saying that Maytag has several plants planned for their 62-acre campus in Reynosa. “By the time they're finished,” Allen said, “we're talking about 3,000, 4,000, maybe even 5,000 workers.” His comments suggested that more U.S. Maytag factories would relocate in Reynosa in the near future.

When asked about the situation in Galesburg, Allen was resentful of the criticism that Maytag and his organization have received and the “moaning and groaning” about Maytag’s departure—especially considering the fact, he said, that McAllen and Reynosa has higher unemployment and poverty than Galesburg.

“There was no outcry in Galesburg, Illinois, about how the people in our community were being treated,” he said. Allen is passionate about his work and his community and makes no apologies about recruiting American companies to Mexico. “Tell Galesburg and anybody else in Illinois, we’re coming back!”



September 28, 2003
The Register-Mail

WORKING AND LIVING IN REYNOSA

By Chad Broughton

Rosa Nuñez is fed up. A worker in a Reynosa factory, or maquiladora, for eight years and a struggling single mother, Nuñez has been attempting to organize workers to improve working conditions and to help workers learn their rights.

“Ever since my daughter was born, I’ve told myself that I wanted better living conditions for her, so we have to continue to struggle,” Nuñez said. “So, here, [with other] women, we’ve taken measures to organize and educate ourselves because we all have kids, and we don’t want our kids to work in the maquilas. It is really all about consciousness-raising.”

Like other critics of the maquiladora industry, Nuñez maintains that corporations mistreat workers by exposing them to dangerous substances and repetitive stress injuries, firing them if they speak out, and by paying them low wages, which forces them to live in desperate living conditions.

She says workers, the majority of whom are women, are afraid to speak out on unsafe working conditions and labor violations.

“[The corporations] violate contracts, they violate everything,” she said. “And workers don’t feel they have the capability to confront such a powerful entity.”

Supporters of the maquiladora industry claim such accusations are untrue.

Herber Ramírez, secretary of economic development and employment in Reynosa said, “U.S. companies come into Mexico and they’re going to be watched [very closely] by the Mexican government. They won’t let you get away with anything.”

Supporters also point out that the wages paid at maquiladoras are higher than elsewhere and offer desperately needed work opportunities in areas of chronic unemployment.

Mike Allen, president and CEO of the McAllen Economic Development Corporation, which recruits companies to Mexico, said, “What we try to do is provide jobs for our community. In the process we’ve created 60,000 jobs in Mexico. We’ve never gone after cheap labor, we’ve gone after the higher tech type companies.”

Advocates of the maquila industry also say that foreign factories have improved the standard of living remarkably in the last fifteen years. They contend that it is unfair to blame the maquiladora industry for Mexican poverty, which it did not create.

The Journey to the Border

In the last twenty years, border cities have swelled as the poor from Mexico’s interior have migrated north looking for work at the border or in the U.S. Like African Americans migrating to Chicago and other northern cities a century ago, southern Mexicans have been migrating in hopes of a better life in the industrial north.

The results for these migrants are varied.

Even critics concede that there are more wage opportunities at the border than in rural areas of the southern states in Mexico, where economic prospects for the poor are bleak.

Free trade agreements between the U.S. and Mexico, including NAFTA, have made farming less profitable for Mexican farmers. With lower tariffs on American grains, millions of unsubsidized small and medium-sized farms in Mexico are unable to compete with federally supported U.S. agribusiness.

As farming families in rural Mexico go bankrupt in record numbers, younger members of these families seek opportunities in the north.

Carlos Peña, a journalist with ten years experience covering the maquiladora industry, sees the benefits of economic growth, but says it needs to be channeled to workers, who find difficult living conditions when they arrive in Reynosa from the rural interior.

“Yes, it’s true. The maquilas provide jobs and development as agricultural development has failed,” said Peña. “But [the migrants] come and live in shacks without water, electricity, doctors, nothing. It’s like we’re going back in time, as if it were slavery again,” he said.

Poor neighborhoods, called “colonias,” have sprung up around the city’s nine industrial parks as migrants arrive, often to live with a relative. The municipal government cannot keep pace with the basic needs of these growing communities.

Secretary Ramírez said, “the city doesn’t have the monies to equip all the new colonias with the infrastructure, electrification, water, sewer systems; that’s something we have to live with and make ends meet.”

“Sometimes the mayor has to weigh it and see where the money is going to be spent,” Ramírez continued. “That’s why you find a lot of potholes in the city, because he’s spending money bringing in water and electricity to colonias that just started up.”

While some colonias on the outskirts of the city have cinder block homes, access to water and passable roads, other have rutted mud roads, standing pools of water during the rainy season, outdoor toilets, limited access to electricity and water, and infrequent trash collection. Critics point to the many physical and mental health problems that such living conditions can cause.

Municipal officials and boosters claim that these conditions are transitory and that as workers find stable work, they eventually move into better housing. After six months, workers can access credit to buy a 600 sq. ft. house though a federal program know as INFONAVIT.

Jorge Cantú, a developer, estimates that 4,000 to 5,000 INFONAVIT homes are built each year in Reynosa.

Ed Kruegar, a social activist in the area, estimates, however, that only 15% to 25% of maquila workers live in INFONAVIT homes. He says that the remaining majority will come to the area and wait two to three years for water, four to six years for electricity, seven to eight years for a street with caliche (gravel), and perhaps ten to fifteen years to replace outdoor toilets with a sewer line.

How Far Does $6.50 a Day Go?

Workers endure difficult and unhealthy living conditions to earn higher wages than they could in the south. According to several sources, including the director of industrial development in Reynosa, Maria Prieto, the average wage for low-level assembly work in Reynosa’s maquiladoras is 70 pesos (about $6.50) per day, or about 80 cents an hour.

Supporters of the maquiladoras claim that workers make between $2 to $3 an hour when free transportation, free lunch, medical insurance and other benefits are accounted for.

With take home pay averaging $6.50 a day, though, it is struggle for maquila workers, especially for recent migrants who typically arrive with very little.

Rosa Nuñez said the organization she works with, the Border Workers Committee, did a report on basic food needs. The report found that food cost about 900 pesos ($83 a week) for a family of four in Reynosa.

“I dream of having a budget like that!” Nuñez said. “They pay me 400 pesos [$37 per week] in the maquila. That is half of what I need to give my kids a balanced diet. And from that comes the poor education of kids, because if they have a poor diet, they can’t learn well. So it is difficult.”

Despite the hardships, advocates for maquila development say, all things considered, poor Mexicans are better off when they come to the border.

Secretary Ramírez said, “How is this unfair? They come in, they have nothing, you know. Somebody from Veracruz [the southern state from which most migrants come], they came because they didn’t have a job. You gotta realize that 40 million Mexicans live on $1 a day. You know by the wage rate here that they make more than $1 a day.”

“They’re going to live better,” he continued. “It’s not the perfect solution, but it’s a solution for unemployment.”

Others are less certain that migrants live better. Though they may earn a higher wage, they find a higher cost of living in Reynosa. And as Kruegar points out, they no longer have crops, animals and land to sustain them. “When they’re back in Veracruz, living on the ranch, they have a reasonable, nice home, with shade trees around; they have chickens, maybe a goat or a cow.”

Whether for good or ill, in a single bus ride from Veracruz to Reynosa, these migrants have tumbled into the industrial revolution, with all of its promise and all of its problems.

Sidebar: THE COST OF LIVING IN REYNOSA

At about 80 cents an hour, workers in Reynosa’s maquiladoras make much less than their American counterparts at Galesburg Refrigeration Products, where the average wage is $15.14. But what about the cost of living? Prices in Reynosa range from much lower than in the United States to more expensive. Below are some selected items and their typical prices when purchased new in a Reynosa store using current conversion rates:
Butter $1.83/lb.
Ham $1.96/lb.
Roated Chiken $1.58/lb.
Corn Tortillas $.17/lb.
Cheese $1.50-3.00/lb.
Avocado $1.04/lb.
2 liter Coke $1.37
Mooshead Beer $2.66/6 pack
Compact Disk $10
Jeans $8-$16
Kid's Books $5-$13
40 Diapers $5-$15
AC Unit - 13000 BTU $260
Enfamil $6.43
Taylenol $3.49



A 2003 study comparing prices of basic food items in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico—a border town not far from Reynosa—to Minneapolis, Minnesota found that prices were comparable. Tortillas, milk, rice, beans, chicken, cooking oil, and tomatoes were cheaper in Nuevo Laredo, while bread, eggs, potatoes, beef, toilet paper, and corn flakes were cheaper in Minneapolis.

Sidebar: WOMEN AND THE MAQUILAS

A woman growing up in Reynosa today faces much different expectations and broader opportunities than those of previous generations—a dramatic social change brought on largely by the introduction of maquila factories into Reynosa.

Erika Barbosa, 37, a maquila worker raised in Reynosa, said, “we have the capability to do things just like men do, not just stay at home taking care of kids. With my co-workers, we have this mentality. If I get married, I get married, but I want to develop myself, my profession.”

Barbosa began working at age 19, placing buttons on radios, a tedious job that paid about $150 a month. Largely because of her education and ability to speak some English, she has advanced to a quality control position that pays about $730 per month.

Edna Avila, 26, expressed similar sentiments. Though she has encountered “machismo” and struggled with low pay, she is excited about the opportunities that women in her generation have. “I want to study and work,” Avila said. “[My husband] has a profession also and he understands my aspirations. He has his and I have mine. I’m not going to conform to just what he wants to achieve.”

Edna added, “In states without maquilas, women are still very repressed. The border areas are more open to women.” Both Erika and Edna said they respected marriage and childrearing, but think it is important that women have the freedom to choose their own path.

Though the proportion of men working in the maquilas has been increasing in Reynosa, women still outnumber men on the assembly lines. Factory managers in developing countries say they prefer women because they have small fingers, better manual dexterity and are more patient with monotonous work. Critics contend that employers hire young, single women because they are still culturally trained to be more submissive than men and therefore easier to control and exploit.

Employment in the maquiladoras brings many hardships for women. There have been numerous documented cases of sexual harassment and discriminatory and degrading monthly pregnancy tests in the maquiladoras, though this practice has been largely reformed.

Also, social justice advocates maintain that because of low wages many women are forced into leaving their children at home without a caretaker or are forced into second jobs or even prostitution.

One maquila worker said, “[My daughter] doesn’t want me to work in the maquila because I leave her alone too long.” She added that she does not want her daughter to work in the maquila because of the low wages and difficult working conditions. With an education and more regulation of the maquila sector, she thinks that her daughter will have a better chance than she did to lead a comfortable life.

Despite enduring sexism and injustices, one vocal critic of the maquiladoras, Arturo Solis, acknowledges many encouraging changes. “Women have the opportunity to support themselves,” Solis said. “She has ceased being dependent on a man. It has allowed her to be in charge of the family and to decide about her life, her family, her partner, and kids. And all this in the past didn’t exist because here in Mexico, women were confined to housework and to conform to what her husband said. This has changed. That’s very good.”



September 29, 2003
The Register-Mail

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE BORDER?

By Chad Broughton

On weekend nights, the young and hip in Reynosa’s middle-class might drop by one of the city’s discobars. At these lavish, low-lit nightclubs, there are waiters in tuxedoes, mirrored tables and green lasers that flutter around the room. On a white wall adjacent to the premium bar, hip-hop and other popular American music videos play out of a digital projector, loud and large.

On the outskirts of the central city—when the workweek resumes—tens of thousands of workers—with dreams of one day entering the middle class—take buses to hundreds of massive factories. In these “maquiladoras” they create an astonishing array of high-tech products that are purchased in places like Galesburg every day. These workers—most of whom are migrants from Mexico’s interior—live near the factories in “colonias,” impoverished, makeshift neighborhoods that have sprung up in the last couple of decades to encircle the city like shantytown suburbs.

Both scenes were unthinkable for Reynosa twenty years ago. The once relatively small city has been thrust into its new role as a production site for global corporations, including Maytag. While people in Reynosa hold opposing viewpoints on the changes that the factories have brought, many now wonder—and worry—about the future of the border.

Galesburg and Reynosa Face a Similar Fate

Like Galesburg, Reynosa faces stiff competition from lower-wage countries, principally China. While an entry-level wage in Reynosa is typically $6.50 per day, excluding benefits, that same job could be done in China for about $2 per day. In part because of competition from China, the maquiladora industry in Mexico has lost hundreds of thousands of assembly jobs since maquila employment peaked in October 2000.

Reynosa is considered a model of economic development because it has weathered the economic recession better than any other border city—perhaps better than any city in all of Mexico. Nevertheless, Reynosa is feeling the pressure of global competition.

Mike Allen, who recruits companies to Reynosa, is constantly worrying about losing jobs to China, a country that not only features lower wages, but also subsidizes materials. “We’re fighting China,” Allen said. “They may be singing the communist song, but they’ve been kicking our butts.”

Free trade agreements, including NAFTA, have made Reynosa a rendezvous point for American companies seeking low-wage labor and poor migrants from Mexico’s interior, who are leaving unprofitable farms and seeking work. But as lower-wage countries begin to attract more factories from both the U.S and Mexico, free trade may take away from Reynosa what it has given.

Stephen Spivey, former business editor of the McAllen Monitor, warns, “As cheap as Mexico is, China is much cheaper still. I think there’s a lot of concern that the industry is in real trouble.”

While Reynosa struggles to retain jobs against lower-wage, low-regulation countries, blue-collar areas in the United States see work disappear month after month, often forcing workers to face a lower standard of living, job insecurity, and dramatic life changes.

Keith Partridge, Allen’s partner at the McAllen Economic Development Corporation, notes that areas that pay higher wages are quickly becoming uncompetitive in attracting manufacturing jobs.

“Unfortunately, from a manufacturing standpoint, what Galesburg’s experiencing now is what every community in the industrial areas of the United States is going to experience in the next five to ten years.”

Noting the unforgiving nature of global capitalism, Partridge said that blue-collar workers have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

“If a person thinks that they’re owed a job for $20 or $30 an hour to put something together with screws when someone else is willing to do it for 50 cents an hour, guess where it’s going to go? I mean, that’s economics,” Partridge said.

In this sense, workers in Reynosa and Galesburg face a similar fate in the global economy: they must compete against workers willing—or forced by political and economic circumstances—to work for lower wages.

Working for Change

Despite the gloomy outlook, there are many working for change in the United States, Mexico and China.

Rosa Nuñez, a worker-activist, often feels overwhelmed in her attempts to organize workers to fight for their rights. She knocks on door after door, finding much discontent with working and living conditions, but also a strong reluctance to confront the unions and corporate management.

“If the unions did a good job of teaching workers their rights, then they would have better working conditions, better salaries, better benefits and a better quality of life. Here the unions are rich and the workers have nothing,” Nuñez said.

“The unions can’t work for workers rights because the government doesn’t allow them to. The government says that if a union offers better benefits to the workers, the companies wouldn’t come here.”

Nonetheless, Nuñez says, there have been small victories in their struggle. By putting pressure on unions to act, many illegal practices have been righted.

A 1996 Human Rights Watch report documented illegal pregnancy tests that were performed in Reynosa maquiladoras when women applied for work and then each month thereafter—oftentimes in a degrading manner.

“Now they don’t make them take a medical exam in order to be a worker,” Nuñez said. “They now hire pregnant women and pay their maternity leave and insurance.”

Supporters of the maquila industry say that the problems of the maquiladoras are exaggerated and not enough attention is given to the opportunities they offer the poor.

Herber Ramirez, secretary of economic development and employment in Reynosa, worked in the area for almost three decades—mostly for Zenith—after attending the University of Houston.

“I saw Reynosa grow from three to four plants when I arrived here in 1974 to the 150 that we got now,” Ramirez said.

Ramirez says that the conventional wisdom about the factories is inaccurate. “Everybody thinks that they exploit people. Those of us that have worked in maquilas, we know that it is not true.”

Referring to the downward pull of global competition, however, Ramirez concedes, “If China hadn’t opened up, wages in Mexico would be a lot better now.”

It is for this reason that—despite some improvements achieved in living and working conditions—poor and working-class Mexicans at the border still face many challenges and an uncertain future. Indeed, in an ever-shifting global economy, uncertainty has become the norm.

Advocates for global fair trade and workers’ rights like Nuñez say that by improving conditions in China, conditions in Mexico will improve. Likewise, by working for better conditions in Mexico—though it will not save jobs lost at Galesburg Refrigeration Products—American workers will benefit.

By holding U.S. corporations accountable for their practices and raising working standards worldwide, these advocates claim that economic development can benefit all—rather than simply enriching corporate coffers and local elites.

Atanasio Martinez, who migrated thirteen years ago in search of work, still wonders whether or not it was the right decision to leave his home in Veracruz to look for work in the maquiladoras. Making only $290 a month in the wheelchair factory, his family struggles from day to day.

When asked about Maytag’s impending relocation, Martinez had much to say about how corporate decisions impact the lives of workers in Reynosa—and in Galesburg.

“This company, Maytag, that closes down completely; it has such a devastating effect for those who were working there [in Galesburg],” he said.

“Right now,” Martinez continued, “we are living in a period in which globalization is too difficult and it’s really hitting us hard. We as human beings, as workers, should do something to organize ourselves, because what rules is money. I think that organizing ourselves, being united, as workers, will do a lot. There must be unity. Isolated, we can’t achieve anything.”

Sidebar: THE ROLE OF UNIONS IN REYNOSA

Herber Ramirez, the secretary of economic development and employment in Reynosa, says that companies locate in Reynosa in part, “because the labor climate is good.” Since labor protests in 1983, organized labor has been relatively peaceful, Ramirez said. Maria Prieto, the director of industrial development for the municipality, said that unions “don’t want trouble” and “are not a problem for companies.”

Likewise, the McAllen Economic Development Corporation, which recruits corporations to Reynosa, writes on their website that, “the labor union climate in Reynosa is very favorable to industry.”

Reynosa’s 70,000 maquiladora workers are represented by the Confederación de Trabajadores de Mexico (CTM) or by in-house unions established by each company. The vast majority is represented by the CTM, which has three leaders in Reynosa.

The CTM has been criticized in Mexico and by U.S. unions for protecting the status quo and the interests of corporations rather than advancing worker’s rights.

Armando Zertuche, the former secretary of economic development and employment, contends that because the CTM has long been part of the established political structure, they do not advocate for workers. “The worker doesn’t feel represented by the unions,” he said. “There is a corporate mentality and many people get benefits from it, live off of it. They help the businesses; they don’t look for improvements [even though] they say they do.”

While there are many smaller, more progressive and independent unions in Mexico, they have not made much headway in Reynosa.

Labor advocates argue that many forces conspire against independent unions forming. Arturo Solis, president of a human rights organization in Reynosa, said, “The employee has no right to unionize freely here. There have been attempts to unionize freely and, right away, they are smashed; [organizers are] fired, let go. They are put on a blacklist and can’t get work in a maquila ever again. It’s very difficult to find work after that and that’s why the level of protest by workers is so low.”

Ed Kruegar, a social activist in Reynosa and neighboring Matamoras for decades, says that in years past, “almost all of the workers, if you asked them who was it that was oppressing their lives, instead of naming the company, they would name the union leader.” Kruegar adds, however, that union leaders have started to support workers in some ways.

Angel Rodriguez, the secretary general of one of the three CTM unions in Reynosa, represents about 10,000 workers, including Maytag workers. Rodriguez said, “we have just one purpose: to represent the workers in a dignified way and with respect for human rights.” His union, he said, provides assistance with personal and family emergencies, housing problems, and workplace conflicts with supervisors. Rodriguez added that his union is constructing a large hall for social events for maquila workers and athletic fields for soccer and volleyball next to the Maytag campus.

A critic of the CTM, who asked to be anonymous, said that Rodriguez—who goes by “Tito”— works in the interest of the maquiladora owners, not the workers. “Tito basically does labor relations for management,” the critic said.

Whether or not unions in Reynosa work in the interests of their workers, there is no denying that Rodriguez has a clear understanding of the situation of Reynosa’s labor force in the context of global capitalism.

“The Mexican border is attractive because the cost of the workforce is cheaper here [than in the U.S.],” the union leader said. “If you get a company here, you try to protect it. How can you protect it? With a workforce that is more accessible, not as expensive.”

Celestica has two facilities in Reynosa, located minutes from the border with McAllen, Texas in northeastern Mexico.

The Reynosa facility located in Parque Industrial Reynosa Sur provides a wide range of low- to medium-volume electronics assembly and repair services. This team there specializes in high-mix (complex) assembly for global customers in industrial, medical, communications and aerospace markets.

Celestica’s second Reynosa facility, located in Plaza Comercial Aereopuerto, provides high volume, build-to-order and configure-to-order fulfillment services to customers in several market segments.

The site’s proximity to the U.S. border makes it easy to ship products and receive parts, improving time-to-market for its customers.

Reynosa Hotels, Resorts & Condos

* Best Western El Camino Inn & Suites - $$
Blvd Miguel Hidalgo 1480
Reynosa, Tamaulipas 88620
Swimming pool - fitness center - restaurant
Info - Photos | Map | Rates - Reservations

* City Express - $$
Blvd Miguel Hidalgo 480
Reynosa, Tamaulipas 88730
Fitness center
Info - Photos | Map | Rates - Reservations

* Holiday Inn Industrial Poniente - $$
Carretera Reynosa - Monterrey
Reynosa, Tamaulipas 88780
Fitness center - restaurant
Info - Photos | Map | Rates - Reservations

* Holiday Inn Zona Dorado - $$
Emilio Portes Gil Prado Sur
Reynosa, Tamaulipas 88560
Swimming pool - fitness center - restaurant
Info - Photos | Map | Rates - Reservations

* Howard Johnson Royal Garden - $$
Blvd Miguel Hidalgo 1165
Reynosa, Tamaulipas 88620
Swimming pool - restaurant
Info - Photos | Map | Rates - Reservations

Holiday Inn REYNOSA-INDUSTRIAL PONIENTE
PARQUE INDUS. VILLA FLORIDA, Reynosa, Mexico, 88780
Holiday Inn Hotel Industrial Poniente is the newest Hotel in Reynosa. It is strategically located in the best Industrial area of the city and in the Monterrey away exit.Only 15 minutes from the Hidalgo, Tx., International more ...
Sellers Found: 3
Lowest Price: $88.00

Today was a great day in Mexico. Here’s the rundown:
Woke up and went to church in Reynosa. It was a church called “Oasis in the Desert”. Very neat place. Very nice people. We had a translator for most of the sermon and luckily during the music they played some songs that i knew like, “Here I am to Worship”. It was really neat to see that the church in Mexico is alive and well. After church we went to a market in Progresso Mexico where we ate lunch and walked around and looked at all the street vendors. This was also a very neat experience. I hope to have another post later with some more meaningful reflections from today because the poverty was almost overwhelming. And one thing you’ll never capture on film is the smell of a place. The place didn’t necessarily stink or have a repulsive smell. It’s just a different smell. The smell of poverty. But anyway, like i said, more reflective stuff later. We ate Launches (sp?) for lunch today. They are kind of liked tacos except with deep fried bread instead of regular tortillas. It was surely authentic mexican food like i’ve never had before. The picture is below. Also, be sure to check out the Mexico Day 2 video below. More soon.

Finally. 19.5 hours in a 15 passenger van with 14 very cool people. We made it to McAllen, Texas. We’re a short 10 miles from the Mexico border. This retreat center (basically a neighborhood) is where we will sleep this week. Wireless internet only seems to work in the kitchen so i’m unable to load any pictures right now. However, expect more from me later, especially some great pics from the van ride. We left at 7:00 p.m. yesterday and arrived at 2:30 p.m. today. Beautiful. 2 hours of sleep in a freezing cold van was a memorable experience.

3.- Se vende casa en dos plantas. con sala - comedor , cocina , un baño y dos recamaras cada una , con escalera exterior independiente. Tiene 24 m de frente a la Avenida



Terreno de 369.29 m2. y Construccion de 240.00 m2

Ubicacion : Av Sur Uno numero 215 , colonia Cumbres, Cd. Reynosa , Tam.

Precio de venta : 900,000 pesos mex

4.-Se vende casa en dos plantas. P. Baja : Sala comedor , cocina , medio baño y cubo de escalera ; Planta Alta : Tres recamaras y un baño completo



Terreno de 110.00 m2. y Construccion de 168.00 m2

Ubicacion : Calle Palafox numero 670, zona Centro, Cd. Reynosa , Tam.

Precio de venta : 500,000 pesos mex

RBD (known by the Spanish pronounciation, "erre beh deh"), a photogenic Mexican sextet that started out as a soap opera spin-off but now rules the world of Latin pop with feel-good teen anthems and Las Vegas-style concert productions. Yet the group remains all but unknown among English speakers, a problem its members are hoping to solve by recording their first English-language album. Due this fall, the album is being aimed at non-Latinos in the United States, as well as markets in Canada and even Asia.

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING! RBD is the best group in the world.

Rebelde is a Reynosa Mexican "novela" (soap opera) produced by Televisa, starring the members of RBD. It is a remake of an Argentine telenovela Rebelde Way adapted for the Mexican audience therefore leading to differences in characters' backgrounds. The series ran for three seasons, the final episode airing in Mexico on 2006-06-02.

Rebelde was one of the biggest teen soaps in Mexico and had a huge impact among Latin-American youth.

The series is set at the Elite Way School, a prestigious private boarding high school near Reynosa Mexico. The school's faculty and the parents often have their own subplots as well. One feature of the show is the random use of English words and phrases, commonly used by fresas (like Mia Colucci when she said to Giovanni "Talk to the hand, por favor! When he spread a vicious rumor about her.

One of the series' major plot lines revolves around a group of students forming a pop band. The actors, who play the members of this band, are also in a real band, abbreviated as RBD to distinguish it from the show. RBD performs most of the music used on the show, and has been extremely successful in its own right, becoming one of the highest-grossing acts in Mexico and touring internationally.

RBD debuted in December 2004 with the album Rebelde, released through EMI. The main writers for the project were DJ Kafka and Max di Carlo, and their songs proved just as popular as the show. The first three singles ("Rebelde", "Solo Quédate En Silencio" and "Sálvame") were all number one hits in Mexico, with the fourth single, "Un Poco De Tu Amor" reaching number two.

In 2005 a portuguese languaged edition of the album was released for the Brazilian market called Rebelde (Edição Brasil). And though no english languaged edition was released, Rebelde sold well in the States, breaking into the Top 100 of the album chart (#95) and reaching number two on the Top Latin Albums chart. Rebelde sold over 400,000 copies in the U.S.[3] and was certified diamond in both Mexico and Brazil, selling at least 1.4 million copies between the two of them.

In July of 2005 a live CD/DVD, Tour Generación RBD En Vivo was released, including the group's sold-out tour of Mexico (35 sold-out concerts across the country.

In October of the same year came their second studio album, Nuestro Amor, which set new sales records in Mexico, selling 160,000 copies in its first week alone. In the U.S., the album topped the Latin Albums Chart for 3 weeks and again broke into the overall Top 100 (#88). The first four singles hit number one in Mexico. In the United States, only "Nuestro Amor" (#6), "Aún Hay Algo" (#24) and Este Corazón" (#10) charted on the Hot Latin chart.

Early in 2006, they RBD released a portuguese version of Nuestro Amor, entitled Nosso Amor Rebelde (Edição Brasil), specially for the Brazilian fans. Not long after, RBD toured the United States for the first time, issuing a second CD/DVD in April, titled Live In Hollywood, which peaked at number 6 on Billboard's Top Latin Albums Chart.

With the June 2 finale of Rebelde (after three seasons), came the news that the group would begin filming a new telenovela and record an english language album comprised of songs from their first two albums and some new songs.

2006 also brought RBD a nomination for the Latin Grammy Awards in the category 'Best Pop Album by a Group or Duo' for their second Reynosa studio album Nuestro Amor. However, they lost the award to La Oreja De Van Gogh, but made a performance, singing a new version of "Tras De Mí".

RBD, Ricky, Guzmán e mais em concerto

Uma constelação de estrelas encabeçadas por RBD, Ricky Martin e Alejandra Guzmán, acenderam o coliseu de Los Angeles no evento em massa Estouro Superestrela organizado por uma popular estação de rádio local.

No megashow, que se prolongou por sete horas atuaram em uma média de meia hora cada um, ante aproximadamente 50 mil presentes além de Homens G, Julieta Venegas, Sem Bandeira, Gloria Trevi, Belanova, Miranda, Mach and Daddy e Julio Preciado.

Com as intensas temperaturas dos últimos dias que ultrapassaram os 40 graus centígrados, este dia o clima de certo modo teve misericórdia, já que grande parte do concerto esteve enevoado e a temperatura foi de 30 graus centígrados.

O público fez seu próprio carnaval ao divertir-se com luxo já que até nas separações fez a onda, acendeu seus celulares em um tema romântico e até fizeram uma enorme fila indiana que recorreu a arquibancada do estádio coberta por plástico.

O porto-riquenho Ricky Martin foi um dos que levou a noite com sua atuação que esteve baseada em sucessos como A taça da vida, Living a vida Louca e A bomba, que deram faíscão de sua produção musical respaldada só por Till I Get to you.

"Necessito purificação esta noite. Há tantos problemas no mundo e mesmo que estejamos longe nos afeta por tanto os milhares que estão aqui podem mandar uma mensagem de paz e energia aos que desafortunadamente vivem em Guerra", manifestou Martin

Na sua participação cheia de energia e faíscão com passagens de bailes que iam desde salsa até samba e que provocavam gritos de suas admiradoras, chamou a atenção que Martin se mudou atrás do palco cada 10 minutos.

O sexteto de RBD, que fechou o concerto, teve a responsabilidade de mostrar qualidade com interpretações ao vivo e mesmo que às vezes se escutaram enormes esforços vogais de Anahí e Christopher, não afetou que seu público curtisse suas interpretações.

A atuação de RBD foi adornada com efeitos de pirotecnia, fogo e vídeos em telas gigantes e entre estas se encontraram os temas baseados na bem-sucedida telenovela do mesmo nome, que ainda se segue transmitindo nos Estados Unidos.

Chamou a atenção que faz uns meses o grupo se apresentou neste mesmo palco onde alcançaram a assistência de 80 mil pessoas a maior marca para um artista hispano e esta vez, em um palco compartilhado a assistência só foi de aproximadamente 50 mil.

Outra que chamou a atenção foi a Guzmán quem impacto ao apresentar-se com botas pretas abaixo dos joelhos e um conjunto de tecido preto que mostrava sua roupa intima além de seu torneada figura.

O grupo espanhol Homens G também pôs a dançar aos presentes com seus sucessos Devuélveme a minha garota, Te quero e Marta tem um marca-passo assim como o tema de seu mas recente produção Não o sei.

No início do programa o quinteto argentino Miranda!, cujos integrantes luziram ataviados com cores bolo começaram seu primeiro gira por Estados Unidos em onde já soa forte Eu te direi e depois seguiu Gloria Trevi apresentada como "O retorno da legenda".

Julio Preciado que parecia ser o único que destoava pelo evento da estação de música de rock e pop em espanhol, alcançou cativar aos presentes acompanhado de banda ao cantar O sinaloense, Meu gosto é, O sapito e Acábame de matar.

Outra que também foi ovacionada foi Julieta Venegas, quem apareceu com seu inseparável acordeão para interpretar temas como Lento, Algo em minha esta mudando, Limão fruto e cor e sal, Andar comigo e A jaula de ouro em homenagem a Tigres do norte.

Venegas também aproveitou para lançar um comentário pró imigrante ao assinalar "Tomara e chegue um dia em que ninguém tenha que deixar sua terra para buscar uma vida melhor".

O toque romântico o deram o dueto Sem Bandeira que além de cantar alguns de seus sucessos como Amor real e Que me alcance a vida, também compartilhou que Noel nascido na Argentina recém obteve a nacionalidade mexicana.

Por outro lado, o grupo mexicano Belanova com seus ritmos de tecno pop e que tiveram como apoio ao ex integrante de Maná 'Vampiro" no violão, foi muito celebrada sua interpretação de Boys dom't cry e Dulce beat.

Quase ao início o dueto reggaetonero Match & Daddy participou com exito o que os levou a conhecer o oeste de estados Unidos Pásame que tiveram que repetir na parte final de sua participação.
Font:: Ritmo Latino traduzido por RBDBR.kit.net (texto modificado)

Fonte:: RBDonline

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The Mexican War (1846-1848) was the U.S. Army's first experience waging extended conflict in foreign land. This brief war is often overlooked by casual students of history since it occurred so close to the American Civil War and is overshadowed by the latter's sheer size and scope. Yet, the Mexican War was instrumental in shaping the geographical boundaries of the United States. At the conclusion of this conflict, the U.S. had added some one million square miles of territory, including what today are the states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California, as well as portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. This newly acquired land also became a battleground between advocates for the expansion of slavery and those who fought to prevent its spread. These sectional and political differences ripped the fabric of the union of states and eventually contributed to the start of the American Civil War, just thirteen years later. In addition, the Mexican War was a proving ground for a generation of U.S. Army leaders who as junior officers in Mexico learned the trade of war and later applied those lessons to the Civil War.

The Mexican War lasted some twenty-six months from its first engagement through the withdrawal of American troops. Fighting took place over thousands of miles, from northern Mexico to Mexico City, and across New Mexico and California. During the conflict, the U.S. Army won a series of decisive conventional battles, all of which highlighted the value of U.S. Military Academy graduates who time and again paved the way for American victories. The Mexican War still has much to teach us about projecting force, conducting operations in hostile territory with a small force that is dwarfed by the local population, urban combat, the difficulties of occupation, and the courage and perseverance of individual soldiers. The following essay is one of eight planned in this series to provide an accessible and readable account of the U.S. Army's role and achievements in the conflict.

Gateway South
The Campaign for Monterrey



Brig. Gen. Zachary Taylor, commander of the Army of Occupation, won decisive tactical victories against a numerically superior enemy at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, Texas, on 8 and 9 May 1846, respectively, the opening battles of the Mexican War. The U.S. Army's light artillery dominated the action at Palo Alto where it devastated massed Mexican formations on the open field of battle. At Resaca de la Palma, Gen. Mariano Arista, the commander of Mexico's Army of the North, tried to adjust his tactics to minimize the dominance of Taylor's artillery by engaging the Americans in an area dominated by heavy underbrush. His efforts were to no avail. Junior officers and noncommissioned officers led squads of American soldiers against well-entrenched positions and successfully swept the Mexican force from the Texas side of the Rio Grande. In doing so, Taylor appeared to settle the boundary question that had been a source of contention since Texas won its independence in 1836. Additional operations were necessary, however, to pressure Mexico into accepting these results and ultimately into ceding California and other territories to the United States.

Strategic Setting

American Plans and Objectives
While the U.S. Army engaged enemy forces in battle, President James K. Polk and his administration were in the midst of their own struggle. The president had hoped that the American presence along the Rio Grande would be enough to compel Mexico into relinquishing its territorial claims north of the river and in California. Polk was wrong. His success in domestic politics had rested largely upon a propensity to intimidate his opponents and to use brinkmanship tactics, but these techniques produced unintended consequences when employed against Mexico. Instead, heavy-handed diplomacy cause Mexicans to rally in support of their government and to demand that it oppose American expansionism.

John Slidell, Polk's special emissary to Mexico, concluded that the Mexican government would not negotiate and war was the only option. When he returned to Washington on 8 May 1846 for consultations, neither he nor the president knew that the conflict had already started. By the time the two met, Taylor had defeated the Mexicans at Palo Alto. Polk's inner circle, including leading Senate Democrats such as John C. Calhoun and

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Map: The Mexican War, March-25 September 1846

Click for larger image

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Thomas Hart Benton as well as his Secretary of War William L. Marcy, opposed declaring war on Mexico. The nation, they feared, was over committed. While the president maneuvered to alter the southern border, he was also at odds with England over the boundary between the Oregon Territory and British Canada. Great Britain and the United States had agreed. in 18 19 to share the region that later encompassed the states of Oregon and Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia. By the early 1840s, however, more than five thousand Americans called the Willamette Valley home while the number of British subjects remained minuscule. Typically combative, Polk campaigned in 1844 on a policy of negotiating the northern divide between the two nations at 54 degrees 40 minutes of latitude. He wanted the entire Oregon territory for the United States and promised war if it could not be obtained peacefully. Calhoun and Benton feared that if talks with England also broke down, the small U.S. Army could not face a two-front war against both Mexico and the overwhelmingly powerful British Empire. Fortunately for Polk, Great Britain agreed to compromise at the 49th parallel without forcing a conflict.

Armed with Slidell's report, Polk went to his cabinet on 9 May to seek its recommendations

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on whether to ask Congress for a declaration of war. All agreed except Secretary of Navy George Bancroft, who cited possible congressional opposition. That evening, Secretary of State James Buchanan worked with the president to draft a message to Congress. Before they adjourned for the night, however, a courier arrived with a dispatch from Taylor dated 26 April, which announced that the Mexicans had attacked and killed American soldiers. Polk immediately recalled the cabinet and all its members opted for war. Polk, Buchanan, and Bancroft then finished the president's declaration of war, which called upon Congress to raise fifty thousand volunteer troops and to appropriate $10 million for the conduct of hostilities. The House quickly approved an authorization bill and sent it to the Senate, which passed it on 13 May by a margin of forty to two with three abstentions. Polk signed it into law later that afternoon.

To reach the fifty thousand men authorized by Congress, the new law gave each state a quota of units to recruit. Volunteers had to provide their own uniforms and, if they joined a cavalry unit, their horses as well, but the government promised to reimburse them later for the cost of their mounts. Once a unit assembled, its men elected their own leaders. The state governors, who could appoint company and field grade officers, almost always allowed such informal methods to prevail. The president, however, appointed all generals and staff officers, subject to Senate approval. Once officially mustered into federal service, the units moved by sea to New Orleans and then by land to the Rio Grande.

At the same time, the legislation increased the authorized strength of the Regular Army by raising the number of privates in each company from forty-two to one hundred. In theory, the measure would have increased the Army to 15,540 men from its authorized size of 8,613, but the War Department never managed to obtain those manpower numbers for the ensuing campaign in Mexico.

While allowing an increase in manpower, the bill complicated matters considerably by permitting volunteers to sign-up at their discretion either for twelve months or for the duration of the war. Most chose to serve only one year. As a result, the U.S. forces in Mexico were constantly in a state of flux, with soldiers coming and going and volunteer regiments chronically undermanned. In addition, the $10 million in appropriations failed to ensure that each newly raised unit received the logistical support necessary for it to conduct operations inside enemy territory. This put a huge strain on the Quartermaster, the Subsistence, and the Ordnance Departments to provide basic necessities such as transportation, food, and ammunition.

With preparations underway to bolster the size of the American military, Polk, Marcy, and Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott, Commanding General of the United States Army, met on 14 May and began to formulate the

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administration's objectives and military strategy. Polk and Marcy disliked Scott because of his Whig sympathies and his widely known ambition to win the presidency. Yet much of the planning fell to Scott, the finest American strategic thinker of the mid-nineteenth century, largely because Marcy was a poor administrator and Polk lacked military experience beyond his several years in the Tennessee militia before being elected to Congress. The president, who often immersed himself in detail, insisted on deciding even minor matters better left to his subordinates. His tendency quickly became apparent when Polk directed the War Department to lay out its plans on an assumption that the United States would win the conflict in less than six months. Scott argued that the president's timeframe was impossible. The Army needed more time to train the volunteers and provide sufficient logistical support to move large forces into Mexico. The judgment chagrined the president, but he eventually agreed.

As a result of these discussions, Polk agreed to the basic concepts outlined by Scott. The primary goals of the military action would be to firmly fix the southern boundary of the United States and to integrate California into the nation. To attain these objectives, Scott planned four simultaneous operations. First, Taylor would retain control of the forces along the Rio Grande and move south of the river as soon as practical. His troops would occupy as many states in northern Mexico as possible. His first target was the city of Monterrey,1 the capital of Nuevo Leon, about 180 miles south and west of his current position in Matamoros, Mexico. By taking Monterrey, Taylor would open the avenues of advance southward toward Mexico City. Furthermore, pro-expansionists, such as Secretary of the Treasury Robert J. Walker, believed that the provinces of upper Mexico would welcome the U.S. Army as liberators. They argued that the region above Mexico City was only marginally tied to the Mexican government. The residents of northern Mexico would accept the protection of American forces. Walker's concept later developed into the "All Mexico Movement," which called for the United States to conquer and assimilate the entire country.

Second, the War Department ordered a column of thirty-four hundred men under the command of Brig. Gen. John E. Wool to march from San Antonio, Texas, to Chihuahua, in north-central Mexico. His command left the United States on 23 September 1846 on what proved to be a five-month expedition. Scott calculated that Wool's column would increase the American presence in the north of Mexico and support Taylor's operation.

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Painting: General Wool

General Wool (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)

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In case Taylor became the target of a Mexican counteroffensive, Wool could rush his men to assist. Wool's column, the Division of the Center, consisted of a small core of Regular Army companies from the 1st and 2d Dragoons, the 4th Artillery, and the 6th Infantry and of volunteer units from the 1st and 2d Illinois Infantry, the Arkansas Mounted Volunteers, the independent Company of Kentucky Mounted Volunteers, and the Independent Texas Rifle Company. Wool, a strict disciplinarian, instituted harsh measures to keep his twenty-nine hundred volunteers under control during their long march through Mexico. These forces provided a friendly if somewhat distant protection to Taylor's right flank and would prove important in the upcoming campaign for Buena Vista.

Third, Scott sent a column from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to San Diego, California, through the important commercial center of Santa Fe, in what is today New Mexico. Consisting of about two thousand troops under Col. Stephen W. Kearny, the force left Fort Leavenworth on 5 June 1846. The command included troopers from the 1st Dragoons, as well as several volunteer units-the 1st Missouri Mounted Volunteers, the St. Louis Volunteer Artillery, the Missouri Infantry Battalion, the Laclede Rangers, the 2d Missouri Volunteers, and the Mormon Battalion. The Mormon Battalion had been raised in Iowa after the Polk administration gave church leader Brigham Young authorization to recruit a battalion of volunteers to serve in California. A battle hardened cavalry commander, Kearny led his men on an arduous 1,700-mile march through deserts and snow-capped mountains. His epic journey was the most impressive strategic movement in the entire Mexican War and was crucial in Polk's plan to acquire California. Although Kearny reached the Pacific coast with only three hundred dragoons, having left the rest of his command in Santa Fe to administer what became the Territory of New Mexico, his troops contributed greatly to the conquest of California.

Fourth, Polk ordered the U.S. Navy to blockade ports on Mexico's Gulf and Pacific coasts to prevent arms and ammunition from entering the country from European sources. Although a difficult task, the effort would succeed in stemming most military shipments from abroad to Mexico. In addition, sailors and Marines participated in several ground campaigns, most notably capturing the Pacific ports of San Diego and Los Angeles. While local opposition forced them to relinquish control temporarily, a joint Army-Navy force under Kearny ultimately gained possession of all of California.

The Mexican Context

While the Americans prepared their plans, major changes were occurring in Mexico. The Ministry of War ordered General Arista before


Colonel Kearny (Library of Congress)

a court-martial following his defeats at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. Lt. Gen. Pedro de Ampudia replaced him as commander of Mexico's Army of the North. Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1805, Ampudia joined the Spanish army on his native island. Serving in the Spanish military forces opposing Mexican independence in 1821, he quickly abandoned the losing side to fight with the victorious Mexicans. Subsequently making a career in the

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Photo: General Ampudia

General Ampudia (University of Texas at Austin)

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Mexican army, Ampudia gained a reputation for cunning and cruelty. After suppressing a local uprising in the town of Oaxaca in 1844, he ordered the heads of several of the leaders boiled in oil and placed in the public square. Such tactics made him generally unpopular with many Mexicans, and he inspired more fear than confidence among his troops. Nevertheless, he was prepared to defend Monterrey with tenacity and vigor.

The return of Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, however, constituted the most significant change. Ousted by a revolution in 1844, the enigmatic Mexican strongman had been an exile in Cuba when Polk became president in 1845. Santa Anna initiated secret negotiations with the United States in February 1846, hinting that if allowed safe passage back to Mexico, he would resume power and sell California and other territories Polk coveted to the United States. Polk agreed to the proposition and Santa Anna returned to the port town of Vera Cruz through the American blockade on 16 August 1846. Once there, he arranged a mass demonstration by his supporters, which forced the Mexican administration to reinstate him as General of the Army. With his official standing secure, he then reneged on his bargain with Polk and began rapid preparations for all-out war against the United States.

Preparations and Preliminary Operations

Concurrent with these events in Washington and Mexico City, Zachary Taylor prepared to follow up his early victories in Texas. Delayed for more than a week after Resaca de la Palma by insufficient transportation, he finally crossed the Rio Grande on 18 May 1846 upriver from Matamoros, which is located on the right bank of that river, opposite present-day Brownsville, Texas. His advance guard discovered that Arista's army had abandoned most of its wounded and had retreated southwest toward Monterrey. Taylor sent surgeons to care for the Mexican casualties, directed his men to pitch camp outside Matamoros, and promised the inhabitants that the U.S. Army would preserve their property and personal safety.

Shortly after the Army of Occupation completed its crossing, Col. William J. Worth (later Brig. Gen.), one of the vainest yet capable officers in the U.S. Army, took command of one of Taylor's divisions. Worth had served with Taylor's forces at Corpus Christi and at Fort Texas before the battle at Palo Alto, but had indulged in an angry dispute with his commander over his status. While at Corpus Christi, Taylor scheduled a review of the army and ordered Col. David E. Twiggs (later Brig. Gen.) to lead the formation because seniority made him the second ranking officer on the scene. The egotistical Worth, who held a brevet to the rank of brigadier general won during the Second Seminole War, had taken this as a personal insult. He

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Image: General Worth

General Worth (Library of Congress)

insisted that he outranked Twiggs. Taylor canceled the parade, but when an appeal through the chain of command returned with an unfavorable ruling to Worth, the colonel resigned and prepared to return home, missing the opening battles as a result. Although displeased with Worth's conduct, Taylor recognized his military ability and reinstated him as a commander.

The largest adjustment to Taylor's force, however, came with the arrival of thousands of state militiamen and volunteers. Within days of arriving at

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Matamoros, militia from Louisiana raced into Taylor's camp without even the most rudimentary supplies. The veteran commander of the Western Division, Brig. Gen. Edmund P. Gaines, also rushed troops to support the Army of Occupation, illegally usurping the authority of the president by mustering state militia into federal service on his own initiative. The War Department eventually sent the troops home and censured Gaines; but in the interim, Taylor had to feed, house, and arm some eleven thousand eager volunteers when he could barely support his four thousand Regular Army soldiers. The days of an all-Regular Army in Mexico had ended.

Problems stemming from this influx began almost immediately. The presence of the new troops shattered the Regular Army's basic routines. As more volunteers arrived, necessities such as food and fuel ran short. This lack of supplies-combined with the dullness of camp life, a dislike of the strict regime followed by the regulars, and a high incidence of illness-resulted in considerable fiction between the citizen soldiers and the professionals. Volunteers died by the dozens from fevers and other ailments. Drunkenness flourished because alcohol provided an escape for volunteers who had signed up to fight, not to suffer from insufficient provisions in the sweltering heat of a Mexican summer. Brawls fueled by gambling, disputes over slavery between northern and southern soldiers, and general boredom broke out, as did violent confrontations between rough-hewn frontier Americans such as the Texas Rangers and the Mexican inhabitants of the area. Assault, theft, rape, and murder were common charges leveled against the volunteers.

While Taylor maintained unwavering discipline among his regulars, he was unable or unwilling to impose a similar control on the volunteers. In fact, he did little more than issue stern reminders that Mexican property and lives should be preserved and tried to keep volunteer units away from populated areas. The fact that volunteer officers frequently lacked the competence and temperament to train or control their men exacerbated the problem.

When regulars did attempt to instill order, it only led to increased resentment between the volunteers and the professionals. On at least two occasions, for example, unknown parties made attempts on the life of Capt. Braxton Bragg, an artillery battery commander whom the volunteers particularly disliked because of his abrasive and authoritarian style. In one incident, someone placed an 8-inch artillery shell under Bragg's cot with a trail of gun power leading out of his tent. The shell detonated while he slept. Although rattled, he escaped serious injury.

Polk's decision to exercise his prerogative to appoint the senior officers to the volunteer army directly from civilian life rather than move Regular Army officers to command positions in Mexico only aggravated the already volatile situation. Regular Army officers who had toiled at the same rank

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for years because of notoriously slow promotions in the peacetime force viewed the creation of new units as an opportunity for advancement. The president's open partisanship in the subsequent selection of senior officers in these units alienated many of them. As a Democrat, Polk harbored a traditional American distrust of a large, professional army. More important, his Whig opponents dominated much of the senior army leadership. To gain influence for his own party, he nominated only Democrats to the newly created positions, generally individuals with little actual military experience. For his part, Taylor proved unable to control the spiraling tensions among the various factions under his command. He may have hoped that a rapid start to the Monterrey operation would relieve some of these pressures.

Operations

The Approach to Monterrey (10 June -10 September 1846)

The Monterrey campaign opened on 10 June 1846 when a regiment-sized American force under Lt. Col. Henry Wilson marched northwest to the town of Reynosa, a settlement of one thousand some fifty miles upriver from Matamoros. Mexican irregulars and bandits harassed the area since the Army of the North retreated after abandoning Matamoros. The American forces were responding to pleas from the town's residents to restore order, but the aid proved a mixed blessing. Using the town as a forward base to reconnoiter routes to Monterrey, a company of Texas Rangers occupied it during the July 4th holiday, consuming two horse troughs of whiskey in the process as well as a number of local chickens and hogs that died "accidentally" during the celebration. The conduct of the Texans outraged many regulars, but Taylor did little to stop it, perhaps because the volunteers performed a crucial reconnaissance role for his command. Happily for the town, Taylor concluded that the route through Reynosa to Monterrey was impractical and moved the bulk of his forces thirty miles further upriver to the town of Camargo. From there he had a more direct approach to his objective, which lay some 125 miles to the south and west.

While Camargo offered a better avenue for attack, it posed several problems for Taylor. He could ferry soldiers up from Matamoros to Camargo on shallow draft river steamers or march them overland parallel with the river. Both options had drawbacks. The Rio Grande Valley lacked sufficient timber to fuel steam engines and, in the grip of the rainy season, the river's changing currents, narrow navigation channels, submerged boulders, and fallen trees made this route treacherous. Under the circumstances, the overland path might have seemed preferable, but it was little better. With the Rio Grande at flood stage, many of the well-traveled roads upriver were
 Taylor's Advance, June-23 September 1846

under water. The troops, as a result, would be forced to march through muck and mud soaring temperatures, high humidity, and frequent rain storms. In the end most of the infantry were sent to Camargo via steamers, while the artillery and dragoons traveled overland.

Conditions at Camargo, however, were not much better. Camargo was a river settlement of three thousand. Its location on the bank of the swollen Rio Grande made it a logical site for a supply depot, but scorpions,


tarantulas, ants, and various biting insects, including mosquitos, infested the area. Daytime temperatures often soared above 110 degrees, drying the mud into what soon became with the passage of the men great billows of eye-stinging dust. Fresh drinking water was at a premium. In short, the Camargo region was a poor choice for housing the nearly fifteen thousand American soldiers that Taylor concentrated there.

Under the circumstances, large numbers of Taylor's force became ill within days of their arrival on 8 August. His volunteer units lacked experience in maintaining sanitary conditions and proved particularly vulnerable to dysentery. But everyone, whether regular or volunteer, suffered from various fevers, heat stroke being the most common.

Accepted medical practices of the time did little to ease the troops' suffering. Medical knowledge in 1846 was still primitive despite some recent advances. Although some American physicians knew and made use of an effective vaccine for smallpox, fewer were aware that ether could act as an anesthetic. Whether because of doubts about the efficacy or simple lack of knowledge of these discoveries, U.S. Army doctors used neither on a large scale in Mexico. The germ theory of disease also awaited discovery. As a consequence, many surgeons failed to practice proper sterilization procedures and increased the spread of infection when they operated. Physicians of their generation had no cures for the most deadly diseases of the time, such as yellow fever, malaria, and typhoid. Instead, Army doctors followed general practice by administering massive doses of quinine to allay the symptoms. In addition, they had yet to learn that mosquitoes carried many devastating fevers and took no special precautions to shield their patients from insects. To compound matters, many practitioners, particularly those drawn directly from civil life, had only a tenuous grasp of the connection between poor sanitation and illness.

Surgeon General Thomas Lawson commanded the U.S. Army Medical Department, headquartered in New York City. His organization provided medical supplies to field units and ensured that qualified doctors, referred to as surgeons, filled medical billets, although they initially held no military rank. Overall, the department fulfilled its responsibilities well, although shipping delays sometimes forced field surgeons to purchase items locally. The medical department also administered rigorous exams-that few passed-to ensure that would-be surgeons were competent. The problem was, however, that the number of doctors assigned to each regiment was too few, three for Regular Army units and only two for volunteers. In addition, civilian contract surgeons hired to fill empty billets were untested and often lacked even basic knowledge of elementary sanitary precautions. In Camargo, Taylor's reports indicate that about fifteen hundred men, nearly 10 percent of his total force, died while camped there and another fourteen

hundred became incapacitated. As the number of deaths and men on sick call rose each day, Taylor realized that to preserve the fighting strength of his army he had to move those men able to march out of Camargo as soon as possible.

On 19 August, the vanguard of the American force, some sixteen hundred men under General Worth, set out toward the town of Cerralvo, approximately seventy-five miles south of Camargo and fifty miles northeast of Monterrey. Its route followed a narrow road that rapidly climbed from the coastal plains of Camargo toward the mountains south of Monterrey. Worth's men had to widen the road so that it could support the army's line of communications, but a lack of transportation nevertheless slowed the exodus. In all, Taylor had fifteen hundred pack mules and 180 wagons to move all of his essential supplies. This forced him to limit the number of troops in his expedition to 6,640. The remaining eight thousand-largely the sick and many of the volunteer units-dispersed to garrisons and hospitals along the route between Camargo and Point Isabel on the coast.

Final American Preparations (11-19 September 1846)

Reaching Cerralvo on 25 August, American forces had to wait until sufficient supplies arrived to support an assault on Monterrey. They struck out again for that city on 11 September, the divisions marching at one-day intervals. Four days later, Taylor halted at the hamlet of Marin, some twenty miles northeast of Monterrey to allow his entire force to close up. Resuming the march in a single column on 18 September, the Army of Occupation arrived at the northern outskirts of Monterrey the following morning. Taylor camped his troops some three miles north of the city at a natural spring lined with oak and pecan trees called the Bosque de San Domingo. Misidentifying the trees, the troops named the area Walnut Springs.

Monterrey was an impressive town of ten thousand surrounded by imposing geographical features. Intersected by a large, flat plateau that extended well into its urban center, the city rested in a bend in the Rio Santa Catarina, which flowed south and east of the town. Beyond the river to the south and west, the Sierra Madre rose from the plain to form a nearly impassable wall of jagged peaks. A pass cut by the Santa Catarina was the only break through the barrier. A road to the south toward the city of Saltillo ran along the river and constituted the principal avenue of supply and retreat for the Mexican force guarding Monterrey.

Intelligence reports gleaned from locals showed that General Ampudia reinforced the Monterrey garrison. The city itself was already very defensible, but Ampudia improved on nature by establishing several strong points at the central cathedral and at key intersections. One-story

 Taylor and staff at Walnut Springs

Taylor and staff at Walnut Springs , Smithsonian Institution

stone buildings with flat roofs, the predominant architecture in Monterrey, became havens for snipers. In all, approximately 7,303 Mexicans manned these positions along with the fortifications and redoubts that stood at crucial points around the town.

At fist glance, the city's outworks appeared impenetrable. An uncompleted cathedral, known to the Americans as the Citadel or the Black Fort because of its dark, thirty-foot-high stone walls, stood approximately one thousand yards north of the city and housed four hundred Mexican troops and some thirty guns. Also to the north stood a bridge called La Purisima, which spanned a local canal known as Ojo de Agua. More than three hundred infantrymen plus artillery protected it. An earthwork, La Teneria, built in an old tannery building and manned by two hundred troops, defended the northeast approach. A fortification known as El Fortin del Rincon del Diablo or Fort Diablo covered the east side of the town. To the west, the Saltillo road ran between two high hills. The one to the north, Independence Hill (Colina de la Independencia), was eight hundred feet in height and held two defensive structures, a small fortification dubbed Fort
 Battle of Monterrey, 19-21 September 1846


Libertad and an abandoned bishop's palace known as the Obispado. Some 250 soldiers and several artillery pieces held these positions. The 400-foothigh Federation Hill (Colina de la Federación), which had a small redoubt on the west end and Fort Soldado at the other, lay south of the road and the Santa Catarina.

Ampudia organized his mix of regular and reserve forces into four infantry brigades. These he bolstered with several detachments of cavalry

and various units of irregulars. The 1st Brigade included the 3d and 4th Light Infantry regiments, as well as the Active Militia of Aguascalientes. The 2d Brigade contained the 2d Light Infantry; the 6th, 8th, and 10th Line Infantry; and the Active Militia of Queretaro. The 3d Brigade was made up of the 3d and 4th Line Infantry and the 1st Active Militia of Mexico. The 4th Brigade held the 1st Line Infantry and the Active Militias of Morelia and San Luis Potosi. The general stationed most of his regular units in the fortifications outside the city and in the strong points inside its limits. The remaining regulars, and most of the irregulars, took up residence in homes within the city so that they could quickly take positions on rooftops to oppose any American advance. Ampudia kept his cavalry largely on the outskirts of the area as a mobile reserve.

Despite the formidable appearance of the city's defenses, a reconnaissance under Taylor's chief engineer, Maj . Joseph K. F. Mansfield, identified two weaknesses. First, Ampudia concentrated his men inside the various fortifications and strong points. Second, the Mexican infantry reserve was incapable of protecting the area between the defensive constructions or of rushing reinforcements to the forts that were under attack. Although Ampudia had cavalry detachments at his disposal, Mexican horsemen were not trained or equipped to fight on foot. Taylor knew from Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma that Ampudia's cavalry would be ineffective in the open field against American artillery. Taylor could cut off and eliminate individual positions one by one without fear of strong counterattacks.

Recognizing that Mexican forces would never venture out of Monterrey to fight on the open fields north of the town and that it wou