Mexico in Focus

No more blood, a desperate shout in the border

Hundreds of people rallied this Saturday in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez demanding the end of the violence in the streets of Juárez.

It was an emotive, courageous and genuine demonstration that brought together victims and people tired of the bloodshed in the neighboring city.

There were many speeches from both sides of the border, but I particularly  like the one given by Catholic priest Arturo Bañuelas, because I think it summarized the feelings of many of the people gathered in the meeting. With his permission, I'm reproducing some parts of his speech:

 

Peace and Justice without Borders

Rally 29 January 2011, Anapra Fence 

"...Right now we are living one of the worst crisis in our border history. Juarez and El Paso are two lungs of the same body that was once a thriving cultural, social and economic community; but now both our community’s futures are at stake. Hundreds of thousands of our hurting brothers and sisters are fleeing Juarez with trauma and unbearable desperation to a nation unwilling to legally welcome them. America this is not worthy of our country.

Over 3,000 murders on our border is just too much blood running in our streets leaving unbearable scars of pain that will last a life-time for fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and friends. We are disgusted and feel angry about our women so savagely tortured and our friends so viciously executed and mutilated. Fear and violence have become a way of life that for some has no end in sight. Recently I had a funeral of a young man who was beheaded and his body was riddled with over 60 bullets. You can imagine the pain of his father who had to go identify the body of his dead son. At the funeral some of his friends pledged revenge for those who did this to their friend. I can understand their anger, but this is not the solution.

We know the causes of violence on our border: poverty, hunger, the growing gap between rich and poor, NAFTA policies that ignore the plight of the poor, racism, unjust immigration laws, bailing out wall street but not the poor who are losing their homes, illegal trafficking of guns going south, our US lethal addiction for drugs that fund the cartel’s terrorism of our border community, the militarization of our border which has already shown its deathly face, and the profiteering of selling violence to children in the media. The list is long and dreadful. These failed policies and laws serve only to bring dark results: people die, violence flows in our streets. But we can say very clearly today, no law, policy, or profit of violence has ever succeeded. Also it is time to say it clearly: when we buy and use drugs, even recreationally, we are paying for bullets that kill others; and we bring unbearable suffering to families.

We have a solution. Today we bring an alternative to all of this violence and death in our midst. It comes from our solidarity for peace. There is nothing stronger in this world than our united convictions in solidarity for peace. There is always a greater power at work in our solidarity for peace even in the midst of the forces of darkness that surround us. God put in every human heart this desire for peace.

However, the most significant reason for violence comes from our disconnection with each other. This distance translates into bloodshed, hate, carnage, and brutal hostility. Peace is born from our efforts to connect with each other and to value each other as sacred. We are all linked as one human family. We stand together or we fall together. We are each other, and we need to help each other. If I diminish you I diminish myself. If I promote the good in you, I promote the goodness in me and also in everyone else at the same time. The road to peace is in our walking hand in hand with each other as one.

Our creator God made us good not criminals, narcos, terrorists or murderers. This is why I still believe that there are more good people in the world than bad, and there is really more good in the world than bad, that we have an unbelievable capacity for goodness; and today we are here to celebrate the coming victory of our oneness over the violence of our divisions.

As long as there is violence toward each other we all remain incomplete as human beings. At this time of such chaos and violence, when human life seems so dirt cheap, we much proclaim that each person matters, that they matter enormously to us, for we are each other. When we do this we are renewed as a people, the world turns toward peace as a better solution; and peace reigns. Violence is not the way to solve violence. We can break this vicious cycle of violence with our solidarity for peace.

This is a historic moment for us on the border. Let us commit ourselves to one another today. Embrace each other and see our future exploding in our midst. Do not live in fear. Be ready to show your resolve. Justice will triumph over hate, love will conquer violence, and our compassion will overcome our divisions.

I still believe in the dream of a better Juarez and El Paso. That is why we will not surrender to your bullets of fear. Hope runs through our veins and the cause of peace endures in our hearts. Justice is coming. Peace is at hand. We can feel confident today because God is on the side of peace. Let us become more passionately determined in our convictions for solidarity and its victory in our lives.

Ya Basta! Too many people have worked too hard, sacrificed too much; too much blood has been spilled for us to be bystanders in the emerging new border. Together we will prevail in the face of death. Amigos, Amigas, we will rise again!

Father Arturo Bañuelas 

 

Todos Somos Juárez, the reality speaks by itself

This weekend marks the first anniversary of the massacre of 15 young students in the neighborhood of Villas de Salvarcar.

The night of Jan. 30, a group of armed men burst into a private party shooting at the attendants, most of them middle and high school students.

The massacre was widely covered by the national and international press and prompted the federal government to take actions against the increasing violence in Ciudad Juárez.

Twelve days after the killings, president Felipe Calderón visited Juárez and held several meetings with political leaders, businessmen and civil organizations, among others. A plan aimed to restore Cd. Juarez’s social fabric and to reduce the criminality was born as a result of those meetings. It was called “Todos Somos Juárez”.

The strategy included 160 actions aimed to attack structural problems in the areas of housing, education, employment opportunities, health, culture and recreation, to mention a few.

Some of the concrete actions were the rehabilitation of public spaces such as parks, community centers, and soccer fields as well as the construction and rehabilitation of schools. The total budget for the 160 actions was $282.1 million.

According to the Todos Somos Juárez’s webpage, 82 of those actions have been completed as October 2010, when the last revision of the plan was posted.  With a dozen of exceptions, the majority of the rest of the commitments had a completion dateline for December 2010.

It would means that, at least in paper, Cd. Juárez is in the track of restoring its social fabric: Children are getting economic support to stay at school, adults are getting training for new jobs, most people are getting access to health care, public spaces are getting safe, there is continuing patrolling and more opportunities for housing and education.

Some of the actions are visible and easy to measure, but what it is difficult to evaluate is how these actions have helped to restore the social fabric. Ironically, just last Sunday seven people, among them a minor– were killed in one of the new soccer fields, and according with figures of the local press, between Friday and Monday 40 people were killed in the city.

It would be naïve to think that the social fabric of a city so deteriorated by years of negligence could be restored in one year, but it is discouraging to see that nothing, absolutely nothing seems to stop Juarez’s painful agony.

A year has passed since the tragedy of Villas de Salvarcar, but massacres in Juárez are becoming just part of the statistics of the violence. They are not prompting the government to do anything additional. They have become “normal” in a society devoured by crime.

Most likely the government –at the state and federal level– truly believe they have enough plans to recover peace in Juarez; probably they really think their plans are giving results. Most likely in their world –where the violence is just statistics and not vivid human dramas– there are significant advances in the fight against organized crime.

But that is their world. In the streets and neighborhoods of Ciudad Juárez, the reality speaks by itself.

 

 

Exodus from Juárez will continue, researchers warn

Researchers and professors from the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez (UACJ) have been constantly documenting the impact of the violence in the lives of the Juarenses.

Some of their studies have shed light on the exodus of Juarenses to El Paso or to other cities in the interior of Mexico due to the drug trafficking violence. One  leading research center, the Centro de Investigaciones Sociales (CIS) in collaboration with the  Observatorio de Seguridad y Convivencia Ciudadana have estimated that around 230,000 people left Juárez in 2009, leaving behind more than 32,700 homes abandoned. The researchers have collected data to infer that at least 54 percent of that people –one of the highest estimates of the Juarez-El Paso migration– might have come to El Paso.

CIS’ researcher Alberto Ochoa Zezzatti has been working with artificial intelligence models to make projections for the future of the city. In 2009, his model estimated that the number of killings in the city would reach around 3,000 in 2010, a figure which was very close to the more than 3,100 registered at the end of the year.

His projections for 2011 don’t offer a better picture for the future. According to his estimates, the number of assassinations will surpass 5,000 by the end of this year and the exodus of people from the city will continue. Ochoa’s model estimates that the total population of Ciudad Juárez will go under 1 million people by 2012.  Preliminary figures from the 2010 Mexican Census found that 1,328,017 people are living in Ciudad Juárez as of today.

Ochoa builds his models based on patterns of human behavior under different circumstances or variables, such as place of origin, job conditions, education,  income and prosperity, among others. It is a heuristic model, which means that it is based in suppositions. Because of that, its accuracy isn’t total.

However, Ochoa’s model looks at the current situation in Juarez through an interesting lens and its findings are a warning of what could happen to the city if the spiral of violence continues at same pace. “The continuing migration of people from Juárez -mostly from middle class- will have a devastating effect on the society”, he warns.

If the trends continue, he says, by 2020 there will be two separated cities in Juarez. One will grow and develop in the north along the border and those areas that are still operating in downtown; the other one will extend through the south, where the most neglected people are living now. Wedged between these two cities there will be a strip of abandoned houses.

While listening to Ochoa I was imagining an apocalyptic city in less than 10 years, but social analysts do their research with the hope that their findings will have an impact in the design of public policies in a way that the worse case scenarios don't become a reality. Hopefully this will be the case.

 

 

The first troubled Mexican election in 2011

On January 30, the people from the southern state of Guerrero will choose a new governor. But on the eve of the election, a wave of violence currently happening in the state is foreshadowing how troubled and controversial the first election of 2011 could be.

In the first 15 days of this year, at least 80 people have been executed in the state, which is known worldwide by the Port of Acapulco, its wonderful beaches and nightlife. A combination of drug trafficking and political violence has put the state in the sight of political analysts and election officials.

Few days ago, Guillermo Sanchez Nava, who was part of the campaign team of the leftist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) candidate for governor, was brutally assaulted allegedly by members of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). As a result of the aggression, Sanchez Nava remains in coma since Jan. 12.

The PRI and the PRD are getting involved in mutual accusations of provoking the violence. Local press is reporting that more violence would erupt today during the first public debate among candidates.

Political violence is not strange to the state of Guerrero. During the seven decades of PRI’s hegemony, the “caciquismo” –a political model based on repression, clientelism (buying votes) and charismatic authority– reigned in several regions of the state. The town’s caciques were the equivalent of a dictator, abusing their powers and repressing people with torture, jail sentences and even disappearing or killing detractors.  That was a form of government that prevailed for so many years affecting mostly the rural areas. Although in 2005, the PRI lost the control of the state against the PRD candidate, the political violence continues. The caciquismo was not eradicated but simply transformed, corruption and impunity prevail and organized crime has flourished as in the rest of the country. Besides that, the two main political parties have been involved in a confrontation that has left more than 26 members of the PRD killed in the last five years.

If this was not enough, the structural causes of the violence in Guerrero  –extreme poverty, high illiterate and mortality rates, among others– have not disappeared yet. The emergence of Guerrero as a distribution center for cocaine has added complexity to the situation. The military presence in the state has resulted in more violence and also in an increase in the number of human rights violations denounced in the last years.

Guerrero has a population of 3 million people and 17.2 percent of them are indigenous. From the total of the population, 22 percent are illiterate; in some areas, that percentage reaches 80 percent. In fact, along with Oaxaca and Chiapas, Guerrero is part of the so called “extreme-poverty triangle” of Mexico. The poorest areas in the state are located in the mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental, where opium and marijuana grow easily. In fact, Guerrero holds the first place in the nation in cultivation of poppy and in the production of opium gum, and thousands of impoverished peasants have been dragged to cultivate it.

Until recently, the production of drugs in Guerrero was under control of the Arturo Beltran Leyva’s organization, but after his death in 2009, other groups have been fighting to take control of the plaza.  This has lead to an increase of violence and gruesome assassinations.

In few words, Guerrero has all the elements of a powder keg: there are two parties using the most archaic methods of political confrontation –beating the adversaries, buying votes, threatening populations, and probably dealing with drug trafficking issues too. Then there is the extreme poverty and the lack of welfare for the majority of the population. Aside of that, there are the drug traffickers taking advantage of the impoverished people, and on the top of it, there are the drug cartels fighting each other and the government trying to fight them.

In a scenario such like this, the first Mexican election of 2011 doesn’t look any promising. The Guerrero state is very unique in the Mexican political geography, but many of the conditions in which the election will happen are similar to other states. In this sense Guerrero could anticipate how the political atmosphere would be for the entire country for the rest of the year.

 

 

 

The noisy violence of Mexico

The political and cultural magazine Nexos has published a very interesting article written by Harvard scholar Viridiana Ríos about public perception of the violence.

Basically, the article states that in spite of the growing number of homicides and crime, Mexico is still considered one of the most safest countries in Latin America and furthermore, it is safer now that it was seven years ago.

The author does a comparison between the levels of the violence in Mexico and other Latin American countries, underlying that nations like El Salvador or Brazil have a higher rate of violence than Mexico. In the case of Brazil, for instance, the homicide rate is even 133 percent higher than the same indicator for Mexico.

But, what makes Mexico's violence more remarkable and memorable than Latin America’s violence is the media attraction that it generates. 

“Our violence is noisy. El Salvador and Latin America’s violence is stealthy”, the author says. “Our violence is noisy because unlike common homicides, the homicides committed by drug traffickers are cruelest and they occurred in short, intense and geographically defined periods… Beheadings, torture and other forms of cruelty sell too much and they are placed in the front pages of newspapers”.

Ríos states that the violence in Mexico is noisy also because it affects public figures like politicians and journalists. The killing of journalists and politicians has a particularly negative impact in the public opinion because it is always followed by strong media coverage, she says.

In summary, the author states that the public perception of violence is strongly influenced by its media impact, but that perception doesn’t necessarily reflects the reality of the numbers.   Tamaulipas, for instance, is perceived as one of the most violent states in the country because of the high profile of some of the victims –including a candidate for governor– and the cruelty of the criminal acts. However, if one just looks at the numbers of homicides, Tamaulipas has a much lower rate of homicides than Chihuahua, Sinaloa or Guerrero.

But perception matters and it matters a lot. If the public opinion –foreign leaders, investors, educators, etc– continue perceiving Mexico as a place of beheaded bodies, kidnappings, grenade explosions or massive and insane killings, who would like to bet in the country? Who would be willing to risk their capitals to invest in Mexico? Who would take the risk to travel there?

Rios concluded that minimizing the high impact violence and to reduce the homicide rates should be the main point of a national security policy because that is the only way that Mexico can improve its public image. One cannot agree enough with her statement.

 

Politics in the middle of the drug war

If we judge by the words of Mexican politicians, Mexico has been extremely successful in its war against organized crime: According to Alejandro Poiré, secretary of the National Security Council, 51 percent of the most wanted Mexican criminals have been arrested from March 2009 to date.

According to Poiré, the structures of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas (two of the most powerful criminal organizations) have been severely undermined by the detention of some of their leaders. With these historical numbers, he said, half of the assignment of this war has been done.

If we judge by the daily evidences of the drug war, the conclusion is not so optimistic: There is not a single indication that the violence is decreasing; on the contrary, the violence is taking over other areas of the country and it is affecting more civilians than ever.

It is laudable that the government is doing its job fighting criminals and we should applaud them for that, but that doesn’t mean the rampant problem is close to being solved. Poiré is getting ahead of himself by declaring victory in the midst of the battle –specially when scenes of horror tarnish the reputation of touristic places like Acapulco, when the killing of local politicians continue and when the mayor of one of the most industrialized and wealthy municipalities in Mexico admits that crime is beyond their possibilities to control it. Poire's words reveal a desperate attempt to convince people that the government is winning the war, but at the same time, they have the recognizable smell of politics.

This year starts the real fight for the Mexican Presidency. Although the electoral process will begin officially Oct. 1, all the political forces in Mexico have begun getting ready for battle. Everything that it is being said or done in Mexico right now has a political connotation.

In that context, we’ll be listening to plenty of noise regarding the current government’s achievements in the drug war, but beyond the parade of numbers and spectacular announcements, what we want to see is a real reduction in the amount of the violence. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

 

 

 

Mexican diplomats and their impossible mission

Patricia Espinosa, Mexico’s minister of foreign affairs, is asking the country’s diplomatic corps to perform an almost impossible mission: she wants consular agents and ambassadors to work harder at spreading the word about Mexico’s achievements and to reclaim the good image of the country at the international level.

I placed myself in the shoes of these diplomats and I came up with a list of those achievements. The list is based on the things the Mexican government frequently boasts about it:

–The estimated economy growth for 2010 was at least 5 percent in 2010. For the current year, the estimated growth is about 3.9 percent. Foreign investment is also expected to grow especially in the manufacturing sector.

–Employment: A total of 730,348 new jobs were created in 2010, the highest number in the last 14 years.

–Welfare and social security: According to government numbers, by the end of this administration the total of the population will be covered by the Seguro Popular, a health care initiative aimed to protect unprivileged members of society.

–Security: At least 10 leaders of powerful criminal organizations were captured, extradited to the United States or killed in 2010.

These are some of the most-publicized achievements listed on the government’s websites. However, it beyond challenging for Espinosa to believe that Mexico’s diplomats can change the country’s image abroad. One only has to review the pages of international newspapers to prove that the news about the violence, corruption and impunity in Mexico prevails over any other positive story. Unfortunately, this is the foremost image the world has of Mexico.

To create a new image of Mexico, it would be absolutely essential to really change things within the country, to really fight against corruption and to create the basis for a new justice system. The government has made efforts to do this, but the results are not visible yet, and I’m not so sure if these efforts will bear fruit in the future.

In the meantime, Mexico’s consular agents and ambassadors will be testing their abilities “to sell” an image of Mexico that most Mexicans would find difficult to recognize. Let’s see how imaginative and creative these diplomats can be.