Eric Rodrigo Meringer Ciudad Juárez: Lives Interrupted
A violent drug war has gripped the northern Mexican border town of Ciudad Juaréz. Multiple killings there have become a daily occurrence and with the death toll rising each year (1600 deaths in 2008, 2600 in 2009 and 3000 in 2010) residents are losing hope for the future. The crisis in Juaréz has drawn a considerable amount of international media attention but thus far the primary focus of conditions in the “murder capital of the world,”[1] has been on the carnage and the drug cartels as perpetrators of violence. With funding from the 2010 Emerging Crisis Oral History Research Award, this project shifts the focus from drug lords and body counts to the lives of ordinary people who call Juaréz home. Ciudad Juaréz: Lives Interrupted considers how residents of this city of 1.3 million perceive the drug war enveloping them and asks how they have adapted to the pervasive violence and how the drug war has altered their perceptions of their city and their sense of normalcy.
One perception commonly expressed by Juaréz residents interviewed for this project - one that contrasts with the more sensational accounts of drug-related violence - addresses the indiscriminate nature of murder in Juaréz. Despite the increasing numbers of drug- related deaths, Juaréz residents still maintain that they are largely removed from the conflict. They see casualties of the drug war as drawing from the ranks of the rival and warring factions involved. For most people the greater source of daily anxiety derives not from the drug lords but from the residual effects of the drug war – small time criminals taking advantage of heightened levels of fear and the absence of law to extort, rob and intimidate at unprecedented levels.
Rosa is a manager of a foreign-owned pharmaceutical retailer in Juaréz who shared her experience in this regard for this project. Rosa transferred to Ciudad Juaréz in 2007 from her home town in southern Chihuahua so that she could be closer to her daughter who had just had her first baby. In her first four months on the job, Rosa was robbed at gunpoint on five separate occasions. Police reports were filed, “panic buttons” installed, license plate numbers recorded. Still her assailants kept returning while the police continued to maintain their distance. She related her frustration saying: “I wish the police could understand how it feels to be assaulted, I wish I could describe those feelings to them so they would help us and see how desperate you feel when you are assaulted.”
Seeing the crisis in Juaréz through the eyes of ordinary people like Rosa reveals a level of complexity that escapes more sensationalized accounts. Moreover, reports of murder and mayhem demand immediate retaliation and justify military or paramilitary solutions. Stories of people caught in the crossfire elicit more measured responses. Consider Raul’s story. He came to Juaréz from Mexico City to work in the maquila industry in the mid 1990s. One summer afternoon in 2008 he was relaxing in his modest home when a passing military patrol paused at his doorstep. Raul was aware of the recent surge of armed soldiers in Juaréz and he had passively supported the military presence. But his opinion changed that afternoon when five soldiers entered his two-room home, robbed him of the 350 hundred pesos, took his cell phone and helped themselves to beer and soda in his refrigerator. Referring to the soldiers raiding his refrigerator he commented: “If they would have asked I would have said ‘sure, help yourselves with pleasure. But why do they have to just take it like that.” For Raul, the cure was not worth the cost. “With thieves or muggers at least maybe your blood gets boiling and you can defend yourself - but not with the soldiers. So if it were one or the other, in that respect I’d rather that the soldiers weren’t here.”
As a final distinction between the journalistic accounts of the Juaréz drug war and the perspectives featured in Ciudad Juaréz: Lives Interrupted, it is important to consider perceptions of the city itself. Journalist Charles Bowden has been reporting on border issues for some 15 years and is more intimately familiar with Ciudad Juaréz than most. In his 2010 book, Murder City, he portrays Juaréz as a dystopian nightmare personified in his description of a strung out prostitute. “She is a whore… She is a product of the city, a testament to the cheap drugs and the expendable lives, and her story will never be in the newspaper, nor will she – or the army that wanders the city and is just like her – ever be counted and considered in the studies and essays about life in Juaréz.”[2] Ciudad Juaréz: Lives Interrupted adds an element of humanity that is missing in Bowden’s portrayal. It treats the present nightmare but also considers lost expectations for the future. It is through these more human perspectives of Ciudad Juaréz as a one-time utopia of hope and promise that the true dystopian nature of Ciudad Juaréz today is revealed.
[1] Barry Peterson, “Juarez, Mexico - Murder Capital of the World”, August 12, 2010, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/12/eveningnews/main6767879.shtml.
[2] Charles Bowden, Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields (New York: Nation Books, 2010), 31.