Fecha de Publicación: Domingo, Abril 5, 2009
What’s next for Juarez
Timothy Roberts
El Paso Inc.
City’s ‘post-war’ plan takes shape
JUAREZ – More than 7,000 soldiers and federal police have kept the streets of Juárez quiet for almost a month, and El Paso’s larger neighbor to the south is putting into place what city hall insiders call the “post-war” plan.
Based on the “I ™ New York” public relations campaign created by the Giuliani administration after it cleaned up New York City’s streets 20 years ago, the “AMOR por Juárez” campaign hopes to bring back pride in the city and encourage respect for law and order among Juarenses.
“We were a city that did not have compliance with the rules and regulations that a city should have, and we are going to try to change that,” Reyes Ferriz says.
At the same time, the mayor is furiously hiring new police officers to replace the hundreds fired for corruption and to more than double the size of the department — to at least 3,000 officers.
Time is of the essence because the Federales and the soldiers will begin to depart at the end of the year, the mayor says.
Reyes Ferriz says the reborn police department will be more than adequate to keep the drug cartels from turning Juárez into the killing field it was in 2008 and early this year. More than 2,000 people died in Juárez during the murder spree as the Juárez and Sinaloa cartels battled over the Juárez plaza or drug route.
Lying low
The drug cartels are lying low right now because they are vastly outgunned, says Scott Stewart, vice president for tactical analysis at Stratfor, a global intelligence company based in Austin. “With that much firepower, the cost is too great for the cartels.”
But there are skeptics who doubt that Juárez can keep its cops clean and others who say that what Juárez and, indeed, México, need is some very fundamental change in attitudes and practices.
“The problem is not drugs but governance,” says Miguel Fernández, the former CEO of Northern México’s Coca-Cola bottler, who now serves on the board of Plan Estratégico de Juárez, a citizens group that is trying to politically empower the citizens of Juárez.
To Fernández, the changes that must come are much more serious than hiring police officers and tending to manners.
“I think that violence and drugs and the rest of the things we are dealing with are just the consequence of a lack of good governance and a lot of corruption between private enterprise and politicians,” he says.
That corruption is widespread in México and extends beyond the little bite or mordida of the traffic cop. Gerardo Licon, who runs a civil engineering business in El Paso and Juárez with his wife, says he cannot do business with public agencies in México without violating his ethical obligations as a licensed engineer.
Among his complaints are agencies that want a certain outcome to a study and bureaucrats who simply expect a gift as part of awarding a contract.
“It is a very deeply rooted problem,” says Licon, who serves on the advisory board for Plan Estratégico de Juárez.
The problems are manifested in neighborhoods that flood, like El Barreal, south of the municipal airport. Fernandez said homes there flood because of bad engineering and the general failure to obtain the proper permits.
The same is true of what was supposed to be an ideal workers’ neighborhood built at the insistence of a former Chihuahua governor. The state built the Riberas del Bravo neighborhood apparently without any care for any physical fact.
An open sewer runs through the middle of the neighborhood. Most of the 10,000 homes have been abandoned, says Fernandez.
Reform and redress
“This tragedy could have been avoided,” says Lucinda Vargas, executive director of the Plan Estrategico. The organization is helping homeowners in both locations seek redress.
It is also trying to get workers, professors and politicians to agree on the need for reform that will lead to a bigger voice for citizens, greater attention to social issues and the end to what Mexicans call impunity, or the ability to avoid any punishment for committing a crime.
The most common estimate of the chance of getting caught, found guilty and sentenced to some form of punishment in México is one in 10.
Reyes Ferriz was once an active member of Plan Estrategico, but has kept a little distance from it lately, saying that it lost its original purpose of developing an economic strategy for Juárez.
“Recently the group got involved in politics,” Reyes Ferriz says. “I don’t think that having a strategic plan has anything to do with politics. In fact it has to be separate from politics.”
AMOR
With the AMOR por Juárez campaign, Reyes Ferriz hopes to change attitudes through pride. (AMOR spells love in Spanish, and it is also an acronym for Alianza Municipal de Orden y Respecto, or alliance of order and respect.)
Thursday night, Reyes Ferriz launched the program with a rally at Centro Civico Cultural Paso del Norte, complete with music and the blessing of the Chihuahua Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza Terrazas. The entourage of speakers and singers called for “love, hope, truth and peace.”
Reyes Ferriz’s plans go deeper than slogans, however. In addition to rebuilding the police department, he sees a huge need for the social infrastructure that has long been ignored.
“We need drug treatment centers,” he says. “We need day care centers. We need the transportation structure to get people to school. We need to make sure that violence and everything else that comes from not taking care of social issues will not rise again.”
But most of all, right now, he wants to proclaim peace.
“We want to let people know that we are back in business,” says Reyes Ferriz. “The city is back to usual.” |
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