HOME INDEX ARCHIVES FALL 98 SPRING 98 SPRING 99

CHANGING NAMES, CHANGING PUBLIC PERCEPTION By Travis L. Mason What is in a name? For Mexico's two largest northern cities, plenty. Their names have become synonymous with the country's two most powerful drug mafias - the Juarez and Tijuana cartels. In early February Mexico's top law enforcement official, Attorney General Jorge Madrazo, developed a solution, which he hoped would appease city leaders angered by endless headlines associating their towns with corpses, shootouts and corrupt police. According to the HYPERLINK "http://www.latimes.com/" Los Angeles Times , Madrazo ordered his agency to call drug-trafficking organizations by the name of their current leaders instead of making reference to the cities they occupied. "Federal law enforcement officials will no longer be allowed to refer to drug cartels by the name of the city where delinquent activities may have taken place," said Madrazo in the HYPERLINK "http://www.latimes.com/" LA Times . "This is a completely unjust stigmatization of these cities." Marist College junior Roberto Mayer, a Mexican citizen, said the new policy should help benefit the citizens of these cities and change people's belief in the government process. "Obviously the crime problem is influencing this process," said Mayer. "It is a factor that should change people's belief in government." The mayor of Ciudad Juarez, Gustavo Elizondo, who led the campaign for the cartel name change, said to the HYPERLINK "http://www.washingtonpost.com/" Washington Post that he was fed up with the illegal activities that have burdened the border city in the decade since Mexican drug-trafficking organizations rose to prominence as criminal powerhouses. "For many years the Juarez cartel has given us a bad image in the eyes of the world, which made us seem as if everyone who lives here was part of organized crime," said Elizondo in the HYPERLINK "http://www.washingtonpost.com/" Washington Post . The final blow to the city came in late December when the FBI announced that as many as 100 bodies were buried on remote ranches near Ciudad Juarez. The incident prompted one of the biggest international media stampedes to Mexico since the 1994 Zapatista uprising in the southern state of Chipas. The excavations of four ranches on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez turned up the remains of nine humans and two dogs. "After the events last December, our city once again appeared in the media as the mecca for drug trafficking, homicide and all kinds of crime," Elizondo said in the HYPERLINK "http://www.washingtonpost.com/" Washington Post . Unfortunately for the mayor's campaign to polish his city's tarnished image, Ciudad Juarez, which shares an international boundary with El Paso, is one of the border's most active drug-trafficking portals into the United States, reports said HYPERLINK "http://www.washingonpost.com/" Washington Post journalist Molly Moore. The city also has had one of the highest murder rates in Mexico for the last several years. Amidst these terrible statistics Pedro De La Torre, a Mexican citizen and former Marist College student, said the cartel name change would have little, if any impact on cleaning up Mexico's tarnished image. More important, said De La Torre, these cities need more than the name change of their resident cartels to clean up their image. "The government has to find some real solutions for the serious problems found all along the border, which include poor regional development, labor rights violations, low standards as well as political and social problems," De La Torre said.