THURSDAY,AUG.23,2001 WORLD THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN • 9A Slow U.S. economy hits Mexican border The Associated Press TJUANA, Mexico — Owners of foreign-owned factories who once flocked to the Mexican border to take advantage of its cheap labor are laying off tens of thousands of people in the wake of a U.S. slowdown. After years of strong economic growth and a booming job market spurred by the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico's dynamic industrial region is sputtering. On a scruff hill dotted with shacks, 50-year-old Jose Luis Cuadras struggles to eke out a living after losing his job sewing U.S. baseball hats at a maquiladora, one of the thousands of assembly plants that have characterized Mexico's border with the United States. He now works at a stand that sells garage doors discarded by Californians. Carted across the border, the doors are used by impoverished Tijuana residents as walls for their homes. Cuadras now makes about $5 a day, about half of what he earned at the maquilladora. The lanky man moved into a garage-door home after not being able to pay his rent on an apartment. "You do what you can to get by," he said. The maquiladora industry has lost 100,000 jobs so far this year, mostly along the 2,100-mile northern border. officials say. Since January, the Mexican state of Baja California, home to Tijuana, has lost 23,100 jobs, while the Chihuahua state has lost 59,100 jobs, Mexico's Labor Secretary Carlos Abascal said. The two states host the largest number of maquiladoras. The U.S. downturn "has had a huge impact," said Manuel Gonzalez, assistant director of the northern Mexican border sector for the National Manufacturing Chamber. "There's been layoffs. Some plants have closed, while others are cutting back on hours and having people work only three or four days. That way they don't lose their skilled workers but can still remain competitive." Rolando Gonzalez, president of the Maquila and Export Industry Council, said the electronic, textile and automobile manufacturers had been hit hardest. International heavyweights such as General Motors, Phillips Electronics and Sony have had to lay off people at their Mexican plants. Maquiladora leaders are working with the Mexican government to find ways to soften the blow. Maquiladoras, also known as "twin plants," were started in the 1960s to take advantage of Mexico's low labor costs. They have grown over the years to become the industrial backbone of the country's northern border, with more than 3,500 plants employing 1.2 million people. Most of the plants are concentrated in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Tex., and Tijuana, across from San Diego. Mexican Border Commissioner Ernesto Ruffo said the maquiladora industry expected to create 150,000 more jobs this year. But exporters, who send more than 80 percent of their goods to United States, have been hit both by the U.S. slowdown and the strong peso. Not all the news has been bad. The region has attracted new U.S. companies looking to cut costs by locating in Mexico. But not enough have come to offset the laffords, officials said. In a dusty neighborhood, Miguel Lopez, 23, said it took him two months to land another job after being laid off. A year ago it would have taken only a few days. Even so, Lopez was weighing his options after being told there would be no more overtime pay. "I'm thinking of going to the other side," said the father of two, referring to the United States on the other side of the border. "Is it any better over there?" he asked. Chinese sect member gets death sentence for murder Associated Press BEIJING — A Chinese court sentenced a member of the banned Falun Gong sect to death yesterday for murdering a fellow villager with an ax to attain salvation, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The court in southern China that condemned Lan Yunchang suspended the sentence for two years because he had surrendered to police, Xinhua said. People given suspended death penalties are eligible for commutation to life imprisonment if they behave well in jail. Nevertheless, the sentence was thought to be the most severe given to a Falun Gong follower since the government outlawed the popular meditation movement in July 1999. Others have faced charges including theft, fraud and illegal assembly. Wei Shaoming died a day after Lan hit him on the back of the neck with an ax on April 16, Xinhua said. It said Lan thought that by killing Wei, it could ascend to heaven. It said Lan had asked Wei to provide him with arsenic, and when Wei could not, Lan attacked him. Lan, from Zhuyu village in the Guangxi region of southern China, maintained his faith in Falun Gong despite 15 days in police detention in September 2000 and efforts to force him to renounce the group, Xinhua said. In an apparent attempt to add to what the government claims is evidence implicating the group in numerous deaths, the court said Wei was "a victim of Falun Gong," Xinhua reported. "Using the excuse of 'ascending to heaven,' he intentionally and illegally deprived another person of life," it continued. Chinese authorities have sent thousands of Falun Gong practitioners to prisons and labor camps in their relentless campaign against the group. Falun Gong claims practitioners are routinely tortured in custody and that 263 have been killed. China says the group is a cult that has caused the deaths of more than 1,600 people, mostly practitioners it says were told to use meditation rather than medicine to fight illness. Chinese leaders fear the group, which until the crackdown had tens of millions of members and a close-knit organizational structure, threatens the Communist Party's monopoly on power. Practitioners believe Falun Gong promotes well-being, high moral standards and even supernatural powers. <>