MEXICO-US
Wall of Hate and Poverty
Divides El Paso and Juárez
By Daniela Pastrana
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico (IPS) - "Sergio,
your death will be avenged by the angry,
organised people" reads graffiti under
the Puente Negro railroad bridge
connecting this border city with El
Paso, Texas.
The message was spray-painted by a few
dozen youngsters who gathered in this
spot on the border on Jun. 12. Five days
earlier, on Jun. 7, a U.S. border patrol
officer had opened fire from the El Paso
side of the border on a 15-year-old
Mexican boy, Sergio Hernández, who was
with a group of boys throwing stones
under the bridge across the nearly dry
riverbed of the Rio Grande.
The fatal shooting, caught on a
cell-phone camera by someone who was
walking across the nearby Paso del Norte
or Santa Fe bridge, has galvanised
public opinion in Juárez, a city
devastated by drug-related violence and
nearly two decades of unsolved murders
of hundreds of poor young women, as well
as a severe recession.
"There is a huge sense of outrage, not
only because he was just a boy, but
because of the cruelty and the excessive
use of force," Rodolfo Rubio, a
researcher at the Colegio de la Frontera
Norte, a college in northern Mexico that
specialises in migration issues, told
IPS.
The history of Ciudad Juárez is
indelibly marked by its location on the
border between Mexico and the U.S. When
Texas was annexed in 1845, the original
city, El Paso del Norte, was divided by
the Rio Grande, known in Mexico as the
Rio Bravo, which today has a double
chain link fence running along it on the
U.S. side.
Three decades ago, at the spot where the
graffiti calling for justice for Sergio
can be seen, people from Ciudad Juárez
would often cross the river several
times a day on inner tubes, to visit
their relatives in El Paso.
Studies show that 75 percent of the
people of El Paso are Hispanic. Rubio
said the border in Juárez-El Paso is
more porous than in any other border
city.
But relations between the two cities
changed "substantially" as a result of
the tighter security adopted on the U.S.
side after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror
attacks on New York and Washington, the
expert on migration issues said.
"Relations, both social and commercial,
are divided now," he said.
César Fuentes, an expert on binational
development, said one of the "first
negative impacts" of that policy was the
increased time it takes to cross the
border, which means people "go to El
Paso less frequently and stay longer
when they do."
The rampant violence on the Mexican side
of the border has also given an
unexpected boost to the economy in El
Paso. The El Paso Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce (EPHCC) reports that more than
200 Mexican companies opened their doors
in that city in 2009, a 40 percent
increase over the previous year.
"The services sector, especially
restaurants, has grown. And so has real
estate," Fuentes said.
The contrast between the two sides of
the border is stark.
As many as 800 women in Juárez, many of
them workers from the maquila export
assembly plants, have been raped,
tortured and murdered since 1993. And
the wave of violence triggered by the
federal government's all-out offensive
against drug trafficking cartels has
left 5,400 people dead in the last three
years.
Meanwhile, El Paso, a city of 700,000,
is ranked as the second safest large
city in the U.S. after Honolulu, the
capital of Hawaii.
In the first six months of this year,
more than 1,800 people were murdered in
Juárez, compared to just one in El Paso.
The already high poverty level in Ciudad
Juárez, which has a population of 1.7
million, is growing fast as the maquila
plants, which pay low wages and import
materials and equipment duty-free for
assembly or manufacturing for re-export,
pull out. In just two years, 2008 and
2009, 300,000 jobs were lost.
Despite the recession that broke out in
2008 in the United States, economic
growth has remained steady in El Paso,
according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Besides the immigration from Juárez,
another factor fuelling the economy was
the multi-billion dollar expansion of
Fort Bliss, just outside El Paso, which
is now the second largest military
installation in the country and one of
the main deployment centres for troops
bound for Iraq and Afghanistan.
The river between the two cities is
increasingly a divide between rich and
poor: those who can afford it flee to El
Paso, and those who can't either stay in
the sprawling, ramshackle Juárez or
return to their home cities and states.
"It's an exodus," said Rubio.
It was against that backdrop that Sergio
Hernández was hit by a bullet to his
head and bled to death next to a column
under the Puente Negro bridge on the
Mexican side of the practically dry
riverbed, less than 20 metres from the
border patrol officer who opened fire.
The officer's name has not been
revealed.
The increasingly hostile attitude
towards immigrants is felt all along the
border between the two countries.
On May 31, Anastasio Hernández, a
Mexican construction worker, died three
days after he was declared brain dead
following a beating with a baton and
tasering by U.S. border patrol agents at
the San Ysidro border crossing between
San Diego, California and Tijuana in
Mexico.
Hernández, 42, was about to be deported
to Mexico after nearly three decades
living in San Diego. He and his wife of
21 years had five children born in the
U.S.
Another grainy amateur video, which
captured his groans and shouts for help
while he was being beaten, shocked
Mexican society, which is demanding that
the government of conservative President
Felipe Calderón take a more vigorous
stance towards Washington.
"There is a pattern of abuses of
immigrants by U.S. authorities, which
have surged in the years since September
2001, and are getting even worse now,
since the Arizona law was passed," Rubio
said.
The controversial SB (Senate Bill) 1070,
signed into law on Apr. 23 in the state
of Arizona, makes it a crime to be in
the state illegally and allows state
police to question and arrest people
without a warrant if there is
"reasonable suspicion" about their
immigration status.
The number of Mexicans injured or killed
by U.S. border patrol agents is on the
rise, from five in 2008 to 12 in 2009
and 17 so far this year.
On Jun. 12, a group of around 30
youngsters from Juárez spray-painted
graffiti on the Puente Negro bridge,
sang songs and lit candles to protest
Sergio Hernández's death.
"Some chavos (guys) jumped over to the
US side, there was a border patrol there
and they yelled at them," said Alma, a
young woman with the Zyrko Nómada de
Kombate street artist collective, who
took part in the demonstration.
"Then the feds (Mexican police) came,
they stayed up there and said they were
going to protect us, but told us not to
throw stones," she told IPS.
The day of the demonstration, the
bloodstain was still on the concrete
where Sergio died. |
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