Mexico, A Failed Country: Abandoning Juarez as El Paso High School Students Duck for Cover

This is another one of those dispatches from the war zone along the Mexican border that this blog has brought to you since about 2006 (well before almost anyone else recognized how bad things were getting).


News last week--it reached Fox--was about a gun battle on the bridge to Mexico that sprayed bullets across Bowie High School, and across a football field where the football coach was holding practive. A Mexican police officer was killled.


In early 1971, while waiting to go to Austin to law schol at the University of Texas School of Law ater being discharged from the army at Ft. Bliss, I spent time as a substitute teacher. One schoool at which I briefly taught was Bowie High School. At that time, Juarez, Mexico (right across the Rio Grande from El Paso) was a SAFE place then. Oh, it was alwyas corrupt. But Ft. Bliss soldiers had no hesitancy going to raunchy bars in Juarez. The first time I tried to find Bowie, I got on the wrong part of teh "Spahetti Bowl" interchange, and ACCIDENTALLY ended up in Mexico (not being able to turn around)--having to come back throgh customs. Guesss what "bridge" I travelled over? Right. I THINK it was the same bridge upon which this gun battletook place--right there almost above Bowie High School. El Paso has had stray bullets from gun battles in Juarez hit the El Paso City Hall, UTEP (the local university), and spray across a part of downtown El Paso and the border highway. That is just how close the war zone in Juarez is to El Paso. And the drug cartels essentially CNTROL Juarez. It is really amazing that El Paso has not really seen a spread of the violence over the river into El Paso But 3,000 people are being murdered per year in Juarez, and the situatiion is totally out of control.


Doubt me? Never do that. The radio "news minute" on KTSM radio, in Paso, this moring was about how MEXICO has abandoned Juarez as essentially a lost cause, along with some 100 other cities. Mexcio has announced that it has CANCELLED a 100 million grant program that was supposed to help troubled Mexican cities fight the drug cartels that now virtually control them. What was the announced reason for the cancellation of the money? It was that Juarez, and the other Mexican cities, have made NO PROGRESS in improving the terrible situation in Juarez (and the other cities). At least, this is what El Paso radio reported today (not a great source, but more reliable than, say, the AP or CNN).


Mexico truly is a failed country, and things are not getting better.