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OPINION

Page 4


Wednesday, January 13, 1982

The Michigan Daily 4

Edie rd bte an i y ia
Edited and rnanaged by students at The University of Michigan

Vol. XCII, No. 84

420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board

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City backs down on
student registration

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FTER A DECADE of progress,
= the city of Ann Arbor, through its
negligence, is acting to erode gains
made toward improving student voting
rights. Delays in starting a special
registration program may make it dif-
ficult for students to participate in this
dear's city general elections.
In 1975, City Council created a
deputy voter registration program,
designed to meet the special needs of
University students. The program
trains local residents, mostly students,
to act as registration officials. These
registrars go door to door or set up
locations on campus to register studen-
ts, who are often unfamiliar with city
.registration locations. The program
has proved to be effective; an average
of 1,500 students register each year
with the special deputies.
This year, city officials have delayed
starting their training classes for
deputy registrars, although student
groups urged that the classes begin in
November. City Administrator Terry
Sprenkel has agreed to start training
deputies early next month, but this ef-
fort clearly will be too late for the Feb.
15 city primary, since a student must
register one month before voting. The
delay thus has crippled chances for.
many students to participate in the
primary, and it may lead to a
diminished student turnout in the April
city general election.

City officials say they were forced
the put off the start of the program
because of budget and staff restraints,
and because of a pending lawsuit on
redistricting. But the reluctance of city
officials to devote time or effort to the
registration program may be behind
much of the city's procrastination. The
city clerk, responsible for the training
sessions, admitted she hadn't found the
time to begin the classes. These ex-
planations, however, do not excuse the
fact that the city is restraining
registration access to students, who
comprise 30 percent of Ann Arbor's
potential voting population.
The past decade has brought great
improvement to Ann Arbor's student
voting rights. Students won a court
battle to ease residency requirements
in 1971. Four years later the deputy
program was created. The possibility
of improvement in student concerns,
such as housing, rent and transpor-
tation, were vastly increased by these
reforms. Also, more students became
involved in city politics through ser-
ving in the deputy registration
program itself. Since its creation,
some 300 student volunteers have ac-
ted as registrars. Ann Arbor must now
clear up its' bureaucratic
mismanagement of the deputy
registration program to preserve the
potential for greater student par-
ticipation in city affairs.

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'Ne tza': A look at Iffe

in the' world 's

largest slum

i.

Letters and columns represent the opinions of the in-
dividual author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the at-
titudes or beliefs of the Daily.
Names will be withheld only in unusual circumstances.
Letters may be edited for clarity, length, grammar, and
spelling.

By Mary McConahay
NETZAHUALCOYOTL, Mexico-
The world's largest slum is
located alongside the jetrunways
of Mexico City's international
airport, at the edge of an old lake
bed where a few dead patches of
water still shine at sunset.
At this time of day trucks
arrive from more prosperous
parts of the city to dump moun-
tains of garbage. Young men
jump aboard before the vehicles
even stop, to grab the best of the
trash. Women and girls pore over
heaps on the ground, and the very
old fill their plastic bags with
whatever is left.
THERE IS AN established
hierarchyuanddivision of labor:
One group takes only rags,
another only tin. Through an un-
derground network, they will sell
what they find.
Today, metropolitan Mexico'
City has about 17 million people,
and its population will double in
about 20 years. The underside of
that celebrated boom is here in
"Netza": area 62 square
kilometers and growing,
population some 3.5 million and
exploding. Its people come from
Mexico's poorest states with
hopes-like the garbage
pickers' - for a piece of the
economic action.
When Alicia and Raul Martinez
arrived in Netza, they hung strips
of cardboard across part of a
narrow dirt lot between two
existing buildings and called it
home. Seven years later, the floor
is still dirt, but the Martinez
house nonetheless provides a pic-
ture of relative progress - the in-
centive drawing thousands
weekly to Netza and other Mexico
City slums collectively known as
the "misery belt."
ITS WALLS OF cement and
adobe brick enclose two small
rooms and a dark, smoky eating
shed. There is furniture now,
consisting entirely of five beds
for the couple, seven of their
children who remain at home,
and the infant boy of their 15-
year-olddaughter.
Raul succeeds in finding day

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labor about once or twice a
week and a teen-age son works
in a factory making blue jeans.
Rabbits and chickens have free
run of the house, kept not for
food-they are too precious to
eat-but because they may bring,
as much as $2 each when ready to
sell. ,
To the outsider, Netza presents
few recognizable signs of the
progress that the Martinez
family sees in its owa experience
here. It is impossible to walk in,
straight lines through the area for
instance, because there is no
drainage in the streets of the
jerry-built neighborhoods. The
low skyline is broken by in-
congruously tall buildings called
"garage hotels," places where
men from downtown can bring
women friends or prostitutes
without fear of being recognized.
MUNICIPAL services are
scanty: The Martinez' only
recently supplied themselves
with light by tapping into a
governmental - owned line. And
because Netza residents don't
have cars to transport their own
trash to the dump, it stays piled
helter-skelter in the streets until
it is eaten by dogs or rats, or
washed away by the next rain.
Yet incredible as it may seem,
for many of those who live in Net-
za, this stretch of what is
arguably one of the globe's most
appalling slums also is a lan-
dscape of hope.
"WE HAD nothing when we

came here, and now look... ,
said Alicia Martinez proudly.
A small, dark, exceptionally
courteous woman, Alicia
playfully calls her eight country-
born children "little Indians," a
mildly disparaging term. But she
calls the children and gran-
dchildren born in Netza
"Mexicanos." Beyond the joke is
a clear perception that urban is
better, that the family won't go
home again.
"We couldn't if we wanted to
because of the children," she
said. "All of them are city people
now."
Before dawn, floods of
workers-and those among the 45
percent of the population who
have no jobs but are looking for
work-leave this "dormitory
city" to make their way into the
capital, not to return until late at
night. Thus, many residents see
Netza in daylight only on Sun-
days.
NOT EVERYONE shares the
presumption of progress with
people who built the first squat-
ters' huts. Those who were born
here and those whose expec-
tations have gone sour may be
more likely to see Netza as a lan-
dscape of despair.
The time may not be far off
when some residents turn their
blame and frustrations outward.
Despite fears and indignities,
migrants to the misery belt have
come to get their hands on
money, and it is frustration in the

quest for cash that is most likely
to spark rebellion.
"Everthing is more expensive
here-food is higher than the
'established maximum price to
the public' and in the pharmacies
you'll see how overpriced the
medicines are," said Navarro.
"Its been a take-it-or-leave-it
situation."
YET IN September, when
private owners of Netza's
rickety, overcrowded buses
raised fares by 44 percent,
making them more expensive
than downtown's sleek fleet and
threatening their passengers'
marginal budgets, people
rebelled. Spontaneous demon-
strations occurred and 30 buses
were burned to hulks.
"There have been fare hikes
before when nothing like this hap-
pened," said a religious worker
who has tried unsuccessfully to
organize community awareness
and improvement groups. "It
seems when people get fed up
they'll take matters into their
own hands."
Ironically, many who
homesteaded the misery belt,
earned enough to improve their
ramshackle homes, and live -in
neighborhoods where the gover-
nment finally has begun to install
services, now are being forced to
move-pushed out by a local ver-
sion of "gentrification."
Taxed beyond what they can
afford for the services, they are
selling or losing their homes to
people from Mexico City. As
home prices soar in the city
proper, low- and moderate-
income Mexicans are coming to
the outskirts, even to Netza.
Those displaced in Netza join
the newest arrivals from the
countryside, settling miles
beyond the airport at the farthest
edge of the old salt lake, starting
all over again without lights,
water or roads-endlessly stret-
ching the misery belt.
McConahay wrote this ar-G
tice for Pacific News Service.

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