| | |  Editorials | Opinions | April 2009 
Calling in the Army Won't Stop the Violence Plaguing Mexico
 Andrew Hunt - Guelph Mercury
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Ciudad Juárez, a troubled city on the Mexican side of the Texas-Mexico border, is plagued by excessive violence, drug wars and extreme poverty. These problems, not new by any stretch of the imagination, mirror deeper social ills so prevalent in Mexico.
The violence in Ciudad Juárez is so excessive, so over the top (even by Mexico's standards), that President Felipe Calderón has deployed over 8,000 soldiers there in an effort to curb the worst of the bloodletting.
Also on hand are large numbers of federal and city police to support the troops.
The streets of Ciudad Juárez now resemble a battle zone, with soldiers in jeeps and armoured personnel carriers patrolling city block after city block.
Much of the violence has been related to the drug trade, which is rampant in Ciudad Juárez. Murders have become so commonplace that people are actually shocked if the community goes an entire day without a homicide.
And these aren't just garden-variety slayings.
There is a stark savagery about the murders. Recent newspaper reports tell of police finding chopped-up remains in plastic bags, shredded corpses with eyes torn out, and charred heads in ditches.
In 2008 alone, there were more than 1,600 killings in the city, which has a population slightly over 1.4 million.
To make matters worse, there is also a serial killer or killers at work in Ciudad Juárez, preying on innocent women. The death toll since 1993 has surpassed 400 female victims.
Not surprisingly, the residents of Ciudad Juárez are happy to see such a strong military presence in their community.
Since the troops arrived, the number of killings has already declined.
But most observers believe the lull is temporary. They expect that as soon as the border city is demilitarized, the violence will resume. A local journalist guessed that the notorious drug dealers of Ciudad Juárez "are probably off on vacation in Acapulco."
Of course, Mexico has a long and checkered history of corruption, and not just in Ciudad Juárez. Bribery, graft, violence, rigged elections, arbitrary imprisonment and routine human rights violations can be found everywhere in the country.
Many Canadians, like Americans, are understandably wary of travelling freely through Mexico.
It hasn't even been quite a year since Brenda Martin, who spent two years in a Mexican jail on charges of money laundering, returned home to Canada. She looked gaunt and frail but also elated to be back on Ontario soil.
Martin's ordeal left a number of Canadians spooked about Mexico. When most Canadians venture down to the country, they opt for heavily guarded compound resorts in such popular tourist destinations as Cancún, Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos.
But not even those places are entirely safe.
Around the same time Martin returned home, a Canadian tourist named Bouabal Bounthavorn, 29, was shot three times in the head inside his hotel room in the city of Cabo San Lucas, the apparent victim of a botched robbery.
Many parts of Mexico are dangerous, but there isn't anywhere as dangerous as Ciudad Juárez. One instantly sympathizes with the innocent residents caught in the crossfire of the violence. And Calderón's decision to send troops to the city was admirable.
But conditions in Ciudad Juárez are a reflection of deeper problems all over Mexico. Sending soldiers there is a temporary solution.
They can't stay there forever. And unless there is more meaningful social and political reform throughout Mexico, then long after the troops withdraw from the city, there will still be a flourishing drug trade, widespread corruption and pervasive sense of fear.
Andrew Hunt is the chair of the department of history at the University of Waterloo. |
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