Thread: Juárez violence leaves thousands of children orphaned

Juárez violence leaves thousands of children orphaned, traumatized
By Adriana Gómez Licón \ El Paso Times
Posted: 10/10/2010 12:00:00 AM MD

JUAREZ -- Pedro turned 9 years old the day somebody killed his father.

A gunman shot him in the head at a convenience store last summer.

"Pedro was enraged," said his mother, Bertha, a social worker. She did not want her family's last names to be published for safety reasons. "I told him that sometimes things happen that we don't understand, but that his father is with God."

Pedro heard the words, but the violence he experienced changed him.

Once docile and quiet, he became an angry child, his mother said. He also began to have breathing problems.

As an epidemic of violence spreads through this border city of 1.3 million, more and more children are left without one or both parents. Therapists estimate that about 10,000 children have been orphaned because of drug-cartel violence that exploded in 2008.

Since then more than 6,600 people have been killed in Juárez, giving the city the unwelcome designation as the world's homicide capital.

Juan González, director of a nonprofit organization that offers psychotherapy for low-income families, said the majority of murder victims were parents of at least two children. Most of those killed were between the ages of 20 and 39.

Juárez, a place where murders routinely go unsolved, generally is not equipped to provide psychological treatment for children who become orphans. This means that more violence could be simmering just below the surface, González said.

"In 10 or 15 years, these children could become criminals seeking revenge for losing their parents," he said.

Bertha's oldest son, Humberto, 21, was tempted.

"Some kids told him they were going to help him find who killed his father if he sold drugs," Bertha said. "They wanted to lure him into criminal activities."

In terms of psychological help, especially neglected areas are in northwest and southeast Juárez -- the most dangerous sections of the city.

Bertha said she cannot afford to drive her three children from the western outskirts to a clinic that offers psychotherapy. Bertha lives in a spacious but unfinished house in an area where most streets are unpaved.

Because her daughter, Ivonne, is a U.S. citizen, Bertha sent her to school in El Paso, away from the violence. One day in El Paso, Ivonne, 14, cut her arms.

"She told me, 'I did it because I wanted to feel pain like my father felt when he was killed.' "

Bertha brought Ivonne back home to Juárez.

Therapists want to start a directory of 100 psychologists to reach out to families such as Bertha's. Other cities in Chihuahua and in Mexico want to use Juárez as a model to organize similar groups.

Some of the techniques therapists are learning in Juárez are methods to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Juárez is going through symptoms that are very similar to the ones in countries in war," González said.

The process is hard for children younger than 10 because they are highly dependent on both parents, he said. But it can be just as hard for teenagers, who are in the process of finding their identities.

González said the treatments in place are for groups because of the large number of children in need.

Alberto RodrÃ*guez Cervantes, a professor with the Regional Institute of Family Studies in the city of Chihuahua, has trained therapists in Juárez on how to treat orphans. He said children suffer from anxiety and eating and sleeping disorders. They also become students at risk of failure or quitting school.

RodrÃ*guez said the group of therapists wants to extend training to police and paramedics because they often are the first to establish contact with children in murder cases.

"We want to teach them emotional first-aid techniques," he said.

For instance, sometimes the healing process starts when children get to see their fallen parent one last time at the crime scene, he said.

Besides the therapists' plans, Chihuahua's new governor promised last week at his inauguration to confront Juárez's problem of orphanhood. César Duarte instructed the state Treasury Department to create a fund of about $8 million to treat children in Juárez who are left without parents.

RodrÃ*guez said government had not done enough.

"We are very disappointed in the government because there has not been real support for children facing orphanhood," he said. "But it is a collateral damage the whole community is suffering from."

In a recent church therapy session for kids coping with orphanhood, a 16-year-old girl looked timid. The teenager twirled her hair repeatedly and smiled, but it was clear that grief invaded her thoughts. She wrote on a heart-shaped sheet of paper that sadness equaled guilt.

One year ago, her father was killed in Juárez.

"I was happy, optimistic. I cared about different things before," she said. "Now it is the violence."

Adriana Gómez Licón may be reached at agomez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6129.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_1630 ... ost_viewed

RodrÃ*guez said government had not done enough.

"We are very disappointed in the government because there has not been real support for children facing orphanhood," he said.







Wanna know why your government doesn't give a rats a$$ about this Rodriguez?

Because they're too busy getting into the United States business and filing lawsuits against a sovereign state in the United States. (Arizona)

Priorities, ya know!!

The orphans in Juarez have been suffering long before all of this violence.
Mexico is using the cartel violence as a handy excuse for their own dereliction of their duties as law enforcement and government officials.
Two things come to mind that I personally witnessed...
The orphanage that I saw in Juarez a few years ago wasn't even a building. It was a crudely constructed hut made out of wood pallets covered with plastic garbage bags. Also a few years back....and I found this to be outrageous....a new school was supposed to open in Juarez. The teachers and students reported to the new school for the first day and guess what?
THERE WAS NO SCHOOL. It had never been built! At the time, I kept wondering, how in the hell does that happen? How does a population of people all get brainwashed into the belief that a school was built that they could see with their own eyes had not been built? On that first day, the students and teachers actually went on and had classes in the open air right on the spot where the school was supposed to have been built.
Mexico doesn't give a damn about it's children. Unless it serves their purpose when it comes to the political arena.

It must be our fault - everything bad that happens in Mexico is our fault.

If mexico gave a sh!t about their children they wouldn't be so eager to ship them over here let's be honest about this its our problem were the one who are going to have to care for them when they finally sneak over here! One more reason for the mexican goverment to deal with their own issiues and mind their own bisness thought their president was a humanitarian all proud of TJ.