Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Gov. Rick Perry is pictured on the banks of the Rio Grande with Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo 'Sigi' Gonzalez, Jr.

AUSTIN, February 15 –Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s office is developing a contingency plan aimed at taking action in border communities should the escalating violence in Northern Mexico find its way into Texas.

“I think elevating violence across the border, in northern Mexico, certainly is cause for concern,” said Katherine Cesinger, Perry’s deputy press secretary. “The governor believes that it’s important to have a contingency plan in place by sector in the event that the violence in Mexico would translate into incidental spillover.”

Cesinger said details of the plan still had to be researched and explored, but added the plan would identify how to deal with a spillover in six separate regional sectors in Texas: El Paso, Big Bend, Del Rio, Laredo, Rio Grande Valley, and the Coastal Bend.

“This is going to be a multiagency effort,” she said. “It’s going to be federal, state and local law enforcement involved and it’s a plan that can be quickly executed to address spillover violence.”

Cesinger added that the definition of a spillover “may vary” according to the region. “It could be incidence of kidnapping in a certain sector (or) maybe a war between rival gangs on this side of the border. Again these are all hypothetical situations or scenarios that could occur.”

Some of Perry’s past border initiatives have come under fire from groups who consider them masked attempts at keeping immigrants out of Texas. Cesinger reiterated, however, that the plan is about border security only.

“Some of those arguments were made last session when he asked for additional funding and overwhelmingly the legislature supported that,” she said. “This has always been about keeping our community safe, securing our international borders.”

In Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, across the border from El Paso, more than 1,600 people were killed in 2008 and the rate appears to have increased so far in 2009. The killings have been blamed on a bloody turf war waged by the Sinaloa Cartel, run by its infamous leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, against the Juarez cartel and the Carrillo Fuentes family.

Estimates indicate more than 500 people have been murdered in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, across the border from Laredo, Texas, since 2003. The battle there also involves the Sinaloa Cartel, whose war against the Gulf Cartel and their enforcement arm, Los Zetas, has ebbed in the past years but still has some uneasy about a possible spillover.

But even as some lawmakers plan for the worst, others along the border wonder if a spillover will actually occur.

Howard Campbell is an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. His book, Drug War Zone will be published by the University of Texas Press this fall and will chronicle the narco culture in El Paso and Juarez. Campbell says a plan is a good idea, but indicated most in El Paso do not appear too worried.

“In El Paso it seems more like life as usual,” he said. “Wealthy people from Juarez are buying houses in El Paso. That’s happening but it’s hard to get the numbers exactly and it sort of blends in to everyday life. It’s not very obvious.”

Campbell said in early 2008, when people wounded in the drug war were transported from Cuidad Juarez to Thomason General Hospital in El Paso, a fear of a possible spillover peaked.

“Initially there was this overreaction to that and a fear that commandos would come across the border and attack the hospital,” he said. “People almost forgot about that. We’ve had very little violence so far. It’s a paradoxical situation; two miles away people are getting slaughtered and decapitated and here we just go about our daily business. There is an ironic element (in that) if it really were so bad then how come we don’t see it more right in the thick if things?”

Campbell did say there has been growing concern, however, about one area of the plan Cesinger said would garner special focus.

“I guess in El Paso one of the things that people are starting to really talk about a lot is maquiladora (factory) managers getting kidnapped and the disruption of business,” he said.

A U.S. citizen and manager for the LEAR Corporation, Campbell said, was recently kidnapped. He was released unharmed but since then the company has removed all signage indicating how to get to its 19 locations in the Mexican city.

Another aspect of the plan would address gangs and their operations in Texas. Laredo Police Investigator Joe E. Baeza, a department spokesman, confirmed that in Laredo there has been evidence the cartels do require the services of many Texas-based gangs.

“There is a lot of freelancing, especially among the bigger Mexican cartels,” he said. “They branch off and they do business with other organizations, other gangs. I would be falling short if I didn’t recognize the fact that these guys are directly or directly (involved).”

Baeza said the department received $225,000 in grant monies from the governor’s office to supplement overtime costs for gang task forces within the department.

In McAllen, which sits across the Mexican city of Reynosa in the Rio Grande Valley, the likelihood that violence will occur exactly the way it happens in Mexico is unlikely, according to the city’s police chief.

“I don’t think there is a great likelihood of the violence as we perceive it in Mexico to spillover,” explained Chief Victor Rodriguez. He added that should the plan be put into effect, he thinks local departments should be part of the planning process, but that he would cooperate in any way.

To have a plan in place, he said, would be ideal to not only ensure public safety, but to ensure the region’s economic prosperity.

McAllen is one of the fastest growing cities in Texas and last week city officials were at the state Capitol urging lawmakers to support initiatives that would help ensure that growth. The reputation the city has, Rodriguez said, is as important as keeping the public safe.

“We always have to understand that our economic prosperity depends on law and order in our community,” he said. “So a planning process I think communicates that we have a plan in place for the preservation of economic prosperity in our community.”

Campbell indicated that approach could translate as a loss of sensitivity by the communities affected.

“It’s sort of sad in a way that people are more affected or care more about a disruption of business than people getting murdered,” he said.

Campbell added that the murders are becoming so commonplace in Ciudad Juarez that some, even the media, might be suffering from what he called a “fatigue factor.”

“If one day no one is murdered in Juarez, that’s the news ‘No one killed today,’” he said. “But the next day, five or eight (murders) and decapitations.”

Cesinger said the plan would call only for reinforcements in Texas, but Campbell said some in Mexico might put aside their long-standing hate for the U.S. government if it means the violence would stop.

“People are suspending this typical concern about sovereignty, they just want to see the violence end,” he said. “Historically Mexico has viewed United States primarily as a political enemy and a threat to their sovereignty, and for good reason if you look at history. I think the primary concern now for people is to end the violence by whatever means.”