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Chávez agrees to help with hostages

Governor says negotiations with Colombian rebels will move forward after his meeting with Venezuelan president

Kate Nash | The New Mexican

CARACAS, VENEZUELA — He traveled 2,943 miles, slept little and had to wait hours after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez bumped his appointment.

Still, Gov. Bill Richardson heads back to New Mexico today with the eight words he wanted to hear.

“President Chávez has agreed to try and help,” the governor told a mob of reporters outside the Venezuelan presidential palace.

The words came after an hour-and-20 minute meeting with Chávez late Saturday about his effort to free three U.S. citizens being held hostage in Colombia.

They also give Richardson the go-ahead to keep working to get the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to give up the men, held since 2003.

“He’s accepted my role as somebody that’s an intermediary,” Richardson said about Chávez in an interview after the meeting.

The globe-trotting governor said last month that he had made inroads with another key player in the situation, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe. Chávez, however, is seen as a central figure, someone to whom FARC in recent months has released hostages.

Now, Richardson said he’s ready to move forward with the negotiation process. “I’m going to try and engage the best I can to secure the release of these hostages to promote the humanitarian accord,” he said.

The governor’s next efforts are undefined, but Richardson indicated he would be in contact with the parties by telephone in the days ahead.

“The next step is going to be to engage in some shuttle diplomacy in the days ahead and the weeks ahead,” he said. He has no immediate travel plans and neither does Chávez, Richardson said.

Chávez didn’t address members of the media after the meeting.

The meeting, the highlight of Richardson’s trip, was seven hours behind schedule, forcing a throng of media to wait in a swanky media room inside the lush complex of the Venezuelan presidential palace, known as Miraflores. Some watched pre-recorded speeches by Chávez.

Others smoked and waited outside in the 70-degree weather while attentive waiters served small sandwiches, fresh squeezed juices and handmade pastries.

That meeting, inside an ornate mansion so big it has its own chapel, was the main objective of Richardson’s trip. He also met with the country’s foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro, and the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States, Bernardo Álvarez.

Since January, Richardson has been working for the release of the hostages, Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Tom Howes, all military contractors.

The rebels want to exchange the U.S. hostages for members of their group who are jailed by the Colombian government. FARC also holds other hostages, including a French-Colombian woman who was once a presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt.

Chávez’s blessing is a big deal for the governor, who some speculate wants to be secretary of state in a future Democratic administration.

Chávez is an inescapable figure here. Some reporters at the press conference were quick to gush about the Sunday program on which Chávez addresses the nation, sometimes with speeches lasting for hours.

He’s also a force in other places: Venezuela is the fourth-largest oil exporter and one of South America’s richest countries. The state-owned petroleum company, Petróleos de Venezuela, is one of the world’s largest.

Images of Chávez adorn the city, including one blue garbage truck spotted by a reporter that said ‘Con Chávez, sí,’ (With Chávez, yes.) Even the repair men at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs display their feelings. A renovation worker walked by one of the meetings with Richardson in a red pro-Chávez shirt, worn by time and speckled with paint.

But the residents of this city of more than 6 million aren’t insulated from the rest of the world: The plight of the hostages in next-door Colombia is a well-read story here, and many reporters seemed interested in Richardson’s role in the negotiations.

As for the governor, he had some cards lined up for him before he left. The bilingual 60-year old already had met Chávez and is familiar with South America and its politics.

To be sure his fortune would hold, Richardson said he brought a piece of his long-time lucky blue blazer to help. He wore the blazer on many an international foray during his time in Congress and while he worked for the Clinton administration.

He also took a gift for Chávez, but declined to say what it was.

If nothing else, Richardson’s meeting here has reignited hope among the family members of the hostages. Jo Rosano of Bristol, Conn., whose 36-year-old son, Marc Gonsalves, is among the three U.S. hostages, said she sees Richardson as among the first people to really work on the situation.

“Bush doesn’t care, Bush backs Uribe and could care less about the hostages,” she said. “It’s really a shame that this government is treating these American citizens like they don’t exist.”

The Bush administration has said it doesn’t deal with terrorist groups such as FARC. Bush and Chávez have an antagonistic relationship, with Chávez once calling him “the devil.”

The patience of the families, who have waited five years for some movement in the situation, has worn thin. But, Rosano said, she hasn’t given up hope. “It’s a matter of time. It’s a matter of testing faith,” she said.

“It will come. There is a reason God is using him (Richardson) for this purpose.”

Published April 27, 2008.

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Gov. Bill Richardson makes a last hurrah in Iowa before caucuses

Gov. Bill Richardson makes a last hurrah in Iowa before caucuses

By Kate Nash
Tribune Reporter

MUSCATINE, Iowa — Wedged into a breakfast crowd at the River View Restaurant, Gov. Bill Richardson stood and made what might be one of his last pitches to Iowa voters, asking for the help of caucus-goers already in his camp and hoping to be heard by those who weren’t.

“I need to know who here is undecided, because I will go straight to your table,” he told the crowd of about 35 people whose body heat fogged up the windows of the cafe two blocks from the Mississippi River.

With the Iowa caucuses just hours away – they start today at 6:30 p.m. – Richardson needed every possible vote to maintain a viable bid going into the New Hampshire primary Tuesday.

He has said he would be happy with a fourth-place finish, but he has said he will continue campaigning in New Hampshire and beyond, regardless of tonight’s results.

While Richardson for days and weeks has headed straight to those in need of convincing in Iowa’s coffee shops and living rooms, it was U.S. Rep. Tom Udall who sashayed to the table of undecided women in the back of the cafe.

Richardson, clearly running on little more than adrenaline, took a seat to talk with other voters who had hurried in from the 2-degree weather Wednesday.

As caucus night loomed, Udall was helping buttress the governor’s campaign, playing lead in a back-up band for Richardson.

Department of Public Safety Secretary John Denko was there, campaigning for hours on end, as was the first lady, Barbara Richardson. So was former Ambassador Ed Romero.

Count in Children, Youth and Families Department Secretary Dorian Dodson and Department of Transportation Secretary Rhonda Faught. Chief of Staff James Jimenez? Check.

Ditto for John Early, a Red Cross pilot who, in 1996, Richardson rescued in Sudan. Harold Bailey, executive director of the New Mexico Office of African American Affairs, is also doing literature drops, speeches in churches, whatever it takes.

While Richardson said he feels good, is upbeat and that he will surpass expectations, the toll of a year of campaigning was evident.

The governor, known for his stamina, on Tuesday and Wednesday looked run down and depleted. Hoarseness crept into his voice. He complained at one event about a sore knee and apologized for sitting down.

Still, he was focused on his last opportunities to reach Iowa voters, to reach his longtime dream, really, and spent Wednesday hopscotching the state in a small airplane, hitting seven far-flung cities.

Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said he planned to end the day at a 10 p.m. rally in Iowa City. That day came after hitting six cities Tuesday, including several “football watching parties” in small towns like West Burlington, a place with the population of Eunice, N.M., just under 4,000.

In West Burlington he appealed to about 30 people gathered in a basement recreation room to turn out for him today.

“Please caucus for me,” he said, wearing snowproof shoes instead of his trademark cowboy boots. “Give me a chance. I’d be honored to get your support. I’m going vote by vote.”

The appeal no doubt was echoed by the other Democratic candidates who slamdanced across the state. But unlike the top-tier candidates, Richardson needs to do better than expected – finishing in the top three, many pundits say – to keep his presidential bid viable heading into the New Hampshire primary.

The most recent Des Moines Register poll, however, shows he’s a distant fourth, ahead of Sens. Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd.

While polls this week show many Iowa Democrats undecided – even at house parties sponsored by Richardson supporters – the 60-year-old governor has some more-than-enthusiastic supporters in a state that’s more than wild about politics.

Muscatine resident and elementary school teacher Pam Lee let her husband, also a teacher, oversee her first class Wednesday so she could hear Richardson at the cafe for the fifth time since the campaign started.

“That’s how important this is,” she said.

But don’t think Lee has watched only Richardson this campaign season. She also turned out for other candidates, including Republican Mitt Romney, before deciding on Richardson for his stance on the Iraq war and his ideas to improve education in the United States.

“This man has restored my faith in politics,” said Lee, 58, whose son is an Army captain in Iraq.

While Richardson’s events this week attracted both supporters and undecided voters, there is another type of caucus-goer – voters who are firmly for one candidate, but who show up in the morning’s stinging cold to hear what their No. 2 choice has to say.

Retha Monroe, who also turned out at the River View, was one of them – something you might guess from her red felt hat.

Her headwear bore political pins dating back to Jimmy Carter’s presidential run in 1976, Jesse Jackson’s 1988 bid, a “Yo quiero Gore 2000″ button, and a “Richardson for President” sticker.

Still, Richardson is behind Sen. Hillary Clinton in Monroe’s mind.

“I’d like to see him as vice president,” she said.

The governor, for the record, didn’t change Monroe’s vote for Hillary Clinton with his coffee shop talk.

He hasn’t swayed many Iowans, in fact. The Register poll showed Richardson at 6 percent – with about 6 percent also undecided – while Sen. Barack Obama led the Democratic field with 32 percent. Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards had 25 percent and 24 percent, respectively.

Other polls by Reuters and CNN in recent weeks have put Richardson at 7 percent in Iowa.

While Richardson’s support might be small in the surveys, it didn’t seem that way in Des Moines on Wednesday as James Jimenez walked door to door looking for undecided voters in the northeast part of town.

The governor’s chief of staff, who has been stumping for his boss in Iowa for a week, started his rental car with a remote control and headed out Wednesday for the umpteenth time.

He had to rap on several doors along York Street before he found Vietnam veteran Michael Reed at home and answering.

Jimenez, in a wool golfer’s hat and hiking boots, asked Reed, whom the campaign had flagged as undecided, to consider Richardson when he votes.

Ignoring the John Edwards sign on Reed’s porch, Jimenez listened to Reed’s concerns about illegal immigration and veterans’ health care for five minutes, then handed him a brochure.

Reed seemed a hard sell for Jimenez, who didn’t leave with a sure vote.

“We’ll just see how the cards fall,” Reed told him.

Back inside the car and steeled again against the cold, Jimenez told co-campaigner Matt Ruybal he was optimistic.

“I think we got a shot at it,” he said, driving on.

The governor’s door-to-door campaigners will go to any house – with any sign out front – that staffers label as having an undecided voter inside.

“What we’ve found is a lot of people aren’t locked in,” Jimenez said. “Even though they have a sign for one person, the spouse may have a different opinion,” he said, getting back in the car after finding no one home at a house with a Clinton sign.

“What we are hearing and seeing is quite different from what they (the polls) are saying,” he said.

It won’t be long now until Jimenez – and Richardson – will know.

Published Jan. 3, 2008.

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Richardson stumps in Nevada

Richardson stumps in Nevada

By Kate Nash
Tribune Reporter

MINDEN, Nev. — This is where it starts for presidential candidate Bill Richardson: a dim, red velour ballroom in the basement of the Carson Valley Inn Casino, with a plywood gray donkey and a pile of yellow “Nevada for Richardson” buttons.

Minden, with a population of about 3,000, isn’t Washington, D.C. It’s not even Des Moines, Iowa.

But this small town and others like it across this small state are critical if Richardson’s bid for president is to get beyond the starting gate.

Richardson concedes that he must exceed expectations here in Nevada’s Jan. 19, 2008, caucus if he wants a shot at winning the rest of the country. It’s the second stop on the Democratic Party’s roll call of primaries, sandwiched between Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus and the New Hampshire primary.

“I have to do extremely well. I have to do more than respectably. I’m not sure I can carry Nevada, but I’m going to try,” he told a bevy of reporters, mostly from local newspapers, on Saturday.

His effort will center on small towns like Minden, built up against the Sierra Nevadas near Lake Tahoe.

While Sen. Hillary Clinton was in Iowa over the weekend, Richardson was here – less than a week after announcing his bid for the White House – talking to a crowd smaller than he could easily draw on any day back home at the Capitol in Santa Fe.

The sometimes impatient, crowd-loving governor with the world’s handshaking record didn’t seem to mind.

“I wanted to emphasize northern Nevada,” he said when asked why he came to this Republican stronghold.

“Like in New Mexico, Albuquerque and Santa Fe and Las Cruces are not the only centers of gravity. Rural areas, rural parts of Nevada, Reno, Carson City, Minden, Washoe – did I say it right? – is important.”

Richardson has conceded he won’t have as much money as rivals such as Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama or former Sen. John Edwards, so his strategy will be to try to connect with people in places big and small, wherever, whenever.

As sure as he’ll journey to other early-primary states, he’ll be back in Nevada – in Carson City for a debate in February and in Las Vegas for a debate in March. Richardson said he can’t afford to write any area off.

“Only 15 percent of America lives in rural areas,” he said before speaking to about 250 Democrats at the annual Douglas County Democrats Turn Nevada Blue dinner Saturday night. “And as a candidate, I’m going to pay attention to rural areas. I know this is Republican territory, but in a primary, I’m going to campaign everywhere.”

Before he and retired Gen. Wesley Clark – another potential candidate – spoke at the dinner, they held mini news conferences in the Chapel at the Inn, a wedding room right across from the ballroom.

“My main message in running for president is that I’m a governor who has managed the state successfully, a Westerner,” Richardson said. “I’m the candidate with, I believe, the most foreign policy experience, as ambassador to the United Nations, as secretary of energy, with energy being one of the most critical areas,” he said.

“I know how to reduce energy dependence. I’ve done it. I’ve done it as governor. New Mexico is the clean energy state, ahead of California.”

“Please print that,” he told a reporter from Las Vegas Review-Journal, and laughed.

As much as he’s looking for news coverage, he’s looking for voters. He connected with several by way of his 50-minute speech, which touched on everything from the war in Iraq to foreign policy, water and renewable energy.

Shirley Fraser had heard of Richardson before, and started checking him out on the Internet after he announced for president a week ago.

She found herself at the Carson Inn on Saturday night, wanting to hear him in person.

“I loved it. I really loved it,” she said. More than anything, Richardson’s diplomatic and negotiating skills appeal to her.

Place Fraser, a restaurant bookkeeper, in Richardson’s column.

“Hillary is very famous, but Richardson has more experience,” she said.

Jeff Elpern, a high-tech business owner in Reno, said he’s looking for a presidential candidate with courage.

“I’m looking for someone with a spine,” he said. “Someone who’s not too timid.”

Richardson might be that man.

But he’s got to let the world know.

“I think he’s an interesting candidate,” Elpern said, noting how early it is in the race. “But he doesn’t have the high-powered candidacy like Obama and Hillary.”

He doesn’t. And in fact, some in Minden hadn’t ever heard of Richardson.

“Is he a Republican?” said Jennine Cunningham, a stylist at Hair Cottage, about 10 blocks from where Richardson spoke.

He’s not. But he can sometimes sound a little like one, emphasizing private property and gun-ownership rights and the tax cuts he’s signed as governor.

While he’s popular with some members of the GOP, Richardson, 59, also seemed hip to members of a youth group who signed up to attend a community conversation Sunday with the governor at the Washoe County Democratic Party headquarters in Reno, a stone’s throw from the Reno airport and the last of Richardson’s stops here. About 20 people attended.

“He’s real,” said Greg Bailor, community outreach director for Youth Voice, a nonpartisan group focused on opening dialogues with politicians about issues that affect young people. “He’s a presidential candidate who has gone out of his way to reach out to young voters.”

While those accolades sound good, Richardson will need more.

Nevada for now is about is about turning up the volume on his candidacy and checking how it sounds, said John Garcia, a political science professor at the University of Arizona.

“It’s a way to check what your neighbors think of you before you test yourself out there further afield,” Garcia said.

It’s also about the West, where Democrats now claim five of the seven governors’ seats.

But the Silver State is also about laying the foundation for his campaign in the rest of the country.

“What he does in Nevada, he’s got to do better in the states after that,” Garcia said.

Published Jan. 29, 2007.

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Analysis: Is America ready for ‘Presidente Richardson?’

Analysis: Is America ready for ‘Presidente Richardson?’

By Kate Nash
Tribune Reporter

SANTA FE — Out from somewhere in the crowd at Gov. Bill Richardson’s inaugural ball came the shout: “¡Viva presidente Richardson!”

It was a phrase that made the governor smile – larger ambitions expressed with a Spanish twist.

The words also might express two themes Richardson wants the world to hear as he considers a run for the White House: He can be president, and he’s Hispanic.

Voters beyond New Mexico might not know that the Anglo-surnamed man speaks Spanish as quickly as anyone in, say, Puerto Vallarta. Or that one of the last times he flew to Mexico City, he got to use the presidential runway.

So is America ready for a Hispanic president?

“I think they are ready for a Hispanic who isn’t so Hispanic,” said Albuquerque media and marketing firm owner Armando Gutierrez.

“If his name was Bill Ulibarri or Bill Archuleta, it would be more difficult for him.”

Richardson says he should be judged not on his ethnicity – his mother is Mexican and lives in Mexico – but his abilities. That’s a fine message, with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama considering runs for the Democratic nomination.

“I think America is a very open country. I think it could very easily elect a woman, an African-American or a Hispanic president. I think the issue is merits, not ethnicity,” Richardson said.

And, he said, his background doesn’t affect how he governs.

“I try to represent all my constituents. I’m proud to be Hispanic, but I don’t govern as a Hispanic governor, I govern as a New Mexico governor for everyone. But I’m very proud of my heritage.”

As he prepares to run, he needs to decide what image to project and how to distinguish himself from other the candidates in a race where ethnicity plays more of a role than in any other year, political scientists say.

So far, he’s playing himself down the middle, said Gabriel Sanchez, an assistant political science professor at the University of New Mexico.

“He’s pushing himself as a Democratic candidate of Hispanic background, not just a Hispanic candidate,” he said.

The governor probably doesn’t need to emphasize his ethnicity too much, but can subtly remind voters, said John Garcia, a political science professor at the University of Arizona.

“He doesn’t need to wear a neon sign that says `I’m Hispanic,’ ” Garcia said. “But he can speak Spanish a little more, or make references to his Hispanic background. But to a certain segment, that can be a negative.”

Sanchez said there probably aren’t enough Hispanic voters to elect Richardson as a one-note candidate.

“Any candidate of minority background has to have a minority coalition in order to get elected.”

That will be a tough task if a candidate like Obama joins the race, he said.

Richardson also said there aren’t Hispanic-only issues that he needs to focus on.

“There’s this misperception that Hispanics only care about civil rights, immigration,” he said Wednesday. “Hispanics care about jobs, foreign policy, education and entrepreneurship.

“That’s a mistake both political parties make. They try to appeal to Hispanics on a very narrow basis.”

And immigration policy, which sparked rallies across the country when Congress debated reforms last year, is dangerous ground.

“The problem with immigration is that it’s super complex, it doesn’t lend itself to simple measures,” Gutierrez said.

“Immigration is an issue you touch at your own risk.”

Richardson has waded into the debate. He has come out against a fence along the border; he was the first border governor to declare a state of emergency along the U.S.-Mexico dividing line; he has good relations with neighboring state Chihuahua and Mexico City, where he grew up.

One thing that could help Richardson is support from influential Hispanics who could help fund a campaign.

In the past, he has received big donations from influential members of the Hispanic community, including Jerry Perenchio, chairman of Univision Communications Inc.

“There is a growing number of affluent Hispanic business individuals,” Garcia said. “And affluent people know other affluent people.”

Published Jan. 18, 2007.

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Practice makes perfect for governor

Practice makes perfect for governor

By Kate Nash
Tribune Reporter

SANTA FE — Gov. Bill Richardson strode onto the floor of the House chambers, primed to stand on the podium.

“Hey, Allan, it’s too long,” Richardson barked across rows of empty seats Monday night.

The State of the State speech he was getting set to rehearse was 37 minutes long, without applause. And Richardson wanted it cut – edited, reshaped, shorter, better.

“Come up with another word for sustainable. We’ve said that like five times,” the governor told Allan Oliver, his policy adviser and the speech’s writer.

Richardson began to follow the lead of the teleprompter, rocking himself forward and back, squinting. He read a few brightly illuminated paragraphs, then shouted “Stop.”

He had another word, another cut, another tweak. He needed another drink of water.

The only people in the audience Monday were his staff members. The only other noise in the Roundhouse was a distant vacuum cleaner, someone making a last-minute touchup before the legislative session begins today at noon.

Richardson’s rehearsal Monday was a run-through of that half hour or so shortly after noon today when he’ll have the attention of the state.

The scene in the House chambers was mostly a practice in massaging the message, crafting the to-do list against which the second-term Democratic governor will be judged until he gives his next State of State.

“I want it to be about what we want to do,” he said before he started. “I don’t want to live in the past.”

Details of the speech will be released once the session clangs to a start.

But during practice Monday night, the governor made it clear he was only looking ahead.

“Get that meth registry stuff out,” he told another staffer, Josh McNeil. “We’ve done it, get it out. We did it yesterday.”

Actually, he made that commitment to create registries of methamphetamine users and homes affected by meth fumes earlier Monday. But to Richardson, it was all in the past.

The state of the state speech is months in the making, starting last summer.

Richardson’s handful of policy advisers began outlining key initiatives for the year, to be highlighted in the address.

As it got closer to delivery day, Oliver and Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos started stringing together the main points Richardson wanted to tout. The governor doesn’t have someone solely dedicated to speechwriting, Gallegos said.

Then the authors decided on the extras, the details that would liven the talk and make what the governor said more personal.

“We’re still deciding whether we want to make news in the State of the State,” Gallegos said last week. “Do we want to highlight a teacher, a family who had a member killed by DWI, a single mom?”

That’s the kind of stuff journalists love; real people who would be affected by whatever proposal the governor is pitching.

That’s not by accident, of course. Gallegos worked as a reporter for The Albuquerque Tribune for nine years, covering education and, when he was hired by Richardson, politics. He has a degree in journalism and political science from the University of New Mexico. He’s one of several former reporters working for the governor.

Oliver previously worked for Lt. Gov. Diane Denish and for Democratic attorney general candidate Geno Zamora. He has a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University.

He also was on the receiving end of many of Richardson’s jabs Monday as he, Chief of Staff James Jimenez and re-election chairman Dave Contarino went over the speech, less than a day before it was to be delivered.

Richardson rarely gives his staff praise in public, but said when he finished with the rehearsal, he said he was pleased with the speech.

Along with the nuts and bolts of the State of the State, the speech also needed flavor: how many pauses, how much humor, how best to start and end.

With Richardson, there was also a question of how much Spanish to blend in with his oration. As on his election commercials on TV, he typically throws into his speeches a few phrases known even to non-bilingual New Mexicans. The speech will be translated for Spanish-language media.

Today marked Richardson’s fifth time giving the address to a packed room.

But many of those setting the stage Monday night have practiced this script for years.

House Sergeant-at-Arms Gilbert Lopez, whose work is key in getting the House ready for its big day, has worked at the Capitol for almost 20 years.

While Richardson prepared for his big event, the staffers who work for Lopez must dress the House floor as well.

And, it takes some outside touches. A florist buzzed about Monday, setting yellow roses, pink carnations, lilies and daisies on the rostrum. Richardson’s podium got a strand of ivy. All the representatives’ nametags were in place, the spelling of freshman legislators’ names checked and double-checked.

Lopez had 170 wooden chairs for staffers to set up, then rose-colored, cushioned chairs, and then whatever they could find by pilfering through committee rooms in the floors above the House, which is in the basement of the Capitol.

By noon, some 450 people will crowd in.

This year, Richardson’s speech was expected to be shorter than any in the past. It also had fewer jokes.

Because he’s considering a presidential bid, he knew he was likely drawing more attention this year – and not just on his words.

Published Jan. 16, 2007.

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Richardson may be setting plate for role at State

Richardson may be setting plate for role at State

By Kate Nash
Tribune Columnist

SANTA FE – A day before he was scheduled to meet with President Bush on a major free-trade pact with Central America, El Salvador President Antonio Saca flew to the City Different to dine with a governor he had never met.

The get-together, Gov. Bill Richardson said, was only a casual meeting. But it was clear Saca was in town for more than a dinner party: He was touring the nation to get support for the Central America Free Trade Agreement.

“As Central American presidents, we think it’s an important topic for us, and that’s why we’re here to talk to the governor,” Saca said before slipping inside the Governor’s Mansion with his international entourage last week.

Richardson, who is undecided on the treaty, doesn’t have a vote anymore in the Congress that’s considering whether to implement the trade treaty.

As governor, he really has no say over which international agreements the United States signs.

And free trade with a handful of teeny countries doesn’t seem to be a big topic for the 2008 presidential race if Richardson is indeed a candidate, as is widely speculated.

Could it be that the governor, a former ambassador to the United Nations who has racked up more frequent-flier miles than an Airbus pilot, has his sights on something else?

After all, meeting with dignitaries from around the world does help the governor keep his foreign policy credentials fresh. The meals make for good sound bites and photo ops. And the governor probably has a little fun, too.

So think about this: Maybe it’s Richardson for secretary of state in 2008.

The governor, a first-term Democrat, has said he’s got the best job he has ever had, and he’s lasering in on keeping it.

As he prepares to run for re-election in 2006, it’s not a stretch to think Richardson is running after something else, said Christine Sierra, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico.

“He’s clearly gearing up to run for president,” she said.

But Sierra said heading the State Department might be a possibility for Richardson, as well.

“That’s not far-fetched, given his experience in foreign policy,” she said.

While Richardson might say he’s not thinking about 2008, the guests he has had since taking office two years ago point to the possibility he’s at least eying the post.

Consider the plate mates: a group of North Korean diplomats; Mexican President Vicente Fox; Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar; Spain’s crown prince and princess; Chihuahua’s governor; Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia; the minister of foreign affairs from Qatar; the governor of a Mexico state; the Argentine ambassador to the United States.

Not to mention his trips to Davos, Switzerland, and Mexico City.

Richardson, who has a master’s degree in law and diplomacy, has met key world figures, including Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein.

And, sure, many of his contacts come from years spent as a Clinton administration Energy Department secretary and troubleshooter.

But they also come from a curiosity about other places.

Maybe Richardson, back from meeting in Nuevo Leon with Mexican and Canadian leaders late last week, is bored with the beltway and wants to see more of the world.

Being president or vice president is one way to do that. But if those don’t work out for Richardson who, you’ll remember, didn’t win New Mexico for Sen. John Kerry in November, maybe secretary of state is a pretty good backup plan.

Published May 16, 2005.

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Border at a crossroads?

Has governor’s emergency declaration discouraged immigrants? Depends on whom you ask

By Kate Nash
Tribune Reporter

LAS CHEPAS, MEXICO — Migrants about to jump into the United States from Mexico still stop in at Ignacio Juarez’s homefront grocery store, a last chance before the U.S.-Mexico border for a frosty drink, toilet paper or a chance to reconsider the danger in the desert ahead.

Juarez and his wife, Erlinda, still take in the badly injured, the dehydrated and the tired.

With its rare electric and phone lines in this remote parcel of northern Chihuahua state, the Juarez’s casita is a place where Mexicans compare notes on getting past the Border Patrol and making it into the United States.

But Juarez and others who live and work in northern Mexico say Gov. Bill Richardson’s 6-week-old declaration of a state of emergency along the border has discouraged some immigrants from crossing over.

Ranchers on the U.S. side disagree.

This outpost, a migrant staging area abandoned but for 30 people, looks emptier today. Mexican police last week plowed down 32 buildings where immigrants hid as they prepared for their journeys.

It’s quieter than it was. More Border Patrol agents, Luna County sheriffs and New Mexico State Police are working to deflect wouldbe crossers from the border, a quarter-mile from the Juarezes’ home.

On a recent night, Carlos Sanchez, an agent with Grupos Beta, a division of the Mexican federal government charged with helping migrants along the border, says he has never seen so many Border Patrol vehicles.

The SUVs are perched on lookout points along the main road into Las Chepas from Palomas, Mexico.

Sanchez, a 12-year veteran of the agency, estimates the number of migrants trying to leave Mexico has been cut in half since mid-August.

U.S. Border Patrol statistics show a slight drop in the number of apprehensions, but not by 50 percent. In July, agents caught 11,569 immigrants in the El Paso sector, which includes two west Texas counties and all of New Mexico. In August, 12,104. As of Tuesday, with three days left in September, the number was 9,212.

Sanchez and colleague Marcos Armenta say the true number of migrants trying to leave Mexico doesn’t make a big difference to them.

Dressed in day-glo orange uniforms, the agents are busy, talking to the migrants who want to cross. Just five minutes into their shift on a recent evening, they pull over a nine-passenger van on a dirt road heading into Las Chepas. Nearly 20 migrants are jammed into the van.

“I’ll take a job in whatever there is,” says Puerto Vallarta resident Ernesto Garcia, who trims hedges and pulls weeds for a living.

As Garcia talks about his goal to earn more than $5 a day, Sanchez and Armenta stick their heads in the van and hand out fliers that explain immigrants’ rights if they are apprehended in the United States and outline perils of the landscape.

If you are going to go, keep drinking water, they say. Watch out for snakes. Don’t sleep in the arroyos. Don’t leave anyone behind.

The pair give the same advice an hour later, when they come across 15 men ducked behind a cement and stone wall, waiting for night to turn the sky black.

Guerrero state native Alfonso de Jesus Viviano says he can’t be afraid of what might happen in the next few days. He’s got to get to a place where he can earn enough to feed his wife and three kids — anything more than the $7 a day he makes as a butcher.

“Better fear for now than hunger later,” he says.

While the agents try to persuade immigrant countrymen to turn back, few do.

As he drives along the border, Armenta points to the landscape, New Mexico’s Luna County on his right, a blank chunk of Chihuahuan desert on his left. “Look at the Johnson ranch,” he says, his hand pointing north to a lush green field dotted with red stripes. “There’s money and water, and they are growing chile, onions, watermelon.”

“Over here,” he says, “We’re growing chamisa.”

Earlier this summer, Joe and Teresa Johnson estimated that 500 immigrants crossed their 102,000-acre ranch a day. This week, Joe Johnson said it’s hard to estimate how many are crossing. But he believes the number is increasing, perhaps as much as 40 percent, since Richardson declared the emergency Aug. 12.

The Johnsons have long struggled to keep immigrants from tearing apart their fence, eight miles of which runs along the border. They’ve fought to make sure cattle aren’t scared from their water troughs by bathing immigrants.

“We are seeing more Border Patrol, but they (immigrants) are still trampling over the top of us,” Joe Johnson says. “I just hope we keep getting more agents or military. We have a positive start, even though it’s getting worse.”

Old school buses that leave from the town center in Palomas and drop riders in Las Chepas, where they wait to enter the United States, now make a third stop at the southern edge of Johnson’s property.

“We do applaud the governor’s efforts,” Johnson says. “We just need more help.”

About 15 miles northeast of the Johnson place, rancher Steve Allen has a theory about what he says is an increase in immigrants coming through his ranch.

“It’s like they said, ‘If we’re going to cross, we better do it now,’ ” Allen says.

The immigrants he sees these days hustle faster through the mesquite and creosote that decorate the landscape. He thinks word got out about the state of emergency, and an expected influx of Border Patrol agents, and immigrants rushed to the border to avoid having to cross with increased patrols.

One hundred five new agents started work earlier this week in the Deming and Lordsburg areas, doubling the number of agents assigned to the Deming station this fiscal year.

The El Paso sector is slated to receive 305 new agents by the next fiscal year.

Officials say that staffing increase is unrelated to the emergency declaration and part of a long-term border security plan.

While the stepped-up law enforcement near Columbus and Deming includes more mobile checkpoints on local roads, some of what the $1.75 million in emergency declaration money will buy has yet to arrive.

Columbus Mayor Martha Skinner says her village of 2,000, three miles from Mexico, will hire three new police officers in as soon as six weeks.

That will more than double the local police force. Skinner is grateful for the help.

“Of course, (the money) just lasts a year,” she says. “We’re going to try and do it for a year and see what happens.”

Published Sept. 30, 2005.

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On the border: state of emergency

Chasing a dream: For Mexicans who try to enter the States illegally in search of a better life, the stakes are high. So are U.S. government costs to stop the flow.

By Kate Nash
Tribune Reporter

ALONG THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER – Elizabeth Sanchez Luna left Mexico City hungering for a job that would pay more than the $45 a week she earned in a bakery.

She fled, on wheels and then on foot, for a chance to support her two children and her parents. A chance for something better, through whatever job she could find in the United States.

But the 29-year-old – dressed in a black sweat shirt and Lycra running pants, lacking a backpack or even a bottle of water – made it just a mile into her dream before U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped her for illegally entering the United States.

“I came to look for a job,” Luna said in Spanish in late July after being fingerprinted in an office trailer in Columbus, just miles from the border. “Any kind of a job.”

In the United States, she predicted, as she pulled back her long hair to release heat from her neck, “I can make in a day what I made in a week.”

Just as Luna would, other immigrants take any job they can find, dashing across the desert for a chance to clean hotels or build homes in Albuquerque or Aspen. To be a sanitation worker in Chicago or a farmhand in North Carolina.

They might send money from those jobs home to relatives, but some people say their presence puts stress on social, educational and health care systems in the United States.

It’s an issue causing waves nationwide – especially in border states like New Mexico.

Gov. Bill Richardson last week declared a state of emergency in four southern New Mexico counties, citing an increase in human and drug smuggling in the 185-mile border between the state and Mexico. Much of the $1.75 million the declaration frees up will go to bolster local and state law enforcement.

Luna, a first-time offender who said she got separated from a friend after stepping into a desolate stretch of southern New Mexico, was the 97th immigrant caught by agents in the area that day. She later was sent back to Mexico.

Her effort – and those of more than 103,000 other immigrants who have been stopped this fiscal year in the El Paso Sector – are keeping Border Patrol agents and borderland residents up all night. They also have kept the federal government pouring out more than $1 billion a year nationwide.

In the sector, which includes two west Texas counties and all of New Mexico, more than 1,200 agents last fiscal year caught 104,430 immigrants. The federal fiscal year runs from October through September.

No one knows for sure how many others have slipped past, although agents estimate they catch anywhere from two-thirds to 95 percent of those who enter.

One way to measure the number they miss is by immigrants’ footprints, said Senior Patrol Agent Ramiro Cordero.

“If we have six (sets of) footprints and we catch four,” he says, “two went somewhere else.”

A flood of danger

Along a cement ditch that funnels water from the Rio Grande to farmers outside El Paso, Cordero spots a blanket rolled up on the Mexican side of the embankment, with a pair of shoes nearby.

“Looks like an encobijado,” he says, using a word that translates as “someone who is rolled up in a blanket” but that on the streets signifies someone killed by criminals.

“They kidnap and torture and roll you up in a blanket and throw you anywhere as a sign,” he said.

From the dirt road along the border he’s patrolling, Cordero looks into another country, watching.

The blanket is picked up by a man on the other side of the river. There’s nothing inside. He wraps it around himself and walks away.

The border is a dangerous, mysterious place: The risks of crossing can be intertwined with the hazard of getting caught in drug, gang or turf wars.

About 600 miles to the southeast of El Paso, in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, more than 100 people have been killed this year, including 18 police officers and a city councilor. The U.S. State Department last month extended a travel warning it had issued for American citizens along the border, and the U.S. Consulate in Nuevo Laredo shut its doors briefly. In Juarez, hundreds of women have been slain and left to rot in the desert since the early 1990s.

In and around El Paso, another kind of death lurks. Immigrants drown as they try to cross into the United States. Miles to the west, in southern New Mexico, they die of dehydration. This fiscal year, 25 people have died in the sector; 399 have been rescued. In the 2004 fiscal year, 18 people died and 87 were rescued, according to the Border Patrol.

Cordero said the increase in reported deaths this year over last could be because the patrol is keeping better records. But the desert swallows bodies nonetheless.

Cordero, a former El Paso police officer, is tasked with a mighty job: stopping the immigrants who risk it all for a chance at something better.

It’s a job others want to do as well. Civilian members of the Minuteman Project plan to patrol the New Mexico-Mexico border this fall, saying the Border Patrol has not done enough to secure it.

Some Minutemen volunteers say terrorists, specifically members of al-Qaida, could be entering the United States from Mexico.

And while Border Patrol officials hope that won’t happen, they say they’ve got to be on the lookout.

“We have to be vigilant,” Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier said.

With seemingly thousands of people desperately wanting in from a variety of countries, the United States has spent billions to keep them out.

A homeland security bill passed by the Senate in July contains funding for an additional 1,000 Border Patrol agents.

Already, 300 agents are scheduled to head to the El Paso Sector in the next 12 months, Mosier said.

For now, Cordero and other agents walk the line, searching out lawbreakers and taking them to a detention facility in downtown El Paso. Some agents – members of the Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue Team – also rescue those in danger of dying.

With his high-power binoculars, Cordero can see Mexico across from him. In some places, the country is just feet from where he works, but in so many senses, it is worlds away.

Scheming against the schemers

Farther west, in New Mexico’s Luna County, Field Operations Supervisor Jack Jeffreys has binoculars, too.

They allow him to see in the dark, giving him a green, grainy picture of the desert at night. Mammoth moths and jittery jack rabbits dart about. Lights from traffic along the Mexican side of what’s called Border Road sweep light trails over his eyes.

The night-vision goggles are among the high-tech devices the Border Patrol, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, uses.

Agents patrol the border area in SUVs and Hummers. On ATVs and horses. From the air and by bike. They’ve got dogs, mirrors, sensors, cameras.

Name any high-tech surveillance gadget, and the patrol probably has it.

But those who smuggle drugs and people have technology, too.

GPS instruments help them navigate remote and rugged terrain, Jeffreys said. Forget craggy landmarks or dusty meeting places stomped out in the sand. Smugglers use geographical coordinates to decide where to meet and load the cars that whisk immigrants off to new lives.

Apart from technology, criminals also have an arsenal of tricks to enter the United States, Border Patrol officials said.

Some strap carpet strips to the bottom of their shoes so agents can’t follow their footprints in the sand. Some clip cow hooves to their footwear, to leave animal prints in their wake. Some have dressed up as clergy or soldiers, while others have used fake government vehicles, including those of a New Mexico Department of Transportation truck and a Border Patrol unit.

Others have stuffed children into pi?atas or sewn people into car seats to get them through ports of entry.

Less-sophisticated standbys remain: a pair of bolt or wire cutters to take out fences; an immigrant sent to distract agents while others sneak across the cactus-dotted countryside.

Creeping along in his SUV with the lights off, Jeffreys tries to find a small group of immigrants, six or maybe eight, who were spotted by an agent manning the control tower for the cameras that line the border.

He drives through the creosote bush, tumbleweeds and mesquite, steering with one hand and leaning out the window, peering through his night-vision goggles.

The group he is after turned south toward Mexico, the voice on his radio says. Radio traffic, however, crackles with reports of other groups giving it a go in other parts of Jeffreys’ patrol area, which includes 53 miles border miles and 14,000 square miles.

The later it gets, the busier. Immigrant traffic picks up, on public land and on private ranches. Dogs guarding homes bark their owners awake. One rancher 22 miles down the road from the Columbus office estimates 500 immigrants cross his property every 24 hours, leaving a trail of garbage, broken water lines and freed cattle.

As Jeffreys drives, with the lights on now, he has time to reflect on the strange things he has seen, where even at night it’s almost unbearably warm and undeniably lonely.

Smugglers or guides once led a group of more than 150 immigrants through his patrol area, apparently to see if they could get away with it, something more common in busier border states like Arizona, he says.

He talks about the old school buses he says smugglers use to transport immigrants between staging spots on the other side of the fence.

The windows on the passenger portions of the buses are painted black or blocked by dark plastic. When the buses drive west from the town plaza in Palomas, Mexico, to drop people off in a tiny outpost called Las Chepas, mere feet from the United States, agents with binoculars can’t see in.

When the buses drive back east to Palomas, the driver’s side windows are unobscured. The buses are empty.

While Las Chepas looks like little more than an abandoned village, Border Patrol officials say it’s a major staging area for border crossers. Richardson last week called on the Mexican government to bulldoze the area.

In nine years as an agent, Jeffreys has seen many tricks. But he knows there likely will be more.

“I wouldn’t put anything past anybody,” he said.

All for a job

Walking along N.M. 9 the next day, Cruz Alberto stops to talk to the passengers in the first car he has seen since sunrise.

He asks a reporter and a photographer standing outside their SUV where he is and whether there is work nearby.

The stocky immigrant from Tabasco state says he left his town of Villa Hermosa seven days ago and hitchhiked to northern Mexico. The oldest man in his family, Alberto is in charge of his mother and seven sisters and brothers.

He is 29, lost, sunburned, dusty.

Dressed in black because legend has it that Border Patrol won’t be able to see him at night, he didn’t know he had crossed the border.

“It’s not like there was a sign or anything,” he says in Spanish.

He’s carrying an almost-empty bottle of water, as warm as the nearly 100-degree day. He hasn’t slept much and woke up on the desert floor the night before when a rattlesnake slid by his eye, he says.

His job as a delivery driver in Mexico pays $50 to $80 a week.

“It’s not enough to feed potatoes to my family. . . . I just need an opportunity to work.”

Crying for a minute under his black hat with a bent bill, Alberto says he’ll try his luck to get past the Border Patrol, if it means there’s even a possibility he’ll make it to a place with work.

Seven or eight miles from Columbus, 320 from Albuquerque, and likely hundreds more from creating a new life, Alberto keeps walking.


Published Aug.19, 2005.

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Dreaming American

Dreaming American: Having overstayed her tourist visa, Santa Fe resident Lupita Hernandez is seeking legal U.S. residency so she won’t be separated from her U.S.-born children.

Her first attempt under a law protecting abused women failed. Now her only hope lies in the halls of Congress.

By Kate Nash
Tribune Reporter

Lupita Hernandez took a seat in her lawyer’s office, already half knowing what the letter with her name on it would say.

Hernandez’s lawyer had summoned her to Albuquerque to deliver the bad news in person: Her application to become a legal U.S. resident had been denied.

In an instant, with three pieces of paper, the life Hernandez had built in Santa Fe over 11 years began to wobble.

She no longer had the legal right to stay with the family she has created. She no longer felt free to take her two U.S.-born, American-citizen children to school or the doctor. She began to worry her family might be torn apart every time someone knocked on her door.

“The whole world fell on top of me,” the 42-year-old says of that day in February. “I’m in no man’s land.”

Hernandez’s immigration story isn’t typical. She came here legally on a 10-year tourist visa.

And she didn’t come for a better-paying job. By Mexican standards, she had a good one in her homeland – as a college-educated counselor in a Veracruz state prison.

Instead, she moved to Santa Fe to be with her then-boyfriend, who later would become her husband, then the man who abused her, then her ex-husband and her worst regret.

He was deported to Mexico, but Hernandez has no desire to return to San Andrés Tuxtla, Veracruz, where she might cross his path. She applied for legal residency under the Violence Against Women Act, one of more than 38,000 women who have sought protection since the law was passed in 1997.

But that door now appears closed, and her anxiety is rising.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents recently completed a sweep of Santa Fe, targeting criminal immigrants and unleashing a wave of fear even in law-abiders.

Hernandez, one of an estimated 50,000 to 75,000 immigrants in New Mexico without documents or who are in the process of getting legal status, says her biggest hope is that the immigration debate boiling in Congress will provide her with a path to legalization.

As she waits for lawmakers to act, she’s left wondering and worrying.

“I’m not sure what my future will be. The only thing I want is to stay here. Eleven years have gone by. What would I return to in Veracruz? What kind of life would I give my family there?”

For love, not money

In San Andres Tuxtla, Hernandez counseled mentally ill patients in one of Veracruz’s biggest prisons. For eight years, she washed their hair, bathed them, took them to therapy. She was surrounded by rapists, a mother who killed her two children, drug runners – 1,200 criminals total.

Unlike millions of other Mexicans who have left their country, Hernandez never seriously considered moving to the United States. But in 1995, she left those patients, that jail. She packed up and said farewell to her family, her favorite foods, her own bed.

All for the man she loved.

With a tourist visa in hand, she flew to the United States and settled in Santa Fe.

At first, Hernandez kept herself busy running her household. She became pregnant with her daughter, Ivanna, then married her boyfriend.

Slowly, she adjusted to the newness of Santa Fe, of the United States, of everything coming at her in rapid-fire English.

And she began to endure what she would never have expected: abuse at the hands of the man she thought loved her. Hernandez says he hit her often, even when she was more than six months pregnant with their daughter.

“He promised me heaven and all its stars, but I never imagined it would be like this,” she said.

“Those are the things you can’t forget.”

She was too scared to press charges, something that to this day gives her heartburn.

Her salvation came from the U.S. government, which deported her husband after a series of arrests for alcohol-related offenses, according to Hernandez’s lawyer.

After a divorce and a custody fight over Ivanna, which cost her thousands she didn’t have, Hernandez cobbled herself back together and attended a therapy group for abused women – something she still does.

For a while, she had pretty good luck finding American employers in the tony neighborhoods of Santa Fe – families who offered work mopping their floors or helping with their children.

But eventually, the most steady employers moved away. Others began asking her for a Social Security number. Jobs were just temporary. Hernandez looked for a reliable paycheck cleaning houses, a chore she still does when she can get the work.

Then she met a new boyfriend, a house painter who had come to the United States without papers. He asked not to be identified for this story due to his immigration status.

They grew as close as husband and wife, although they are not married. His work brought financial stability. Almost two years ago, they had a son, Ian.

The golden dream

The life Hernandez has built in the United States revolves around her two children and her effort to join them as a legal U.S. resident.

Ian, almost 2, is a giggly handful on his best days and a screaming bundle who can’t sit through an hourlong Mass on his worst.

He was recently diagnosed as developmentally disabled, something Hernandez says would be much harder to deal with in Mexico, because he can get speech therapy and other help more easily here.

Medicare helps pay for part of Ian’s treatments. So does the money Hernandez and her boyfriend earn, about $18,000 last year.

Ivanna, 10, attends public school in Santa Fe. Unlike in Mexico, her mother doesn’t have to pay tuition or buy books.

Hernandez has also enrolled Ivanna in dance classes – jazz, hip-hop, ballet, tap – and voice lessons.

While they paid for the dance classes – $2 for low-income students – Hernandez and her partner also saved to buy a trailer home, which they did in December. That is no small feat in Santa Fe.

“The golden dream is really a house, but this is a place to start,” Hernandez said.

The immaculate home isn’t large – three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, nothing fancy.

At the same time, Hernandez and her partner scrimped to pay the legal fees for her immigration case – $600, $800, $1,200 at a time.

Last June, just as they began to consider buying a home, the first wave of bad news hit. Her petition for residency had been denied because her ex-husband wasn’t a legal U.S. citizen or permanent legal resident when she applied for protection – a requirement under the law.

Hernandez and her attorney appealed. In February, the government again denied her plea to stay.

Since then, Hernandez has struggled with depression.

She tries to live as normally as possible, with her future, her heart and her extended family split between two countries.

The pull of family

Hernandez regularly wires money to her hometown of San Andr‚s Tuxtla – $125 some months; $200 in others, when work is good.

The cash is like gold dust in the lives of her Mexican family. Her brother got shoes that blunt the pain of standing for hours on a cigar-factory floor; a grandmother was given a decent burial; her father feasted on fried chicken for his birthday.

Leaving was hard for Hernandez, but going back presents a terrible dilemma. If she does, she risks never seeing her children again. If she doesn’t, she risks never seeing her parents.

Her mother is ailing. Her father is aging.

“My mother still doesn’t understand why I left,” she said. “And it is hard. They called me to say my grandmother had died, and I couldn’t go back. And my two uncles died, and I couldn’t go back.”

When her mother underwent surgery late last year for a tumor on her back, Hernandez was left to fret from afar, more than 1,000 miles and an international boundary away.

While she dreams of temporary permission to leave the United States, she knows her immigration status would make returning difficult. She follows the debate in Congress, looking for a glimmer of hope.

Hernandez wants Ivanna and Ian to meet their grandmother. She wants to see her mother herself for the first time in more than a decade and, maybe, for the last time.

“Do I stay or go?,” she said. “This is my mother.”

A world of what ifs

For now, with so much up in the air, Hernandez and her family have to live as if their lives weren’t on shaky ground, as if what they’ve built isn’t as wobbly as they feel, as if they couldn’t be uprooted at any moment.

In many ways, her emotions are similar to those of other immigrants who wonder what the future will bring.

She tries not to think of the what ifs, all the while planning for them.

Hernandez has a network of people in place, friends who could take care of her kids and her home if she received a deportation order. Others look out for “la migra” – immigration officers – and spread the word on their whereabouts.

Hernandez dreads the possibility of being separated from her children, but she also fears seeing her ex-husband if she had to return to San Andres Tuxtla.

More than anything, she wants an inner peace she knows deep down might never come.

“I want to work peacefully; I want to live peacefully,” she said, her eyes spilling tears.

“I don’t want to think that today everything is fine, and tomorrow they could come and arrest me – take me away – and I wouldn’t know what would happen with my children.”

Published May 25, 2007.

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WWII prisoner’s photo album returns to New Mexico roots

WWII prisoner’s photo album returns to New Mexico roots

Kate Nash | The New Mexican

Roberta Koishi held the photo album in front of a Santa Fe crowd that included World War II veterans and slowly began to turn the pages.

From the outside, the album, which includes images of New Mexico soldiers in the 1940s, might have seemed at first glance like any other keepsake of wartime and military buddies past.

Unlike other albums, though, this thick, time-worn tome filled with black-and-white snapshots of people, horses, training sites of another time, had just been flown across the Pacific Ocean to Santa Fe. And the book is about to start another journey — one to find its owner.

A former member of the Imperial Japanese Army found it in a bunker when he worked at a prisoner of war camp in the Philippines. He searched for years for the owner, but only recently discovered that seven of the names listed in the album match records of former members of the 200th Coast Artillery of the New Mexico National Guard.

Members of that unit were among thousands of U.S. and Filipino soldiers who surrendered at the outset of the war in the Pacific. The Japanese forced most of the weakened men to march for several hundred miles — what became known as the Bataan Death March.

The man who found the album, Tokio Watanabe, enlisted a Japanese man and his wife — Roberta and her husband, Takao — to bring the book to Santa Fe.

The trip here ended Monday, with the Koishis presenting the album at the Bataan Memorial Military Museum, where Roberta’s turning through the pages unleashed a flurry of emotions for those who watched.

Ret. Tech. Sgt. William Overmier said he recognized some things in the album, including a view similar to one he had from the Mitsubishi shipyards while he was a prisoner of war in the early 1940s.

“All we had to do was look out the west and there it was, 60 miles away, every day,” he said. “I sure recognized that.”

Overmier took his time looking over the photos. He even recognized a car similar to the one he had owned in days gone by — a Chevrolet Club Coupe.

Others in the room recognized ships, a recreation area, names of people lost. Their ships, their recreation spot, their people.

None was the album’s owner, however.

The people in the book whose names matched those of state records are all dead, National Guard officials said. But officials soon will start writing to family members to see if they can determine where the album should go.

During the event, Roberta Koishi delivered a message from Watanabe, who wrote a history book on the second world war.

“He said he’s so happy he can give the album back and he can feel an ease in his own heart,” she said.

For now, the book will be kept at the museum.

As some pieces of the mystery begin to fall into place, National Guard Adjutant General Kenny Montoya said he’s optimistic the book will go where it needs to be.

“I think what’s going to happen is whoever owns it is going to not come forward,” he said. “I’ve seen this over and over with the Bataan veterans: They want to share.”

If an owner comes forward and claims the book, the Guard will hand it over. If not, it will go on display at the museum, Montoya said.

The men whose names are in the album are Fred Swope, George Milliken, Lloyd Harman, Walter Kiefov, Errett Lujan, Jesus Silva and Francis Van Buskirk.

Van Buskirk, a 1939 graduate of Santa Fe High School, was believed to be one of only a couple of dozen Bataan survivors at the time he died here in February at the age of 86.

Published Dec. 01, 2008.