June 5, 2008

Ciudad Juarez News

Narcos, Soccer and the Public Good

Catapulted into Mexico’s First Division, Ciudad Juarez’s Indios soccer team is hot. The May 25 victory over Leon brought perhaps tens of thousands of people pouring out of their homes and into the streets for an ecstatic celebration that magically transformed the social mood in a city otherwise battered by narco-violence- if for only a fleeting moment. “Not even the narcos can stop us,” gushed resident Alejandro Amador. “Everyone in Juarez is with the Indios.”

The triumph of the hometown favorites provided the occasion for heady declarations about the future of the privately-owned Indios. Cited in El Diario de El Paso, a report from Mexico’s Economist newspaper claimed the Indios’ ascension into the First Division shot up the value of the team from $4 million to $17 million. The Indios’ owner, Francisco Ibarra Molina, would not confirm the Economist’s story, but he soon joined with government officials to unveil a plan to take the Indios to even greater heights of glory.

Flush with pride, Ibarra and Chihuahua Governor Jose Reyes Baeza appeared together at a press conference to announce that the state government will support the construction of a new stadium for the Indios. Governor Reyes Baeza did not say how much the stadium will cost or how it will be fully financed, but he said that 400 VIP boxes could be sold to help pay for the project, which is envisioned for completion in 2010. An undetermined amount of state funding will be allocated for the stadium, Chihuahua’s governor added.

Left undisclosed was where the stadium will be built. At the moment several zones of Ciudad Juarez are undergoing redevelopment, including sections of the historic downtown and the area near the future US Consulate. The northwestern edges of Ciudad Juarez, encompassing the Lomas de Poleo and Anapra neighborhoods near the New Mexico border, are likewise within the perimeter of important future developments.

Currently, the Indios practice and play at a stadium owned by the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez (UACJ). Under the terms of an agreement between the public university and Indios, the soccer team’s rent payment comes out to about $250,000 per year. Nonetheless, the Indios avoid paying most of the amount in cash by including the UACJ logo on players’ shirts, by giving a number of free tickets to the university, and by paying for maintenance costs. The Indios are responsible for upgrades of the school’s sporting complex, and the team donates money for academic grants.

Private sponsors including Home Depot, Lala, Plastimex, IDN and Grupo Yvasa support the Indios to the tune of a reported $15 million annually. Team owner Francisco Ibarra heads a company that received the contract for the building of the new Camino Real highway on the outskirts of the city during the previous municipal administration of Hector “Teto” Murguia.

Apart from the private sector, the Indios get monetary support from both the state and municipal governments. In the last 7 months, the two public entities have funneled $340,000 to the Indios and a basketball team, the Club Gallos de Pelea.

The use of tax money to support a private team, however popular, is beginning to stir controversy in a city where thousands of people still lack running water, where major boulevards suffer cave-ins from rotting infrastructure and where a public safety crisis is the order of the day. Ciudad Juarez City Council member Leticia Corral Jurado, who represents the opposition National Action Party, said subsidies given to the Indios might be better spent elsewhere. “I know sports are important for our community, but it seems to me there are other priorities instead of giving equivalent resources to private companies,” Jurado said.

An admitted soccer fan, state legislator Victor Quintana of the Democratic Party of the Revolution urged transparency in any dealings between government and private sports clubs. Quintana cited numerous scandals involving soccer teams, including the Necaxa club of Aguascalientes, which got a legally-questionable sweetheart deal complete with an improved stadium, tax exemptions and other breaks when it relocated to the central Mexican city earlier in the decade.

Like professional US sports, scandals over money, power and fame have become part and parcel of the action in Mexico’s soccer world in recent years. First apparent in Colombia, alleged ties between some soccer clubs and the illegal drug underworld also have tarnished the Mexican sporting world. Before his reported death in 1997, Ciudad Juarez drug kingpin Amador Carrillo Fuentes reportedly tried to buy La Corregidora stadium and more than 50 acres in Queretaro.

In Ciudad Juarez, meanwhile, more than a few are rooting for the Indios and a return to the brief hours of bliss that unfolded in the city on the evening of May 25. Since the Indios’ memorable victory, the scene on the streets has returned to the bloody “normalcy” that’s defined the year so far.

Within the past three days alone, at least 10 people were slain in the gangland wars. Two innocent bystanders were among the victims, including an unlucky laborer who was “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” according to press accounts, and 24-year-old Neri Dominguez Pacheco, a single mother of three who was three months pregnant. An emotionally devastated Hilario Dominguez, Neri’s father, recounted how his family had moved like so many others from the state of Veracruz in search of a better life in a city that the sign at the southern entrance of Ciudad Juarez boasts is “the best border” in Mexico.

“She was happy, lately dedicating herself to her children,” Dominguez said of his slain daughter. “She was a worker, washing cars, cleaning houses, and helping out in a little restaurant..”

Sources:
Lapolaka.com, June 5, 2008.
El Diario de Juarez, May 26, 2008; June 4 and 5, 2008. Articles by Armando Rodriguez, Horacio Carrasco, A. Quintero and editorial staff.
Proceso/Apro, June 2, 2008. Article by Veronica Espinosa.
El Diario de El Paso, May 28, 29, 30, 31, 2008. Articles by Sergio Arturo Duarte, A. Salmon, Gabriela Minjares, and editorial staff.
Proceso, June 20, 2004. Article by Raul Ochoa and Ricardo Ravelo.
El Sol del Centro, July 22, 2003.

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email fnsnews@nmsu.edu

Prepared by UVB staff.

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