The Fight to Save Juárez

by Ricardo C. Ainslie

  As the engineer was speaking, a man in a navy blue blazer and a pink shirt with no tie briskly entered the fray. He did not bother to identify himself, but the engineer no doubt recognized him as Víctor Valencia, the governor’s representative in Ciudad Juárez. I thought that perhaps Valencia lived in the neighborhood. He had a thick moustache and black curly hair that was combed straight back; whatever product he used in his hair made it gleam in the summer sun. The crowd opened a path for Valencia, who in a matter of moments was in the engineer’s face, brusque and imperious. Valencia’s voice was loud and carried easily through the crowd. His tactic was to jab his finger into the young man’s chest while publicly humiliating him. The engineer was clearly out of his depth. “Who called the police?” Valencia demanded to know. He called the engineer a “coward” for “coming in here to beat up on the public.” The engineer made one or two efforts to respectfully counter Valencia, invoking the fact that he was just doing his job, but Valencia shouted him down, accusing him of “working for other interests” and alleging that the real reason he was here was that the city was clearing the road so people could cut through the neighborhood to get to the new shopping mall on the other side. He repeatedly called the man a coward and a “collaborator” with the police, who, he said, “have done nothing.” The latter drew cheers from the residents, who by now had formed a tight circle around the encounter, savoring every word. People clapped every time Valencia made a point. Valencia appeared to have a need to fan the flames; he was theatrical, playing to the audience.

  “There are killings all over this city,” Valencia continued, now speaking to the neighbors rather than the engineer, “and look how many police they have with them. We must be very important,” he said mockingly. Some people laughed, but Valencia’s excesses were beginning to make even those who had at first enthusiastically welcomed him now begin to feel a degree of awkwardness. The tight knot of people that had encircled the exchange began to loosen, and some even began to head home. It had become clear that the city was not going to proceed with the orders to dismantle the barriers on this day, and they’d had enough of the spectacle. Off at the edge of the crowd, I eavesdropped on a conversation between two federal police officers remarking on the scene that had just unfolded. “When are you going to see people of that class behaving that way? That’s how out of control this is,” one officer said. He was referring to the fact that in Mexico, with its tight class structure, it was unusual to see upper-middle-class people out on the streets screaming and shouting. Then, in reference to Valencia, the same federal officer observed that the situation had turned into political grandstanding. “I heard this guy is going to be put in charge of the CIPOL,” said another officer. The CIPOL, the intelligence and investigative agency for the state police, was known to be under the control of the Juárez cartel.

  Valencia had succeeded in throwing a wrench in the process. The engineer ordered the city’s crew to stop their work and most of the berms and boulders remained in place. As the city vehicles exited down the street, the remaining residents cheered. Having accomplished his goal, Valencia exited the stage as abruptly as he’d arrived.

  At the time of the Campestre confrontation, I did not know who Víctor Valencia was, much less of the animosity that existed between him and the mayor of Juárez. But it was impossible to miss the man’s arrogance, an attribute that had eventually soured even those who’d initially cheered him that day.

  . . .

  Conflict between José Reyes Ferriz and Víctor Valencia dated back to Reyes Ferriz’s nine-month tenure as interim mayor in 2001. The day following Reyes Ferriz’s interim appointment, Valencia had called ostensibly at the then-governor’s behest. “He said, ‘The governor wants my compadre to be secretary of social development,’” Reyes Ferriz recalled. This was an important post, because it controlled many of the city’s purchases. The entire arrangement had the look and feel of an insider deal (the kind of deal that Saulo Reyes would subsequently get in 2005, when he opened the companies through which a third of the city’s business flowed). Reyes Ferriz wasn’t comfortable with it. “I refused,” he told me. “I knew [Valencia] and didn’t trust him.” The mayor’s refusal put him on a collision course with the governor and Valencia’s other allies.

  Governor Reyes Baeza had installed Víctor Valencia as his personal representative in Juárez in July of 2009. It was a step meant to set the stage for the latter’s mayoral candidacy, positioning Valencia for the upcoming 2010 elections. The tensions between Reyes Ferriz and Valencia had simmered for years and the governor knew it. In the prior mayoral election, in 2007, both the governor and Héctor Murguía had picked Valencia to succeed Murguía as the Juárez mayor. At the time, Valencia had begun spreading rumors that José Reyes Ferriz actually lived in El Paso, not Juárez, a fact that, if true, would have disqualified Reyes Ferriz from running for office. Reyes Ferriz did, indeed, own a home in El Paso, but that was not uncommon among the people who occupied Juárez’s upper social strata.2 Paying Texas property taxes made it possible for their children to cross the river every day to attend school on the U.S. side. Having such homes was also a symbol of status within Juárez’s upper social circles.

  Reyes Ferriz discounts the allegations that he lived in El Paso as outright falsehoods. “We lived our lives in Juárez,” he said in reference to himself and his family. But as a precaution, in the six-month run-up to the mayoral elections in 2007, Reyes Ferriz made sure he did not so much as cross the river. “I did not go to El Paso, not even for a single day, during that time because if they had photographed me there they would have used it against me,” he told me.

  But Valencia’s accusations stuck. Reyes Ferriz claims that El Norte, which backed Valencia’s candidacy, was primarily responsible for endlessly repeating the rumor, which took on the status of fact and was repeated as such in both Mexican newspapers and the international media, in part because it lent itself to the dramatic picture of an embattled mayor whose life was under siege. However, in Juárez, the Valencia-inspired rumor had a different connotation: it implied that the mayor was cowardly, and for some it also bred resentment because it implied that the mayor’s privilege gave him the luxury of seeking refuge across the river while the rest of the populace lived trapped in crime-ridden neighborhoods from which there was no escape.

  Reyes Ferriz had succeeded in outflanking his adversaries within his party and garnered the nomination for mayor. But the animosities remained. There was no love lost between José Reyes Ferriz and Víctor Valencia.

  . . .

  I had read many newspaper accounts over the course of researching Juárez, and during my first interview with José Reyes Ferriz, I, too, remarked that it was my understanding that he was living in El Paso due to concerns for his own and his family’s personal safety. The mayor’s reaction was immediate: “I must correct you,” he responded, politely but firmly. “I do not live in El Paso. My wife and children stay in El Paso because we have been the object of many death threats. But I live in Ciudad Juárez. I live in this city, not over there,” he said definitively, gesturing toward the north-facing window behind his desk with a view of the Rio Grande and downtown El Paso. I was surprised by the mayor’s correction, and not altogether convinced of it given that the contrary view was common currency in the local, national, and international media.

  Across the street from my hotel, the Lucerna, was a Sanborns restaurant. One evening not long after that first interview with the mayor, I joined a group of Juárez journalists who were decompressing from a day’s work over a few beers. The discussion was lively and far ranging. At one point the conversation drifted to the mayor, with whom the journalists did not seem to be particularly enamored. They were aware of the fact that I’d interviewed him and asked me what he had to say about what was taking place in Juárez. I volunteered at one point that the mayor had told me that he did not live in El Paso, as had been so frequently reported in the media. “He says he lives in Juárez,” I told them. The j
ournalists were emphatic: “He lives in El Paso!” they asserted.

  The mayor had been so adamant about living in Juárez, however, that I pressed the journalists. “Why don’t you investigate it?” I asked. “It would be easy enough to do, you know where he works; you could trail him.”

  That suggestion drew protests. “We might be killed,” one of them volunteered. No one was interested in pursuing the question of the mayor’s domicile, even as they strenuously upheld the common view that he lived across the river.

  Some months later, on a Saturday afternoon, I was interviewing the mayor again in his offices. He seemed to feel beleaguered. Despite his efforts, he had yet to succeed in dampening the rate of the killings or other crime in Juárez. He knew the city was growing restive about the situation, and he threw in the press’s insistence on the notion that he actually lived in El Paso as a reproach against the media. In response, I suggested that perhaps he could show me where he lived in Juárez and, to my surprise, he readily agreed. Within minutes we were headed out of his office.

  The convoy exited the Presidencia Municipal and roared down the border thruway until we turned right onto a boulevard off of which were a series of relatively new housing developments. One bore a large stone marker that said Bosques de Aragón; fifty yards past the marker we pulled up to a gated community. The security detail deployed to strategic spots as the gate opened slowly and we passed through. Once inside, we came to a stop in front of what Reyes Ferriz said was his house.

  The gated community was nice but not ostentatious; the homes were arrayed around a central, expansive lawn, at one end of which was a well-worn children’s playscape. The mayor exited the Suburban and made his way over to greet some neighbors clustered near the playscape, their children entertaining themselves on the swings and slides.

  Next we headed inside the house, where the mayor gave me a tour. There was a living room/dining room area partitioned by an iron railing. In the living room were family pictures of his wife and children. The decorations were modest, some appearing to be gifts he had received over the course of his term in office, but there were also paintings and other artwork on the walls. In the kitchen the mayor offered me something to drink. I noticed that the refrigerator held food, the condiments shelf was full, and there was a case of water bottles and a six-pack of Dos Equis beer. On the kitchen counter, next to a toaster, I spotted half-consumed bottles of DayQuil and NyQuil, which suggested that the mayor had been battling a cold. Also on the counter I spotted two letters addressed to him at this address: one from a bank and the other from his telephone service.

  The landing at the foot of the stairway took me by surprise. An enormous steel door, like one would find at a bank vault, was used to seal off access to the stairway. It was easily one inch thick. “I close this when I go upstairs for the night,” the mayor said, adding that this door and one upstairs had been installed following a rash of death threats against him when he’d fired the police after the Confidence Tests in the fall of 2008.

  Upstairs, there were several bedrooms and a workout area. The master bedroom was somewhat in disarray. One of the nightstands had a stack of DVD movies as well as books and what appeared to be an assortment of medications. There was also a handheld electronic device with an LCD screen and numerous security cameras that Reyes Ferriz could control with the device. “I can see what’s going on downstairs with this,” he explained. To illustrate, he changed stations. The door to the house came into view on the LCD screen, then the living room, then the landing by the stairs. Standing in front of the only bedroom window was a three-quarter-inch steel plate that spanned the length of the window. “When the death threats against me intensified, we installed this in order to prevent a sniper from shooting through the window,” he said matter-of-factly. Finally, the mayor showed me his “panic room.” It was actually a large master closet with rows of suits, shirts, and trousers, and shoes haphazardly arrayed on the floor. “I’ve got food and water in here,” he told me. “I’ve also got a weapon in case of an emergency,” he said, referring to the AR-15 that he had begun keeping when he’d fortified the house. The panic room had an enormous vault-like steel door, like the one that sealed off the stairway downstairs. The house had the unmistakable feel of a bunker.

  José Reyes Ferriz’s residence was more like a professional person’s bachelor pad than the home of the mayor of an important city. But all indications were that he lived here, at least during the week, visiting his wife and children on weekends, as commitments permitted. It was evident that in the steady chorus of “He lives over there,” the mayor felt maligned.

  I asked him why he hadn’t brought other people here. “In Juárez it’s dangerous to talk openly about death threats,” he answered. “It is easy for the cartels to take that as an act of defiance, as a challenge to them. That can make them feel that they have to take you out. It has not been worthwhile for me to do that. People can think what they want. I know the truth.”

  Notes

  1. A skeleton force of municipal police had been retained.

  2. Héctor Murguía owned a home in El Paso as well, but his “residency” was never an issue in his campaign.

  CHAPTER 20

  Addicts

  Juárez was awash in drugs and addicts (150,000 of them by one official count).1 Drugs were being sold all over the city—on street corners, in parks, in bars, even from street vendors’ push carts, which ostensibly sold tamales or steamed sweet potatoes but whose owners made their real profit selling drugs. As a result, drug addiction had metastasized. The explosion of picaderos was paralleled, if not exactly matched, by an increase in the number of treatment centers catering to strung-out addicts seeking help; they had sprung up everywhere, most supported by churches and nonprofits, others by government programs.

  Casa Aliviane, the Center for Attention to the Health of Addicts, was on Uranio Street in Norponiente, just a short walk south of the Rio Grande and within sight of downtown El Paso. The center was not difficult to find: the entrance to the building, which had once been a private residence, had a distinctive arabesque-shaped narrow doorway, as if one were entering a set from 1001 Arabian Nights. The exterior was painted bright pink and purple, its barred windows outlined in bold burgundy stripes. A short, red-tiled ledge sheltered the entryway, and above it “Casa Aliviane, A.C.” was painted in large red and orange block letters. The center had multiple rooms that served as dormitories, as well as a kitchen and dining room area, an office space, classrooms, and a space that served as a large meeting room. Twenty addicts were living at the center. Some of them had day jobs, returning in the evenings for dinner, prayer, and the group classes and meetings that were part of their recovery program. Others spent the day at Casa Aliviane, performing a variety of jobs that kept the center going.

  The staff at Casa Aliviane knew that theirs was dangerous work. The men who walked through their doors were not only strung out, many also had complex ties to Juárez’s drug world, which was rife with gang warfare and killings. Not all of the clientele were there in good faith. The staff at the treatment centers often worked in fear that gang members had infiltrated the centers and were living among the addicts who were genuinely trying to work their recovery programs. For example, gang members who were on a rival gang’s hit list sometimes sought refuge in the rehabilitation centers, masquerading as addicts seeking treatment, when in fact they were merely trying to hide out until the heat was past. And as often as not, the pushers themselves were addicts. By virtue of their gang affiliation, the pusher-addicts retained their predatory edge within the rehabilitation centers. It gave them power; they represented an ever-present threat of violence. Ordinary addicts feared them. Thus, within the rehabilitation centers there was often a great deal of tension.

  The addicts were part of a chain of realities that could be traced back to the cartels and the vicious battles taking place between their proxy gangs for control of the retail drug markets. Each rehab center had its own place with
in the ecology of the Juárez drug world. Pushers and addicts had alliances or arrangements with specific gangs by virtue of where they lived and the source of their drugs. If you were an addict living in a twenty-block area in Bellavista that was controlled by Los Aztecas, then you purchased your drugs from one of their pushers. You were living out your addiction within a Los Aztecas–controlled universe, but rival gangs (from a few blocks over, or perhaps even from the same neighborhood) were constantly trying to move into this piece of turf to push their own product on the neighborhood’s residents. Each of the substantive players in this game pressed people into service. Upcoming wannabes had to prove their mettle by pushing drugs and were sometimes forced to test rivals’ terrain. They also shared responsibility for identifying the incursions of rival gangs into their part of the colonia. All of this created flux and tension between gangs and within neighborhoods, and addicts were caught in between. It was a combustible mix that was producing many of the Juárez dead.

  The fratricidal hatreds between the Juárez street gangs ran so deep that treatment centers could not cater to addicts from rival gangs. In the natural course of things and not by design, there was an informal sorting of the centers. As often as not, specific centers became associated with particular gangs and the addicts that they served.

  . . .

  The sicarios arrived at Casa Aliviane on the night of September 2, just as the evening prayers had begun. They wore ski masks and brandished assault weapons. There were eight in all, and they broke down the door and moved briskly, in single file, through the narrow arabesque entryway and into the hallway, where they encountered the first residents. They eventually rounded up twenty men, whom they lined up and forced to their knees before shooting. All told, seventeen people were executed that night at Casa Aliviane. Sixteen were found dead in the interior hallway amid pools of blood and another died later that night at a nearby hospital (the remaining three were gravely wounded). One of the treatment center’s two pit bulls, ostensibly there to protect the facilities, had also been gunned down. The other dog, later found cowering in the courtyard, was spared for some reason.