Interesting Stuff: Juarez

Largest cartel gun bust in Mexico’s history

Any time you hear political rhetoric about USA border security and Mexican nationals attempting to sneak in, Juarez is the hotspot. Juarez is on the very border of Mexico and the US. In fact, it essentially forms a single city with El Paso, Texas, except that the Rio Grande which forms the border goes through this city. Although it’s been in the news a little bit, it’s really been downplayed and pretty unreported in terms of its importance to the “war on [some people who do] drugs”* and immigration policy.

In the 90s, El Paso and Juarez essentially functioned as a single city. You could go across without a passport. It was common for US nationals visiting El Paso to pop over the river for some shopping. After September 11th security got tightened. Now it is the absolute hotspot of the border since Juarez has become the capital of the Mexican drug cartels thanks to the US’s insatiable appetite for drugs which seems to grow in proportion with the billions spent on the drug war.

The two cities have really gone their separate ways. El Paso is the 3rd safest city in the US (for cities of 500k+ people), and this despite having a high poverty rate and being made up largely of unskilled Mexican migrants. Juarez, on the other hand, is possibly the most violent place on earth outside of declared warzones. In fact methinks the only reasons it hasn’t been declared a warzone are political.

Juarez is the place closest to the border so it makes sense for drug cartels to take their business there. However the turf war has been absolutely brutal. Juarez has 130 murders per 100,000 per year, more than twice the already astoundingly-high murder rate of Capetown. For comparison my sleepy Australia has 4 per 100,000.

In fact, there were over 3200 murders in Juarez just in 2008-9. There have been many cases where large numbers of civilians have been machine-gunned as part of the turf wars, including children. Just recently, a mass grave of 72 migrant civillians was discovered. But you can breathe a sigh of relief, that wasn’t in Juarez proper, just somewhere else across the border. What’s happened to the lead investigator for these 72 murders? Why, he disappeared of course, how silly of you to ask!

And if you think that’s bad, just a few weeks ago Mexico fired 3200 cops for corruption. That’s 10% of its existing police force that are already tied to drugs and are now out of a job so will almost certainly work for the cartels directly. Now this is where it really gets hairy. As a response to the escalating drug violence the entire US-Mexico border will be patrolled by unmanned drones. Note that this is the same violence NOT spilling over into super-safe El Paso (just metres away from this nightmare). And to top it all off, next week (Sep 16th) is Mexican Independence Day, one of the most important national holidays for almost 200 years. For the first time ever, Juarez is cancelling its celebrations altogether because of security concerns. This would be like cancelling 4th of July celebrations in Real America^TM

The drug war, combined with the criminalisation of drugs has led to a catastrophe of truly biblical proportions and most people outside of the 2-3 countries stricken with it have their heads in the sands. And the thing is, if I made up a post with all of this horror, it would be too far out to be believable. If anything, this is worse than a military junta: drug cartelling is so profitable the cartels have metastesised and have gripped northern Mexico much tighter than a repressive government might.

It’s the end of the world, folks. Last one to leave please turn out the lights.

*Expression stolen from Amanda Marcotte.