Struggling US economy and fear of border violence adds to Brownsville voter woes
The economy and jobs are at the top of the agenda for the 2012 US presidential election. But down on the Mexican border worries over drug-cartel bloodshed add to high unemployment rates and home foreclosures. In Brownsville, Texas, a town situated on the border with Matamoros, Mexico, the fear of violence has added to the slump.
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“We’re clearly linked in economy, we’re linked in culture, we’re linked in infrastructure and there are so many things that when you talk about Brownsville and the United States, Mexico is included,” says Angela Burton, the President and CEO of the Brownsville Chamber of Commerce.
Report in Brownsville, Texas
While Brownsville has only 175,000 people, when considering the economy, it is necessary to factor in Matamoros across the border, a city of 750,000 that hosts maquiladoras, or factories, of US companies, she says.
The US economic crisis hit Brownsville hard - statistics from the US Bureau of Labor show Brownsville (coupled with neighbouring town Harlingen) as having more than 10 per cent unemployment.
Matamoros has a number of maquiladoras servicing the US car industry, which suffered during the decline of the US economy, affecting the Mexicans who were employed there.
The flow of Mexicans coming over to the downtown area to shop has slowed to a trickle.
“For years in Brownsville there were lots of clients from Victoria Tamaulipas, from Tampico, lots and lots of people. And now, no one comes because they are scared to travel,” says Gustavo Alfredo Aguilar, the owner of G.A. Mexican Food, a small restaurant downtown.
It’s not job losses they are scared of, he says. It’s the wave of violence in Matamoros, a city the violent Zetas drug cartel is struggling to control. The Zetas, who were originally deserters from the Mexican army, working as hit men for another cartel, created their own group in 2010.
They have left a swath of bloody assassinations and attacks on journalists and Mexican authorities as they fought for turf in and around Matamoros, with some hits occurring in the US. Two Zeta members were killed by the rival Gulf Cartel in Brownsville two years ago.
Matamoros residents “are afraid to go down the streets of the [Mexican] towns on the border with the US, where every minute there are deaths, assassinations - it’s dangerous,” says Aguilar. “From six to seven in the evening you will not see people on the streets, in the restaurants, in the nightclubs, because the gangs stay outside, while the people stay inside. We’re suffering a lot,” he adds.
The loss of Mexican shoppers has had a major impact on the fabric of downtown. Aguilar says he has seen lots of changes in Brownsville since he opened his business nearly 40 years ago.
Brownsville was the hub of a thriving wholesale industry, where Mexican retailers would come and buy in bulk. But with the rise of the cartels, Mexican nationals who bought items in the US had to pay more than tax when they returned to Mexico - they had to pay a percentage to the cartels too, according to one shop owner in downtown Brownsville who did not want to be identified.
Today, the few stores sprinkled through downtown include used clothing stores and 99-cent shops. Aguilar says that yet another restaurant near him went out of business last month. What used to be a booming downtown area now has the look of a ghost town. Several stores have ‘going out of business’ signs, while many more storefronts are for rent.
“I’m here because my restaurant is small, and I know the people who come and eat with me, but I don’t know how much longer I’ll hold on,” he says.
Burton, the Chamber of Commerce President, says that residents on both sides of the border are looking to see what the newly-elected government in Mexico will do to improve the situation, as well as who will win the US presidential election.
“We are hoping that the economy and the insecurity will be worked on by the new president of Mexico, Pena Nieto and the PRI,” says Aguilar, skeptically. He’s referring to Enrique Pena Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who is the president-elect of Mexico. Pena Nieto’s win was legally challenged after the July 2012 elections.
While Burton maintains that Brownsville is a safe place, with Brownsville police, Brownsville University police, and a beefed-up US border patrol, Aguilar remains unconvinced, based on his own loss of income.
“Already here in the [Rio Grande] Valley we have the Zetas - they have killed people as well. The Zetas, the cartels, the people are scared. But what can we do about it?”
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