Once Vibrant, Mexican City Now a Haven of Death

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (March 27) -- American teenagers flocked to the garish strip of Juarez bars just south of the Santa Fe International Bridge as recently as three years ago. It cost 25 cents to cross the border from El Paso, Texas, and the bars didn't ask for IDs.

The once-vibrant streets are ghostly after sundown in the industrial city now notorious as Mexico's murder capital. Firebombs have hollowed out buildings and businesses have boarded up their windows. Even La Marezca, Juarez's once-vigorous red-light district, has been laid low by the latest wave of drug violence. "Sales are very dead," said a bouncer at the Alice y Charly gentlemen's club.

Along Avenida Juarez, known as "the strip," about half of the businesses flourishing in 2007 are now closed, said Antonio Navarette, the head of the wait staff at The Yankee bar. "We're right in the center of the chaos," Navarette said. The Yankee has kept afloat by showcasing live jazz music on the weekends, but the strip's more historic bars haven't fared as well. The antique cash registers are rarely in use at the Bar Kentucky, Juarez's oldest watering hole, which lays far-from-exclusive claim to serving Pancho Villa and inventing the margarita.

The desolation stems from the murderous drug war. "We have no business, no prosperity, no public debate. We have no future here in Juarez as long as assassins are on the loose," said the owner of La Cucaracha, a spacious dive with checkered floors and stained-glass windows, adorned with black and white photographs of the Mexican Revolution and an assortment of musical instruments pegged to the wall. He said he'd owned the place for 36 years but declined to give his name.

The only thriving places of business on the strip today are pharmacies, where Americans can buy drugs for which they would need a prescription north of the border.

The teenagers of Juarez have more to worry about than most of their peers elsewhere. "We're kids, so we want to enjoy ourselves but we're too afraid," said Beatriz Segura, 18, a high school student. "We have a fear of going out and never going home again."

That fear is justified: Most of Juarez's 600 homicide victims so far this year were between the ages of 16 and 18, according to Jaime Torres, a public affairs officer for the mayor's office. Two of Segura's classmates were among 15 teens massacred at a house party in February.

A group of armed youths on Thursday gunned down a 13-year-old boy, terrifying a group of boys playing soccer in a nearby field. The boy was among nine people killed in Juarez on that one day alone, the mayor's office said. This month an average of six people have been killed each day.

During a recent night patrol through the neighborhoods with the largest concentration of narcomenudeo -- small-scale drug peddling -- the city police stopped frequently to frisk groups of teens inside bodegas. In a section of the city with 60 known gangs or bandillas, any group out after dark is considered suspect, explained police captain Ruben Pinedo.

"Kidnappings have gone way up. So have extortions," Pinedo said. "If we see young kids in stores, we have to check to make sure they're not robbing the store owner, because of how often this happens." The police released a group of teens after frisking them for drugs and weapons, sniffing their fingers for the scent of marijuana and administering breathalyzers. Another group was caught sniffing an inhalant and thrown into a paddy wagon for underage intoxication.

The only other people venturing out in the Juarez night were teenage couples, sneaking a kiss under the dim glare of the street lamps.