James Charnaud

This has been an interesting trip. For those of you who are not familiar with Juarez, it is a town on the border of Mexico and the US. Geographically it lies to the south of the Rio Grande River and the US town of El Paso lies to the north. If it was not for the frontier El Pasoand Juarez would be one big city.

Even though they are only the width of a river apart they are very different places. El Paso prides itself on being one of the safest cities in the US - I think it is second or third behind San Diego - whereas Juarez has the dubious distinction of having the highest murder rate in the world. That is quite some statistic coming from a town of only 1.3 million people.

Economically Juarez has been double hit by the general economic slowdown in the US and the drug wars. Being a border town Juarez is full of factories that supply goods for the US market. Therefore, when the US economy slows down they are hit very hard. Anecdotally I have been told that some of the factories are starting to see an increase in activity -this has been put down to an increase in orders resulting from the improvement in the US car industry.

I am not entirely clear on the drug war situation. The Mexican government has decided to tackle the very powerful drug cartels and it seems the squeeze has made them take on each other. The result is that there is a battle going on between two rival drug cartels (Sinaloaand the Juarez Cartels) in Juarez while at the same time both cartels are fighting the police (both local and federal). I have heard there are now 2,000 Federal Police stationed in Juarez.

Whilst I have been here we have had the coldest recorded temperatures since sometime in the 60s. It went down to minus 15 degrees with a wind chill making it feel like it was in the minus 20s. I normally like to walk around cities I visit, but this time the crime and the cold have held me back. Interestingly, the weather seems to have had a more drastic effect in El Paso where the city has imposed rolling blackouts to conserve electricity, whereas there was no interruption in Juarez. I am not sure what that says about the state of either country!

As you can imagine there is a lot of real estate available in Juarez. It is hard to find out exactly how much is available as some space has been on the market for years and much of the time landlords have given up advertising availability The best area for offices is in the south-east of the city where office rents are in the $12 - 16 per sq ft per year range. These rents are for the better space and class B buildings are available for rents closer to $8.00 per sqft. The best industrial areas are close to the bridges on the east and south-east of the city. Here industrial rents range from $3.75 - 4.50 per sqft per year for the best quality space.