The Calm before the Storm?

Finally my trip to Juarez a few weeks ago materialized on KOB airwaves Thursday:



When I prepared for Thursday's report weeks ago, people told me to be careful. After all, I was traveling to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico where in 2008 sixteen-hundred people were executed, including one local journalist. I looked forward to the trip.

I worked in Juarez often when I was a reporter for KTSM-TV (NBC) in El Paso. I loved it. The sense of urgency in the city seems far more intense once you step off the bridge and into the bustling city of two-million people. Everywhere almost everyone is trying to make a peso by washing your windshield or trying to sell bootlegged CD's.

But the dark side of the city unfortunately has a grasp on the psychology of the town. The cartels have grown too powerful, too big, too violent. So violent, their threats have forced the resignation of the chief of police--the one who wasn't assassinated.

For now, the five-thousand soldiers that patrol the Juarez streets, essentially doing police work, have curbed the violence. Ten murders a day has dropped to about a handful a week. But....more than half the soldiers are expected to leave in the fall.

The cartels certainly know this.

Is this the calm before the storm?

As long as there is money to be made on illegal drugs (especially marijuana, the cartels' largest cash crop) there will be battles over turf. More people will certainly be killed over failed deliveries of drug loads.

My prediction: There will be a surge of violence in the late summer/early fall in Juarez once three-thousand-plus Mexican soldiers leave Juarez. The sight of uniformed men carrying assault rifles is certainly a deterrent. The less the cartels see of them, the bolder they will grow.
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jeremyjojola.com