"One, two, three, four, here, and two more back there on the next block," said Laura Longoria.
The 36-year-old ran a convenience store in her
working-class neighborhood in south Juarez until the owners closed shop, fed up
with the tribute they were forced to pay to drug gangsters to stay in business.
Her family vowed to stick it out. But then came the
kidnapping of a teen from a stationery shop across the street. After that,
Longoria's husband, Enrique Mondragon, requested a transfer from the bus
company where he works.
"They asked, `where to,'" he recalled. "I
said, `Anywhere.'"
No one knows how many residents have left the city of 1.4
million since a turf battle over border drug corridors unleashed an
unprecedented wave of cartel murders and mayhem. Business leaders, citing
government tax information, say the exodus could number 110,000, while a
municipal group and local university say it's closer to 230,000 and estimates
by social organizations are even higher.
The tally is especially hard to track because Juarez is
by nature transitory, attracting thousands of workers to high-turnover jobs in
manufacturing, or who use the city across
the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, as a waystation
before they slip north illegally.
But its toll is everywhere you look. Barely a week goes
by when Longoria and her husband don't watch a neighbor move away. Then the
vandals arrive, carrying off window panes, pipes, even light fixtures, until
there's nothing but a graffiti-covered shell, surrounded by yards strewn with
rotting food or shredded tires. That could be what's in store for Longoria's
three-room home of poured concrete if her husband's transfer comes through.
Long controlled by the Juarez Cartel, the city descended
into a horrifying cycle of violence after Mexico's most-wanted kingpin, Joaquin
"El Chapo" Guzman, and his Sinaloa Cartel tried to shoot their way to
power here beginning in 2008. President Felipe Calderon sent nearly 10,000
troops to restore order. Now, the Mexican army and federal authorities are
going door-to-door, conducting an emergency census to determine just how many
residents have fled.
Many people, however, refuse to answer their questions
for fear authorities are simply collecting information about neighborhoods so
they can begin extorting residents — just like the drug gangs.
"Soon," Longoria said, "there won't be many people left to
count."
While many Juarez residents fleeing the violence seek out
more peaceful points in Mexico, others have streamed across the border into El
Paso, population 740,000, where apartment vacancies are down and requests for
new utility services in recently purchased or rented houses have spiked,
according to Mayor John Cook.
Massacres, beheadings, YouTube videos featuring cartel
torture sessions and even car bombs are becoming commonplace in Juarez, where
more than 3,000 people have been killed this year, according to the federal
government, making it among the most dangerous places on earth.
El Paso, by contrast, has had three violent deaths — and
one was a murder-suicide.
Juarez Chamber of Commerce President Daniel Murguia said
at least 6,000 city businesses have closed so far this year, according to
Mexican Interior Ministry figures. There is no data available on those
shuttered amid last year's and 2008 violence, however, or on scores of
businesses targeted by arsonists.
Kathy Dodson, El Paso's economic director, said the
number of fees paid for new city business permits there have not increased
dramatically, but Jose Luis Mauricio, president of a group for new Mexican business
owners in El Paso known as "La Red," or The Net, said membership has
grown from nine in February to about 280 today.
"Maybe it's a bit sad for Juarez, but these are
business owners who are moving here because they have no choice," said
Mauricio, who leads weekly breakfasts for Mexican expatriates looking to set up
businesses in El Paso.
One club member is a Mexican-American who owns a factory
in Juarez but moved to El Paso with his family after he was kidnapped last
year. The 50-year-old, who asked that his name not be published to avoid
further repercussions, was held in a Juarez safe house — but managed to untie
his hands and cry for help loud enough that neighbors called the Mexican army
to rescue him.
"There's a lot of people afraid. I don't blame them.
Even if they haven't had a bad experience, they don't want to be the next one
to have one, so they run away," said the factory owner. He said he will
never move back to Juarez but hopes the violence will one day calm enough for
him to visit.
"It's a city that's dying," he said. "It's
out of control."
Many of those who have not left want to, including Marta
Elena Ramirez. She owns Restaurant Dona Chole, specializing in menudo, a clear
soup made with beef stomach. Her cafeteria-style eatery is on the second floor
of an indoor market of Mexican handicrafts.
Ramirez said sales are down 50 percent since 2007, when
Americans used to head south for drinking and clubbing, or to stock up on
Mexican knicknacks. Now they are too afraid to come.
Though she has held U.S. residency for 18 years, Ramirez
lives in Juarez and had never considered moving — until now. She's stopped
paying rent on her restaurant and is looking for investors to help her start a
street food cart in El Paso.
"I've always been a fighter, and this is my Juarez.
I've always said, `No matter what happens, Juarez is mine,'" said the
65-year-old. "But too much has happened."
As commerce in the city dries up, even Juarez residents
who do not move north cross into El Paso more frequently for services no longer
available in their neighborhoods and spend $220 million a year in El Paso, said
Murguia.
"Here it's a problem of opportunity, not just
violence," he said. "There are no jobs, and that means there are more
people who are becoming hit men and criminals."
Even for those not tied to drug trafficking, staying in
Juarez means paying off extortionists — like a 43-year-old food wholesaler near
the city's center who provides everything from bulk dog food to beer that
smaller stores use to stock their shelves.
In September 2009, associates from "La Linea,"
enforcers for the Juarez Cartel comprised of hit men and corrupt police and
soldiers, visited his store and said he would be required to pay 4,000 pesos —
about $330 — a week "for protection."
"They came to see me in a very friendly way,"
said the business owner, who asked that his name and key details be omitted so
he could not be identified. "Everyone is paying. Those who aren't paying
are out of business, even dead."
As recently as 2008, he had 500 wholesale customers; now
it's down to 200. Two storeowners who used to do business with him have been
gunned down in their stores over the last year, and a third shot dead in his
kitchen. Business got so slow that his extortionists recently reduced his
weekly payment to 2,500 pesos, about $205, but warned him never to miss a week.
Every week, the wholesaler receives a call in which a
distorted voice provides a bank account number where money can be deposited but
not withdrawn. He takes cash to indicated bank branches and makes deposits.
The wholesaler's son-in-law was kidnapped early last year
— the family put $230,000 on a debit card and exchanged it for his safe return.
His store had also been burglarized previously. Since he began paying for
protection, however, all crime around him has ceased and his customers have
even stopped getting harassed by police for illegally parking in front of his
business.
"At first, I used to say `this will pass,' but now
I'm resigned that there's no solution," said the wholesaler, who has
applied for U.S. residency to move to El Paso.
Murguia said extortion payments are now so common that
they've become known as "cobras del piso" or "floor
charges" for doing business in Juarez — but that there's no measure of how
much payoffs cost business citywide per year because few admit to paying them.
Many familiar Juarez restaurants have shut down only to
pop up anew on the U.S. side. The high-end Mexican eatery Maria Chuhchena
closed its original location in Juarez and resurfaced in El Paso, though the
restaurant maintains a branch in Juarez's spiffy Campestre district. Another
Juarez favorite, Aroma, was one of three eateries set ablaze by arsonists on a
single night in June 2008 and now operates in El Paso.
Now parts of Juarez after sundown are all but deserted —
even in the heart of downtown. Closed used car dealerships, taco and hamburger
stands, pharmacies, ice cream parlors and muffler shops give way to a block of
abandoned doctors' and dentists' offices, which stand forlornly next to a
closed stereo outlet and across from an empty office supply store.
"Se renta" and "se vende," signs
offering retail space for rent or sale are everywhere, plastered to the
shuttered pizzeria, the closed and looted furniture store, the defunct
locksmith and the empty facade of "Jersey Mechanic."
Other abandoned properties are tagged with a simple
phrase in black spray paint: "How many more?"