FAMILIES, BUSINESSES FLEE JUAREZ FOR U.S. PASTURES

EL PASO - A painting in the apartment of novelist Benjamin Saenz
depicts an exodus of Mexican campesinos to El Paso during the 1910
Mexican Revolution - part of a larger group of refugees that included
business and civic leaders. Many settled in this Sunset Heights neighborhood.

A street named for then-President Porfirio Diaz cuts through the
historic area. Another former Mexican general and president,
Victoriano Huerta, is buried nearby.

These days, as drug cartel-fueled violence pushes a new wave of
emigrants northward, history seems to be repeating itself - with one
striking difference.

"This time, the newcomers are settling everywhere, the West,
Eastside, Upper Valley, Horizon City," said Saenz, a literature
professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. "It's not just
Sunset Heights anymore, but everywhere."

This immigrant wave includes civic leaders and entrepreneurs, who
have moved dozens of businesses north, generating jobs and a boost in
the housing and real estate markets.

Months of savage violence across the border in Ciudad Juarez and
elsewhere in Mexico are spurring a new exodus to El Paso, as well as
other southern U.S. cities, including Dallas. But El Paso, already
familiar for many living along the border, is a favored destination.

Nobody knows the exact number of Mexicans who have settled here in
the latest wave, but there's no denying the reality. Juarez is slowly
emptying. And as in the past, whether Mexicans are fleeing a
revolution, a peso crisis or rampant violence, they rarely return
home after planting roots in McAllen, Laredo or El Paso.

"During the Revolution a significant portion of the affluent refugee
population did remain in the United States, settling in El Paso, San
Antonio, Tucson, Los Angeles," said border historian Oscar Martinez
of the University of Arizona. "Their presence gave the
Mexican-American community a boost, enlarging the small middle class
that was there already."

These days, many are giving up on the government of President Felipe
Calderon for failing to stop the bloodshed. The national death toll
in two years of cartel violence is estimated at 18,000. About 98
percent of crimes are never solved.

Since January 2008, Juarez has had more than 4,700 homicides and,
last year, 16,000 car thefts and 1,900 carjackings. The homicide rate
is 190 per 100,000 people, making it one of the most violent cities
in the world. The Dallas murder rate is about 14 per 100,000 people.

U.S. consulates have issued repeated warnings to American travelers
in the northern states of Chihuahua, Coahuila and Tamaulipas - all
bordering Texas. El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen recently requested
1,100 M-4 assault rifles, in part, he said, to ensure that El Paso,
population 750,000, remains one of the safest U.S. cities of its size.

The number of Mexicans seeking haven in Texas is unclear. School
districts report only modest increases in enrollment. Yet business
leaders and law enforcement officials see a large influx, although
their estimates vary widely.

The El Paso Regional Economic Development Corp. estimates 5,000
recent arrivals in El Paso. Allen puts the number at 30,000. Juarez's
Autonomous University calculates that 60,000 have made the move.

Measuring those numbers is difficult because many residents have
homes on both sides of the border and others commute across the
border daily to work. But playing down their growing presence in El
Paso is no longer possible. At any shopping mall, the Juarez and
Chihuahua license plates, once seen mainly on weekends and holidays,
are a daily presence. Dozens of former Juarez businesses, including
the bar 33, have moved to El Paso as well.

"El Paso is now known as 'Juarez North,' " said Willivalddo
Delgadillo, a social activist and writer.

Saenz also noted a shift in the makeup of the city's population.

"We're becoming a lot more Mexican and a lot less Chicano," he said,
using an old term to refer to Mexican-Americans.

In the short term, an infusion of business and investment may be
welcome in a city ranked as one of the poorest in the state, if not
the country, with a traditionally high unemployment rate.

"However, the long-term picture is bleak if we don't turn things
around," said City Council member Beto O'Rourke, adding that El
Paso's economy depends heavily on a healthy maquiladora industry
across the border. Hundreds of El Paso companies provide logistical
support, parts and transportation for maquiladoras, mostly
foreign-owned assembly plants that produce goods for the U.S. market.

"If we agree that Juarez is a failed city and that the failure of
Juarez portends the failure of El Paso, then what are we going to do
to turn this situation around?" O'Rourke asked.

Last month, O'Rourke and fellow council members passed a resolution
urging President Barack Obama and Calderon to meet in El Paso and
make drug violence a top priority.

Once a proud city of 1.4 million, Juarez is on its knees. More than
10,000 businesses have closed, leaving tens of thousands unemployed,
the city's chamber of commerce says. Since 2005, more than 116,000
homes have been abandoned, according to the Juarez Municipal
Institute of Investigations and Planning.

The number of people who have left is also unclear. Media reports,
citing the Mexican census bureau, have said that more than 500,000
people have abandoned Juarez because of fear of violence or endemic
unemployment.

What's clear is that violence in Juarez has defined the boundary
between the two cities more sharply than any political barrier could,
reminding residents that despite their shared roots and culture, they
really do live in two countries. Border crossings have fallen dramatically.

A drive through Juarez neighborhoods underscores the exodus.

Rivera del Bravo, a newer section in eastern Juarez with schools and
strip malls, was once described by a former state governor as a model
for future neighborhoods. It is also near where some of the most
vicious fighting has taken place. Stories abound of gunfights,
headless corpses and men in SUVs peering through dark tinted windows.
Today, rows of homes are abandoned, littered with trash and graffiti.

"From one day to another, people just pick up and go, some never
paying their debts to me, just disappear like the wind," said
Francisca Kika Lucas, 38, a store clerk who does business from behind
white wrought iron bars. She would like to return to her native
Oaxaca or, better yet, take her two children and husband and "leave
for the other side," she said, pointing north.

In Campestre, once the elegant country club area of Juarez, "For
Sale" and "For Rent" signs are prominent, along with large boulders
blocking streets - placed by residents as a last-ditch effort to
deter would-be kidnappers or extortionists.

"Unbelievable," said businessman Jorge Contreras Fornelli, teary-eyed
and shaking his head as he walked the block, pointing to the homes of
former neighbors now living across the border. "The human cost is
beyond belief."

If there's hope for Juarez, it's found in residents such as Contreras
- - the people who stayed despite the downward spiral of their city.
They wrestle with guilt for wanting to leave and fear that staying
behind may cost them their lives.

Their determination, some say, is a reflection of their city's
storied past. In the 1980s, the city woke a country, leading a
nationwide movement for democracy that finally reached Mexico City on
a rainy night in July 2000. That's when the National Action Party, or
PAN, led by Vicente Fox, booted the ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party out of office after 71 years in power.

That history is partly why Calderon, who took part in some of those
early marches as a teen, has made Juarez a top priority, aides say.
After the Jan. 31 massacre of 15 young people celebrating a birthday
party, he visited Juarez three times in a month. He named Luis H.
Alvarez, an iconic PAN figure who once led hunger strikes in
Chihuahua City and Juarez, to oversee a federally funded project
aimed at restoring order, generating jobs and building parks, schools
and museums.

The Juarez Strategic Plan is an effort led by the private sector to
restore the city's image. Businessman Miguel Fernandez is founder and
president.

"As a society we need to become active again, stronger, bolder and
perhaps most importantly, demand rule of law, the most powerful tool," he said.

The plan's director, Lucinda Vargas, works in Juarez and lives in El Paso.

"What's really at stake here is not just Juarez's future, but
Mexico's too," she said. "Do we learn from our past and rescue our
city, or stand back and watch it die? Do we fight on, or leave for
the other side? Only we as a society will answer that."