Another Look at Gang Violence
El Paso, Texas Leaders Talk Youth Violence Solutions in SB
City, church, and community leaders met at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church Thursday evening to listen to a discussion led by a team of officials from El Paso, Texas on the issues of community improvement and youth violence. On hand were Chief of Police Cam Sanchez, 1st District Supervisor Salud Carbajal, and Prof. Carl Guttierrez-Jones, Director of the Center for Chicano Studies at UCSB, as well as dozens of parents and community members residents some of whom were using headsets to listen to a live translation in Spanish. Fr. Rafael Marin-Leon, who hosted the meeting, said to the attendees, “Our obligation as citizens, as good people, is to improve our city.”
The representatives from El Paso were County Attorney Jose Rodriguez, El Paso City Councilman Steve Ortega, and El Paso City Services Coordinator Mark Alvarado. These men delivered a presentation on the current programs and services in use in El Paso to ensure safety in the city’s neighborhoods. However, Alvarado – a Santa Barbara native whose family still resides in Santa Barbara – stressed that different situations call for different ideas and different strategies saying, “We’re not here to tell you ‘This is how it’s done.'” Essentially, the three-part presentation consisted of complementary strategies that have collectively helped alleviate crime and raise the quality of life in some of El Paso’s poorest neighborhoods: creating neighborhood groups to foster community support, providing services for residents – especially youth. It remains to be seen, however, how effective these strategies would be in solving Santa Barbara’s own own struggles with poverty and violence.
El Paso is a city much different from Santa Barbara, most obviously in size and in its proximity to the border with Mexico. In addition, El Paso’s poorest neighborhoods are comprised of mostly first generation immigrants who lack proficiency in English. Some schools have an over 50 percent dropout rate – a fact which drew gasps from the assembled crowd. This environment of poverty has been compounded by a rise in violent cartel-backed drug-trafficking gangs operating in El Paso.
