Page 4-Saturday, April 15, 1978-The Michigan Daily hec 4gan, aIaiI Eighty-Eight Years of Editorial Freedom 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 156 News Phone: 764-0552 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Deciding what should exist The fox wants Comparing the Mexican government to the Chilean or Argentine may be, to borrow a phrase from Malcolm X, like comparing a fox to a wolf: they're both in the canine family, and though the fox may be trickier, it is not necessarily any less vicious. Hector Marroquin knows the brutality of the Mexican state. HE ENTERED the University of Neuvo Leon in Monterrey at the age of 16 in 1969, a year after hundreds of peaceful demon- strators had been killed by army troops in Tlaltelolco Square in Mexico City. In 1971, student demonstrators from Monterrey took. their campaign for student-faculty control of I F YOU HAVE an animal living in your backyard that you think could be considered an endangered species, don't tell your congressman about it. The government is currently taking steps which would allow it to deliberately finish off the poor creature. The U.S. Senate is now discussing an amendment to the Endangered Species Act which would, for the first time, empower officials to extinguish a species of life. The proposal would permit the government to waive sections of the Act - which passed Congress in 1973 by a near consensus vote - in order to further progress on some construction projects. In other words, certain projects, like dams, would be construc- ted even if an animal or plant species would be destroyed in its wake. The benefits of such projects must "clearly outweigh" the value of the species, however. Under the proposed amendment, a special review of representatives of seven federal agencies would become responsible for deciding which species should be saved, and which should not. If not for such a safeguard, your representatives in Washington might have a heyday. Take, for example, Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah), who says "I frankly don't give a damn if a 14- legged bug or the woundfin bug live or die." Garn has proposed a second, even stronger amendment to the En- dangered Species Act, leaving state goyernors with the option of waiving its provisions, should they not prove ' ractical" in the construction projec- t9. A good number of environmental organizations have, understandably, been active in preventing the adoption df any amendments which would remove many of the teeth from the Endangered Species Act. :The initial amendment came as a result of protests from business and in- dustry, and from scientists working for the Smithsonian Institution, who have argued the current Act is "too inflexible." Wit- nesses at hearings on the amendment have pointed to an ongoing suit - to be heard in the U.S. Supeme Court next week - which asks that the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River not be completed because it would destroy the "critical habitat" of the snail dar- ter, a tiny fish which can only survive in flowing water. Backers of the amendment say that too many vital projects are being delayed or eliminated because of the fate of some insignificant species. Many of these witnesses seem to be overlooking the original intent of the Endangered Species Act - to provide some safeguard to the right of such "insignificant species" to exist.- If the government must allow itself to waive the provisions of the Act, it must at the same time make sure there are responsible people to review such a waiving. Just because it's hard to "give a damn" about some strange en- dangered species doesn't mean it must be condemned to extinction. By Howard B The 1977 Amnesty Internatio the prevalence in Mexico ofI modes of repression. The "numerous cases of people d ter being arrested" and deno of torture by federal and stat extract confessions, the appa violence employed by militar arrests, and the unacknowledg political prisoners in secret pr EVEN AFTER Marroquin c U.S. in the spring of 1974, authorities continued to cha terrorist acts. Mexican newsp to feature him under hyster "These are the Subversives Monterrey!" and "Once Aga Mad Dogs Cause Panic and F Monterreyans." He has be wounding two policemen in April 23, 1974, and of taking pa robbery in August of th Marroquin was working fora struction firm in April and was Galveston in August after suff juries in a car accident. Pay sl April 23 to May 21, filledo Zamora, the alias Marroquinv have been submitted to the Im Naturalization Service ( Marroquin is closely allied to the entire problem of un- rick documented Mexican immigrant workers in the Southwest United States. 3nal report cites Most of these people have been forced to precisely these leave Mexico - where the economic crisis is report noted so severe that nearly forty percent of the isappearing af- labor force is either unemployed or underem- unced "the use ployed - merely to survive. The U.S. e authorities to economy welcomes these immigrant arent excessive workers because they will work for low wages y and police in - at the legal minimum or below - and ged detention of because their "illegal" status makes them isons." docile. In fear of being arrested by INS police, jailed, and deported, these workers cannot crossed into the stand up against employer abuses. Last Oc- the Mexican tober, when 200 workers at an Arizona citrus arge him with ranch struck against starvation wages and apers continue animal-like living conditions, the INS was on ical headlines: the scene within two.weeks, deporting 90 of That Torment the strikers. Attacks like this warn the ain the Violent "illegals" to accept their degradation quietly, ear Among the to the advantage of American business. That en accused of these workers are in turn treated like a shootout on criminals is a classic example of how, under a art in an armed repressive social system, the victims of at year. But crime are punished in place of those who vic- a Houston con- timize them. s hospitalized in ering severe in- PERHAPS PART of Hector Marroquin's ips dating from problem is that he refused to be docile. His out to Roberto conviction of the need for socialist change, was then using, nurtured in Mexico by the fight against nmigration and government repression, was not altered by INS) officer his experiences in the United states. EDITORIAL STAFF Editors-in-chief DAVID GOODMAN GREGG KRUPA Managing Editors EILEEN DALEY KEN PARSIGIAN BARB ZAHS Editorial Page Director BOB ROSENBAUM Sunday Magazine Editors PATTY MONTEMURRI TOM O'CONNELL the university to Mexico City, where they were attacked by right-wing gangs. Over a hundred were killed, but none of the attackers were indicted. It was later revealed that the killer gangs had ties to the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI). Finally, in January 1972, Marroquin's room- mate Jesus Rivera was accused of taking part in a terrorist bank robbery and was shot to death in a police raid. Rivera had emerged from a friend's apartment, his hands up, of- fering no resistance, and he was shot fourteen times. The other suspects in the bank robbery left police interrogations with burns, bruises, and missing teeth. It can be no wonder, then, that Marroquin chose to flee Mexico when he was accused of terrorist activity in January 1974. Nor should we doubt the validity of his claim that if the U.S. government denies his pending appeal for political asylumrand deports him now, his life will be endangered. MARROQUIN WAS active in the student protests at the University of Nuevo Leon, and after Rivera's murder in 1972, he joined a socialist discussion group that became known as the Student Revolutionary committee. He left the group in August 1973 as its leaders. began to advocate guerrilla activities, which Marroquin saw as an impediment to developing broad popular support for radical change and an invitation for widespread government repression. This judgment was based on his knowledge and understanding of Rivera's fate: each terrorist action only gave the police an excuse to conduct a general sweep of radicals uninvolved in criminal ac- tivities. And that is precisely what happened to Marroquin after a university librarian was killed on January 17, 1974. He heard of the assassination, feared another witchhunt, and in fact found himself listed two days later s one of the accused. He hoped to prove his in- nocence of the charges, but after an attorney advised him against turning himself over to the Monterrey police, known for their brutality, Marroquin fled to Baja California and later to Texas. Since that time, two of the other students accused in the crime have beek killedsby police in "shoot-outs" and a third has disappeared. 'His case is simple: The Mexican government would like to see him dead, or at least in jail, and the U.S. government is willing to help by deporting Hector Marroquin.' Arts Editors OWEN GLEIBERMAN MIKE TAYLOR reviewing his asylum request. And medical reports from the University of Texas Medical Branch indicated that the hospital indeed treated a man named Roberto Zamora in the month of August for a broken leg and pelvis, injuries that incapacitated him for over a month. But this evidence of the falsity of the Mexican charges against Marroquin has not been ;taken seriously by Joe Staley, district direcdor of the INS in San SAntonio. In a letter to the State Department seeking advice on Marroquin's appeal for asylum, Staley wrote: "The three hospitals in that locale (Galveston) have been able to establish that the SUBJECT, under his true name, was not treated . . . One of the hospitals did acknowledge that an individual named Robert Zamora was admitted . . . The alien claims to have used that alias at the time, but establishment as to the alien and Robert Zamora being one and the same has not been substantiated." MARROQUIN'S treatment at the hands of INS - his arrest in September 1977 for carrying false identity papers and his sub- sequent three-month imprisonmenthas an "illegal alien," the bias and suspicion the agency bears toward his defense, and the threatened deportation - shows that his case Though he lived in fear of "la migra'' - the immigration police - he took part in a union organizing drive at a Coca-Cola bottling plant where he worked. He joined the Socialist Workers Party in 1976 and became active in the fight against deportations of undocumen- ted workers. But the U.S. government is reluctant to grant asylum to an exiled radical, who charges a government friendly to Washington with political repression. If we are not fooled about the intentions of the Mexican foxes - about their > commitment to democracy or due process-certainly the U.S. government, which we assume is well-informed, is not either. Perhaps we must also beware of the intentions of our own government in this case. We will have to fight to save the life of Hector Marroquin. t Howard Brick is a member of the Ann Arbor Committee for Human Rights in Latin America. Hector Marroquin will speak at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 18, in the Pendleton Room of the Michigan Union. STAFF WRITERS: Michael Arkush, Rene Becker, Richard Berke, Lenny Bernstein, Brian Blanchard, Bruce Brumberg, Mitch Cantor, Donna Debrodt, Eleonora diLiscia, Marianne Egri, Josh Gamson, Steve Gold, Sue Hollman, Elisa Isaacson, Margaret Johnson, Carol Koletsky, Paula Lashinsky, Marty Levine, Mitch Margo, Sheila Middlebrook, Dan Oberdorfer, Mark Parrent, Judy Rakowsky, Martha Retallick, Keith Rich- burg, Julie Rovner, Beth Rosenberg, Dennis Sabo, Amy Saltz- man, Steve Shaer, John Sinkevics, Liz Slowik, R.J. Smith, Pauline Toole, Sue Warner, Jeffrey Wolff, Shelley Woison PHOTOGRAPHY STAFF. ALAN BILINSKY....................... Co-Chief Photographer ANDY FREEBERG ................Co-Chief Photographer BRAD BENJAMIN ...................... Staff Photographer WAYNE CABLE.......................Staff Photographer JOHN KNOX. . Staff Photographer PETER SERLING.............. Staff Photographer i LETTERS S'', 11'o The Daily; The correspondents who ijastised The Daily (April 11) for 0inting Greg Lynne's article on ttudent health insurance and fibortion,'demonstrate both their 4ntolerance of differing opinion 4iid the moral bankruptcy of the .Oitreme feminist ideology which, 'tey say, demands "access to lbortion." !'hey deny that abortion kills $uaman beings, which is at the Oiert of the abortion issue, ling the unborn child merely b'agroup of cells." Since there is ono serious scientific or medical :study suggesting that the product Of human conception, from the "mment the new DNA chain is formed, is anything other than a ;ew and unique human being, the ,"rden of proof that this new sitman life does not deserve equal protection lies with the pro- ,bortionists. s: It is not moral myopia, as they contend, to believe that the ;aking of human life even at its erliest stage of development is barbaric and immoral. But it is "morally myopic to place tIative value on human life, placing a greater importance on a woman's - or a man's - con- venience than on nascent human lfe; And don't kid yourselves, a ,aige proportion of abortions are committed only because a boyfriend doesn't want to be bothered by responsibility.) Furthermore, it is the feminists themselves, and not Greg Lynne ,r any other pro-lifer we know of, *hr nntar at nracm... ,ad TO THE DAILY Abortion letter employs 'desperate feminism' To The Daily: This is in response to the letter of Deidre Feeney, Deborah Filler, and Joan Gibson ap- pearing in your April 11th issue. In that letter they chastize the Daily for publishing an anti- abortionist article containing thoughts which in their roles as censors of what is fit to print they determine to be "sensationalist rhetoric and tasteless and in- flammatory cartoons". At the risk of being sentenced along with Mr. Lynne as an emotional sensationalist I would like to point out the following fac- ts relative to fetal life which these ladies refer to as "something that is not yet human". Three to four weeks into a pregnancy the fetal heart is pumpimg. At six weeks all organs are present. At eight weeks there is readible electric brain activity. At ten weeks into the pregnancy there is spon- taneous movement of the baby's body independent of a mere stimulus response. And at twelve weeks, the end of the first trimester, electrocardiograph readings can be obtained. Now it seems to me that anti- abortionists have a right to have a public hearing and to advocate that this sort of human life ought to be protected. What appalls me is that the ladies in question would snuff out Mr. Lynne's wor- ds from the pages of the Daily with such blithe indifference, especially in the light of the fact that they put words into Mr. Lyn- ne's mnth which he never utter- reality. Human life is human life, regardless of whether or not it has yet arrived at what society determines to be the status of human personhood in the legal sense. If the ladies in question think that a fetus in the twelfth week of development, moving indepen- dently, with all of its organs in place, and with electronic brain activity is not a human person, so be it. But please, ladies, in your plea for rationality and fairness, don't tell Mr. Lynne or the Catholic Church that they have no right to make a public counter- argument, or that by engaging in public debate they are "imposing their morality on the rest of society", or that they are thereby being emotional and sen- sationlist. It is perfectly evident to me, that women should have an equitable role in society, that their rights should not be denied, that they are not simply baby fac- tories, and that there is more to women than their wombs. But it is also perfectly evident to me that fetal life is human and that there are certain rights which at tach to being human. Hitler's genocidal mania and the holocaust stand in the wings of the argument precisely because of human rights, fetal, male, female, ages, or of any color, race, or creed. -Rev. Fr. Charles E.Irvin St. Mary's Student Chapel To The Daily: book review problems To The Daily: I was embarrassed to see a review of Philip Jose Farmer's The Dark Design that appeared under my name in the Sunday Ar- ts section of the Daily (4/9/78). I) bore limited resemblance to what I actually wrote, although 90 percent of the words are probably the same. I have written a couple of books and several articles, along with much other less easily classifiable prose. Although my writing is not scintillating, it is usually at least minimally literate and almost always, I hope, comprehensible. The published review had neither of those two qualities. A point-by-point analysis would be tedious, but a few examples will establish the point. In describing the planet River- world, I said: "Any given area along the shore is populated ap- proximately 70 percent by people from one time and place, and somewhat less than 30 percent by people from another time and place .. ." Not, admittedly, the gainliest sentence possible, but it communicates the basic idea. For reasons unclear, your editor chose to omit any reference to the fact that the sentence concerned limited area, and suggest by con- text that it described the whole planet: "Seventy percent of the inhabitants come from a par- ticular time and place, the other even have to know what my sen- tence meant to know that something was wrong with your editor's sentence. Your editor also chose to insert the world "immortal" before the word "resurrectees" early in a short paragraph that ends with the statement that "(Resurrec- tees) who die by violence wake up downRiver with a new, healthy body." One can ignore whether such people are in fact immortal,' but only an editor who edited before reading the entire paragraph would think that the word "immortal" was necessary with the concept fleshed out so close at hand. And why did my reference to the "action" scenes get changed to a reference to the "exciting" scenes, with a total change of meaning? Why was 2,000,000 B.C. (count the zeroes), changed to 2,000 B.C.? Why did my reference to the author's "af- fection" get transmuted into a reference to the author's "affec- tion"? Why did the printed ver- sion say that Farmer's knowledge of history "enriches the narrative of the other minor characters" when I wrote that it "enriched the narrative with minor characters"? Why was the second to last paragraph chopped to make its last sentence a non- sequitur? The complaints would or- dinarily be the type one should make to one's editor. But when the editor chooses to rewrite my copy in a way that casts doubt on publication-or skip the idea altogether. -Jim Martin Proffessor of Law EDITOR 'S NOTE: It is stan- dard Daily practice to notify writers of any major changes being made in their sub- missions by an editor prior to publication. For some reason, the author was not notified and the copy not cleared in this instance. The Daily regrets the error. unsuper review To The Daily: For four years now I have been reading your arts reviews, and for four years now I have been dismayed by the gratuitous hat- chet-jobs that your reviewers pass off as serious criticism. Almost without exception, The Daily reviews which I have read have been condescendingly negative - despite their usual obligatory and supremely banal summation that a good time was had by all. I'm seriously begin- ning to wonder whether there is a performer alive who can satisfy your artistic standards - stan- dards, I might add, that seem as arcane as they do fluid. The latest case in point is Susan Barry's brutalization of the recent performance by the U-M Dance Company. Under the hnadline. "Dancers Green but frenetic coherency. The "imper- fect execution" and the osten- sible lack of technique, which Ms. Barry takes as proof of amateur- ness (pronounced OM- mateurness, with the appropriate disdainful nasality), seems to me to be the obvious aim of the work. One cannot, however, criticize Ms. Barry for obtuseness above and beyond the call of duty. Her comment that the second piece was smoother than the first illustrates that she has, if nothing else, a firm and solid grasp on the obvious. Finally, Ms. Barry, searching for something positive to say, places herself well within The Daily tradition of concluding a review with immemorable in- sipidity. Noting that the cheerful expressions of the lead dancers of "Yake" made that dance a joyful celebration, Ms. Barry provides valuable advice on how to get a good review. Undoubtedly, choreographers will henceforth instruct their dancers to smile in the direction of The. Daily reviewer. Yet, even if Ms. Barry knew something about dance, I don't think the review would have been a good one. It seems an unwritten rule at The Daily (although there are a few reviewers independent enough to give perceptive reviews) that a review should focus on why a performance did not meet some unrealistic and ill- defined standard. This is unfor- tunate for it encourages the easiest and worst type of criticism and discourages the