Killings hurt businesses, fuel anxiety in Juárez
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 05/31/2008 10:13:17 PM MDT


Workers from the Juárez morgue removed a body Thursday from the scene where four men were shot dead and a girl was wounded outside CarnicerÃ*a Hacienda, in a residential area near the intersection of Boulevard Oscar Flores and Teofilo Borunda streets in Juárez. According to witnesses, two trucks carrying black-clad men pulled up and shot the victims before speeding away. (Adriane Jaeckle / El Paso Times)Related
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JUAREZ -- The city bustles despite the heat of a scorching sun.

Children giggle, scrambling to assemble in a school yard. A rocker, sporting a wallet chain, jeans and a black T-shirt stating "Vote for Satan," struts down a sidewalk.

A soldier mans a machine gun mounted on the back of an army pickup going down Avenida Ejercito Nacional.

But hiding in the shadows is a notable sense of fear over a vicious war among drug traffickers that is behind many of about 400 homicides this year. No arrests have been made in the drug-related deaths, a war that has been called "La Limpia" -- the cleansing.

Killings include daytime shootings on major



streets, corpses left with threatening notes, and the assassination of more than a dozen police officers, including the director of the municipal police force.
The narco war is the latest blow to a city with an unwanted reputation for the unsolved murders of more than 300 young women. Those murders have spawned several books and movies.

"People don't go out anymore and when they go out, they go out afraid," Hector Contreras, 23, said while working at his family's taco stand on the Avenida

Bystanders watch the scene where four men were shot dead outside Juarez's Carniceria Hacienda. Juárez strip of shops, bars and restaurants catering to tourists.
In May, the killings spread to tourist zones, including Avenida Juárez, where two taxi drivers believed to be bystanders were fatally shot May 8. Now, heavily armed federal police riding in the back of blue pickups patrol the strip.

Shopkeepers said business has dropped by at least 50 percent at tourism-related establishments since visitors from the U.S. started staying away, especially after an anonymous e-mail warning of a bloody Memorial Day weekend began to spread two weeks ago.

"Hay más muertos que ventas," Contreras said lamenting there have been more deaths than sales.

Last year, there were about 300 homicides in Juárez. But a tidal wave of mob-style shootings began to heat up at the start of 2008, about the time President Felipe Calderón's crackdown on the drug cartels switched into high gear.

In March, the Mexican federal government sent more than 2,500 troops and federal police to help quell the violence. The killings slowed for a few weeks then restarted.

"We've come to help you," say Mexican army banners along boulevards asking residents to anonymously report criminals.

It's not as if history is on the city's side. Juárez has always been more violent than its sister city of El Paso, which is ranked as the second-safest large city in the U.S. There have been four homicides this year in all of El Paso County.

In addition to the murder of hundreds of women, Juárez also experienced a number of killings during an internal fight for control of the Carrillo Fuentes drug cartel after the death of drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes in 1997.

What's different today is that there appears to be an underlying sense of uneasiness across all levels of society, from the posh shopping malls on the city's east side to the shantytowns on the city's outskirts.

Waiting at a bus stop, Teresa Portillo, 52, said she has not seen any shootings or crime scenes but still worries about her adult children and grandchildren living in the city where she grew up.

"Now, you have to take the children everywhere. ... You have to tell them if there is a shooting to hit the ground. I tell my grandchildren to be careful," Portillo said. "The good thing is it (the killings) are not against us. It's narco against narco. They are killing each other.

"I'm Christian. I trust in God," Portillo said while looking up a quiet Avenida Lopez Mateos trying to catch a view of her bus. She is not surprised by the troubles in Juárez.

"It's written in the Bible," she said, referring to troubles of the end times.

One doesn't have to see the violence firsthand in Juárez. Street vendors hock tabloids with screaming full-color covers on the latest slaying, "Shot through the neck." Theme music similar to war coverage on U.S. television networks accompanies Juárez TV reports on Mexican military operations.

Veracruz native Priscila Rojas, 24, who works at a pharmacy, moved to Juárez about three years ago. She is one of the thousands of arrivals from the interior of Mexico lured to the fast-growing city with a population approaching 2 million. A city official said about 35,000 to 40,000 families move to Juárez each year. Many take jobs in the maquiladoras, or foreign-owned factories.

"When I first got here (to Juárez), there were deaths here and there. A shooting or a fight. But lately it's been a lot. A lot," Rojas said. "It's scary. You go out and you are looking around in all directions" for trouble.

The chances of being a bystander hit by a stray shot are less than minuscule and police officials have asked residents to go about their regular business. But there is what some have described as a "psychosis," or an irrational fear, in the metropolis.

During the May 24-25 weekend, streets were empty and businesses closed after a widely circulated e-mail carried a warning that the weekend would be the "bloodiest and deadliest" in the history of the city. There was violence, but it was comparable to other recent weekends.

On the Sunday night, the city forgot its fear as thousands of cheering Juareneses took to wide boulevards to celebrate the Juárez Indios soccer club winning its way into the top tier of Mexican soccer for the first time in 20 years.

"I knew that day that it was much more than a sports result. ... It was a moment in the most difficult time in our city," club president Francisco Ibarra said becoming emotional last week as the Juárez city council honored the team. The Indios' logo of soccer ball with a red headband can be seen all over the city.

Despite the violence and the U.S. economic slowdown, Juárez economic development leaders said that the local economy continues to expand in a crowded border metropolis where U.S. franchises intermix with tributes to the heroes of the Mexican Revolution.

But Margarita Santana worries at her stand on Avenida Juárez, where she sells sarapes, kitschy T-shirts and traditional Mexican items to the tourists who normally crossed the Paso del Norte Bridge. Fear is killing her family's lifeblood.

Santana, 35, grew up in the tourist market. Her father runs another shop nearby. It was there that she met her husband, who runs another stand.

"It's a lifetime," Santana said in Spanish. "The little English I know, I learned it here."

Memorial Day weekend was the worst because of the warning e-mail, which she described as a sick joke.

"We expected people because it was a holiday (Memorial Day) over there. We ended up closing early. We closed at 5 p.m. Normally, we close at 8. There was nobody. No Americans. No Mexicans," Santana said.

The most visible difference in Juárez as it tries to function in the middle of a drug war is what you don't see. The avenue was quiet, calm and mostly empty during a recent weekday visit.

"I think there is crime everywhere. There are wars and terrorism. But the gringos think pistoleros (gunmen) are standing there waiting to kill them as soon as they walk across the bridge," Santana said.

Daniel Borunda may be reached at dborunda@elpasotimes.com;546-6102.






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