| | |  Americas & Beyond | October 2008 
Ciudad Juarez Violence Keeps Americans Away
 Alicia A. Caldwell - Associated Press
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| | Juarez city officials kicked off a billboard advertising campaign in El Paso, Houston, Dallas, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Tucson and other cities in the U.S. in an effort to tout the city's quality of life and sporting events. One of those billboards located at the intersection of Copia and Gateway East is one example. (Ruben R. Ramirez/El Paso Times) | | |
City located across the border from El Paso is awash in bloodshed. Tourism down 20 percent so far this year.
El Paso, Texas - Mexican officials are trying to persuade Americans to visit Ciudad Juarez, touting the city in a new billboard campaign as a “land of encounters.” But on this side of the border, that sounds like a cruel joke.
More than 1,100 people have been killed this year in Juarez, population 1.5 million, in a drug-related bloodbath so staggering that the city has been declared off-limits to U.S. soldiers looking to go bar-hopping; El Paso’s public hospital is seeing a spillover of the wounded; and residents on the American side are afraid to cross over to visit family, shop or conduct business.
“We all like to make money, but the money I was making isn’t worth it,” said Fernando Apodaca, who spent at least one day a week for the past 18 years working in Juarez as an auto industry consultant. After his Cadillac Escalade SUV was seized in a carjacking last month, Apodaca vowed he wouldn’t go over the border again.
“I had a gun to my face. There’s no law over there,” he said.
Juarez, situated just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, has had more murders this year than New York and Chicago together had in all of 2007 - and those two cities have seven times the population of Juarez. Last weekend alone, Juarez had 37 killings.
Juarez has always been a rough town, but one where many Americans felt safe enough to play, shop and work. Violence began to mount early this year after Mexico’s president launched a national offensive against drug lords.
Initially, the bloodshed involved drug cartels fighting each other. Then, military troops, law enforcement officers and government officials became major targets.
Assassinations have become more brazen and more and more innocents have been killed. Masked gunmen stormed a drug rehab center in August and killed eight people. Six men were gunned down last weekend at a family party. A 12-year-old girl was shot and killed in June while riding with two men targeted by hitmen.
Armed robberies, carjackings and kidnappings for ransom are also rampant.
While the bloodshed hasn’t yet spilled over to the American side, the violence is costing El Paso, a city of about 600,000 where only 17 homicides were reported in 2007.
Dozens of shooting victims, several of them U.S. citizens or legal residents, have been treated at Thomason General Hospital - the only facility for 250 miles that is equipped to handle such patients - at a cost to local taxpayers of more than $1 million.
Mexican Consul General Roberto Rodriguez Hernandez said the number of visitors crossing into Juarez from El Paso this year is down about 20 percent.
The U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory this week, warning Americans of daylight shootings at shopping centers in Juarez and suggesting applicants for U.S. visas at the consulate in Juarez not pay in cash to avoid getting mugged while in line. |
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