Very interesting piece on the migration to Mexico City from violent parts
of the country… An adjusted google translation is below… Also, Torreon
is one of the places of migration featured in the article. Last night, a
rehab center in the city was attacked leaving at least 11 dead and many
more injured.  An AFP article on that is also posted below…  molly

{GOOGLE TRANSLATION with some corrections}
Silent migration to Mexico City
Sunday May 27, 2012 Cynthia Sanchez |
The Universal

The door of the plane barely opens and your eyes are full of tears. The
traffic is unbearable. People are rude and lazy. There are kidnappings,
robberies and assaults. Throughout the historic center your bag is likely
to be snatched.Parked cars are stolen off the streets. You are afraid all
the time and it is the worst place to live in this country. Those years and
years of complaints are seldom heard anymore. The Federal District was a
surprise t them. It just was not so bad and today it is the only place in
the country where you don’t have to live with psychosis.

They come here from Ciudad Juarez, Torreon, Tamaulipas, Veracruz,
Monterrey, Sinaloa, San Luis Potosi and other northern cities and find
Mexico City to be a place free of drug violence. It is a silent migration
starring middle-class youth who have moved their businesses or their
studies to Mexico City for fear of dying from a stray bullet or being
mistaken for a member of organized crime or simply because someone felt
like killing them. It is known that one in five residents of Mexico City
was not born here, but there are no statistics on this new migration. But
there are a lot of them and you only have to venture to places of
entertainment such as bars, restaurants, theaters, plazas and even
universities to notice them. Northern accents that echo increasingly in
neighborhoods like Roma, Condesa, Cuauhtemoc, Central and Polanco. Today it
is possible to go to a Condesa bar on a Sunday soccer league final where
the title is disputed between two teams from the north and find the place
full of fans from both teams. Most are newcomers to this city where until
about five years ago they never thought they could live, the same place
they constantly criticized and considered a mess.

Roger, restaurateur, Marcelo, musician, Carlos and Daniel, students–all
belong to a number that no one has yet counted because it is a relatively
recent migration. They are mostly young people who are fleeing the violence
generated by drug trafficking in their places of origin. Students,
musicians, filmmakers, small businesses, young people supported by their
families come to Mexico City just to shelter in place, they say, where it
is still possible to live without psychosis, where they can walk the
streets, enjoy nightlife, go to a soccer stadium, a mall or a massive
concert without fear.

In 2012 alone, statistics from the Universidad Iberoamericana and the
Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM)
indicate that students from the campuses of Tijuana, Torreon, Tampico,
Monterrey and Mazatlan have emigrated to the campus of the cities of Center
the country. The Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City received 45
students from Coahuila, Chihuahua, Baja California and Nuevo Leon.

In Tec, the loss of students is a reality, a thousand young people have
left the campus in the north for a place in Queretaro, Puebla and Mexico
City.

Free university

Daniela, 20 and Carlos, 26 are two young people from Veracruz. A couple of
years ago they asked for their transfer to the City because in the port
city of Veracruz they were not free even to walk run or jog along the
shoreline boardwalk in the morning. Even before 2010, Carlos’ family never
would have thought to send him to live in Mexico City. “It was like sending
me to the slaughter, the most insecure place in the country. My mother
would have to call me up every hour to be sure I had not been kidnapped.
Now I live here (in Mexico City) and she feels more secure than when I was
in Veracruz, sleeping in the next room,”he says. Carlos’s parents made the
decision to ask for the university campus change because they saw his
frustration. “The time we could not go to bars let alone not even parties
to the homes of friends and we should stay together in one house all night
until our parents came for us the next day,” he says.

Daniela returned from a semester of study in New Zealand, and after being
back in Veracruz one month, the gunfire and shootouts in the night were so
disturbing, especially compared to the life he had had before leaving.  “I
only lasted one month and asked my parents send me here,” he says. He says
that a week before coming, as he was heading to college, a body was found
on the corner near his home. “That’s what made me decide.”

Restaurants from Torreon to Roma

They started with one coffee shop moe than 10 years ago in the center of
Torreon, Coahuila. Four years after first opening, they had established 27
more across the country, except in the Federal District. At that time they
did not consider it a place they could do business. However, in 2007 Roger
and Marcelo simply had to close their restaurants.”In that year the
nightlife of Torreon collapsed and the straw that broke the camel’s back
was when they disappeared the owner and the wife of our neighbor bar,” says
Roger.”We had deaths of people close, friends, neighbors, and nowhere in
Torreon was peace. People in the City can not imagine how we lived, there
is a collective psychosis. We went outside believing that at any time you
can be killed, so you can not live, “said Marcelo.

Between the two brothers have seen about the migration of about 500 people
from their region. “They are of all kinds, students, filmmakers,
entrepreneurs, musicians, we have all helped, first by helping get people
an apartment and then helping to get work ,” said Marcelo.

Roger says that they have brought Torreon to Mexico City. Groups still
gather for barbeques, but in much smaller spaces without huge gardens and
pools. They have two restaurants in the City in the Roma district. The
concept is red wine and the chef and waiters are also from the north who
came to town for the same reasons.

In the capital city, they say, have found a safe lifestyle. They regained
their social life. Marcelo, who is also a musician, can play at any bar
without fear of someone coming in to kill anyone, and Roger said with
confidence is going to La Merced (market) to buy the supplies for the
restaurant.

“For the size of the city, it did not prove to be as insecure as it is
created in the province. Here we’ve never been assaulted and I think the
hardest thing was getting used to traffic and earthquakes, we feel one of 5
degrees and less than 10 seconds are in the street, you, the ones here,
tell us to take it easy,” he says.

“Here you can even curse at a bad driver in traffic without fear of being
shot because you used your horn. In the north now that would be equivalent
to being able to live in peace.”

Marcelo and Roger hope to return. They have come to the capital city in
passing. They feel a commitment to Torreon, say they and all their friends
who are now taking refuge in the capital are committed to re-build the city
of Torreon and powerful rebirth and creative in business has always been.

Carlos and Daniela want their future children to grow in the state of
Veracruz, the port again want to be confident before.