Zedillo Urges Humane U.S. Border Policy

Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo wrapped up a historic three-day goodwill tour of California on Thursday, vowing to press for a more humanitarian U.S. border control policy to reduce the mounting toll of immigrant deaths.

Zedillo said his government will use an upcoming session with U.S. Cabinet officials to complain about the scores of migrants who have died in the remote desert or harsh mountains, trying to avoid stepped-up U.S. border patrols.

“We don’t argue with the U.S. government’s right to apply their laws,” Zedillo said, “but the laws should be applied having in mind very basic humanitarian considerations.”

Zedillo’s comments, made in an interview with The Times, marked a rare note of discord in a four-city sweep intended to highlight a turnaround in ties with California. The Mexican president was invited by Gov. Gray Davis, who has pledged to heal relations fractured during Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration by new laws perceived as anti-Mexican.

President Clinton added his voice to the goodwill chorus surrounding the trip by calling Zedillo on Thursday morning, as the Mexican leader toured an East Los Angeles school. In the five-minute conversation from Air Force One, Clinton and Zedillo spoke about the importance of California-Mexico relations to both countries, according to a Mexican communique.

But the Mexican leader was clearly moved by more than just a diplomatic victory. In an emotional farewell address in San Diego Thursday night, Zedillo emphasized how impressed he was with progress by Mexican-Americans, citing Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and California’s Assembly Speaker, Antonio Villaraigosa, who had greeted him with effusive Spanish-language speeches in the Legislature two days earlier.

“How times have changed!” declared Zedillo, who grew up in the border city of Mexicali. “When I was a child, living not far from here . . ., if someone had said two people of Mexican origin would be lieutenant governor and Speaker . . . , I would never have believed it.”

In San Diego, Zedillo emphasized rapidly growing trade by visiting a California energy company with extensive investments in Mexico, and a Mexican giant that recently opened a headquarters here.

In recent years Mexico has become California’s second-biggest export market, and is closing in on California’s No. 1 customer, Japan. “We want to affirm our partnership with California and make better use of the advantages that our geographic proximity offers,” Zedillo told 150 business executives at a luncheon at the headquarters of Sempra Energy in San Diego.

The company is one of the most successful U.S. companies trying to exploit the underdeveloped Mexican energy market. Among its investments is a 23-mile natural gas pipeline that by year’s end will power Baja California’s largest power plant.

Also at the lunch, Leap Wireless International, a spinoff of Qualcomm, announced that it is spending $1.3 billion on new wireless phone systems in Mexico.

Zedillo’s last event Thursday was the inauguration in San Diego of the new U.S. headquarters of telecommunications giant Telefonos de Mexico, which moved from Houston to better tap the Latino market in California.

Mexico’s Recovery

Throughout his trip, Zedillo emphasized Mexico’s recovery from its devastating 1995 economic crisis. In part, such comments have been aimed at investors. But the glowing economic report card also was intended to allay the fears of Californians nervous that continuing economic problems would drive more Mexicans north, Davis aides said.

In Mexico, there is growing concern that beefed-up border controls in the San Diego areaare forcing immigrants into remote, inhospitable areas to the east, where many die of exposure to heat or cold.

Last year, 300 Mexican migrants died at the border, 177 of them on the California side, Mexican officials say.

“Over the last year we have seen very painful tragedies occurring in both the desert . . . and also in the sierra” on the border, Zedillo said. He did not specify what Mexico will ask U.S. officials to do.

Rosario Green, Mexico’s foreign minister, said Mexico will urge U.S. authorities to work more closely with their Mexican counterparts as they do in implementing their anti-drug policy. “We need cooperation to avoid these deaths,” she said.

Mexican officials said they have addressed the border deaths with Doris Meissner, head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

On June 3-4, the subject will be introduced at a higher level, in the annual meeting of officials from the U.S. and Mexican cabinets.

A senior U.S. State Department official said the Clinton administration is aware of Mexico’s concerns about the immigrant deaths. “We have to work together to come to grips with the problem in a joint fashion,” said the official, speaking in Washington on condition of anonymity.

“There are things we can do and things they can do. Much has to do with just ensuring that people know how dangerous the situation is and that people don’t risk their lives here,” he said.

The official listed a series of actions that the United States has already launched to deal with the problem, including increasing rapid-response capabilities for emergencies and boosting communication with Mexican authorities when immigrants’ lives are at risk.

In the interview with The Times on Thursday, Zedillo addressed several subjects besides immigration:

He defended his government’s efforts to fight poverty and resolve the rebellion in southern Chiapas state.

He insisted that the North American Free Trade Agreement was producing good jobs for Mexicans.

And he suggested that he intended to play an active role in his party’s recently announced plunge into democracy. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has controlled the presidency for 70 years. Zedillo has announced that he will break tradition by not nominating his successor; instead, the PRI announced this week, it will hold a primary.

“I think what has to be done is to check whether the rules are sound, and to follow everybody’s behavior to see whether those rules are being obeyed,” Zedillo said. “I think it would be very bad for Mexican democracy if people started looking at these things in a not very transparent way.”

Zedillo’s 24-hour Los Angeles trip included a pep talk to a flag-waving Latino audience Wednesday at Union Station, a speech to a large lunch sponsored by Town Hall Los Angeles and the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, and a gala dinner Wednesday night in Beverly hills.

The president’s last public event in the city was a visit to Breed Elementary School in East Los Angeles on Thursday morning. Hundreds of children and parents seated on bleachers and on an outdoor playground waved American and Mexican flags and cheered heartily for the two dignitaries. One section of the audience chanted Zedillo’s name, and he responded with a warm wave and applause.

After brief comments in which Zedillo encouraged the students to work hard at school, Gov. Davis and the president went inside a classroom to read to the children from the book “The Little Engine That Could.”

“There are people walking out of here with goose bumps,” said Henry Ronquillo, principal at nearby Roosevelt High School. “This is going to spread like wildfire through this community.”

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Times staff writers Dave Lesher of the Times’ Sacramento bureau and Tyler Marshall of the Washington bureau contributed to this story.

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Complete coverage of Mexico President Zedillo’s three-day California visit, including audio and video of selected speeches, is available on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/zedillo