VALLEY TOWN TRIES TO STEER ITS YOUTH AWAY FROM GANGS

DONNA - This small Rio Grande Valley city has been in the news plenty of
times, but for all the wrong reasons.

Over the years, local headlines have detailed the growing influence of
gangs and a rise of satanic worship, against a backdrop of crooked cops,
rampant drug trafficking, chronic political in-fighting between two
factions over control of City Hall and a water system that almost went dry.

But it was the ghoulish murder of a 12-year-old boy last spring that caused
residents of this dirt-poor town to focus on one major problem - how to
keep their children from going astray.

"This murder that happened in Donna was a wake-up call," insists Police
Chief Miguel Carreon. "If we didn't do anything about the gang problem by
paying attention to these kids, we're going to have the same thing happen."

Carreon said the murder of David Cardenas last April raised questions about
who is minding the children in Donna .

Cardenas, a seventh-grader living with an older sister, was murdered
shortly after he was dropped off by a family member near a neighborhood
store on a Friday evening. Because relatives thought he was staying with
members of his extended family, he was not missed until he failed to come
home from school the following Monday afternoon.

"We're starting to do something about it," Carreon said. "And one thing
I've seen in this community - after this tragedy with the 12-year-old -
we're getting more involved; citizens are getting more involved."

Carreon has ample reason to worry about the town's youth.

Donna is a city of 15,000 without any large industries, a town where city
parks have been stripped of playground equipment by vandals and where the
city swimming pool was filled in years ago because it was too expensive to
repair. About 85 percent to 90 percent of the residents live at or below
the poverty level.

With many Donna households headed by single mothers attempting to raise
large families with limited time for teens, the lure of gangs is powerful.
In the past, Donna police have documented the existence of 26 gangs in the
city; they say 23 are currently active.

Gang-related graffiti marks walls, abandoned houses and businesses
throughout the town despite a stepped-up effort by police to crack down on
spray-painting "taggers" and gang activity.

"What we need are jobs," asserts the police chief.

At the Donna Chamber of Commerce, executive director Sylvia Escamilla tries
to organize activities for youngsters. On this year's calendar are health
fairs, car shows, beauty pageants, appreciation days for notable citizens
and safe Halloween activities. All the details are faithfully faxed by
Escamilla to local media outlets on letterheads with the chamber's hopeful
slogan, "A New Beginning."

"We wanted to show we were doing something. I send all my press releases to
the newspaper to show Donna is back in gear, or in the right gear,"
Escamilla said. "And it's all about getting people involved. Stop the
politics, stop the gossip and let's concentrate on Donna ."

The problems Donna has with gangs are in some instances imported, since the
school district draws in students from an 89-square-mile area - far beyond
the town limits. Ringing the town are nearly 60 colonias, the Spanish word
for unincorporated subdivisions that often lack basic services, and in many
of these remote neighborhoods gangs seem to rule by default.

"I would say 85 percent of the people in the Donna school district are
living at or below the poverty level," said David Simmons, who is the
district's tax collector and also chief of the Donna Volunteer Fire
Department. "I go out and visit the colonias and I see it. We have people
living in buses, and it's like Third World conditions. It's unbelievable,
but we have it in the Donna city limits, too."

Donna school officials are trying a number of strategies. For the last
three years, they have used student mediators to counsel other students
having difficulties - a project known by its acronym PALS, Peer Assistance
and Leadership.

The district also operates a student mentoring program, pairing troubled
students with local college and high school students with good track records.

Fred Zambrano, at-risk coordinator for the schools, has asked the school
district to boost the 60-student capacity of the alternative learning
center by 50 percent. The center houses students referred for discipline,
attendance, poor grades and other offenses. But being part of a gang is
still a reality in Donna , Zambrano said.

"When they come (to the center) from high school or junior high, nine times
out of 10 when asked they will say, `Yes, I'm either a gang member or I
hang out with gang members,' " Zambrano said.

In hopes of diminishing the gangs' sway on youth, Donna citizens are
attempting to revitalize the Boys and Girls Club housed in an old National
Guard armory.

"Donna needs to take care of the kids," said Barbara Deschner, a Brooklyn,
N.Y., native who was hired last month to run the club. "They need
activities for children, they need programs, they need services, they need
a safety net in place.

"These kids don't have anything to fall back on. They come from the poorest
homes in the country, unemployment is horrible. They don't know what it's
like to be successful."

Deschner said she was appalled to learn that 80 percent of the children who
come to the club have never left town, not even to visit nearby South Padre
Island or a museum or zoo.

"The needs, the wants and the desire are out there," she said. "The money
is not.

"Right now I'd like to take the kids to see the ocean, but we don't have
any transportation. We couldn't even take them to the city pool if there
was one."

The club operates almost entirely on grants from outside the town, and
Deschner has no illusions about the availability of local funding. Instead,
she is applying for more grants and trying to bring a host of youth reading
and sports programs underwritten by large corporations. The club is also
looking for a surplus school bus to shuttle kids from outlying colonias
into town to use the facilities.

"I'm trying to do this on $64,000 a year, and to serve these kids properly
I'd need $250,000 a year. But the community is in such an impoverished
condition that there's no money to raise," she said.

But the townsfolk are doing what they can.

The police association held a benefit barbecue and donated the proceeds to
the club. Volunteers have removed the club's boarded-up windows during a
cleanup two weeks ago.

Some city officials, like tax collector Simmons, believe the political
bickering has shifted the focus from improving the community and brought
unwarranted negative attention to the town.

"Poor Donna just gets kicked around, and I blame a lot of it on politics,"
said Simmons. "These groups are just too busy fighting among themselves,
getting their people (elected), and they're not thinking about the community."

But the consequences of ignoring the needs of Donna 's youth are too great
to ignore, warns Deschner. "We either build them up, or we build prisons."