Bush accepts aid from Mexico, silent on Venezuela but rejects help from Cuba

Los Angeles, Alta California - September 8, 2005 - (ACN) For the first time since 1846, the Mexican Army will be operating in Aztlan territory. A 35 vehicle Mexican Army convoy carrying water treatment plants, mobile kitchens and food supplies for the victims of Katrina is presently rumbling north to Houston, Tejas. The convoy is due to cross into Laredo, Tejas, early today, said a spokesman for President Vicente Fox.

Professor Javier Oliva, a political scientist at Mexico's National Autonomous University (UNAM) said that the convoy has "a very high symbolic content". He added, "This is a very sensitive subject, for historic and political reasons." The army trucks will also include 195 unarmed Mexican soldiers, officers and specialists, who will provide water and hot meals for the Black victims that were evacuated from the New Orleans area.

The convoy includes two mobile kitchens that can feed 7,000 people a day, three flatbed trucks carrying mobile water treatment plants and 15 trailers of bottled water, blankets and medicine. It also includes military engineers, doctors and nurses.

Mexico has also sent a Mexican navy ship to the Mississippi coast with rescue vehicles and helicopters. The ship "Papaloapan" left the Mexican port of Tampico on Monday and will be docking in the Mississippi River near Biloxi, Mississippi. Mexico has sent disaster relief aid to other Latin American countries, but this is the first time it has done so to the USA.

In 1846, Mexican troops advanced north of the Rio Grande in Tejas, a rebel state that had joined the United States. Mexico did not then recognize the Rio Grande as the U.S. border. Soon after the Mexican-American War began and this led to the theft of half of Mexico's territory in 1848