Thread: Mexican City of Juarez is Dying

Juárez is dying, prominent journalist warns
By Ramón RenterÃ*a \ El Paso Times
http://www.elpasotimes.com/juarez/ci_14860751


"Charles Bowden, an award-winning Arizona author and one of the region's most prominent freelance journalists, documents the Mexican border city's ever-escalating violence and its repercussions in a recently published book, "Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields." Fighting the border drug war
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"You can look out your office window and just watch one of the major cities of Mexico die," he said in a recent phone interview from Albuquerque.

Bowden, an award-winning Arizona author and one of the region's most prominent freelance journalists, documents the Mexican border city's ever-escalating violence and its repercussions in a recently published book, "Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields."

Bowden also wrote "Down by the River," the acclaimed 2002 narrative describing the multibillion-dollar drug industry along the border, related corruption in Mexico and the United States, and one El Paso family's entanglement.

Bowden was drinking coffee with photographer Julián Cardona, a Mexican friend, around the time violence of historic proportions first exploded in Juárez in January 2008. A record 43 people were murdered that month in Juárez.

"The number of killings shocked people," Bowden said. "I realized I didn't know what was going on and that everything that I knew about Juárez was irrelevant now. So Julian and I dove in."

Bowden and Cardona also worked together on "Juárez: The Laboratory of Our Future," a 1998 critically acclaimed collection of essays and photographs depicting the border's escalating drug and gang culture and the hopelessness of poverty.

In "Murder City," Bowden set out to understand the violence escalating in Juárez in 2008. The story trapped him.

"The press was saying it's a cartel war. I thought, 'What kind of a cartel war is it when all the people getting killed are poor nobodies from poor barrios?' " he said.

Bowden contends the violence in Juárez -- murders, mass extortions and kidnappings -- is so out of control that it is not easily explained even in a city where selling drugs is a multibillion-dollar industry.

"I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle easily," he said. "These people killing in Juárez don't get arrested, and it's become a way of life."

Luis Alberto Urrea, author of "The Devil's Highway," applauds Bowden in the book blurbs for plunging into the bloodshed that has transformed Juárez, a poster child for free trade 10 years ago, into a city abandoned by an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 of its richest residents who have fled to El Paso and elsewhere in search of a haven.

"There are moments when the book threatens to burst into flames and burn your hands. Crawling with ghosts and demons, dripping blood, howling with rage and terror, it's go-for-broke apocalyptic prophecy," Urrea writes. "Forget Baghdad, forget Kandahar: Hell is only 50 yards away from your back porch, and Bowden is going to make you look or die trying."

In the book, Bowden interviews a hit man and gets riveting insight into the business of killing people.

He also recounts the story of an attractive young woman who came to Juárez to party and ended up getting raped by the police and people engaged in the drug industry. Eventually, she was dumped at an insane asylum in the desert.

"Part of the book is to get past these numbers, to make you hear those flies buzzing over that puddle of blood in that room where they executed nine people having a prayer meeting," Bowden said. Witnesses told Bowden that soldiers stood idle in the vicinity of the execution and did nothing to stop it.

El Paso poet Bobby Byrd, co-owner of Cinco Puntos Press, describes Bowden as a writer concerned about the negative effects of globalization and militarization of the U.S. side of the border on Mexican cities like Juárez.

"Charles wants to change the way people feel about the border and about Juárez," Byrd said. "What's happened in Juárez is a result of these very greedy economic policies like NAFTA."

Byrd suggests that Juárez has become a metaphor, an emblem of the future of the U.S.-Mexico border, for Bowden.

"He's probably one of the best craftsmen of language writing today," Byrd said.

Bowden's book says various groups in Juárez -- gangs, the army, city, state and federal police -- are killing people in Juárez because of the enormous profits attached to drug sales.

He also predicts that violence in Juárez is not going to stop soon.

He points out that Juárez, a city that once boasted it had the lowest unemployment rate in Mexico, is now a city with 25 percent of its houses abandoned, and a city where 40 percent of the businesses have closed, a city that has lost 100,000 maquiladora jobs. Compounding the problem: 150,000 to 200,000 drug addicts and 300 to 500 gangs.

Bowden suggests that the United States must do more to alleviate problems in Mexico or risk an even greater influx of Mexican immigrants fleeing destitute conditions.

"Mexican people are not al-Qaida. This is preposterous rhetoric which leads to lunatics like the Minutemen," he said. "I expect better of my government. I expect it to be honest and say the War on Drugs after 40 years is a failure. I expect it to say NAFTA after 16 years has created mass migration of the Mexican poor. I expect them to take seriously allegations against the Mexican army and say maybe we shouldn't give them half a billion dollars a year so they can go kill more Mexicans."

Bowden has not been to Juárez in months.

"I needed a break. I get depressed," he said. "I'm not a ghoul."

He tells others that Juárez and Mexico deserve a chance to solve their own problems without political stunts or failed policies on both sides of the border.

"We're not talking about some sort of monster across the river," he said. "We're talking about what happens to people when they're not given any chances in life.""

We have given Mexico millions and millions and millions to help them on their drug problem. They have used our help against us. Why is it our responsibility to help Mexico? Close our borders and keep them out. Send back the illegals and let them figure it out for themselves.

There once was a really great sounding, liberal idea...called "Mind Expansion." Now we see the results.

Yah, it seems that it is an epidemic to blame America for someones faults and then ask for help when needed......

I am sick with taking the blame for greedy evil people.

I mow my own grass.

Clean my own house.

Cook my own food.

I don't use anything made in Messico.

And on a daily basis, they blame me and my country for THEIR ineptness.

What a SICK RACE of ANIMALS