BROKEN PROMISE: VIOLENCE CHASES FAMILIES BACK TO NATIVE VERACRUZ

VERACRUZ, Mexico -- Thousands of families left this depressed coastal
state 15 years ago for blue-collar jobs in the bustling factories of Juarez.

Now many of them are fleeing Juarez, one of the most violent cities
in the world, to return to Veracruz, an impoverished place that has
been ravaged by natural disasters.

The Veracruz state government is subsidizing the exodus from the
border. This year, it has paid for seven charter flights that ferried
1,600 people from Juarez to the port of Veracruz.

An epidemic of extortion, kidnapping and murder has led these people
to the same conclusion: It is better to be poor in Veracruz than to
be prey in Juarez.

"We prefer to be in these floodings than to live in a violence-torn
city," said a woman named Lilia, who witnessed the shooting deaths of
three men on a Juarez street. Fearful of retribution, she asked that
her last name not be published.

Juarez this year has had about 2,800 murders -- twice as many as New
York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston combined. More than 7,000
people have died violently in Juarez since 2008, when a war erupted
between the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels.

Veracruz was the port that U.S. sailors invaded in 1914 on orders
from President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson feared that Germany was sending
arms to Mexican President Victoriano Huerta, who rose to power
through a bloody coup during the Mexican Revolution.

Today, historic Veracruz is Mexico's third-most populous state, but
it also is a place where poor towns are as common as the primary
crops of sugar cane and coffee beans.

One recent day, 177 people who returned to Veracruz from Juarez
stepped off the plane with mixed feelings. In the sticky heat they no
longer are accustomed to, their foreheads filled with beads of sweat.

The muggy day was only one reason for their discomfort. They have no
homes and no job prospects. Relatives would have to provide many with
temporary shelter.

"We are going for quite an adventure," said Clara Ramirez, 45.

Still, life will be much more peaceful than it was in Juarez, she
said, where gang members kidnapped her for failing to pay extortion
money at the soup kitchen she ran.

A journey for jobs

Veracruzanos are nicknamed Jarochos. But those who left for Juarez
received a label that mixed their origin and their destination --
Juarochos. They settled in neighborhoods on the outskirts of Juarez
that would become the most dangerous areas on the border.

Many had worked in the sugarcane fields or at low-paying jobs in the
city of Veracruz.

The Mexican government, which had once provided incentives to farmers
and fisherman, began eyeing bigger industries in the early 1990s,
said Carlos Garrido de la Calleja, a professor at Universidad Veracru
zana who specializes in migration. One reason was that the North
American Free Trade Agreement was on the horizon.

Other economic troubles led many to begin looking to Juarez for employment.

"The privatization of the sugar mills worsened the agricultural
crisis," Garrido said.

The price of sugar has always fluctuated, but production under the
new private model shrank and slowed the economy, Garrido said. About
2 million people in Veracruz state depend on the sugar industry.

Another blow came when thousands saw their industrial jobs end after
the construction of a nuclear power plant near the city of Veracruz
was completed, Garrido said.

Those workers did not want to go back to the fields, he said.

Out of the fields, into the plants

Peasants were desperate for jobs in the '90s. Luis Gabino Ventura was
one of them.

At 17, he would travel by bus for at least an hour from the small
town of Potrero Nuevo to a sugar mill. Supervisors would randomly
choose workers for the day.

"I would go in the morning. If I was not chosen, I would go back in
the afternoon, then at night," he said.

Ventura made the equivalent of $12.66 a day. When he was lucky, he
would work three days a week. But some weeks he would get only one shift.

From his vantage, the factories in Juarez beckoned like a distant
but attainable oasis. After NAFTA was signed, ma quiladoras boomed as
more foreign companies relocated to Mexico to attract cheap labor.
Juarez needed workers, and Veracruz had a ready pool of unskilled and
uneducated people.

Ventura and others said charter buses hired by companies would pick
up people in rural areas and take them north, promising jobs, homes,
health coverage and education for their children. With megaphones on
the roofs of their cars, recruiters would tout factory jobs in Juarez.

Ventura heard from a cousin in March 1996 that Juarez was a
destination for those seeking steady work. The cousin had married a
mechanic who found a job at a plant that manufactured wiring for cars.

"She said there were jobs," Ventura said. "She talked about the benefits."

Ventura traveled alone by bus to Juarez a few months after that
conversation. The trip took 40 hours and covered 1,300 miles.

With the help of his cousin, Ventura soon joined the emerging
blue-collar work force composed of many Juarochos like him. He got a
job at the same plant as the cousin's spouse.

Companies would place workers with no relatives in buildings that
resembled cattle sheds. Some would stay for 15 days. Others would
sleep in the sheds for up to two months.

Whoever could endure the work at the factories would stay and earn
other benefits, such as buying little homes from the federal housing
agency. The rest would move on to the next plant.

Even with the hardship of moving to a faraway place, jobs brought
happiness. Just walking the streets of Juarez would remind them that
opportunities were everywhere, Ventura said. His eyes widened and he
flashed a rare smile as he described cars scouting Juarez in search of workers.

Ventura met his wife while working at another maquila, Scientific
Atlanta, in June 1998. At the plant, they built cable modems and
digital cable boxes. They married after two years, had three children
and bought a little house near the airport. Each earned about $70 a week.

As a hobby, Ventura sang in a band that played cumbia music at
quinceaneras and weddings.

"It was a different Juarez," Ventura's wife said of the years before
2007, when fear made its way to the poor neighborhoods where
thousands from Veracruz had settled.

'The drug trafficker clipped our wings'

The pattern of crime in Juarez is like a map of the areas Juarochos
populated in the '90s and early 2000s. Most murders occur in colonias
southeast or northwest of the city.

One neighborhood in particular, Rivera del Bravo, is nicknamed
Riveras de Veracruz because so many residents migrated from the
coastal state. In this subdivision only a few yards from the border
fence in Socorro, Texas, people speak a distinguishable accent in
which they do not pronounce the letter "s" and where cursing is part
of the local tongue.

Far from the center of the city, newcomers started their lives in
Juarez. Local government did not seem to care about these immigrants,
Garrido said.

"It is a shame that local authorities knew about the influx of
immigrants from Veracruz and allowed them to establish at the edges
of Ciudad Juarez," he said.

In February 2007, the Veracruz government conducted an informal
census and calculated that 200,000 former Juarochos lived in Juarez,
said Luis Ramos, director of the program that helps Veracruzanos in
Juarez. Juarez is a city of 1.3 million.

"Veracruzanos found a way to create a mix," he said.

Ramos said buses would arrive with fruits, seafood and other fare
from Veracruz every other week. A restaurant named El Encanto
Jarocho, or the Jarocho charm, became popular with people of Juarez
and of Veracruz.

In one of the poor colonias of the Juarochos, the Echevarria family
struggled as violence escalated.

In 2004, the Echevarrias left their traditions, relatives and the
tropical weather of Veracruz to work at the maquilas, Rafael Echevarria said.

"But the drug trafficker clipped our wings," he said.

Armed men stormed into the Echevarrias' home twice this year,
stealing their valuables and ordering the family of six to vacate the
home or face death, said Cristian Echevarria, 22, son of Rafael and Alejandra.

"The third time we will rob the house and kill you," Cristian said
they told them.

"But why?" Cristian thought to himself. "We are poor."

Life in a pressure cooker

The Echevarrias knew crime was out of control when the teacher of
7-year-old Valeria asked each child to pay 300 pesos, or $24, per
week to extortionists.

"We were not sleeping," said the father, Rafael Echevarria. "We were
defenseless."

Cristian said living in those neighborhoods was also a temptation for
young men who were recruited by drug cartels.

While hanging out with friends one day, Cristian said, several men
pulled over in late-model SUVs, their AK-47s visible. One reached
into his pocket and pulled out a bundle of bills that he said
amounted to 5,000 pesos, or about $400.

"We only needed to take the cell phones and wait to receive
instructions," Cristian said the man told them.

Cristian said he declined, but some of his friends took the phones
and the money.

The memory that haunts the Echevarrias most at their hot one-bedroom
home in Veracruz was being caught in crossfire between hit men and police.

It happened on a Saturday, one day before they left Juarez in May.
Rafael and Alejandra were riding in a city bus with their daughter,
Valeria. They heard gunfire and bullets riddling the metal bus.
Police were on one side, reputed criminals on the other.

Valeria ducked and crawled beneath the seats, smashing her teeth on
the floor when the bus screeched to a stop. The girl saw blood
everywhere. Her parents cried out in panic, assuming that their
youngest daughter had been shot. Fortunately, she was not. She only
lost a tooth.

The Echevarrias moved back to Veracruz.

"She is the reason why we are here," Alejandra said. "We don't want
her to grow up in that city."

Since the shootout, Valeria behaves differently. Nightmares haunt
her. Her parents said she barely speaks. They believe she was
traumatized, but they don't have money for psychologists.

Distracted and anxious, Valeria just sits and draws on recycled
sheets of paper. Mostly, she draws heart shapes and writes messages
such as "I love you."

Far away from the murders -- Juarez averages nine homicides a day --
the Echevarrias still feel suffocated by the violence of their former city.

Any time an SUV with tinted windows drives by, Cristian Echevarria
said, the family is terrified. He starts running or walking in the
opposite direction. It is his instinct.

"I had grown used to Juarez," he said.

Back where it all started

In the town of Carlos A. Carrillo, population 22,000, residents are
familiar with the smell of sugar burning and the sight of ash piling
up on streets and inside crudely built homes.

People depend on the sugar-cane mills to survive. "No ashes means no
money," they say. During the six-month off-season for sugar
production, people eat what they can, including deep-fried turtle.

Residents of this downtrodden town were the first to speak to Fidel
Herrera, former governor of Veracruz, about the dangers relatives
faced in Juarez.

Herrera, whose term ended Tuesday, conceived the idea of returning at
least some Veracruzanos to their native soil at taxpayer expense. The
program began in March. It also helps people from Veracruz flee Rey
nosa, a border city in the state of Tamaulipas that is plagued with
drug-cartel violence.

The program intensified an exodus from Juarez that has left more than
100,000 houses abandoned and prompted the closings of at least 10,000
businesses, according to the city planning office and the chamber of commerce.

Ramos, the program director, said 400 families have already left
Juarez through government subsidizes. An additional 500 families are
on a waiting list. All travelers underwent criminal background checks
and were clean, Ramos said.

The recent flight carrying 177 travelers was part of the government
program. None had been on a plane before.

Herrera welcomed the families at the government's hangar. The state
department of health, education and labor and other agencies set up
booths to hand out information to newcomers.

"You are our source of pride," Herrera told them.

He said he brought back Veracruzanos more as an act of kindness than
to better their economic condition. He said the program has nothing
to do with the fact that his wife, Rosa Borunda, is native of Juarez.

"It was the humane thing to do," Herrera said.

Some returning families stay in the metro area of Veracruz, where
700,000 live. It is the largest port in Mexico, handling nearly a
million tons of vehicles every year. Others travel in buses to towns
trying to recover from natural disasters.

Rafaela Mendoza was one happy-go-lucky traveler. She recently arrived
at her hometown of Tlacotalpan, battered in September by Hurricane
Karl. The river Cotaxtla swelled and its waters destroyed the road
that connects Tlacotalpan, a town of 8,000, to the coast.

The aluminum sheets that once sheltered Mendoza, her husband and
three children were taken by the floods or by people rebuilding their
homes. What few belongings she had were lost in heavy rains.

"See? I am poor, poor, poor," she said.

Yet Mendoza smiled.

"My husband will build it once he gets here from Juarez," she said.
Her husband, two daughters and son are still in Juarez. The daughters
are already married and will stay. The father and the son plan to
meet her in Veracruz before the end of the year.

"We'll be eating rice and beans, but there is peacefulness," Mendoza said.

She has no job prospects and does not know what she will do.

A reunion brings joy

On a recent afternoon, Mendoza's parents and six siblings gathered to
celebrate her return.

Mendoza's mother fried a type of bream fish from the river. Then she
cut onions, green chiles and tomatoes to prepare a sauce. The steamy
house smelled like fish with a scent of lime. The slices of
vegetables and a bottle of Coca-Cola were covered with flies.

Lacking doors, the house has curtains that separate the one bedroom
from the dining area and from the bathroom. Behind the house,
Rafaela's brothers climbed the palm trees to get coconuts for
everyone. With a machete, they cut the outer husk of the
orange-yellow coconut just enough to make a small hole to drink the
liquid. After the juice was gone, they cut the shells in half to
remove the tender meat.

As poor as Mendoza's family is, her mother still invites strangers
into the house to eat.

Poverty dominates rural areas of Veracruz. Of 7.1 million people,
half struggle to pay for a place to live. About 1.5 million cannot
afford to eat.

The poverty rate dropped 11 percentage points from 1994 to 2006,
according to the National Council for the Evaluation of Social
Development Policy. But Veracruz still is prone to poverty, said
Adolfo Sanchez Almanza, an economist at the National Autonomous
University of Mexico.

Since 1970, Veracruz has dropped 10 spots to fourth-worst state in
Mexico when it comes to welfare, Sanchez said. The southern states of
Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero are worse off.

Sanchez said the living conditions are a result of "nanny state" policies.

"The government has historically helped those living in extreme
poverty with socialist programs that don't end poverty," he said.

Juarochos returning to Veracruz will put more pressure on a feeble
economy, he said.

"The government has already sent them there, but now what?" he said.

They have tasted what it was like to own a house, a car and to earn
at least $60 a week living in an industrial city so close to the
modern United States.

He said the floating population of Veracruzanos may be forced to go
back to Juarez if their homeland turns out not to be productive for them.

"If their living conditions don't improve," Sanchez said, "they will
be prone to return."