America's poorest border town: no immigration papers, no American Dream

The Guardian: Seven miles east of McAllen’s palm-studded city streets, the interstate off ramp slides past the sprawling branch of a popular Texas supermarket – HEB (Here Everything’s Better) – and a drive-in bank. Swinging under the highway and heading north on Alamo Road, the shopping malls and car showrooms recede at the first traces of the colonias – the ramshackle but largely unseen towns that are home to hundreds of thousands of Latinos across the Rio Grande valley of southern Texas.

A mechanic’s sign declares “credit no problem”. Vibrant green fields of coriander or cilantro, a staple of Mexican cooking, accentuate the dilapidation of the road. A small square building with a corrugated iron awning marks the corner with East Trenton Street. A wooden, hand-painted sign is nailed to one of its walls: “Trenton’s Second Hand Store”. Doors, sinks, windows and mosquito screens are propped in a jumble on the grass in front. Buyers stop by to pick up the parts for colonia houses, constructed piecemeal as their owners find the money. Read more.

Merida Initiative Supports Mexican Organizations to Advance Bilateral Efforts on Crime & Violence Prevention

US Embassy: The Embassy of the United States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will provide funding over the next three years to support local Mexican organizations working in the area of crime and violence prevention in Mexico. The funding is part of the Merida Initiative, a historic cooperation mechanism that acknowledges the shared responsibilities of the United States and Mexico to counter drug-fueled violence threatening citizens on both sides of the border.

USAID/Mexico is partnering with four local organizations to support crime and violence prevention efforts in Mexico.  The work by these organizations will focus on two objectives: 1) Generating opportunities for at-risk youth to contribute productively in their communities; and, 2) Supporting efforts to facilitate the replication of successful crime prevention models through strategic partnerships. Read more.

An 8-Point Plan to Repair the US-Mexico Border

Huffington Post: Ten years ago, in 2005, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security introduced its Secure Border Initiative (SBI). Today, the Mexico-U.S. wall is a fact of everyday life for millions of people who live in its shadow.

Disagreements persist about how effective the border fortifications have been, but two outcomes are certain: the SBI intervention has massively disrupted community, commerce, and environment along the border zone; and created a bloated 'border industrial complex,' consisting of surveillance infrastructures and enforcement personnel that intervene in the lives of U.S. citizens even though they are intended to target undocumented migrants, smugglers, and terrorists. Read more.

Chapo Guzman sends flowers to Jardines de Humaya cemetery

Proceso (Translated by Borderland Beat): A floral arrangement with about 70 red roses, was seen Monday November 2 in the Jardines de Humaya cemetery in Culiacan, Sinaloa.

An all capital written message in dark letters surrounding the floral arrangement reads, "FROM: JOAQUIN GUZMAN LOERA, TO: PERRILLO.

Doctors from Cuba and Costa Rica Examine Comatose Mexican Student

Latin American Herald Tribune: Two foreign neurologists have examined Aldo Gutierrez, an education student who has been in a coma since he and several classmates were shot in Iguala, a city in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, in September 2014, the Executive Commission for Assisting Victims, or CEAV, said Tuesday.

Calixto Machado, of the Cuban Neurology and Neurosurgery Institute, and Costa Rican neurologist Mauricio Chinchilla examined the comatose student last Friday, the CEAV said. Read more.

Behind Ciudad Juarez’s New Labor Movement

FNS News: In a virtually unprecedented development, labor protest is widening in the maquiladora industry of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. While worker dissatisfaction or protest is nothing new in the foreign-owned border factories that produce goods for export to the United States, previous manifestations of discontent in the generally union-free industry have usually been confined to one company at a time.

But recently, movements for better pay and working conditions- and union representation- have emerged at four different companies-Foxconn, Lexmark, ADC/Commscope and Eaton. Hundreds of workers have participated in street protests, hunger strikes and leafleting. Read more.

Q&A: Economist Gerardo Esquivel says full benefits of NAFTA elude Mexico

World News Report: Next week, the George W. Bush Institute, the public policy arm of the former president’s library in Dallas, will launch a North America Scorecard with an assessment that the North American Free Trade Agreement has been a boon to the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Gerardo Esquivel offers up a slightly different point of view, specifically that Mexico has not done as well as the other nations.