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STATE & LOCAL
Tuesday • June 21,15)
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Mexican plants settle Texas birth defect lawsuits
Families to receive compensation
for babies born with anencephaly
BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Five
maquiladora plants operating in Mata-
moros, Mexico are the first to settle
lawsuits alleging that pollution caused
rare birth defects in Texas.
The firms settled to avoid a costly
court battle, according to Sunday edi
tions of The Brownsville Herald.
The five firms — Breed Automotive
Inc., Wickes Manufacturing Co., Ranco
de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Gobar Systems
Inc., and Leonard Electric Products Co.
— are among more than 90 Matamoros
twin plant operations that were sued
last year.
Each of the five companies will pay
$10,714 to eight families under a June 1
settlement approved by District Judge
Ben Euresti.
“The position of the association is
that the maquiladora industry had
nothing to do with the anencephalic
births,” Gonzalez said.
“I can assure you that 90 percent of
the maquiladoras don’t handle contam
inants.”
Maquiladoras are mostly U.S.-
owned assembly plants that take ad
vantage of cheap Mexican labor along
the border.
The lawsuits, filed in March last
year, a day before the statute of limita
tions would have taken effect, are on
behalf of about 20 families whose babies
were born in Cameron County with
neural tube defects. N
The most dramatic neural tube de
fect is anencephaly, a fatal condition in
which the child is born with an undevel
oped and exposed brain.
Critics of the maquiladoras have sug
gested that air and groundwater conta
mination is to blame, ever since a clus
ter of anencephalic births was discov
ered in Brownsville in 1991.
Scientific studies, however, have not
directly linked a higher than normal
rate of anencephaly in Cameron County
to the maquiladoras.
The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention and the Texas Department
of Health say they’ve found no solid en
vironmental links to neural tube defects
in the county.
Some community leaders also have
suggested that the widespread use of
pesticides on both sides of the horde
may be contributing to the anencephal
problem.
Researchers from Texas A&Mltj.
versity are investigating whether art
lationship exists between anencephat
and pesticides.
In recent years, Cameron Count)
anencephaly rate has been moretlsi
double the normal U.S. rate, whidili
about three or four per 10,00
births.
But the county is 85 percent Hispt
ic, and Hispanics have a higher risk
anencephaly than the U.S. populate
as a whole.
Diet is also believed to be a factor,
Jennie Mayer/ The Battalion
For that deep-down body thirst
Dylan Haynie takes a water break atop fortify Mount Aggie by reinforcing the
Mount Aggie. Work is being done to corroding sides with concrete.
Fate of space station still in question
Congress to take critical vote on $2.1 million
funding of NASA project as early as next week
WASHINGTON (AP) — Cancella
tion of the space station would strike
a devastating blow to the United
States’ pursuit of knowledge and
new technologies, NASA’s adminis
trator says.
In a staunch defense Monday be
fore the National Fh-ess Club, Daniel
Goldin argued that death of the $30
billion program would exchange
short-term savings for long-term
losses.
“We have to take risks. We have to
explore space, not just for ourselves
and today, but also for our children
and the quality of their lives in the
next century,” Goldin said.
His plea comes as the House
readies for its annual tussle over the
contentious program, which
squeaked through last year by a
one-vote margin.
Critics have long
targeted the orbiting
laboratory as ques
tionable spending at
a time of huge bud
get deficits. They
also contend it is
draining funding
from more worthy
scientific ventures.
The space sta
tion, which would
receive $2.1 billion
next year if funded at the level sought
by the Clinton administration, comes
to Congress in a vastly different form
this year.
Prodded into action by last year’s
vote, NASA returned to the drawing
board to trim costs by redesigning the
Goldin
massive program, streamlinediii
management and signed up Rusk:
for a collaboration that already
volves Canada, Japan and the Eim
pean Space Agency.
“We are facing an extremely cnt
cal vote in Congress on the space sti
tion,” Goldin said. The House voi
could come as early as next week,
Noting that 25 years have passe;
since man first landed on the moc
Goldin said the Apollo program i
had its naysayers. “If we had listece;
to the critics though, we wouldti
have taken the risks that havera
off with a bonanza of technology ai
inspiration that permeates our dc
lives,” he said.
He accused the United States:
being risk-averse since the 1975s
pointing to the cancellation of thesi
personic transport and the superco:
ducting super collider.
Please see Space/Page
Congregation converts to Catholicis
IT;
Tuesday
Th
Lil
lik
Episcopal priest, 200 parishioners find alternative to 'straying' faith in mass conversio
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — The Rev. Allan Hawkins
spent 34 years as an Episcopal priest, but he knew he
needed to find an alternative to the faith that he felt was
straying from its roots.
The hard part, Hawkins said, would be to leave behind
the congregation he had led for 14 years. So he didn’t.
“My feeling as a pastor is that if I think something is
right, then I can’t just say, “Well bye, folks. I’m going to go
do it.’ I have a responsibility to the people God ; gbvife tfifeTo
lead/’ Hawkins said.
“A shepherd is somebody who leads the flock. Shepherds
do not say goodbye. They try and take their flock with them.”
In Hawkins’ case, he took the entire flock with him.
Earlier this month he and his congregation of 200 parish
ioners were received into the Catholic Church.
Hawkins, 60, will be ordained as a Catholic priest
June 29.
His temporary loss of status at St. Mary the Virgin
Catholic Church doesn’t seem to bother the easygoing.
English-born priest. His ordination will conclude a process
that began many years ago, when he and his congregation
became examining alternatives to the Anglican Church.
St. Mary is the first Episcopal Church in Texas too!
vert to Catholicism and the only in the nation to take
its buildings and properties, Episcopal Church officials sjj
Because of the congregation’s near unanimity, itn
allowed to retain its property. The Rev. Samuel Edwr
executive director of th,e conservatiye. Episcopal Sync*::
America in Fort Worth, said, property titles for ippstt
copal churches are held in trust for the diocese, not
1 ‘c6hgre£ations.
Hawkins stresses that the switch cannot be attribuK
to individual issues, such as the ordination of womeci
the approval of same-sex marriages. He calls those “sym;
toms of the problem.”
The problem, he said, is that recent denials of Scriptl
and tradition have led to a questioning of where author."
lies in the Anglican Church. Traditional Episcopaliaa
contend the church is making unilateral decisions has
on secular trends rather than biblical authority.
Additionally, his parish sought to unify with Rome
movement that had started and then stalled among Epi
MARI-
SMITI
Sports
Please see Church/Pagel
Congress conducts peyote hearings, may allow use of stimulant for religious purposes
Proposed bill could extend rights of Native Americans
nationwide following example of Texas, western states
DALLAS (AP) — A bill now in a U.S.
House subcommittee would extend gen
uine religious freedoms to American Indi
ans for the first time, Indian leaders said.
The bill would follow Texas’ lead by
allowing American Indians to use pey
ote for sacramental purposes.
The U.S. House Natural Resources
subcommittee on American Indian af
fairs conducted hearings June 10 on a
bill to allow the limited use of the nat
ural hallucinogen in Indian religious
rituals.
“The First Amendment (of the U.S.
Constitution) has never really applied to
American Indians,” said Walter Echo-
Hawk, staff attorney for the Native
American Rights Fund in Boulder, Colo.
“The religious freedom crisis is not
over for Native Americans until this
legislation passes,” he said.
Peyote has been a part of American
Indian religious rituals for at least
10,000 years. According to tradition, the
bitter herb’s hallucinogenic effect helps
bring the faithful closer to an under
standing of the Creator and all creation.
“God gave this sacred medicine to the
Native Americans to use it for their
spiritual needs,” said George Hindsley,
a Native American Church official in
Wisconsin. “The more we consume of it,
the more we understand God.”
The herb’s active ingredient is mesca
line, a mind-altering stimulant that the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
has placed in the same category as LSD.
Every spring, thousands of American
Indians make pilgrimages to a sliver of
the South Texas brush country. There,
in a belt from Rio Grande City north to
midway between Laredo and Heb-
bronville, is the only legally grown p?
ote in the United States.
In 1968, Texas became the first of£
states, most of them west of the Misss
sippi; to protect the religious use of pe)
ote by people of at least one-fourth Ini
an blood.
The Texas Department of Publii
Safety regulates the sale of peyote#
any of the 250,000 card-carryiti
members of the Native Americat
Please see Peyote/Paget
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