LEARNING UNDER FIRE: TENSION MOUNTS AS EXTORTION THREATS ESCALATE

JUAREZ -- Trinidad Vazquez says he spends each day waiting for a
death threat. His job is innocent enough, as he teaches English at a
small school he owns on the south side of Juarez. But for the past
year, Vazquez, 40, said he has expected a phone call from drug cartel
members demanding protection money and threatening to kill him if he
cannot pay.

He said such threats are the trend on the impoverished east side,
where he lives. More than 4,900 people have been murdered in Juarez
since 2008, and most of the stores in his neighborhood have been
targets of extortion, Vazquez said.

Some have paid the money. Those who didn't either abandoned their
businesses or continued operations until their stores were riddled
with bullets or burned down, he said.

So Vazquez keeps his school, A.E.S. Language Specialists, hidden in a
house in South Juarez.

"At the school, every day I wonder if the next call is going to be
something like that," he said. "So I let the answering machine pick it up."

Vazquez said his young students have kept him in Juarez, the most
violent city in North America.

"Just by being bilingual in Juarez you have 1,000 more opportunities," he said.

He is not numb to the shootings, murders and mutilated bodies, but he
is becoming accustomed to daily violence.

"Everybody's scared out there. We say we get used to it, but I don't
think anybody gets used to murder," he said.

Vazquez said he used to watch street gangs in Fresno, Calif., battle
for drug-distribution territory when he was a teenager. Now the
cartels or their couriers do the same in Juarez.

A Mexican citizen, he returned to Juarez 10 years ago to start over
after divorcing his American wife, he said. He has three children who
live in the United States, and his parents and siblings are
naturalized U.S. citizens, he said.

Vazquez lives in a neighborhood where the dirt streets are covered in
trash. One-room houses cost $4,000. They have cement floors and are
made of concrete blocks.

The neighborhood is near assembly plants on Boulevard Independencia,
where he also teaches English to the managers of Masa, a factory that
makes televisions. Vazquez said he moved to the neighborhood to be
close to the plant. Truth is, he said, it is not a safe place to live
or run a business.

But police frequently patrol the neighborhood where his school
operates, he said.

"We try to kind of conceal the business because of the extortions,"
he said. "If they see that you have a lot of activity, they might ask
you for payment or money or rob you or something."

A sticker on the front door and painted letters on one of the walls
are the only indications that the house contains a language school.
Inside, a cluster of lively children study English.

They are sons and daughters of police officers and maquiladora
managers. After attending regular school during the day, they take
classes at Vazquez's academy in the evening.

Sebastian Campos, 13, said learning English is an opportunity for a
better life. Carlos Gonzalez, 10, said he is learning English so that
he can get a job in the United States someday.

Interviewed one recent night, they said they were not afraid of
living in Juarez, even though they have seen people being killed.

Campos said he saw a man shot after a wedding reception last year. He
was in a car with his family, and the man was in a vehicle in front of them.

Gonzalez said he recently saw someone shot in front of his house.

Vazquez protects the children with common sense.

"I don't allow them to go outside any more," he said.

Vazquez said he is mostly afraid of receiving a death threat from a
cartel member who wants him to pay money for "protection." That would
mean he would have to choose between closing the school or somehow
finding the money to keep it open.

Vazquez said in the last six months extortions have expanded from
parts of Juarez with large stores and restaurants to his tiny,
low-income neighborhood. Its small grocery stores struggle to generate income.

One of the few remaining businesswomen in his neighborhood recently
reopened her store after paying a portion of the money an
extortionist had demanded. Maria Garcia, owner of Maria's Grocery
Store, said she received the extortion threat April 7.

Garcia, 55, said a man called her and told her to deposit 5,000 pesos
into an account or she would be killed. He told her he was a member
of a gang that works for the Juarez cartel.

She said she took the threat seriously because of what happened at
Richy's, a neighborhood grocery that closed after the owner was
kidnapped for not paying an extortionist.

"At closing time they were always armed and they still got
kidnapped," she said.

Garcia said she could only afford to pay 1,000 pesos and now spends
every day afraid that the gang will kill her.

"A lot of people tell me, 'What are you waiting for? To get killed?
Just close the store and go,' " she said.

In 2009, Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said stopping extortion was a
priority. The cartels were fighting for heroin sales and competing to
shake down businesses.

Extortions caused more than 6,000 businesses in Juarez to shut down
by December 2009, including most of the tourist shops in mercados,
according to Juarez officials. By February, the Mexican Chamber of
Commerce reported that 10,670 businesses had closed since the drug
war escalated in 2008.

Unclear is whether the extortionists are gang members, cartel members
or working alone.

For example, brothers Alejandro and Rafael Padilla, ages 24 and 32,
were arrested in February for allegedly threatening business
operators at Joaquin Terrazas and Altamirano. Police and the Mexican
army set up surveillance and caught the Padillas.

Even police can be perpetrators.

The director of the Mexican federal police said in a recent interview
that 10 members of his force were arrested in Juarez for extortion
and breaking into private property.

Vazquez said it may be only a matter of time before he is victimized.
Then his school of hope will be in real danger.

"What can you do when someone calls you on the phone and asks you to
deposit money? What can you do about that?" he said.