Border cities in contrast

Houston Chronicle:

Although barely knee-deep and a stone's-throw-wide as it flows through this desert metroplex, the Rio Grande marks a stark divide when it comes to drug-related violence.

Narcotics en route to U.S. consumers flow across this river border. Gangsters who traffic the drugs live and work along both the river's banks. But the bloodshed spawned by Mexico's underworld all but ends at the border's southern shore.

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's sprawling industrial city of 1.3 million, has notched more than 1,000 killings so far this year amid a gang war for control of its smuggling routes and street-corner sales. Just 13 killings have been logged across the river in El Paso, an Army garrison community about half the size of Juarez.

Juarez now easily ranks as one of the hemisphere's most dangerous cities. El Paso boasts of being the second safest large city in the U.S., behind San Jose, Calif.

"We are joined at the hip, and we have such a contrasting situation," said Lucinda Vargas, a Juarez community development specialist, as she compared her city to El Paso. "The difference is institutions — the lack of rule of law on one side and its existence on the other."

North of the river, John Lanahan, a retired chief of the El Paso police homicide division, said the drug gangsters "pretty much toe the mark when they're on this side." He explained, "They know that law enforcement in the United States has a lot of resources and will go to no ends to solve some of these crimes."

That assessment belies the alarms about border violence ringing from Washington and Austin to sheriff's offices and city halls along the border.

Citing the fear of a spillover, the Texas Legislature has earmarked $110 million to bolster police forces along the border. Thousands more Border Patrol and other federal agents are being sent to the line.

But some academics who study the drug wars remain skeptical. "U.S. bureaucrats just love to pump up the threat, to set up a paper tiger," said Tony Payan, an expert on border crime at the University of Texas at El Paso. "There is no historical evidence that the violence has ever spilled over to this side. It's never been the case."

Indeed, since the early 1990s, fewer than 20 slayings a year have occurred in El Paso, a city of about 630,000. Laredo, Brownsville and other Texas cities bordering violent Mexican areas report homicides this year in the single digits.

Not that violence doesn't occur: El Paso police said the shooting of 11 people outside a bar early last Sunday was gang related. Two of the victims were in serious condition, and six were under the legal drinking age. Police named a suspect in the crime and were searching for the man.

Killings linked to Mexico's drug cartels have occasionally occurred in Texas, but they aren't the problem many politicians suggest, El Paso officials say.

"I think the cartels, as violent as they are, are not that stupid," said Greg Allen, El Paso's police chief. "There's too much pressure that can be put on them."

...

There is much more.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of immigration law in keeping the bandits at bay. While they might take their chances with local law enforcement on some level they know that immigration status is a lever that can stop them in their tracks. They also know that the mordita culture of Mexico which allows them to escape punishment does not exist on this side of the border.

Mexico needs to adopt a counterinsurgency strategy that will protect the people so that ordinary citizens can help them fight the drug insurgents. Now cooperation with the authorities is risky in the extreme. A citizen does not know whether the officials he may be dealing with is on the side of the insurgents or not, and if they are not, he does not know if they can protect him or themselves if they go after the insurgents.

They are left as bystanders in a bloody red on red battlefields of competing drug insurgents.