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REBROADCAST: Charles Bowden, Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields

A city dreamed up from a dusty border mountain pass by promoters of the NAFTA, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, now typifies the failure of the so-called “war on drugs.” Directly across the border from El Paso, Texas, the 1.3 million person metropolis has garnered a gritty reputation in recent years. It’s a place where drug cartels battle for control, murder and rape run rampant, and the low wages offered by foreign-owned maquladoras cannot begin to compete with the heady allure of drug trafficking. When Mexican President Felipe Calderon dispatched 10,000 soldiers to the city in 2008 as a part of his drug war policy, murders spiraled further out of control, as citizens of Juarez clashed with the military. So far, the death toll in 2010 has exceeded 3,000 in Ciudad Juarez—already eclipsing that of 2009. 2010 is already the city’s deadliest year yet. Overshadowed by the drug violence, the femicide of young women and girls has continued unabated. More than fifty women have been killed this year, their bodies often mutilated by torture and abuse. The killings surged out of control beginning in 1993, when young women came to the US border in droves to the maquiladoras set up in the wake of the NAFTA. Political passivity has turned Ciudad Juarez into a place of murder without debt. According to the Chihuaha State Human Rights Commission, there are over 20,000 abandoned houses in Ciudad Juarez. Privileged residents fled over the border to El Paso to escape being caught in the constant crossfire of violence between residents and cartels. Award-winning author and critically acclaimed journalist Charles Bowden paints a vivid picture of Ciudad Juarez in his newest book “Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields.” In riveting prose, he explores the ongoing violence behind the headlines of mainstream US and Mexican media accounts of who is doing the killing and who is doing the dying. Bowden tells the story of the city by intertwining the narratives of a myriad of personalities—a pastor who runs a desert asylum, a penitent hitman for hire, a broken beauty queen, a journalist running for life. Poet, novelist and essayist Luis Alberto Urrea said of “Murder City,” there are moments when the book threatens to burst into flames and burn your hands.”