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There’s faith in the face of Juarez’s evil
After spending several weeks in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the last few summers, the grim realities of life across the border from El Paso have taken on new meaning for me. Reports about beheadings, kidnappings and extortion are bad enough, but they are worse when you know where fear stalks.
This isn’t Iraq, Afghanistan or Darfur, mind you. It’s on our border. What happens in Juarez can end up so easily on the streets of Dallas, Chicago or Kansas City. So I spent several days last week talking with friends and pastors who work with churches in Juarez. My church has built homes, schools and churches there for several years, as have others from Texas to North Dakota. Way beyond the physical work, relationships have been borne across the border. The friendships are what make the situation so heart-breakingly sad.
Since I last reported on the drug cartels in July, an additional 900 people have been killed in Juarez, a city of about 1.2 million residents.
Heroic effort
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has heroically tried to fight the cartels, which intimidate through beheading kidnap victims, shaking down local businesses and bribing officials. Calderon must persevere, and I hope President-elect Barack Obama appoints a U.S. ambassador as strong as outgoing Tony Garza to help Mexico conquer its internal challenges.
But this isn’t the time for a policy column. Instead, I want to report on what life is like in Juarez, particularly for people of faith trying to live their beliefs during this holiday season, with fear surrounding their every move.
For some, it’s nothing short of Baghdad, circa 2004-06. A pastor I’ve met leads a church in a dusty colonia outside town. This month, some toughs showed up. Pay them protection money, they said, or they would let the drug thugs have a crack at them.
He’s not alone. Another friend leads a church in a settlement of unpaved roads and limited electricity. Tough guys cased his church recently — just showed up, walked around, seeing who was around.
The message was clear. They knew Americans had been at his church, so they suspected the pastor would have money. He, too, must live his faith amid this climate of intimidation.
Protection money is becoming a way of life for folks caught between the feds, drug cartels and local gangs copycatting their way into the action. One factory, I’m told, didn’t pay hush money. Not long afterward, two workers were kidnapped.
Schools also are ripe places for bribery. Whether neighborhood thugs or the cartels, gangsters demand teachers give up their year-end bonus money — or else.
Targeting schools
A pastor friend and his wife recently pulled their smiling, laughing, funny 4-year old out of school. He tells me they were only doing it until January, but how absolutely cynical it is for gangsters to prey on schools.
If there is anything Mexico needs — anything! — it is an education system that prepares its young for the world economy. Otherwise, they are left with heading here, legally or illegally, or becoming one of the drug guys.
This, folks, is where Mexico’s battle is being fought. A pastor friend writes: “Criminals know that we have our extra money and are demanding it through intimidation. They have entered schools and threatened teachers with pistols in front of the children, demanding money.”
People either leave or persevere. One pastor I know defiantly walked through his neighborhood the other night, showing the world that he wouldn’t be intimidated. He relied upon Psalm 91: “You will not fear the terror of the night nor the arrow that flies by the day.” You have to love courage in the face of evil, although others have to move as wisely as serpents.
I wish a Christmas miracle would appear at the end of this story, but there may not be one. All I know is that I admire those who walk through the valley of the shadow of death. May God rest them and their beleaguered city.
X William McKenzie is an editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune.