Paul KeenanThe city of Ciudad Juarez prepares for Pope Francis, writes Paul Keenan
There is a brief moment when travelling along the US-Mexican border when one is presented with the true disparity with the ‘rich North’ and ‘poor South’.
It comes as one travels east through Texas along the I-10 highway, and that road curves through the border city of El Paso, roughly following the line of the Rio Bravo river (the author has travelled the route).
At this point, for just a few minutes, the traveller is surrounded by a conurbation that appears at first glance to be a surrounding whole. But then one looks left to see the shining steel and glass of El Paso’s high-rise business district surrounded by paved, painted and clean streets. And afterwards, upon looking right, one is presented with a low level expanse of commercial buildings and dwellings, decrepit and mutely painted, the entire scene a through-the-looking glass experience after the earlier view north.
Made impoverished by its geographic positioning just south of the Rio Bravo, the Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez nestles as close to the US-based El Paso as is physically possible, but in the world of haves and have-nots, it is as far from the American dream as the farthest flung township in the Latin American nation.
Confirmation
This, then, the world learned this week, will be a key stop for Pope Francis when he visits Mexico in mid-February 2016. It is fairly safe to use ‘when’, as religious media have already gained confirmations – after Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu let the cat out of the bag – from prelates in the Diocese of Ciudad Juarez as well as Chiapas and Michoacan that the Pope is coming. (The Mexican Bishops’ Conference has remained tight-lipped, but full confirmation of the trip is expected from the Vatican on December 12, when Mexico celebrates the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.)
The choice of Ciudad Juarez is an intriguing one – and comes after the late 2014 invitation issued by the cross-border Bishops of Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) and Las Cruces (USA). For, in Ciudad Juarez, the Pope will find all of the elements afflicting Mexican society concentrated in one place.
Be it the issues of poverty, migration, violence, criminality or corruption the Pope wishes to address, he will be in the right place when he speaks to the citizens of Ciudad Juarez.
Indeed, it is almost a certainty that Pope Francis will reference migration, and perhaps hold true to his stated desire to walk between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso in solidarity with the many thousands who are driven by poverty and violence to tackle the US crossing every year.
For the record, it must be acknowledged that Ciudad Juarez is viewed as a progressing success story amid the blighted image of wider Mexico, with the town making headlines most recently for its attempts to convince foreign tourists that it is now safe to visit – not something other cities in Mexico can yet claim.
But it was not always so with the city. If readers were previously aware of Ciudad Juarez, it most likely for the city’s reputation as the murder capital of Mexico.
Stemming from the drugs war declared by then-President Vincente Fox in 2006, Ciudad Juarez, as a border city, was inevitably affected as the dominant Juarez cartel faced down first the challenge posed by the Mexican military, and then by the rival Sinaloa cartel, eager to seize the Juarez smuggling routes.
As is ever the case, ordinary citizens were caught in the middle in the bloodiest of fashions, leading to a recorded murder rate for 2010 of 3,000 people (within a population of approximately 1.3 million people – imagine a murder rate of 3,000 people per year in similarly-sized Dublin city?).
The rate was exacerbated on the one hand by an appalling level of murders of women quite aside from cartel slayings, while on the other, according to one cable leaked by Edward Snowden during the Wikileaks scandal, the Mexican military allegedly prompted clashes between cartels so they would wipe each other out without soldiers having to become involved.
Not unexpectedly, migration as a form of escape from such violence became endemic, driving the exodus that has so exercised American legislators in recent years.
However, on top of this have been the harsh realities of globalisation – American firms looking to cut costs were not dissuaded by drugs problems in establishing factories in nearby Ciudad Juarez, and while hailing the provision of jobs for poor Mexicans, were enabled by lax employment legislation to expect long hours in return for an average $20 per week.
One result has been the decreased supervision of young children, with an associated increase in crime. (The economic bust of 2008 did not help as many factories were mothballed by US companies as they streamlined to ride out the financial storm.)
Such matters cannot be neglected by a visiting Pope, and again with certainty, it can be suggested that Pope Francis is the Pontiff who will speak on them most forcefully. He will laud the efforts by police which have seen the murder rate reduced to 424 last year – not the lowest on record, but moving in the right direction – but will surely set this against the fact that victory by the Sinaloa cartel in the Juarez turf war has contributed to the rate, meaning that drugs and the corruption and violence inherent in that trade continue; he will welcome the return of jobs to post-bust factories but will certainly denounce the exploitation of poor workers by corporations driven by profit margins; and among the victims groups he greets, the Pontiff will surely meet with the families and parents of those thousands of lost young women who continue to be snatched from the streets for torture and murder in Ciudad Juarez.
As to the migrants, and whether Pope Francis crosses the Rio Bravo or not, here is another sure prediction: for one day in February next year, travellers on the highway past Ciudad Juarez will witness a mass migration as Mexicans stream boldly south in support of their Latin American champion and the prayers he brings for their country.