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By Doug Cunningham

The unsolved murder of Santiago Rafael Cruz, an AFL-CIO Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) organizer, was brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C. Wednesday. FLOC tries to protect workers in the U.S. H2-A visa program who often are victims of bribery and extortion. FLOC president Baldemar Velazquez says the Mexican government isn't doing enough to bring the murderers to justice and is now considering ending protective measures that guard FLOC organizers. One of the murderers is in custody and has confessed. But so far the Mexican government hasn't arrested others this man says helped murder Santiago Rafael Cruz.

[Velazquez]: "He identified the other three people, two of whose names we got clearly and we submitted that information but the government has done nothing to pick those two men up."

Velazquez says beyond solving the murder, a political solution is needed to the abuses rampant in the current H2-A program that he says victimizes migrant workers.

[Velazquez 2]: "What this issue's really all about - apart from this tragedy - it has to do with North American corporations and the labor supply that they depend on. It's a convenient system for them and a union is trying to defend those workers and clean up the corruption that's endemic in how they procure these laborers. It's all part of an economic design and we have to change it."