How Ciudad Ju�rez was crippled by Mexicos drug wars

Ruth Maclean, Ciudad Ju�rez & , : {}

At first sight, Ciudad Juárez is a Mexican city much like any other. An affluent border town of Wal-Marts and Holiday Inns, with old people waiting at bus stops and children walking happily home from school.

In daylight, there are few signs of its dubious distinction of the worlds most violent city with a murder rate of 191 per 100,000 inhabitants until you are shown them.

Denisse Guerrero points out the bridges from which the Juárez drug cartel hang decapitated bodies and narcomantas, banners displaying messages from the narcotráficos, as we drive past. A schoolteacher in one of Juárezs state schools, Ms Guerrero was a close friend of Lesley Enriquez, the American consulate worker killed with her husband as she drove away from a childrens party last week.

I am from one of the very few old families in Ciudad Juárez I am fourth generation, she says, driving through one of Juárezs many stretches of wasteland. My parents live here, and I like it here. We are not all narcos, as the Mexican Government likes to make out. There are a lot of good people in this city but then a lot of them are leaving.

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Abandoned houses, their windows plastered over with concrete, haunt the citys sprawling residential areas. Many of Juárezs citizens have escaped over the border to El Paso, the second-safest city in America and a short car journey for those who have the means. There, ex-juarenses have established a mini-Juárez, complete with its old restaurants, selling the burritos that were invented here.

Ciudad Juárez used to be a small, sleepy town famous for giving express divorces to couples of any nationality during the 1930s. It began to grow in the 1960s with the advent of the maquiladoras, the many foreign factories that take advantage of Mexicos cheap labour and flexible taxation and that now number more than 400. Migrants have come from all over Mexico to earn around 30 per week, and Juarez is now Mexicos sixth-biggest city. The people who join the drug gangs are often the children of these migrants, says Ms Guerrero. They see a fast way to make some money. Sometimes my pupils get involved. Two of them were killed six weeks ago.

The undeclared war on drugs has been the ill-fated centrepiece of President Felipe Calderóns programme. He has sent more than 10,000 soldiers and police to Juárez since the beginning of his presidency in 2006, and yet in that time the annual number of murders has more than doubled. We have hope for the future, said Jorge Torres, another friend of Mrs Enriquez. The situation may yet get worse, but it has to get better eventually, because if it doesnt the citizens of Juárez will take things into their own hands. Even if it means revolution.