It can be a dangerous trip, given widespread drug war violence and high levels of crime on the highways of northern Mexico.

Shannon Young reports on what travelers can do to minimize their risk exposure on Mexican roads.

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One way the city fights back is through art. And at the heart of that effort are community centers that provide at-risk youth with non-violent alternatives to the gang lifestyle. One example is the Moravia Center for Cultural Development.

The Moravia Center sits in a neighborhood built in what used to be Medellín’s waste dump. The center serves more than 1,000 local youth with courses in music, theater, and visual arts.

One of the center’s strategies is to engage entire families from the neighborhood. Some members of those families might be involved in criminal activities. But somehow the center avoids attracting trouble.

“We’re neutral in the conflict,” said staffer Yeison Hendo. “But that doesn’t mean we allow it to perpetuate. We use education and culture as a means to create conditions of peace and tolerance. Everything we do is so that we can get along with each other. At the beginning of each cycle of coursework, we always hold a class on the culture of non-violence, which is what we promote here.”

Promoting non-violence may sound easy, but it can be a delicate dance in a neighborhood where armed groups actively recruit young people.

“Our youth have two options,” said Lina Mejia, who co-directs Platohedro, a multimedia training program for at-risk youth in Medellín.

“Either they go to the army and pick up a weapon,” she said, “or they’re taken by ‘el combo’ and they have to pick up a weapon. So, it’s like you’d think our youth, the only option they have is death.”

‘El combo’ is a given area’s dominant street gang, the entry level position of organized crime. It controls neighborhood-level drug trafficking, runs extortion rackets, and uses violence to enforce territorial boundaries known as ‘invisible borders.’

Mejia calls her program a third option for kids, one that allows them to avoid guns and crime.

And just as gangs can lose new recruits to a multimedia training program, the hyper-territoriality of the gangs has found a push-back in cultural initiatives aimed at reclaiming public spaces for neighborhood residents.

La Casa Morada is a shared studio space for musicians in the Comuna Trece, one of Medellín’s most conflict-ridden neighborhoods. When Casa Morada opened to the public, it held a concert on its small front yard. The audience spilled onto the sidewalks, the streets, and up on the balconies of neighboring buildings.

In a pause between sets, a rapper named Jeihhco spoke about a quarter century of keeping culture alive in Medellín, even through the darkest days of Pablo Escobar’s reign.

“This is what it’s about,” said Jeihhco. “It’s about filling these spaces with life. It’s about giving hope to our kids who are here hanging out, watching what we’re doing. A better world is possible and we’re the ones who need to build and rebuild this society.”

Singers can also serve as a community’s oral historians. Many of the artists in Medellín’s active hip hop community use their lyrics to tell stories that rarely appear in Colombia’s mainstream press.

Don Vito is the front man for Niquitown, a ska band that’s been around since the 1990s. He’s also an MC with the Bellavista Social Club. He said music in Medellín tends to be a social activity in which lyrics become a vehicle for preserving collective memory and narrating the daily reality lived in the barrios.

While artists attain a level of notoriety and respect within their communities, they’re not immune to the violence. Since 2009, nine rappers from the city’s hip hop movement for peace have been murdered.

While the ongoing violence causes both pain and fear, silence isn’t an option, according to Lina Mejia.

“War has been for so long here and it’s a war that’s never been declared a war,” said Mejia. “It’s like an imaginary war, so we’ve got to keep quiet about it. And it’s that silence that lets violence continue. I think the only thing that would solve the situation, or at least loosens the tension of the people, is being able to write, sing, do radio, having cultural groups… giving people the feeling that they’re together with somebody else, and that they’re not alone going crazy about their feelings or emotions.”

There are many levels of violence in Colombia. Right now, the national government is focused on peace talks with leftist rebels, in an effort to end decades of armed conflict.

But at the local level, in communities where options for teens are limited and where violent crime and drug trafficking by remnants of former paramilitary groups are rampant, sometimes the best hope is offered by something as simple as a song.

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But so-called “memory projects” in Colombia have made some inroads, and as Shannon Young reports, could offer some guidance for activists trying to create such projects in Mexico.

Coming to the realization that there’s been a massacre in Mexico every day since the start of this week…

— Shannon Young (@SYoungReports) October 25, 2012

Many local Mexican news organizations no longer cover the violence, out of fear or extortion by the cartels.

Texas reporters are filling the void, increasing their Spanish-language output on the web, and getting tips from residents south of the border.

The main street of the historic Texan town runs right across International Bridge number 1, over the Rio Grande to become the central corridor of Nuevo Laredo’s once buzzing commercial and night life district.

Now, business on both sides of the river is bleak. Around half of the small businesses in downtown Nuevo Laredo are closed. Frequent shootouts, occasional grenade attacks and even car bombs, have turned the Mexican border city into an urban war zone and left its economy in shambles. While the violence itself hasn’t crossed the river into Laredo, Texas – the economic impacts are undeniable.

A boutique manager in downtown Laredo, who didn’t want to give her name, said business has nose-dived since December, when crime across the border got out of control.

“Now, we’re really scared,” she said. “That’s the word for it because I used to attend 20 to 30 clients an hour. Less than a year ago, I couldn’t sit still for a minute because I was helping customers, one after the other. And today, all of this morning I’ve only had two clients.”

The steep drop off in commercial activity is evident throughout downtown Laredo in the empty storefronts and the “for rent” or “closed until further notice” signs posted on front doors.

Lots of these stores sold wholesale to Mexican retailers, so they depended on shoppers coming across the bridge. But a rash of extortion, arson, and kidnappings for ransom have forced many of those small business owners in Mexico to shut their doors. Criminal activity including highway robberies and car-jackings in northern Mexico have prompted shopkeepers to stay away from Nuevo Laredo and look elsewhere for their merchandise.

These dangerous conditions have affected another important source of revenue for both Laredos: tourism.

“It has really hit us hard,” said Raul Perales, manager at La Posada, a historic hotel right on the Laredo, Texas riverfront.

“We used to average roughly 10, 15, tour buses a month. We don’t get any anymore,” he said.

Buses from the US and Northern Mexico used to regularly shuttle travelers back and forth. The downtown areas of the two sister cities are within walking distance of each other. Mexican tourists can visit the border region on easy-to-obtain day passes to shop for items like electronics and brand name clothing. The big attraction for Americans was the ability to cross over into Mexico for quick trips: eating, souvenirs, and nightlife.

The Texas city’s tourism director Blasita Lopez said she used to facilitate travel between the two Laredos but not anymore.

“It has been about a year since we’ve had somebody who has come and said, ‘can you tell me about traveling into Nuevo Laredo,’ the travelers who used to come in to go to the mercado, or who wants to go have a few margaritas and come back, we don’t see that anymore,” she said.

While the absence of tourists and proliferation of empty storefronts are the most visible signs of how the situation in Nuevo Laredo is affecting its Texan sister city, perhaps the most profound impact on Laredo residents is the abrupt change to the region’s bi-national lifestyle.

“It does make us think twice about going across,” said Laredona Ana Lopez. “I mean, I’m not afraid of going – I just don’t take my kids. My kids are 15.”

Ana Lopez said what she misses most are the little things that were part of her family’s routine.

“My kids used to go to the dentist, to the doctors. You know, if we’d get sick, we’d go across because they’re there 24/7. But at this point, it’s kind of difficult to go at a certain time over to Nuevo Laredo because of the situation,” she said. “We used to go a lot, just to go eat at the little carts that they have, for whatever, and we don’t anymore. It’s not that we don’t want to go, it’s that we’re just cautious now.”

Lopez said when she does cross, she makes sure to be back before nightfall. Like many other Laredoans, Lopez has family on both sides of the river. So in addition to the economic impact, the violence and insecurity in Nuevo Laredo – along with ever-more-strict border policies – have separated many families who live literally within minutes of each other.

Earlier this month, the skeletal remains of more than 167 people were discovered in a cave in Chiapas, Mexico. Initial reports suggested the find may have been a mass grave. It wouldn’t have been the first such discovery in Mexico in the past year. Mass graves have become an increasing common discovery within the context of the country’s drug war.

But the human skeletal remains found in that cave in Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas turned out to be unique. It wasn’t a mass grave, but a pre-Columbian bone deposit.

“This is like the first time that’s happened, at least in my administration here in the state,” said Dr. Emiliano Gallaga, director of the Chiapas office of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, known as INAH. The institute is the official caretaker of Mexico’s physical ancient history, like the remains in that cave. INAH should have been contacted before the bones were taken from the site, but that didn’t happen.

“My guess is that the person who discovered the cave with a bunch of skeletons got scared and called the police,” said Gallaga. “They saw there were a bunch of bones and they freaked out, because (of the) narco violence that we have… So they came right away, they collect the stuff, and they took it. And finally someone said, ‘wait a minute, this looks old!’”

Gallaga said it wasn’t until after the remains were removed that INAH staff were consulted. Because this find occurred over a weekend, they were only sent photos. Given that some of the skulls showed evidence of intentional cranial deformation, a practice used in ancient Mesoamerican societies, anthropology officials told police medical examiners that the bones could possibly be pre-Columbian.

Authorities from the state attorney general’s office held a weekend press conference to announce that this was not a recent mass grave, and the story soon dropped off the news radar. That left some important details ignored and questions unasked. First, how could an archaeological site have been mistaken for a modern-era crime scene?

Forensic anthropologist William Haglund, who has led mass grave investigations for the United Nations and Physicians for Human Rights, said the authorities in Chiapas failed to adhere to standard protocol for crime scene investigations involving skeletal remains. He said guards should have been posted at the scene because crime scene investigations can take several days to carry out, months if the scene is determined to be an archaeological find.

According to local media at the scene, state police and soldiers took a mere 15 hours to empty the cave of its remains. Video and photos from the crime scene show that authorities raked up bones with a hoe and stuffed them into bags for transport.

After analyzing the visual documentation, Haglund was bothered by tell-tale signs of reckless handling of the remains. “There were busted crania, there were recent fractures of bones,” said Haglund. “They stuffed them all into large bags and I understand they did it very, very fast and just… wrecked it for history. And the disrespect for the remains was just horrible.”

Crime scenes and archaeological finds share an important characteristic; diligent documentation from the start is crucial to understanding how and why remains got there.

“Once you’ve changed the context, it’s gone, it’s destroyed. And that’s what they’ve done,” said archaeologist James Brady at Cal State in Los Angeles. “They’ve completely destroyed that site. They’ve raped it. To me, all of that bone that they’ve recovered is of negligible value without the context.”

Dr. Brady specializes in the study of caves in ancient Mesoamerica. He said that, while it’s common to find human skeletal material in caves, this particular discovery was huge. “This was a very important discovery,” said Brady. “We haven’t had a cave with this many burials in that area before. And so to have something of this magnitude utterly destroyed is just awful.”

According to the Chiapas state attorney general’s office, state police and soldiers participated in the removal of the remains from the cave. Even if the find in Chiapas had been a mass grave, it would not have been the first time authorities have radically departed from standard crime scene protocol. The largest of these modern-day grave sites have been found in and around the state capital of Durango. At least some of the 300 bodies which have been uncovered were damaged by the use of heavy machinery to extract delicate, decomposing remains.

“It sounds to me like they’re not really invested in solving anything,” said forensic anthropologist William Haglund.

If the past year is any indication, mass graves attributed to drug war violence will continue to pop up around Mexico. And questions regarding the fate of thousands of disappeared persons will persist. But if the methods used to collect evidence from that cave in Chiapas are indicative of those used nationwide, answers to those questions will remain elusive.

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Many city dwellers have the habit of checking the traffic report before getting in their cars to go somewhere. In northeastern Mexico, some people check their local Twitter hashtags to avoid shootouts.

A shootout in the border city of Matamoros was one of the multiple attacks in four cities on September 27, 2011 in the state of Tamaulipas. Local media made no mention of the violence.

Journalists in some areas are often under severe pressure from the drug cartels not to report the violence. Some government officials also prefer that the media stay silent so as to avoid bad publicity.

The recent gunfights and grenade attacks in Tamaulipas were, however, documented in real time on Twitter using city-specific hash tags.

A Tamaulipas resident who asked to be identied only with his Twitter handle, @MrCruzStar, said the purpose behind these real time reports is to minimize panic by providing information to residents about which parts of the city to avoid. He said timely alerts also allow people to notify relatives who may be on the streets to get out of harm’s way.

It is the kind of information Tamaulipas residents don’t have access to via traditional outlets. Media in the northeastern border state is likely the most censored in all of Mexico. When the split between the Gulf Cartel and its former enforcement wing, Los Zetas, erupted in all-out street battles between rival bands in early 2010, authorities in Tamaulipas dismissed reports on social media sites as “panic” and “collective psychosis”.

@MrCruzStar said when the government began to deny the situation on-the-ground, people started posting video, photo and audio evidence online. That, he said, is when the local government began to acknowledge acts of violence.

A similar situation exists in other parts of Mexico like the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz.

Gilberto Martinez Vera opened a Twitter account in May in order to keep up with security risk reports using the “verfollow” hash tag, which covers the port city of Veracruz. He said he recalls signing in once on his phone after he came out of a movie theater with this family and hailed a taxi. When he saw news of a shooting – as his taxi driver headed for the area – he asked the driver to change course.

Martinez Vera and another social media user, Maria Bravo Pagola, were arrested in late August, for spreading unconfirmed information online about an attack on local schools. Both were charged with terrorism and sabotage.
“When they took me before the judge and I saw the paper, it really scared me,” Vera said. “I thought ‘My God; thirty years for 140 letters! It’s not possible’. It was just too severe, excessive and unfair.”

Veracruz authorities say the information they put on Twitter, which turned out to be a rumor – reportedly caused more than 20 car crashes as parents rushed to pick up their kids from schools. Both of the so-called “Twitter terrorists” say they were only repeating information that had already circulated by phone and in the streets.

As the pair sat in jail, Veracruz lawmakers modified the state’s penal code to make spreading unverified information via social media a criminal offense.

During the floor debate, state representative Karime Aguilera spoke in favor of the bill saying penalties are needed to punish those who damage society by causing alarm, panic, and the unnecessary movement of people and resources.

False information spread online deemed to have caused a disturbance of the peace and provoked damage is now punishable in Veracruz with up to 4 years in jail and a fine equal to more than $4,000.

The two Twitter users were released the same day state lawmakers passed the so-called “Anti-Rumor” law. At least two other Mexican states are reportedly considering similar legislation. While he no longer faces terrorism charges, Gilberto Martinez Vera says the new law is a restriction on free expression.

“I recognize that it’s wrong for someone to act with the intent to cause harm, but that’s not what we did at all,” Vera said. “The #VerFollow hash tag wouldn’t even be necessary if the government would give information or alerts about which areas to avoid due to security issues. There are ways for them to let people know.”

Hours after legislators passed the “anti-rumor” law, gunmen dumped 35 bodies of murder victims near an underpass in a commercial district of Veracruz during rush hour traffic. The news, along with photographic evidence, was first reported on Twitter by local residents using the #Verfollow hashtag.

While criminal violence, media silence, and possible legal penalities can make social media users Iin Mexico feel trapped in a catch-22, the situation does have an unexpected benefit.

Tamaulipas blogger and Twitter user Mr. Cruz Star says the group experience of people looking after each other’s safety has created a sense of civic awareness and community. It’s a sense he hopes will one day be reflected not just online, but in real life as well.