BY JUDY WILEY

McClatchy News Service

ANGANGUEO, Michoacan, Mexico -- They travel thousands of miles, unerringly, every year between Canada and Mexico. No one knows how they find their way.

Las mariposas -- the butterflies -- come by the millions. They arrive in Mexico's heartland, the Sierra Madre in the state of Michoacan, every November. Five sanctuaries are established to protect them and to let visitors see the miracle of the monarchs.

Rosario is the original butterfly sanctuary in Mexico, and the largest. It was already considered a sanctuary in 1986 when the Mexican government established two zones that form a Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, protected from logging and development.

The monarchs cluster on oyamel pines in the remote mountains, and the microclimate provides just the right temperature and moisture.

Indians in the area before Columbus arrived depicted butterflies in their drawings. The wintering grounds were first noted by scientists in the 1970s, when a Canadian zoologist rediscovered the spot.

In 2001, the government and private sources set aside millions of dollars for a fund called the Monarch Trust to pay local residents to stop cutting down the trees. Today, some of the farmers make their living off tourism, as guides.

Guide Andres Orosco and I start the three-hour drive from Morelia to Santuario El Rosario near Angangueo early in the morning.

Tourists have plenty to see on the way to Angangueo. In San Lucas Pio, outdoor vendors sell baskets woven using ancestral techniques. The town is one of many in the area where artisans create goods made there for centuries. Paracho is a guitar town, and in Santa Clara del Cobere, coppersmiths create jewelry, pots and more.

Between villages, the roadsides are lined with the cornfields of subsistence farmers and barbacoa stands. We stop near Querendaro to eat at one called Borrego Feliz -- Happy Sheep. I'm not so sure about that, because we are eating mutton, and I'm more than a little worried about the big, greasy-looking chunks of it that are being sliced as we pay for the meal.

But I could have relaxed.

The barbacoa -- sprinkled with lime, cilantro and onion and served with chile arbol -- is amazing -- delicate and spicy at once. Nothing like the heavy flavors I'd expected. Orosco says 20 different kinds of chiles are grown in the area.

This is a family enterprise. The father is slicing the mutton, which Orosco says was raised by the family and butchered, then buried for about a day in an underground cooking pit piled with maguey cactus for fuel. Two or three daughters are mixing masa (ground from corn he says they probably grew) into tortillas they cook on a charcoal-fired griddle.

As we drive on toward the sanctuary, Orosco hits the gas and squeals the tires around every curve, and there are a lot of them. Luckily, his spiel about the monarchs helps distract me from his driving.

A LONG FLIGHT

The insects leave Canada in September and arrive at their winter homes in Mexico around Nov. 2, the Day of the Dead. They fly about 2,500 miles, resting in trees by night. Some 40 million come to Santuario Rosario alone.

''They come here to die,'' Orosco says. The males live only 72 hours after mating. The females live on to lay eggs as they travel back toward the north. A monarch butterfly's life span is nine months at most.

Subsequent generations continue traveling north, reproducing and dying; the process repeats several times along the way. Several generations later, new offspring make the trip from Canada to Mexico.

One theory is that the butterflies navigate by smell, Orosco says. But no one really knows how they find the way. The route is the same every year.

Blue-and-white signs showing the way to the santuario start to appear as we get closer. The streets narrow in the towns with their central cathedrals and white-walled buildings. Campesinos, their hats hanging down their backs, trudge down the road, and skinny cows stare out at the cars. Homemade altars stand near the road, sometimes alone, sometimes near houses.

Finally, we are in Angangueo. People are dressed in their best on this Sunday afternoon. Every older woman is wrapped up in a rebozo (shawl) despite the unseasonably warm February weather.

At the santuario, the whole enterprise looks a lot more touristy than I'd expected. There is a charge to use the restroom, for starters. A ticket to enter the sanctuary costs about $2.75.

MAKING THE CLIMB

Orosco immediately starts marching up the path, which is steep and lined with food vendors. A little farther up, when I stop to gasp for breath, the selling begins in earnest. Booths are filled with butterfly mugs, butterfly lunch pails, butterfly paperweights, all the kinds of trinkets Americans expect from border Mexico. Until now, I hadn't seen it here in the interior.

I can't pay much attention to this annoyance, because the real butterflies have begun to drift down the mountainside, just a few here and there, flapping around the hordes of people marching up to see the colonies.

As the climb grows steeper, the crowd gets thicker, and so do the flocks of butterflies. After we've passed the booths, we begin to see hundreds at a time, often resting at places where water has collected.

They alight on bushes right beside us, sometimes brushing our wrists and faces with their wings and thin black legs. Kids are kneeling beside a flock of them on a creek bed, nudging them onto their hands and giggling.

Orosco says the black lines on their wings are the butterflies' thermometers. When they get too cold, they huddle together for warmth.

He outwalks me on the path -- it takes about an hour to reach the top -- but when I finally catch up, he urges me to climb a little higher, where the colonies are easier to see.

They are not what I expected. Still distant, high up in the firs, they hang in clusters. They look like orange infestations from here.

Andres says the migration was viewed by the indigenous peoples of Mexico as a plague. The Spaniards, he says, thought the butterflies were people's souls.

We stop to eat again on the way down, at a stand run by a woman named Isabel Valencia Hernandez. She greets Orosco, a regular customer, and we order blue corn tortillas stuffed with cheese and served with spicy salsa. They're good.

We are ready to leave, and the butterflies soon will be, too. The monarchs make the long journey back to Canada in early March.

They will repeat the cycle again, their internal road map still a mystery to us.

Posted on: Sunday, 15 October 2006, 21:00 CDT

By YVETTE CARDOZO; BILL HIRSCH

SEA OF CORTEZ, Mexico - Dinner awaited: medium rare steak and lobster tail.

But . . .

"I hate to do this to you just before this dinner but there's a mammoth pod of dolphins off our bow." The announcement on the ship's loudspeaker sounded almost apologetic. This was, after all, our grand finale dinner.

However, yards from the ship were hundreds and hundreds of saddleback dolphins, splashing and leaping and twisting in the rays of golden sunset light, for a good 20 minutes.

When nature's show was over we headed in for dinner and were just settling bottoms into chairs when Capt. Shawnda Gallup's voice echoed again, "Uh, folks. We've got rays. Dozens of them."

Sure enough, their large black bodies were just inches below the surface. It was like being surrounded by shadows. Every so often, a set of wingtips would break the surface. One of the beasts actually jumped. Since when do rays jump?

Back to dinner. This time, the hot rolls actually made it to the table.

"Er, you really don't want to miss this. It's a blue whale."

Capt. Gallup didn't need to tell us. A hundred feet of body slid alongside our boat. The thing was only 20 feet shorter than our 120- foot vessel. And it came up hardly five yards from our starboard side. We could see its dorsal fin nearly filling the lounge window.

Blue whales are the largest in the ocean. A small child could swim through its arteries. And here it was just feet from our railing. It surfaced not once but three times before our light faded completely.

Welcome to the Sea of Cortez...........................

Above water, the desert comes right down to the sea, resulting in a surreal mix of cactus, sand dunes and mangroves.

The high point of our first few days was a swim with sea lions. ............ From a skiff, we slipped into the water and were instantly surrounded by slick black heads and twitching whiskers. The sea lions moved with lightning speed, darting and swooping, doing barrel rolls and folding their bodies backward like gymnasts...................

To top it off, bioluminescent fish in the water and burning stars above.................

By Carlos Luken

The Mexico-U.S. border fence recently approved overwhelmingly by the U.S. Congress, and signed into law by President George W. Bush, will join the ranks of such notable structures as the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, and the Maginot Line as a new monument to man’s futility and pigheadedness.

Some who naively hope that this wall will finally solve the “immigration problem” fail to understand that immigration is not the problem; it is a consequence of economic and social problems that have been conveniently circumvented for political correctness for decades. In this regard, the blame lies not only in Mexico, but also in the United States.

Both countries have reaped huge rewards from immigration. United States trade knowingly tapped into a large, low cost and highly controllable labor source permitting its products to be competitive worldwide. In return Mexico found an effective and predictable safety valve for exporting the growing numbers of workers that its weakening economy could not accommodate. Immigration is also providing Mexico with its migrant remittance windfall, revenue that is expected to rise to US$25 billion in 2006.

For many years this sort of quid pro quo understanding existed between the two nations. In the United States border scrutiny was relaxed or suffocated according to trade needs, and Mexico tacitly complied.

At that time immigration was primarily an economic issue, but after decades of neglect and ambiguousness it mushroomed into a social predicament, with growing numbers of migrants and their families putting a burden on U.S. health, education and social service institutions. With economic slowdown, disgruntled citizens began protesting and collectively targeted Latinos as the source of their maladies. Millions of United States and Mexican citizens were pushed into a conflict that was not of their doing, in which both were unwilling victims of a new era “southern question.”

Expectantly the media took sides, furthering animosities. Some biased U.S. communicators branded all migrants as “illegal” and encouraged confrontation. The Latino media retorted by airing its own biased news versions, and promoting activist led protest demonstrations.

But instead of finger pointing and accusations, the culprits who caused it — the United States and Mexico, should realistically address this southern question. Both governments must recognize that theirs is a bilateral crisis, brought about by years of procrastination and double standards.

Mexico should acknowledge that its past economic policies have failed to create job opportunities and higher living standards for its people. It must define and implement comprehensive economic, agricultural and industrial development programs for its poverty stricken southern states. To do so it must implement legislative reforms, and it should encourage alliances with U.S businesses. And it must execute an immediate and in-depth program to eliminate widespread corruption.

The United States should also do its part. It must acknowledge and stop circumventing immigration and labor laws, and slap stiff fines on protected business, agriculture, construction, manufacturing and service industries that advantageously benefit from the immigrants illegal status.

The United States should realize that all of its dilemmas cannot be solved through immigration reform as is currently being considered. It must isolate its current social crisis from its future temporary labor needs. By grouping current crises with future needs, the United States has continuously gotten into a quandary.

At the same time Mexico should concede that the United States has its own laws and political agenda, and that it will define — within its sovereignty — what to do with the millions of undocumented migrants currently living in the 50 states.

In order to deter further immigration, and to help Mexico create genuine job opportunities, U.S. development programs dealing with trade education should be put into place, while economic aid plans and private investment ventures should be encouraged. Once the cost benefits are considered, the payback will prove more profitable than the currently incurred social costs (notwithstanding the US$1.7 billion budgeted cost for the border fence). Only then can provisions be negotiated to accommodate a realistic temporary supply of workers from Mexico for future U.S. labor needs.

Citizens and public officials view immigration with tunnel vision, failing to note that it is only part of many ongoing interactions between neighbors. Other vital concerns, such as border security, trade, organized crime deterrents, energy, agriculture, water rights, social and environmental issues — the list goes on, must too be addressed.

Considering that immigration is a most sensitive issue, both governments must acknowledge the need for new and innovative plans and solutions before more innocents in both countries are made victims of further hypocrisy.

——————————

Carlos Luken, a MexiData.info columnist, is a Mexico-based businessman and consultant. He can be reached via e-mail at ilcmex@yahoo.com.

By Patricia Reaney LONDON, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Mexico's ambitious health reforms which aim for universal coverage by 2010 could be a blueprint for change in other poor nations where medical costs impoverish millions of people, its health minister said on Sunday. Dr Julio Frenk, the architect of the plan and a candidate for the top job at the World Health Organisation (WHO), said the reforms show health innovations can make a difference even in countries with high levels of poverty. "The Mexican formula is working. There are 22 million people today that didn't have insurance three years ago. For those people this is the difference between life and death," he told Reuters. The universal insurance plan called Seguro Popular was passed into law in 2003. It is on track to provide health coverage for about 50 million mostly poor people by the end of the decade. Organised by federal and state government, it is free for 20 percent of the poorest people. Others pre-pay a means tested premium based on income. Funding is through taxes, which Frenk stressed have not risen, and savings in health administration costs that have been cut from 8 to 3 percent since he was appointed health minister six years ago. So far 1,700 new health facilities have been built. Twelve regional treatment centres deal with illnesses such as heart disease and cancer. Investing is focused on telemedicine, training and logistics to enable swift delivery of vaccines and medicines to remote areas. The Mexican plans have been evaluated in studies published in The Lancet medical journal, which praised the reforms. Frenk said they stemmed from a realisation that spending on healthcare was impoverishing millions of uninsured Mexicans. "The numbers are quite scary. It shouldn't be that way. Health should be a force to fight poverty. It should never be a reason for impoverishment," he added.

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Mexico lobbied for six years for a comprehensive immigration reform that would allow millions to cross into the United States legally. Instead, they're getting a fence.

Mexicans -- from leading politicians to migrants preparing to cross illegally -- consider the U.S. plan to fence off much of the border shameful, offensive and ill-conceived.

President Bush on Wednesday signed a bill that would allot $1.2 billion for hundreds of miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border and for more vehicle barriers, lighting and infrared cameras.

But migrants resting at a Tijuana shelter after being deported from the United States said more walls wouldn't deter them. Alfonso Martinez, a 32-year-old from southern Mexico, had been working as a farmhand for six months in Vista, Calif., when he was arrested and deported last week.

"Wall or no wall, I will try at least three times," said Martinez, who said he would try to cross by himself through Tecate, a mountainous town about 35 miles east of Tijuana. "I have three girls that I have to support, and in Mexico there is no work."

Mexican immigrants in the United States and the Mexican government had lobbied lawmakers for more ways to cross the border and work legally.

While Bush had proposed a temporary worker program, it didn't garner enough support in Congress for passage. The idea has been dropped by Washington, at least until after the November congressional elections.

Congress focused on security over immigration, arguing that the porous border could be used by terrorists who want to sneak into the U.S. undetected. There is no evidence that has happened, however.

The Mexican government this week sent a diplomatic note to Washington criticizing the plan for 700 miles of new fencing along the border. Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez called it an "offense" and said Wednesday his office was considering taking the issue to the United Nations.

But Ruben Aguilar, the spokesman for President Vicente Fox, said Thursday that Mexico had ruled out that possibility. He added he was "confident" the additional fencing would never become a reality because an immigration accord would eventually replace it.

President-elect Felipe Calderon Thursday criticized the U.S. plan, but said the case is a bilateral issue that should not be taken to any international organization.

"I think it is a deplorable decision that has been made by the United States Congress for the construction of this wall, and it does not solve our common problem, which is emigration," Calderon told a news conference in Santiago, Chile.

Guillermo Alonzo, a migration expert at the Tijuana-based Colegio de La Frontera Norte, said fences instead will force migrants to look for new ways to sneak into the United States and find new routes through deadlier terrain.

"When migrants are determined to cross, they find a way to jump the fences," Alonzo said. "Walls don't stop anything."

Alonzo cited the construction of a fence between Tijuana and San Diego, known in Mexico as "the tortilla wall." It was completed in the 1990s and forced migrants into the sparsely populated and dangerous Arizona desert.

While there are walls at various points along the border, the one in Tijuana is the longest stretch, running 14 miles west from the Otay border crossing and plunging into the Pacific Ocean.

It has become a symbol of the divisive immigration issue, a blank slate for graffiti, crosses, photos and other remembrances of those who have lost their lives trying to sneak into the United States. Some families, divided by the border, even meet at the fence, talking through the metal wires.

While the wall downgraded Tijuana from the illegal migration mecca it was in the 1990s, hundreds of migrants still come here, Alonzo said.

"Now smugglers hide migrants in trunks of cars or get false documents," he said.

Luis Kendzierski, a priest who directs a Tijuana migrant shelter, said building a wall is an unfriendly gesture that will lead to a hike in smugglers' fees and more migrant deaths.

Between 2001 and 2006, almost 2,000 migrants died while trying to sneak into the United States, according to El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

"We are supposed to be neighbors and friends, and instead of building bridges and doors, we're building obstacles," Kendzierski said.

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)