El Paso Times from El Paso, Texas • 6

El Paso Times Honiiey May 9, 1988 Section 2D Deaths 3D Editorials 4B Texas City editor: Dan Elliott, 546-6124 LIlS TD Ulster vote mo stnrpnse i t. i n. Plan: Chief envisions five precinct department 2B come, Bill Kaigh of Associates, an El Paso polling firm, said Sunday. "We've done surveys before that show El Pasoans are very much in support of the police and fire. I wasn't expecting it to be this one-sided," Kaigh said.

So what made 67 percent of the voters go against the raise? "The fact that the mayor 'ay ffTJ k'-" 7 Wi 1 sdPXZS. 11 I I "A 1 38 i- 4 if? if; mmmi 1 rV. T7 I if I lwjirfiiiWwwinii' -j-- rr came out against it had a lot to do with it," he said. "The mayor has that much support." The fact that El Paso's sales tax went up Jan. 1 and again April 1 also helped kill the proposal, Kaigh said.

The county increased the sales tax by a half-percent in January, and another half-percent increase in April was to finance the city's bus system. Before the election, Rogers warned that the pay raise would lead to an increase in city Smith has raised her grades from zeros to 80s and 90s in the nine months under Aguirre's spell. "He's the father I never had," she said. "He's shown me that life is beautiful." Her mother, Estela Smith, said, "He has helped me a lot with all my children. To me, he's a special person, very giving.

I've seen a total change in my daughter." Other Btudent testimonials: Malcolm Hunt, 16, a towering freshman aiming to star in basketball: "Before, all I wanted to do was play basketball and cut school. He gave me a chance taught me that without school, I can't play ball. I learned to sacri property taxes. "People are real reluctant to have taxes go up at any time," Kaigh said. "Now that we've had two increases in sales taxes, they are even more reluctant.

Any other year, and this pay raise passes." The third deciding factor was the mayor's proposal that 25 new officers should be added to the force instead of the salary raise, Kaigh said. County Commissioner Charles Hooten had another theory: "The police union's fice. It's like he defines consistency. He stayed on my butt, and now my grades are up." Joseph Venegas, 17, sophomore, who hopes to play football without grades making him ineligible at midseason: "I was failing pretty bad. It's like getting a second chance.

Now, I'm doing my work, hitting the books." Aguirre's premise is that even the school's most desperate students can be salvaged educated without a big injection of money or highly paid experts. "These guys have been labeled irresponsible and lazy," Please see Principal 2B tactics. "We love our police, but people resented the pushy organized power polictics that the police bargaining unit mounted. Their tactics were a bit frightening." Some officers were involved in a shouting match with other city employees during a rally a few days before the election. "The booing and heckling showed a mean spirit that's unbecoming of our police image," Hooten said.

No trick questions Test won't be as hard as reported, INS says Associated Press How many states are in the Union? Who was the first president? Must the president be a citizen? Officials at the Immigration and Naturalization Service say these are the types of questions examiners will ask people granted amnesty who want to seek permanent U.S. residency. A person is eligible to seek permanent resident status 18 months after applying for amnesty. The amnesty program started about a year ago, so some legalized immigrants will become eligible for permanent residency starting this November. Immigration commissioner Alan Nelson was put on the spot at a news conference Thursday when a reporter told him critics of the INS say that the civics test questions are not as simple as Nelson suggests.

"What right is provided in the 15th Amendment to the Constitution?" the reporter asked Nelson. "I don't know about the 15th Amendment," Nelson said. "I've seen a list of questions, and I haven't seen that one on there." When the reporter asked Nelson the date of the start of the American Revolution, Nelson answered, "I'm not here to go through testing." The 15th Amendment passed during Reconstruction gave blacks the right to vote. The Revolutionary War began April 19, 1775, when British redcoats clashed with Massachusetts militiamen at Lexington. Friday, INS spokesman Verne Jervis said the questions asked by the reporter aren't on the current list and that the questions asked of Nelson "mis-Please see Questions 2B Ramon Renterla El Paso Times Manuel Aguirre, center, shared his birthday Friday with two of his "adopted" El Paso High School students, Malcolm Hunt and Marcella Smith.

By Ramon Bracamontes El Paso Times Mayor Jonathan Rogers' clout, rising taxes and the possibility of more officers led to the defeat of the police and firefighters pay raise referendum, an El Paso pollster said. By a 2-to-l ratio, El Paso voters Saturday rejected a pro- fiosal to give police and fire-ighters a 7.5 percent pay raise. The margin of defeat was more surprising than the out-- eccentric, effective Assistant principal lights fires under school underachievers By Ramon Renterla El Paso Times Once in a while, Manuel Aguirre yanks truants out of bed, shoves them into the shower and then escorts them to school. El Paso High School students define Aguirre as an eccentric problem-solver. Aguirre calls himself a hard-nosed assistant principal dispensing tough discipline with a personal touch.

This year, Aguirre adopted 15 of the school's worst problem students and tucked them under his wing. His unorthodox methods are working so well that El Paso High plans to enlist all 93 teachers next year to guide not only the potential dropout but the high achiever and average student as well. Aguirre is campus parent, counselor and inspirational leader for 15 to 20, boys and girls, mostly freshmen and sophomores. Some students were failing so badly that they had not earned any credits in four years of high school. Aguirre doesn't patrol the hallways with a baseball bat to make his point.

He simply badgers students, demanding performance. He directs students to tutoring, finds them jobs, and sometimes jumps directly into their personal problems. Teachers send progress reports and report cards directly to Aguirre. Some hard-core cases, students often tossed out of school for habitual truancy or Woman turns search for son into campaign By Chandler Thompson El Paso Times Rosario Ibarra de Piedra is seen by some as the conscience of Mexico, a modern Llorona who, like the ghostly Weeping Woman of legend, demands that her missing offspring be accounted for. Ibarra, a self-described housewife, set out to find her son who disappeared 13 years ago.

She came to Juarez last week as a fringe candidate for president of Mexico who never stops asking the same question. Where, she demands to know, is Jesus Piedra Ibarra? She has come as close as a mortal can to haunting Mexico's three most recent presidents and their ministers. Her genius for slipping past outer-office receptionists and through security details has made her as much a legend as the Llorona herself. The dignitaries, Ibarra says, are unfailingly polite and often promise to look into the case of her son. But the last hint she had that he may yet be alive came in 1983 from a political prisoner released from military custody in Mexico City.

The freed prisoner described a fellow detainee named Jesus with a scar across his face. When Ibarra last saw Jesus, he was a 23-year-old John Laird Journalists will attempt melodrama Don't think of it as paying $30 to watch El Paso media thumb their noses at political pooh-bahs. You're saying, "They do that all the time anyway." No, think of it as paying $30 to honor the memory of Polly Harris, the esteemed politician and endearing matriarch of El Paso fine arts who died last year. And think oi it as paying JO to help a future journalism student at the University of Texas at JM Paso. If you're a glutton, think of it as $30 in finger foods.

If you like to bend your elbow, think open bar. If you like fine buildings, think of it as a $30 visit to the Plaza Theater. If you like visiting the Downtown area, well, it beats shelling out $30 for pigeon food. If you like all El Paso, think of it as a way to help the El Paso Community Foundation. If you'd like another tax break, think of it as a $30 deduction.

If you don 'Hike the media, think of it as a $30 chance to watch journalists make fools of themselves. Think of it: the 1988 Gridiron Show. "Prime Time El Paso, at the Plaza Theater Thursday night. Tickets are $30 and on sale at MBanks. Grub and hooch at show at 7.

Maybe you've heard this referred to as a "roast," but it's better than that. This is not some testimonial where people take turns trading nasty barbs. It's a full-blown production. Media types have spent long hours planning and rehearsing their bawdy antics. It's about as philanthropic as you'll ever see the cynical media hounds.

Whether for the worthy cause or for laughs, pencil in the 1988 Gridiron Show on your calendar for Thursday night. Of, by and for gringos El Paso Times reader Jerry DeVore seeks the origin and meaning of "gringo." DeVore wrote: "My wife says everyone calls me 'El Gringo' behind my back kids, neighbors, even my dog and cat. The dictionary says it's a contemptuous term. I can't and mustn't accept that, given the above circumstances. I'm sure you understand.

Please help!" I wouldn't know, being a sensitive and cultured columnist. But a good source is "0 Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun," by Willard R. Espy. It reports: "Gringo, the pejorative term applied by some Latin Americans to foreigners, is usually assumed to corrupt griego, Spanish word for as in 'It's all Greek to But there are those who insist on locking the name into the Bobby Burns ballad 'Green Grow the Rushes, reportedly sung by Yankee soldiers in the Mexican War. "Some say again that it refers to Major Samuel Ringgold, a gallant officer killed in that war.

As it happens, the latter two attributions are impossible; the word is defined (as a version of griego) in Diccionario de Americanismos, published in 1787." Safety in acronyms Speaking of insults, students at Loma Terrace Elementary School in El Paso's Lower Valley have advised me that nerd and dork actually are acronyms. Nerd stands for "never-ending radical dude." Dork stands for "dynamite out-of-sight radical kid." Based on those acronyms, plus the juvenile use of radical' as a person to be admired, I'd say Loma Terrace is one school that's I full of nerds and dorks. New highway numbers add up to confusion, worry for New Mexicans A few southern New Mexico changes serious discipline problems, now are earning passing grades. They are suddenly caring about school. For all this, Aguirre is earning a reputation as a miracle worker of sorts.

Marcella "Chops" Smith, who has been struggling four years in ninth grade at El Paso High, cried when she tried to describe how Aguirre influenced her to stop being a loser. Friday, she baked a cake to celebrate his 52nd birthday. "I always thought I was dumb spent a lot of time in detention," she said. "He made me understand that I can accomplish anything I want." .111 iiiiiiMHUjjjMpiiui. LAI El Paso Times Rosario Ibarra de Piedra was in Juarez last week.

medical student living at home in Monterrey. At 7 p.m. Nov. 23, 1973, she told him to take her 1970 Ford Galaxie and go to the store for cooking oil and cheese for dinner. Five hours later, police called and said they had tried to arrest Jesus, who had been active in left-wing student politics, but that he'd gotten away: Ibarra's Ford was returned riddled with bullets.

The cheese and cooking oil she sent her son to buy were still inside the car. Mexican press reports claimed the fugitive Jesus was arrested April 18, 1975, for anti-government political activity. According to Mexican journalist and author Elena Poniatowska, his ar- Please see Woman 2B Some of the highways being renumbered in southern New Mexico: N.M. 90 from Silver City to Caballo Lake is now N.M. 152.

N.M. 28 between Interstate 25 and Radium Springs is now N.M. 157. N.M. 78 from U.S.

180 past Mogollon to Willow Creek is now N.M. 159. U.S. 80 in Las Cruces, known as Main Street, is now N.M. 478.

N.M. 273, known as Coun By Michael Scanion El Paso Times Fears are mounting across southern New Mexico that the state's new highway numbering system will result in lost tourism dollars and lost tourists. The state Highway Department is nearly finished renumbering many state routes, changing road designations that have been used on maps, brochures and advertising for decades The $300,000 project, ap- roved last year by the state lighway Commission, will create about 180 new road numbers statewide. It is designed to sort out confusing and conflicting designations. "It'll create a confusion factor probably for a year or 18 months, Carlsbad tourism executive Ray Walker said.

"From my experience with tourists, if it's easy for them; you can get them to do things. But if they can't find the turnoff or if they get confused, they'll say, 'Let go to Arizona. Walker said the renumbering problem is worsened because, in most cases, the old road signs were taken down when the new ones were installed. "The ideal thing would be to leave the old sign for about two years and then go back and take them down." Old road signs with stick-on decals that say "old" do remain along some routes, said John Gray, state traffic services Elsewhere in the Borderland Texas: Dallas area law officers learn to identify signs of criminal activity associated with satanism 4B Texas: The plight of a 7-year-old boy believed imprisoned in a bathroom for four years spurs a flood of offers of help to a child welfare center 48 try Club Road just inside the Texas-New Mexico state line, is now N.M. 184.

N.M. 176 east of Carlsbad to the potash mines is now N.M. 243. The portion of N.M. 24 between Cloudcroft and May-hill is now N.M.

130. N.M. 24 east of Cloudcroft and north to U.S. 70 is now N.M. 244.

N.M. 253 from U.S. 380 to Atkinson Street in Roswell is now N.M. 265. bers that conflict with the new road signs, spokeswoman Andrea Garcia said.

For example, N.M. 90 from Silver City to Caballo now is N.M. 152. And N.M. 78 in the Mogollon area is N.M.

159. "The problem is that we've already had our maps and brochures printed," she said. "We may get a little adhesive sticker printed to put on our maps indicating the changes." Please see Numbers 2B "Unfortunately, we decided to do that when the contract was about 90 percent complete," Gray said, adding that only a few route markers remain to be changed. Still unchanged, however, are the large green signs that mark interstate exits. "Those will be changed eventually," Gray said.

"I'm not exactly sure how many of those there are." Southwest New Mexico's major tourist draw, the Gila National Forest, has literature showing highway num.