TWO SIDES OF A BORDER: ONE VIOLENT, ONE PEACEFUL

EL PASO -- Every day, as she gets off a bus in Mexico and crosses the
border to go to work in downtown El Paso, Edith Escobedo says she
feels a sense of relief. For at least the next eight hours, she says
to herself, she is safe from the violence ripping apart Ciudad Juarez.

"One lives with fear over there," Ms. Escobedo said, as she waited
for customers in the Casa Sylvia clothes shop. "It is pure fear, pure
insecurity. One cannot even go out at night. It's curious that here
it's so different. It's another way of life."

Juarez and El Paso are divided only by the narrow Rio Grande and a
couple of border checkpoints that have done little over the years to
stop the steady back and forth of trade and family visits.

The two cities are so close that the mayor of El Paso can look out
his office window to view downtown Juarez.

But in other ways the two cities are worlds apart these days.

El Paso still enjoys its status as one of the safest cities in the
United States, while Juarez, a city of 1.5 million that has always
been rough, has become a battleground for drug cartels. More than
1,550 people were killed there in drug wars last year.

Worse, other violent crimes -- carjacking, extortion, armed robbery
- -- have surged as the beleaguered authorities struggle to respond to
daily gun battles.

"It's strange to be the third-safest city in the United States right
next to a war zone," said Mayor John Cook of El Paso, as he gazed at
the ramshackle neighborhoods of Juarez.

Yet what is happening on the other side of the border -- a vicious
turf battle prompted by Mexican government efforts to crack down on
the cartels -- is taking its toll here in myriad ways. Americans have
cut back on visiting their relatives in Mexico, and Mexicans, too,
venture to the American side in smaller numbers, either because they
are afraid to leave their homes at night or because they lack money.

The local public hospital in El Paso has treated 48 people wounded in
gun battles in Mexico in the last year, and law enforcement officials
in the United States spend much of their time trying to figure out
how to prevent the violence from spilling over into their jurisdictions.

"It's just lawless over there -- it's complete lawlessness," said
Fernando Apodaca, an El Paso insurance agent, echoing the views of
many Americans here. "The criminals have the run of the city."

Mr. Apodaca, 47, stopped crossing the border on business, as he had
for his entire adult life, after his car was stolen at gunpoint on
Sept. 17 in broad daylight.

Experts say many factors have kept violence at bay in El Paso, from a
high concentration of law enforcement officials because of border
operations to fear of the death penalty in Texas.

But some have other theories. Mayor Cook, for one, thinks the
problems in Juarez began when a Mexican crackdown on drug dealers
backfired. The operation smashed the drug-distribution network on the
Mexican side, leading to turf wars. That has not happened on the
United States side, Mr. Cook said, but if it did, he said, a similar
crime wave could erupt.

Worries that the violence in Mexico could spread to the United States
reach to the highest levels of the federal government. Last week,
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the Bush
administration had laid plans to send a surge of federal agents and
soldiers to trouble spots if the violence spilled over.

The conflict in Juarez has led some in El Paso to propose radical
solutions. In a symbolic resolution of support for Juarez, the El
Paso City Council recently voted unanimously to ask Washington to
consider legalizing drugs as a way to end the violence. "We think it
should at least be on the table," Councilman Beto O'Rourke said. On
Monday, the Council backed down after the mayor vetoed the resolution
and local members of Congress warned that the Council's stance might
imperil federal aid.

Still, the failed measure was a sign of the general longing here for
a return to the relatively peaceful days before December 2006, when
the Mexican president, Felipe Calderon, began the current campaign to
wipe out the drug cartels.

Across the river, the once-vibrant streets of Juarez are dark and
gloomy, as residents scurry for home. The restaurants, bars and
nightclubs that catered to American tourists, students and soldiers
from Fort Bliss are shutting down for a lack of business.

On a recent night, three mariachis stood in the cold for five hours
waiting for a single tourist to come by on Avenida Juarez. None came.
A year ago, they said, American tourists, youths and soldiers filled
the avenue, as vendors hawked the seamy and the sacred, steering
people to pharmacies, the city market, strip clubs, restaurants and cantinas.

"It used to be full of people every day," said Luis Olivier, a
40-year-old singer. "Now no one comes, since the executions started."

The mayor of Juarez, Jose Reyes Ferriz, says his city suffers from a
woefully undermanned and ill-equipped police department, despite
programs to recruit new officers and purge scores of corrupt ones.
Mr. Reyes estimated that Juarez needed at least 4,000 police officers
to take back control of the streets. It has only 1,600.

He said the 3,000 soldiers and federal agents Mr. Calderon had
dispatched to quell the violence had had limited success. The
soldiers, for instance, know nothing about police work and patrol in
long columns, which are easily spotted and avoided.

In the past six months, the killings have become more frequent, more
brazen and more gruesome. One body was beheaded and hung from a
bridge. Others were stuffed in giant stew pots.

Most of the victims have been young men recruited from other towns to
fight for the warring drug kingpins. But at least 40 of the victims
have been innocent bystanders, among them a few El Paso residents.

"This is a real war and the city, unfortunately, is the theater for
this war," Mr. Reyes said.

Not so in El Paso, a tidy desert town of 600,000. There were 16
slayings last year and violent crime dropped 4 percent, the police
say. If anything, the streets of El Paso are known for being a bit
dull, rather than dangerous.

El Paso is a city where people feel safe leaving their belongings in
a car or strolling the street at night. The biggest problem the
police have faced recently is a spate of robberies of convenience
stores, Chief Gregory Allen said. Some say cultural differences
underlie the paradox.

Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas, El
Paso, said the American town is made up mostly of new immigrants or
their children, who tend to be cautious, law-abiding and respectful
of authority. That, coupled with Fort Bliss and the heavy police
presence, makes for a law-and-order atmosphere, Professor Campbell said.

For some 25,000 residents of El Paso who go to work every day in
Juarez, every crossing has become fraught with peril.

Their fears are not unfounded. Marisela Granados de Molinar, 48, was
an office manager at the Mexican attorney general's office in Juarez,
but lived for decades in El Paso with her husband, Jose A. Molinar
Jr., a warehouse manager. For the past 11 years, she went to work at
the federal office building on the other side of the border, never
worrying about being attacked, her husband said.

Then, on Dec. 3, Ms. Granados agreed to give a lift across the border
to her boss, Jesus Martin Huerta Hiedra, the deputy prosecutor in the
office, because she had a special pass for crossing one of the
international bridges and he wanted to visit Wal-Mart. Gunmen caught
them at a street corner at about 4:15 p.m. and pumped 85 rounds into the car.

Mr. Molinar said he knew something was wrong when his wife did not
call him during her lunch break, as she always did. It was a routine
they had, a security check. He learned of the shooting on television,
raced to the scene and stood dumbfounded before his wife's lifeless body.

"She was never afraid," he said. "She thought she wasn't important
enough for them to care about."