War Zone
Ciudad Juárez has been an important border city for more than a century, but in a lot of ways it's still just a boom town, a product of several waves of foreign investment that brought thousands upon thousands of industrial jobs. These jobs never paid as much as the same jobs would have paid just north of the border--that's why the companies came to Mexico in the first place--but they were still great wages by Mexican standards, and former rancheros flocked to the city. This happened first in the 1950s and '60s. In 1990, the city's population was holding stable at 789,000, but then NAFTA brought another wave, and the population exploded, nearly doubling in two decades.
This astounding growth brought on the first of two problems Juárez would eventually face. All this growth brought a lot of tax revenue with it, but it didn't necessarily bring it to Juárez. Tax money in Mexico tends to flow uphill into Mexico City, but very little of it comes back down. Juárez grew in a kind of uncontrolled, unsanctioned, unregulated sort of way. (Again, you'd think the free market Libertarians would love this place.) Shanty towns and shacks sprang up everywhere around the city, and city services couldn't keep up. One source I read said that the city's police was forced to ration bullets and gasoline. A certain lawlessness took over, and Juárez became an increasingly dangerous place.
This led to the second problem that finally pushed the city over the edge. The people who came to Juárez for industrial jobs were mostly poor people who had left family ties behind, and their children were left to wander the streets during the day. The kids inevitably joined together into gangs. (This is a familiar scenario to somebody from Chicago.) Violence increased. Eventually, the Juárez Cartel rose from these gangs to control the flow of illegal drugs over the border, and money of a different sort started to flow.
Things started to fall apart in 2008, when the cascading chain reaction started by the recession across the border caused 90,000 industrial jobs in Juárez to evaporate, turning thousands of people who were already poor desperate. Simultaneously, the Sinaloa Drug Cartel moved into town and started fighting the Juárez Cartel for control. It turned into a literal war that lasted for five years, with battles fought in the streets. At the height of the violence in 2010, there were 3,766 homicides in Juárez. (Chicago is famous for street violence, and this has been a bad year, but even so we'll likely see a fifth as many murders this year as Juárez saw in 2010.)
Things have calmed down for Juárez now, but the wounds are apparent. Estimates suggest about 400,000 people have left Juárez since 2009, most headed back south into the Mexican countryside. The city planning department says there are 110,000 abandoned homes throughout the city. About 10,000 business closed during the war, which adds up to 40% of the total number of businesses that once operated in the city. But the war's over, at least. This neighborhood seemed quiet while I was looking at it. There wasn't a lot of traffic.
But you can see from this why an American living in a nice El Paso house might be glad he has a fence to look at when he glances out his window toward the Rio Grande. Despite what Fox News might have implied, the crime never really made it across the border--El Paso reported 23 murders in 2010, when the fence I'm standing next to was still incomplete. But having that fence makes a person feel better, and it's probably good for the property values.
War Zone
Ciudad Juárez has been an important border city for more than a century, but in a lot of ways it's still just a boom town, a product of several waves of foreign investment that brought thousands upon thousands of industrial jobs. These jobs never paid as much as the same jobs would have paid just north of the border--that's why the companies came to Mexico in the first place--but they were still great wages by Mexican standards, and former rancheros flocked to the city. This happened first in the 1950s and '60s. In 1990, the city's population was holding stable at 789,000, but then NAFTA brought another wave, and the population exploded, nearly doubling in two decades.
This astounding growth brought on the first of two problems Juárez would eventually face. All this growth brought a lot of tax revenue with it, but it didn't necessarily bring it to Juárez. Tax money in Mexico tends to flow uphill into Mexico City, but very little of it comes back down. Juárez grew in a kind of uncontrolled, unsanctioned, unregulated sort of way. (Again, you'd think the free market Libertarians would love this place.) Shanty towns and shacks sprang up everywhere around the city, and city services couldn't keep up. One source I read said that the city's police was forced to ration bullets and gasoline. A certain lawlessness took over, and Juárez became an increasingly dangerous place.
This led to the second problem that finally pushed the city over the edge. The people who came to Juárez for industrial jobs were mostly poor people who had left family ties behind, and their children were left to wander the streets during the day. The kids inevitably joined together into gangs. (This is a familiar scenario to somebody from Chicago.) Violence increased. Eventually, the Juárez Cartel rose from these gangs to control the flow of illegal drugs over the border, and money of a different sort started to flow.
Things started to fall apart in 2008, when the cascading chain reaction started by the recession across the border caused 90,000 industrial jobs in Juárez to evaporate, turning thousands of people who were already poor desperate. Simultaneously, the Sinaloa Drug Cartel moved into town and started fighting the Juárez Cartel for control. It turned into a literal war that lasted for five years, with battles fought in the streets. At the height of the violence in 2010, there were 3,766 homicides in Juárez. (Chicago is famous for street violence, and this has been a bad year, but even so we'll likely see a fifth as many murders this year as Juárez saw in 2010.)
Things have calmed down for Juárez now, but the wounds are apparent. Estimates suggest about 400,000 people have left Juárez since 2009, most headed back south into the Mexican countryside. The city planning department says there are 110,000 abandoned homes throughout the city. About 10,000 business closed during the war, which adds up to 40% of the total number of businesses that once operated in the city. But the war's over, at least. This neighborhood seemed quiet while I was looking at it. There wasn't a lot of traffic.
But you can see from this why an American living in a nice El Paso house might be glad he has a fence to look at when he glances out his window toward the Rio Grande. Despite what Fox News might have implied, the crime never really made it across the border--El Paso reported 23 murders in 2010, when the fence I'm standing next to was still incomplete. But having that fence makes a person feel better, and it's probably good for the property values.