BORDER DRUG WAR: VIOLENCE WEARS ON VALLEY OF JUAREZ
RESIDENTS

IN THE VALLEY OF JUAREZ -- Jose Morales says he knows his options are
to get out or die.

Morales, 47, is one of thousands of people living in fear in the
Valley of Juarez.

Some residents are trapped in the small colonias because they do not
have the money to relocate or the documents to enter the United
States. They have been left behind to run stores or sell goods while
the economy crumbles around them and drug-cartel violence claims more
lives.

Some, like Morales, have chosen not to leave.

He said he sent his wife and son to stay with relatives in the U.S.,
but he has remained in the colonia of El Porvenir to protect the
60-year-old hardware store started by his grandparents.

El Porvenir is about 40 miles east of Juarez in a sparsely populated
part of Mexico. Fewer than 18,000 people live in the low-income
communities between El Porvenir and Juarez, but the area has become a
place of rampant death threats and murders.

In March, more than 50 people died violently in the Valley of Juarez.
About 180 homicides occurred in Juarez during that time.

Morales said it has become increasingly difficult to run his store, La
Ferreteria Y Carpinteria, because about half of his customers have
fled the town. Across the border from the valley are Texas towns
stretching from San Elizario to Fort Hancock.

Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West recently said that Mexicans
crossing into the U.S. were abandoning El Porvenir because criminal
organizations had posted notices near the center of the colonia,
ordering the residents to get out. The notices said people had 30 days
to vacate or their families would be kidnapped or killed.

Mostly the poor have stayed behind. Fear is the steady companion of
those left in El Porvenir, Morales said.

"Here, all the people are scared," he said.

Many businesses in the communities that straddle the Juarez-Porvenir
highway have closed.

In Guadalupe, a colonia midway between El Porvenir and Juarez, Jorge
Perez, 19, works for Computadoras Joma, a computer repair shop on the
main street. Perez said he continues to live in Guadalupe because his
choices are to be afraid at home or be afraid elsewhere.

"It's the same wherever you go," he said.

Perez said Guadalupe, much like many other colonias along the
Juarez-Porvenir highway, shuts down about 6 p.m. Around sunset, he
said, people barricade themselves in their homes and hope that they
won't be victimized overnight.

Once the sun rises, the once lively area looks abandoned, he
said.

Vendors who sell food along the Juarez-Porvenir highway say it is
common to see vehicles headed toward Juarez with furniture piled high
on top of them.

They say they have watched their profits diminish amid the slow exodus
of migrants looking for security in an insecure country.

This feeling is fueled by crime, such as a murder wave during the past
two weeks in the Valley of Juarez.

March 25, gunmen killed two men in the community of Praxedis Guerrero.
One was shot more than 40 times at a cell-phone shop.

On March 28, the bodies of four men and one woman were found on a dirt
road off the Juarez-Porvenir highway, and the body of a man was found
on a soccer field in the colonia of El Sauzal. He had been stabbed
many times.

Another body was found Tuesday in the El Porvenir cemetery.

Perez said he would like to see more police or soldiers in the Valley
of Juarez.

"Some days they're patrolling the downtown area, and some days they
don't care at all," he said.

Mexican law enforcement officials monitor traffic and inspect vehicles
at checkpoints on the Juarez-Porvenir highway. Some residents, though,
say sending additional police or soldiers into the valley to establish
more checkpoints or to increase patrols would not make a difference.

Vincente Mendez, 40, said he has watched an influx of law enforcement
in the valley since he was a child living on the outskirts of Juarez.
He has also seen his share of dead bodies as an adult in El Sauzal,
where he rents a small piece of land.

"I expect the cartels to win (Juarez) because the money is in the
drugs," Mendez said.

The cartels' presence in the valley has strengthened in the past three
years, he said, and the government cannot control them. The economy,
he said, has been crumbling due to the absence of tourists. This feeds
desperation and abets drug dealers, he said.

"Part of the people who don't have the money end up working for the
cartels," he said. "It forces the problem to grow bigger."

It is a problem that may not be resolved in time to save the
communities from becoming completely corrupt, Mendez said.

"Many of the people who live in the communities on the border don't
have hope," he said.

Some of them go to work as lookouts for criminal organizations. They
stand on street corners to watch for people who should not be in the
area, then feed the information to their employers.

Their presence is increasing, Mendez said, and so are murders, death
threats, bodies left in the street and drug smugglers demanding that
people leave their homes. Some of those tactics are specifically
geared to push the people out of the Valley of Juarez, he said.

"It's true," he said. "They don't want us here."

Mendez said he would move to a different state in Mexico if he
believed it was too dangerous to remain in El Sauzal. Mexico, despite
its problems, is the only country worth living in, Mendez said.

"In Mexico, the life is easier here than it is in America," he said.
"There's no other country like Mexico. It's better. It has liberties."

In El Porvenir, Morales said his plan is to migrate north if the
violence continues.

"I will try to cross the border to America," he said.