The Border Nexus of Crime and Commerce: Ciudad Juarez and El Paso

291 _{Felbab-Brown, 2011, pp. 37-8.} 292 _{Garzón, 2010, p. 102.} 293

_{Ellingwood, Ken, “Mexico vs. drug gangs: A deadly clash for control,” in The Los Angeles}

Times, 3 June 2008, accessed from http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-me- haven2,0,1246611.story on May 21, 2013.

A Market of Narcotic Violence does not have what Clausewitz might recognise as a centre of gravity, but if it did, it would likely be Ciudad Juarez, which is located in northern Chihuahua state, directly across from El Paso, Texas. Juarez is useful in this context because it represents a critical terrain for DTOs in a tactical sense. It is also a microcosm of the dynamics of the border, which is the most critical piece of terrain to the participants in the conflict. In order to better understand the El Paso/Juarez dynamic and its place in the conflict, an October 2011 fieldwork visit to El Paso is part of this analysis. Unfortunately, the ongoing security concerns,294 _{made travel into Juarez itself impractical.}

Juarez and El Paso form the “world's largest border metropolis,” joined by culture and history and divided by a border fence and the shallow, narrow and sluggish Rio Grande. In many respects, the two are functionally indistinguishable. Driving through El Paso, there are dozens of cars with Chihuahua state license plates, and although El Paso's downtown resembles that of many other medium-sized American cities, its nearby 'golden horseshoe' neighbourhood, which abuts the border, might as well be in Mexico: nearly every sign is in Spanish, every radio seems to be set to Spanish-language stations, and the vast majority of residents are of Mexican ancestry. The lives of the two cities are run through with deep interlinkages: in addition to the many families with members living on both sides of the line, conversations with El Paso residents indicated that up until 2008 it was extremely common for them to simply walk across the international border into Juarez for a meal, shopping or a night out. The grim realities of the violence in Juarez seem to have put a stop to that practice. Now, El Paso and Juarez are deeply divided by a simple risk calculus: where Juarez had over 3,000 murders in 2010,295 _{El Paso had 5.}296 _{The combination of post-9/11 security measures,} political pressures around border control and the surge in drug violence have made crossing the border a time-consuming, frustrating experience. Heeding the fairly unambiguous travel

294

_{These security concerns were expressed in a variety of forms, including the inevitable}

diplomatic travel warnings, along with more specific warnings, such as the notes on my local map and near the border crossing points warning travellers not to bring firearms into Mexico.

295

_{Felbab-Brown, 2011, p. 10.} 296

_{Texas Department of Public Safety, “Texas Crime Report for 2010,” Ch. 10, accessed from}

advice of the State Department,297 _{Americans have largely stopped traveling into Juarez,} which has devastated the city's once-thriving tourism industry – and, in doing so, reinforced the economic rationale for involvement in drug trafficking.

The recent level of violence in Juarez is unparalleled in the city's history, at least going back to the early 20th _{century, when the city was a critical battleground in the Mexican Civil War.}

Under the PRI's rule, tensions were generally high between the Mexican and American governments, but the mid-20th _{century period saw the development of increasingly strong}

informal cross-border relationships. Twinned border cities, including San Diego and Tijuana and a plethora of smaller cities, towns and settlements developed increasing trade across the frontier, paired with the development of families spreading both north and south of the line. These organic, apolitical linkages predated any kind of formal border control by the national governments, giving smugglers a number of advantages over their law-enforcement counterparts.298 _{Up until roughly the 1970s, the illicit trans-border trade largely consisted of} small consumer items, cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, heroin destined for customers in the immediate border region.

As an example, Howard Campbell relates the story of La Nacha (“The dope queen,” whose real name was Ignacia Jasso González), one of the most famous and influential drug traffickers in Juarez from this period. While reliable information on the drugs trade from this period is difficult to come by, it appears that La Nacha came to control the heroin trade in Juarez from the 1930s until the 1960s, accumulating a fortune of at least $4.4 million in the process. The interesting contrast between La Nacha and her successors is that her business was locally-oriented; she bought heroin on the Mexican side of the border and sold it there as well, either to American tourists (including a large number of American soldiers on leave from nearby Fort Bliss) or in bulk to individual smugglers, who were specialists in crossing the border with illicit cargo and had their own contacts on the northern side of the border. There 297

_{United States Department of State, “Travel Warning, Mexico, November 20, 2012,” accessed}

from http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_5440.html on 21 May 2013.

298

_{Campbell, Howard, Drug War Zone: Frontline Dispatches from the Streets of El Paso and}

Juarez, (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2009), Kindle Edition, Part 1, “The Roots of Contraband Smuggling in El Paso.”

was violence associated with the trade in La Nacha's day, of course, but it was localised and limited in scale – evidenced by the fact that she died of old age, peacefully and free, in 1977.299

The next important development for Juarez was the passage of NAFTA. With the significant easing of tariffs and trade bureaucracy between Mexico and the U.S. came a significant incentive for companies to locate operations in Mexico, where labour was cheaper, but as close to the U.S. border as possible in order to minimise the costs and complexity of shipping. The foreign-owned factories that sprang up along the border in the wake of NAFTA's passage were known as maquiladoras, and their promise of better wages led to a massive wave of migrants moving from southern Mexico to Juarez and its surrounding area. The

maquiladoras were far from a blessing for the city. Between the overabundance of migrant workers and the general laxity of Mexican labour laws, wages are generally very low, forcing workers to live in overcrowded slums. In addition to the poor conditions, another danger emerged prior to the onset of widespread drug violence: hundreds young women, mostly poor

maquiladora labourers, were murdered in the early 2000s. Most of these cases remain unsolved.300 But if the coming of the maquiladoras brought social problems, the slow death spiral of the region's economy (thanks in part to competition from even cheaper production elsewhere in the developing world and in part to the recession of 2007) have not undone those effects; rather, they have left the city with even more underemployed residents, putting a strain on social services and offering a fertile recruiting ground for drug gangs.

As the other economic options dwindled, drug trafficking became an increasingly attractive alternative means of financial support, regardless of the risks. But not only does Juarez represent a desirable route into the United States, it has also increasingly become a contested drug market in its own right. As a result, two parallel “tracks” of violence are unfolding – more organised violence for control of the border approaches, and more free-form violence for control of the local plazas and tienditas. In some respects, the two are deeply connected: the availability of ad hoc violent specialists who have cut their teeth in local battles for plazas

299

_{Ibid., Part 1, “La Nacha: The Heroin Queen of Juárez.”} 300

_{Bowden, Charles, Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields,}

and tienditas has made it much easier for the larger trafficking organisations to contract out their operations in Juarez to locals – and their numbers (along with the ready availability of arms in nearby American gun shops) have driven down the price of violent services dramatically. This lack of accountability and professionalism, along with the fear amongst contract assassins that they will become victims themselves if they fail their missions,301 _which accounts for some of the worst, most indiscriminate crimes in Juarez, as when 15 teenagers were machine-gunned as they attended a party in 2008. Although a number of people were subsequently arrested and convicted for the attack, the trial was marred by accusations that the accused had been tortured by police.302

In response to such wanton attacks, and the overall lack of security in Juarez, the Calderón Administration undertook a multifaceted strategy to try to rein in the level of violence in the city. In addition to permanently stationing federal police and Army units, and installing as police chief Julian Leyzaola,303 _{a former Army colonel who had previously taken over and} reformed the police department in Tijuana (although not without substantial complaints that his forces serially violated human rights and due process)304_{, the Mexican government began a} series of public restoration programmes, such as Todos Somos Juarez (“We are all Juarez,”) to rebuild the city and its civic institutions as a bulwark against drug trafficking. The government presented these measures as part of a two-track strategy, along with increased armed campaigns against local traffickers. While these efforts had (at best) a mixed record,305 the level of violence in Juarez did decline a small but significant amount in 2011 and 2012 – though the lower rates were still significantly higher than both the overall rate of violent crime

301

_{Felbab-Brown, 2011, p. 11.} 302

_{Martinez-Cabrera, Alejandro, "4 found guilty in Juarez massacre," The El Paso Times, July 8,}

2011, accessed from http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_18436719 on 22 May, 2013.

303

_{Felbab-Brown, 2011, p. 12.} 304

_{Finnegan, William, “In the Name of the Law,” The New Yorker, 18 October, 2010, accessed}

from http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/18/101018fa_fact_finnegan on 21 May 2013.

305

_{Meyer, Maureen, “Tackling Urban Violence in Latin America: Reversing Exclusion Through}

in Mexico and Juarez itself before 2006. Given the importance of Juarez as a smuggling waypoint strategically located in the centre of the Mexican-U.S. borderlands, it remains to be seen whether such gains can be made permanent in the absence of a broader resolution to the conflict.