Incomprehensible violence, loss on Mexican border

Justice
May 22, 2009

El Paso, Texas
I am a teacher at a Catholic school, Our Lady of the Valley, in the border city of El Paso Texas. The sixteen students in my class, mostly 12 and 13-year-olds, arrive daily from Cuidad Juarez, a dense metropolis of about 1.5 million in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

The sister cities are divided by the Rio Grande River, but bound together by the growing terror of drug cartel violence and daily murder. This violence has become part and parcel of our school life, most dramatically in my English as a second Language class.

Today, my student Miguel’s desk is empty. He is one of some 69 students in our school who are U.S. citizens but reside in Juarez with their Mexican parents. These are primarily middle-class parents who work hard to send their kids to Catholic school. The youngsters cross the international bridge on foot daily to meet a bus that drops them off at Our Lady of the Valley three miles away.