Zedillo Condemns Violence to Mexicans

President Ernesto Zedillo on Tuesday branded as “absolutely reprehensible” the violence of two recent incidents involving illegal Mexican migrants in Southern California and said the outrage they provoked in Mexico is “perfectly legitimate” and “totally justified.”

In his first public comments on a police beating of at least two Mexican migrants and a truck wreck that left eight undocumented Mexicans dead and 17 injured, Zedillo told a gathering of human rights groups that his government will intensify diplomatic efforts to protect all Mexican nationals on U.S. soil.

“The Mexican government repeatedly has raised its firm protest of the violation of human rights of our nationals in American territory,” Zedillo said in a speech to the group in the historic Mexican city of Queretaro. “The attack on their dignity offends us and it insults us deeply that they are victims of abusive treatment and intimidating acts that physically threaten them and even have meant the loss of life.”

Reflecting the Mexican government’s view that the incidents are part of a new, hard-line anti-immigration attitude by some factions in the United States, Zedillo added, “We know of the political climate and the motives that are promoting these attacks; for that reason, we have redoubled our efforts to protect” Mexicans through Mexico’s 40 consulates in the United States.

“Today,” Zedillo said, “I reiterate that we will continue defending our compatriots with total conviction and decisiveness and we will ensure through all means that local authorities [in the United States] revise their methods in cases of detentions of undocumented immigrants.”

He said he will soon submit to the Mexican Senate a resolution authorizing his government to appeal to international human rights organizations for a special conference on the rights of migratory workers and their families. He said Mexico will ask the U.S. government to join in the appeal.

Zedillo’s government has been sharply criticized by the political opposition in Mexico for failing to take a tough diplomatic stand against the United States after the beating and crash incidents. On Sunday, the government responded with a communique declaring that high-level diplomatic meetings with the U.S. Justice Department yielded agreements for reviews of local police methods all along the American side of the border and official Mexican human-rights courses for future U.S. Border Patrol agents.

On Monday, a Justice Department spokesman said that no formal agreements had been reached and that the Mexican government already has been giving sensitivity training classes to Border Patrol cadets.