Once a sleepy border town known best for creating the burrito, Ciudad Juárez is now one of Mexico’s fastest-growing cities. Hundreds of new buildings and factories fill the city’s streets, affixed with large signs announcing the presence of world-class companies: Boeing, Bosch, Lear, Delphi, and Siemens. Dozens of construction sites signal that the steady stream of maquila factories and jobseekers is not about to end. From the 12th floor of the Torres Campestre building, you can see downtown El Paso, Texas, now the smaller of the two connected cities.

In 2008 Juárez was named the “City of the Future” by Foreign Direct Investment magazine, a trade journal of the Financial Times Group. Per capita incomes surpassed Mexico’s average, and Juárez’s expansion spurred the biggest housing boom in the nation. New cars filled the streets, dozens of stores and restaurants opened, and the city boasted eight universities.

On a normal day at the Juárez–El Paso border crossings, some 80,000 people come and go. In the morning, children line up with backpacks, ready for school. Later on, drivers carry shopping lists or business leads as they pass through checkpoints to the other side. At night, couples, families, and friends visit relatives or head to bars and parties in the neighborhood (and often country) next door.

But open a newspaper or turn on the television, and a very different image of Juárez emerges. Each morning, numbed reporters recount the previous night’s murders. In 2009, Juárez’s death count topped 2,500—the highest in Mexico. Juárez set another macabre record in 2010, surpassing 3,000 drug-related killings, making it by many measures the most violent city in the world. The bloodshed of 2011 brought the cumulative five-year total to more than 9,000 souls. Teenagers, with little else to do, hang around gawking at bloodstained sidewalks. Close to half of Juárez’s youths do not work or attend school, setting themselves up for a life on the margins. Even in the strong midday sun, the unlawful menace is palpable, leading residents to scurry between their houses and work, to resist lingering in the open air, to duck when a car backfires. Whole neighborhoods have emptied out, as the residents, driven by fear, have made the heartbreaking decision to walk away from their homes. In 2009, the government sent in 7,000 military troops and federal police to patrol the streets in face masks and bulletproof vests, carrying automatic weapons at the ready. This only temporarily quelled some of the bloodshed.

The extent of today’s violence is unparalleled, but crime is hardly new to Ciudad Juárez. Drug-related violence first exploded in 1997 when the Juárez cartel leader died while undergoing plastic surgery to change his identity. What began as intracartel fighting escalated as the Tijuana and Sinaloa drug trafficking organizations entered the fray in an attempt to gain control of the city’s lucrative border crossings. Ciudad Juárez is also infamous for the violent deaths of hundreds of young women—most workers in the international maquila factories. Their murders remain unsolved, the law enforcement system being too weak, too incompetent, or too complicit to delve into the deep underworld of this burgeoning Mexican city.

Juárez today mirrors Mexico’s—and the United States’—larger dilemma. Can it realize its potential and become a hub of North American competitiveness and interconnectedness? Or will it succumb to inept government, weakened communities, and escalating violence, walled off rather than embraced by its neighbor next door?

Turn on U.S. cable news and story after story recounts gruesome beheadings, spectacular assassinations, and brazen prison-breaks, painting Mexico as a country overrun by drug lords and on the brink of collapse. More evenhanded news outlets aren’t far behind. The Los Angeles Times boasts a whole section entitled “Mexico under Siege.” If this threat was not enough, pundits and politicians alike conjure up images of vast waves of humanity pouring over the nearly 2,000-mile border—illegal aliens flooding U.S. schools and hospitals and taking Americans’ jobs. Whether by lost jobs, illegal immigrants, or thugs and drugs, Mexico’s downward spiral is portrayed as imperiling the American way of life. But this conventional wisdom about Mexico is incomplete. Worse, the response—walling off the United States—is counterproductive and even harmful to U.S. national interests. Paradoxically, such efforts make the doomsday scenario next door that we so fear only more likely, directing billions of dollars away from policies that could actually improve U.S. security and prosperity.

Overlooked, underreported, and at times even blatantly ignored in the United States is the positive side of what is happening in Mexico. Yes, the Mexican government faces significant challenges—the most urgent being security. But as dismal as the current news is, Mexico stands on the cusp of a promising future. Mexico’s real story today is one of ongoing economic, political, and social transformation led by a rising middle class, increasingly demanding voters, and enterprising individuals and organizations working to change their country from the inside.

Mexico has come a long way. Three generations ago, the vast majority of Mexicans lived in semifeudal conditions, tied to the land and political bosses. Two generations ago, Mexican students were massacred for their political beliefs by the authoritarian PRI government. Today, Mexico is a consolidating democracy, an opening economy, and an urbanizing society. Mexico is less a problem and more an answer for the economic, security, and international diplomatic challenges the United States faces today.

This isn’t the first time that the United States has misunderstood its southern neighbor or that its misguided actions have exacerbated the problems plaguing both countries. What is different now is how important the outcomes in Mexico are for America’s future. Over the last few decades, through the movement and integration of companies, products, and people, Mexico and the United States have become indelibly intertwined in ways that most Americans do not see or understand. What happens in Mexico today has ramifications for towns, cities, and states across the United States; this reality has yet to sink in, at least on the northern side of the border.

Policies such as the border wall assume that the challenges both countries face can be solved unilaterally. This too is wrong. Instead of clinging to the myth of autonomy, we must find a better way to work with Mexico for our own well-being. If we don’t, the consequences will be far worse than we imagine.

The post What’s Mexico’s Real Story? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I realize there are plenty of journalists in places like Afghanistan or famine-struck Somalia who must bear witness to similar horrors, but they have to fly across many time zones to encounter them. What’s surreal about my reporting assignment is that I commute to it from America’s quotidian tranquility – sometimes I even swing by my Starbucks drive-thru en route to the war zone next door.

Indeed, I live in one of the safest cities in the United States – El Paso, Texas, had the lowest crime rate among large cities in CQ Press’ 2010 crime report – and work in one of the world’s most notorious murder capitals – Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

The two cities have historically been intertwined far more than other major border communities. San Diego and Tijuana are divided by a large buffer zone, and San Antonio, which has long claimed to be the gateway to Mexico, is a two-hour drive away.

El Paso’s downtown runs right into downtown Juarez. For generations of families crossing the border into Mexico was like crossing the street and many did just that to shop, get a haircut or visit “abuelita.”

Drive down I-10 past the University of Texas in El Paso and there’s a clear view of Juarez neighborhoods. In Juarez players on soccer fields near the border can see the El Paso skyline just across the Rio Grande. Even at the big border fence on the outskirts of El Paso heading west into New Mexico, neighbors can hear each other’s dogs bark.

Juarez has long been a playground for Americans looking for freedom and thrills, and an edgier nightlife. But that has all changed, and it’s El Paso that’s becoming the exotic escape, for Mexicans seeking peace and safety. Security issues have altered the bi-national metropolitan area’s cohesion.

El Pasoans increasingly stay out of Juarez, and those who can leave Juarez increasingly flock to El Paso, and bring much of Juarez with them. Brand new restaurants seem to pop up every day in El Paso, except they’re more familiar than new. They’re the same places I frequented just across the border in Juarez before violent crime forced their closure and emigration, as their owners relocated to El Paso for safety and to cater to customers who are now too afraid to visit Mexico.

Over the summer I’ve also watched the construction of two private Mexican schools in El Paso. Wealthy Juarez families fleeing the violence will soon send their children to the same elite schools they attended back home before they moved. The Tecnologico de Monterrey just opened its first prep school in the U.S. and the Ibero Academy is now registering toddlers through 2nd grade.

To understand this transformation of El Paso and Juarez’s interdependence, all you need to know are two numbers: 3,097 and 5. The first is the number of murders in Juarez last year, as warring drug cartels fighting for lucrative smuggling routes to the U.S. turned the city into the Stalingrad of this conflict. The second number, 5, is the number of murders that took place in El Paso last year.

Why the stark divergence, the lack of spillover violence?

I get asked this question all the time. I’ve grappled with the answer for years. I’ve lived my life on both sides of the border. I was born in Mexico City and raised in Guadalajara until the age of ten. That’s when my family returned to the U.S., my mother’s native country. We moved to Texas even though her family is from Chicago and has been for generations.

I guess you could call me an American-Mexican. As a journalist I cover the drug war day in and day out with my colleague, photojournalist Hugo Perez. We work out of a border news bureau for Belo, a Texas media company that owns 20 TV stations and The Dallas Morning News. For me this is more than a newsy hotspot – it’s home.

Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon sent thousands of soldiers and federal police to restore law and order on Juarez streets, which created some lulls in the killings, but only for brief spells. The body count climbed each year. Kidnapping and extortion have also spiked. Carjacking is another threat.

On many days Juarez seems like a “normal” bustling border city with people going about their business. But there’s a new normal; everyone knows things can suddenly change. We’ve all learned to adapt to the risks.

While driving through Juarez Hugo and I roll down the lightly tinted windows of our dark blue SUV to make sure we’re visible. We don’t want young hit men looking for rival gang members to go after us by mistake.

We don’t want soldiers and police officers to see our vehicle and think we’re the hit men targeting them. People have been killed at checkpoints in the midst of confusion.

Many former Juarez residents who now live in El Paso keep a low profile when crossing back and forth for business or to visit relatives. “You use some little clunker to go to Juarez and come back, “explained Tony Payan, a professor at the University of Texas in El Paso who also teaches a class at the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez. Even wealthy doctors who are frequently targeted by kidnappers use the clunker strategy.

Changing cars is one thing, changing your frame of mind is not as easy. After covering the bloodbath in Juarez at the end of the day I get to go home to peaceful El Paso with images and interviews still swirling in my head. I feel a sense of relief when I cross the border.

The remarkable safety of U.S. border cities continues to confound expectations (and at times, political rhetoric that assumes the spillover is already taking place). There are no gun battles raging on the streets of El Paso or car bombs like the one that blew up in downtown Juarez last year.

It’s not that the cartels don’t operate outside Mexico. These are transnational criminal organizations. Plus, plenty of U.S. citizens are involved in smuggling drugs into the country and running guns and cash into Mexico. The cartels regularly hire gangs with members on both sides of the border who exploit their connections to carry out hits.

The rule of law is one explanation for El Paso’s safety. “On the Mexican side, the institutions that should sustain a functioning rule of law, on the judicial and law enforcement sides, are either weak, corrupt or non-existent,” says Lucinda Vargas, one of the founders of Plan Estrategico de Juarez, an organization that fosters civic responsibility and respect for rule of law.

In the U.S. there’s the expectation that when there’s a crime, an investigation follows; there’s hope a suspect will be identified, caught, prosecuted and punished. In Mexico, impunity is a fact of life. And while Mexican authorities may dispute whether the 98% impunity rate that is often cited is correct, many people never see justice for their loved ones. Most people I interview complain they don’t even get a full murder investigation.

A journalist colleague of mine says in Mexico you die twice: first from the bullet or other lethal wound. Then there is the character assassination. It’s common for authorities to point out even before the investigation is complete the victim was likely “involucrado,” involved in organized crime.

In the U.S., known drug smugglers get their day in court. Last month, a federal judge in El Paso handed down two life sentences for kidnapping. According to prosecutors the victim was targeted because he lost a load of drugs when Border Patrol agents seized 670 pounds of marijuana at a highway checkpoint a month earlier.

The abduction happened in Horizon City on the outskirts of El Paso in broad daylight. In September 2009, the kidnappers dragged Sergio Saucedo out of his home as his wife and children watched. Youngsters riding past on a school bus also witnessed the abduction.

A few days later his tortured body was dumped on a street in Juarez. His hands had been chopped off and carefully placed on his chest, a message from drug traffickers indicating he was killed because he was a thief.

While some law enforcement and politicians sound the alarm about the threat of spillover violence, for many border residents, the debate rings hollow.

Consider Rueben Redelfs. Gunmen killed his brother Arthur Redelfs and pregnant sister in law Leslie on a sunny Saturday afternoon in March last year. Arthur Redelfs was a detention officer at the county jail in El Paso. His wife Leslie Enriquez Redelfs worked at the U.S. Consulate in Juarez. The couple had just attended a children’s birthday party.

On the way back home to El Paso, just blocks from the international bridge hit men sprayed their car with bullets. Their baby girl riding in the back seat survived the deadly attack.

“In my opinion the spillover has already happened,” Ruben Redelfs told me. “The grief is spillover.”

His words stayed with me long after our interview. On my drive home that night to El Paso’s west side I spotted another familiar restaurant from Juarez with an “opening soon” sign.

Angela Kocherga is border bureau chief for Belo TV.

*Photo by Angela Kocherga.

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