Houston Chronicle: "The inauguration of the brilliant green soccer field was meant to seed a more hopeful day in this squalid neighborhood on Ciudad Juarez's bloodied western fringe. Long a local ambition, the park was finally realized with Mexican government money meant to help calm the gangland slaughter that's claimed 9,000 lives in Juarez of late. About a dozen other parks sprinkled across Juarez brace an ambitious 18-month effort to end the battered city's travail. ...
Ernesto Acosta, a reed-thin, troubled 17-year-old whose family shares a three-room concrete hovel on a bluff overlooking the park, bought into the promise. Ignoring friends' warnings, he went to play in the inaugural soccer games. But the dream, like Acosta, didn't stand a chance. Coming off the field, Acosta was confronted by the leader of a rival gang, the Tristes, whose fief includes the park. The gangster fired a bullet into the boy's head.
Acosta's younger sister, Jessica, 11, watched her brother murdered. She ran screaming from the park with most everyone else. Nine months later, neither Jessica nor other children from her neighborhood have returned. "There has never been a truce with the Tristes, and there never will be," said a 23-year-old boss of Acosta's neighborhood gang, the Novenos. "They have had too many loved ones killed by us, as we have by them. "There simply are too many dead now," he said."
No comments:
Post a Comment