Photometric parallaxes of Southern high proper motion stars. I.

Photometric distances derived from VRI photometry are given for 44 high proper motion stars from the Cerro El Roble proper motion surveys of Wroblewski & Torres and Wroblewski & Costa. The observations were carried out with the main purpose of estimating the distance of selected members of the above survey that are likely to be nearby. We have discovered 13 stars closer than 25 pc, the classical limit of the Catalogs of Nearby Stars (see e.g. Gliese Jahreibeta 1991) and the NASA/NSF NStars Project. Those stars of the sample whose photometric distances are less than similar to25 pc, or have proper motions in excess of 0.50 arcsec/year, are either currently being targeted by the Cerro Tololo Parallax Investigation (CTIOPI) or will be targets of a forthcoming expansion of this survey.