Border Youths Get Rad. By J.E. Relly ON A WEEKEND afternoon last Sunday, July 14, numerous gringos buying sombreros and swilling Tecate in Nogales, Sonora, got an eyeful as several hundred binational activists ambled past, protesting government repression, the sellout to foreign interests and injustices against Latino immigrants in the U.S. Several of the motley gang of demonstrators from Colectividad Fronteriza I wore ski masks, hooded sweatshirts and bandanas covering their faces as they yelled chants, and carried banners decrying neo-liberal economics and human rights injustices on both sides of the border. An organizer commented on the bravery of the participants; earlier this year in a similar protest, Mexican Federales photographed activists. In 1968, 500 students were killed protesting in Mexico City about similar issues. As video cameras rolled documenting the culmination of a three-day rally, Mexican police kept a distant restraint as the bullhorn blasted "Your children are in the struggle," "No one is illegal," and taggers plastered the border fence on Calle Internationale with such revolutionary phrases as "This Wall Won't Separate the Two Races," "We're All Human," and "Die Yankee Government." After a string of protesters consecrated the wall with a group urinary defilement, an anarchy flag made from a plastic trash bag was erected by a fence scaler. Protesters ranged in backgrounds from rock musicians with chains, spikes and rainbow hair to college professors, members of the Navajo nation, social workers and an attorney wearing an "INS suspect" T-shirt. Outside the police station, protesters yelled "When you cooperate with the gringo, you assassinate your people." The group blocked an intersection for a few measured minutes; and below the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) office, they blared "These are the ones. These are the ones that fuck over our nation." Since the devastating fallout from the peso devaluation, similar collective movements have been staged in other border cities and around the country. Activists traveled from as far south as Oaxaca to participate in discussion on bringing about social change. Through dialogue, art and music the movement speaks about what organizers call Mexico's political and social crisis. In the '80s, Colectividad organizer Alberto Morackis participated in union activity at the maquiladoras and supported the squatters' rights movement. Other march participants indicated their support of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which takes its name from a popular hero of the Mexican revolution--Emiliano Zapata, who led the fight to recover communal land seized by rich landowners. Zapata had declared that it was better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. Guadalupe Castillo, a member of Derechos Humanos, one of several Tucson groups taking part, says at least half of Mexican people are youth and have felt the devastating effects of the peso devaluation through lack of food, jobs and educational opportunities. She estimates the vast majority of Mexican people have relatives in the U.S. and feel the indignity of the wall and dehumanized treatment (because of their skin color) when crossing the border. Conditions in Mexico have become so bad, she says that "many leave their family and life and have to make the journey (to the U.S.) to find a job, so they can buy food. For them it's a question of life." As the march approached the border check point a Mexicano facetiously beckoned a U.S. reporter, "Where are your papers? Do you know your rights?" U.S. Border Patrol agents closed the gates as protesters briefly planted themselves in front of a clot of honking northbound cars and chanted "Down with the walls of the border."

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