CP Progressive Partner Miners Without Borders Raises Awareness About Gun Traffic Across the Border

Posted Friday, February 4, 2011 by Eduardo Garcia

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  • CP Progressive Partner Miners Without Borders Raises Awareness About Gun Traffic Across the Border

Students and faculty of the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) were among the 700 people who gathered to stage a bi-national demonstration at the Anapra border fence in Sunland Park, New Mexico on January 29. The demonstrators, representing communities from both sides of the fence, called for reform in current U.S. drug and immigration policies that have devastated the region.

The turmoil that has resulted from the escalating violence among drug trafficking groups on both sides of the border has seriously impacted the southwest over in the past decade. This is especially true for El Paso, which stands on the Rio Grande, adjacent to Juarez.

In November of last year, two UTEP students died in a shooting while commuting from campus to their homes in the Juarez. Manuel Acosta was one semester away from earning a degree in computer information, and Eder Diaz had just started taking classes at the business school after transferring from a community college. They were among the 701 people killed in the course of just one month in the city that has been called the most violent in the world outside of declared war zones.

The deaths of Acosta and Diaz raise concerns about the grave challenges facing youth in border towns who travel to pursue their education. The cross-national commute for students at UTEP, for example, is not uncommon. About six percent of the student population has registered addresses in Mexico. That’s over fourteen-hundred young people – both of U.S. and Mexican nationality – making the treacherous commute to and from class every day.

But the student community at UTEP is not standing idly by. As Jorge Gomez, a long-time resident of El Paso said, “Enough is enough. It’s time for us to face what we’re up against.” Gomez is also president of Miners without Borders, a student-run organization formed with the goals of creating solidarity with Juarez and addressing the challenges cross-national commuter students face. “People on both sides of the border are demanding an end to the violence, and both sides are responsible for making this happen,” added Gomez.

In calling for accountability from both the U.S. and Mexico, Gomez calls attention to what most Americans don’t realize about the rise in violence in the region: that firearms are travelling south across the border and contributing to the cycle of violence. An ABC News report released in September of last year found that 3/4 of guns used in Mexican crimes could be traced back to U.S. gun shops, particularly from California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Since forming last year, Miners without Borders has recruited students invested in building alliances with organizations in Juarez, while organizing to put pressure on the university administration to adopt policies that would improve the accessibility of on-campus housing for bi-national students. “We’re also about showing that we stand with the people of Juarez,” added Gomez. “What happens there matters because it affects us, too.”

Video From the Protest

Learn More About Our Progressive Partnership Program

Campus Progress has worked with Miners without Borders via the Progressive Partnership, a Campus Progress program that supports grassroots campaigns led and run by students on their campuses and in their communities. If you have a great idea that we can help you with, head over to the Progressive Partners page for more information.

Eduardo Garcia is an advocacy associate at Campus Progress. Follow him @itseddie.

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