[By Becky Gomez]
On October 4, 2009, the El Paso Times conducted a poll that stated that 80 percent of El Pasoans had not been personally affected by violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, but 60 percent do feel threatened by it. Every day El Paso is inundated with negative news of their sister city, Juarez, and it’s not surprising that they feel severely concerned. However, there are many of us who live in El Paso --- the border city on the US side of the US-Mexico border just across from Ciudad Juarez --- who are is affected personally by the violence and for whom it is personal.
It’s without a doubt personal because it is personal to me. I have befriended the most beautiful people I have ever known in impoverished areas of Juarez (who I feel are most affected) as well as know people from middle class, primarily relatives of mine, that live in circumstances where their communities are going through some atrocious tragedies: Drug Rehabs are being massacred; random display of bodies left in their streets of people not just shot, but mutilated or with their mouth sown shut; schools being extorted; a neighbor here and there being kidnapped and then found rolled in a carpet rug a few miles away. So, my perspective, and probably of others as well, see the news not just as news, but as a possibility that it could be the people we love or even just know. However, even with people that we just may know being affected by these atrocities does not stop us from seeing them not just as human beings, but as a mother or a father to children... or a child of a mother or father.
Moreover to this idea of children being left fatherless and motherless and vice versa, there is also this anger inside of me that all these happenings are mostly because of vanity and greed, of people who don’t care how their attainment of power and money affects people. We see it like an evil spirit devouring our own people and communities before our own eyes. And even more so, I personally feel like I don’t know what to do about it, and I would think others feel the same way. There’s a sense of confusing chaos. We don’t know who to blame. In reality, the subject is so complicated that there are many forms of academics that need to be understood before trying to understand this phenomenon of violence in Juarez. In order to get somewhere, I feel like I have to profoundly study sociology, criminal justice, and border studies. It stirs emotion of desperation at times because I wonder that if by the time I finish studying these things the phenomenon will become something else unimaginable like the violence overpowering US border cities such as El Paso. Nevertheless, I don’t know about others, but, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m tired of it!!! This and the love I have for my people are what push me to ignore my doubts in myself, and pressure for a solution.
NOTE: USLA is grateful for this blog submission by Becky Gomez, a student at the University of Texas, El Paso, Center for Inter-American and Border Studies.