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Mexico 2010 Census Effort a Daunting Task Amid Drug Violence
 Adriana Gómez Licón - El Paso Times
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May 17, 2010
In Juárez, where homicides, extortions and assaults dictate the way of life, counting the population for the country's 2010 census may be a difficult, if not impossible, task.
At the same time, federal funds will arrive to the city depending on the results of the count. Not getting an accurate count could affect Juárez's social reconstruction during the next 10 years.
Mexico is preparing for its door-to-door census effort that is conducted every 10 years, just like in the United States. The national statistics institute, INEGI, is the counterpart of the U.S. Census Bureau.
The Mexican agency counts people every five years, but carries out a more thorough socioeconomic analysis every decade.
From May 31 to June 25, the census institute will face three problems completing the count in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, demographers said.
First, agency officials said it will be difficult, logistically speaking, to measure the exodus effects - evident in the number of abandoned homes and deserted subdivisions. Second, Mexicans' distrust of the federal government has grown in the past two years. And third, drug cartel violence will make it difficult to keep census workers safe.
"In Juárez, there is crime, there are homicides, there is fraud," said Wilebaldo Martínez Toyes, a demographer at the autonomous university of Juárez. "The people committing all those crimes live in Juárez."
More than 900 people have been murdered this year, and more than 5,150 have been killed since 2008.
Hundreds of thousands are fleeing the city in response to the turf war between two rival drug cartels - the Joaquín "Chapo" Guzmán or Sinaloa cartel, and the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes or Juárez cartel.
The one-time boomtown will soon see a major population decrease, demographers predict. The population more than doubled from 550,000, in 1980 to 1.2 million in 2000. The latest population count of 2005 said 1.3 million people live in Juárez.
The 2010 results may show a population drop to 1.1 million, Martínez Toyes said.
"People are leaving, people stopped moving in, and then mortality rate increased," he said.
Measuring the exodus
Juárez's city planning department said about 110,000 houses have been abandoned in the past year. With no mail form, census workers need to knock on doors numerous times to ensure houses are indeed abandoned.
The economic downturn is also to blame for the exodus, Martínez Toyes said. Tens of thousands lost their jobs in the factories and moved back to their cities of origin. Juárez's reputation and its lack of jobs also stopped the constant influx of domestic immigrants who had been arriving to the border area in search of better opportunities in the 1980s and 1990s.
The head of Chihuahua's census efforts, Maria Tomasa Badillo Almaráz, said Juárez has traditionally been an area that is hard to count.
"At one point, the floating population made the count really difficult," Badillo Almaráz said. "It would require very dynamic operations."
The institute in Chihuahua has about 5,300 workers.
Badillo Almaráz said the crisis of violence that is wrenching Juárez will be just another obstacle in counting, not only Juárez, but all of Mexico.
"In all of the country, we have the same complication," she said.
Fearing the count
Juárez residents are increasingly afraid of answering the door or the telephone fearing fraudulent activities, Martínez Toyes said.
Martínez Toyes and a team at the university conducted a survey on the perception of crime in the past two years, 2008 and 2009. About 1,800 people participated in the survey.
The findings were alarming, he said.
A majority of the people said they did not feel safe downtown, in restaurants or using public transportation. The two havens for Juárez residents were schools and El Paso. Most recently, a Catholic church wedding was the scene of a kidnapping of three U.S. citizens who later were found killed.
In response to the violence, people in the city have changed their habits. More than 80 percent of those surveyed said they do not give out information via phone, and 75 percent of the people said they do not talk to strangers.
Although Mexican census workers wear uniforms, people in Juárez may choose protection over civil duty, Martínez Toyes said. When working on the survey, his staff found the hardest part of the research was to persuade people to answer questions.
"Many surveyors told us people did not answer the door," he said. "All this is the result of distrust people have of authorities."
Officials said they think people trust census workers because the counting of the population is a well-regarded institution among Mexicans. Plus, throughout Mexico staffers have been visiting schools, organizations and hospitals to inform people about the census. Commercials also appear on the two major television networks, and local radio stations and newspapers.
"Practically, an army of people is explaining how the census works," she said.
Badilla Almaráz said people will gain trust when they begin to notice workers wearing their uniform and displaying census materials.
"We don't rule out that there will be people who will refuse to be interviewed," she said.
Counting a battle zone
Being constantly in the streets, knocking on random homes and traveling throughout Juárez seems like a dangerous job that not many people would take in a city like Juárez. But the weak labor market has forced many people to accept these temporary jobs.
The agency has been training its workers since the beginning of May, Badillo Almaráz said.
While conducting the university's survey at the end of last year, Martínez Toyes said, they were very vigilant and patrolled areas where surveyors worked.
One of his surveyors witnessed an execution in a house across the street from where he was interviewing a person. The surveyor got down on the ground to avoid being shot.
"INEGI should contemplate all kinds of situations," he said.
Adriana Gómez Licón may be reached at agomez@elpasotimes.com.
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