The Fight to Save Juárez (27 page)

The stakes were high for the coming elections. One of the old guard who was jockeying for the PRI candidacy for governor was Héctor “Teto” Murguía. Murguía was Reyes Ferriz's predecessor in the mayor's job; he had imposed Saulo Reyes on the police department in January of 2007. The man that Murguía wanted in the Juárez mayor's job was named Víctor Valencia. Valencia was Reyes Ferriz's nemesis—a street fighter of a politician with a sketchy background. Reyes Baeza, Murguía, and Valencia formed the old-guard troika, a package deal wrapped in innuendo and rumor. Reyes Ferriz was convinced that this lineup would undermine his efforts to save Juárez from the current crisis; at stake was everything that he had been trying to achieve since becoming mayor of Juárez.

.   .   .

By chance, I had encountered Víctor Valencia one day at a standoff between police and residents in an upscale residential subdivision. In Ciudad Juárez the rich and the poor alike braced themselves every time they left their homes, no matter what time of day or night. Living in the most violent city in the Americas (perhaps in the world) was to live in a constant state of fear even for the city's elite, who lived in the Campestre neighborhood. The older part of the Campestre was dotted with opulent mansions arrayed around the exclusive Club Campestre, with its emerald-green, well-manicured golf course and the usual country club amenities. The homes had
expansive
lawns; expensive, late-model cars and armored SUVs sat parked behind tall walls and elaborate wrought-iron gates. It was the fashion that a good number of these homes had private chapels. In addition to the ever-present bodyguards, elaborate security systems were in evidence.

Not far from the heart of the Campestre was a more recent and comparatively more modest subdivision of the neighborhood. It was still upper middle class, home to assembly plant managers and successful professionals, but clearly a rung below the original Campestre, where the city's mega-wealthy lived. If less luxurious, the homes here were still quite nice, ample with gated entryways and tall walls surrounding interior gardens. The newer neighborhood lacked the panache of the original Campestre; it had a nouveau riche feel rather than the air of established money. A long wall that ran several blocks separated the older Campestre from the new, further reinforcing the sense that the latter was not to be confused with the former. I had come to this upscale part of the city because I'd been told that the residents had taken to putting up impromptu obstructions in the streets in an effort to dissuade
sicarios
and kidnappers from coming through the neighborhood. It struck me as an indication that notwithstanding their bodyguards and armored vehicles, the rich were also affected by the climate of fear that permeated the city. In the older, wealthier Campestre, residents had trucked in enormous boulders to block the streets; in the newer subdivision, residents were using both boulders and sand from the desert to create berms.

In an all-too-premature effort to bring an air of normality back to the streets, the city administration, in conjunction with the federal police, ordered the Department of Public Works to remove the berms and boulders so that traffic could flow freely. Under the watchful eyes of two dozen municipal
¹
and federal police officers, who lined the street to protect the city crew, a mustard-yellow Caterpillar backhoe loader was at work scooping up the sand from the berms and dumping it into the bed of a waiting truck. Black diesel smoke gushed from the backhoe's exhaust as its operator maneuvered the heavy scoop, which scraped loudly as it moved across the pavement.

The residents of the newer Campestre were out in the street and they were irate. A tense standoff had developed between them, the city crew, and the police officers. The residents had not been informed that the barriers they'd thrown up over a year ago in a desperate act of self-protection had been slated for removal. It was only the scraping sound of the backhoe and the sight of the dump truck and police that had alerted some to what was taking place, and as word spread in the neighborhood that their defenses were being dismantled, the number of angry onlookers grew. It was noon and some thirty or forty neighbors were out in the street demanding that the work stop, but so far their efforts were to no avail.

The
tension was growing with each scoop of sand that was removed and each boulder that was pushed on to the edge of the street. In desperation, one middle-aged man in a brown designer jogging suit jumped in front of the backhoe, daring the driver to run him over. The crowd screamed, imploring the Caterpillar operator to stop, which he did just as the thick steel bucket came within inches of the defiant man's face. The jogger held his ground in this Juárez Tiananmen Square moment as the crowd erupted in applause and cheers and the Caterpillar operator looked on helplessly.

When a federal police officer approached the jogger, the crowd drew close, shouting “Don't touch him! We are all witnesses!” Several made it a point to show that they were filming the incident with their video cameras. The officer calmly explained that the orders were to clear the street, that this was no way to handle security issues, but his appeals drew a chorus of howls and derision. By this juncture, in solidarity with the Tiananmen man, some residents had laid themselves down under the enormous wheels of the backhoe. “Calm down,” the officer appealed, but to no avail.

A municipal police officer named Lieutenant Villalobos now stepped forward to try to address the crowd. “I'm in charge, and I will ensure you are safe,” he told the men and women who'd left their nearby homes in what was already a sweltering-hot summer day. “That's not true,” a woman shouted into the lieutenant's face. “You're a liar,” another shouted.

“You tell me the time of danger and I'll have a patrol car assigned to be here,” the officer said. “What time?”

A middle-aged woman in a T-shirt and shorts, her hair braided down her back, spoke up: “They kidnapped me at four in the afternoon,” she said, her words breaking up with emotion. “They kidnapped my sister at ten o'clock at night, and they shot my father to death at eight in the morning!” She continued, angry and upset. “There is no safe time in this city!” Soon another neighbor replaced this woman, recounting his version of the city's horror. “Please don't use my name,” the first woman told me when I spoke to her later. “There could be reprisals.”

The police pulled back, regrouping to the side as the stalemate continued. At that moment, a young man who had been standing in the wings stepped forward. He was no older than twenty-five, dressed in a purple striped dress shirt, black pants, and sunglasses. He was modest in stature and soft-spoken as he attempted to address the group, identifying himself as a city engineer here to monitor the job. He was apologetic and understanding of the residents' concerns, but he also underscored that clearing the street was in keeping with a recent directive from the federal police. Such obstructions were not a good security strategy, he maintained. The city engineer was clearly a newbie, not long out of college and still wet behind the ears. He was perspiring in the summer heat and in the face of the responsibility he'd
been
given to oversee the order to clear the street. He was trying his best, but he was no match for the agitated crowd.

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.