MAY/JUNE 2011 report: No End in Sight: Violence in Ciudad Juárez

Mexican troops on patrol in Ciudad Juárez in April 2008. Intense violence followed the drug-trafficking arrest of a cartel leader (and high-ranking police official), prompting President Felipe Calderón to dispatch thousands of soldiers and federal police into the city’s streets.

By Howard Campbell

i u d a d j u á r e z , i n t h e m e x i c a n s t a t e o f of migrants for its fine weather, vibrant nightlife, Chihuahua, is known as a city of death.1 and relatively high standard of living. CPerhaps the most violent place on the In the mid-1980s two powerful drug traf- planet, it is home to the world’s highest homi- fickers, Rafael Aguilar Guajardo, a federal Howard Campbell cide rate—officially there were 3,111 total mur- police commander, and Rafael Muñoz Talavera, is a professor of ders in 2010, but since many deaths go unre- a businessman, ran the Juárez Cartel, but the anthropology at the ported, the real number is likely significantly city’s yearly homicides remained below 100 University of – El Paso. He is the

o higher. Like many other Mexican border cities, until 1993. That year, author of Drug War Juárez has had relatively high levels of crime, muscled out his competitors and took control Zone: Frontline 2 vice, and corruption for decades. But it was not of the Juárez trafficking market and assumed Dispatches From er y Rom always as brutally violent as it is today. Not long the mantle of the Juárez Cartel.3 From 1993 the Streets of El ago the city was renowned by its own inhab- onward, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, an innovator Paso and Juárez itants (Juarenses); visitors from its “sister city” in jet-transporting from South America (University of Texas Press, 2009). e n r REUTERS/H across the border, El Paso, Texas; and millions to northern Mexico, substantially increased 19 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS report: mexico

the volume of cross-border drug trafficking. Homicides, In the first month of the “surge,” the homicide rate including a substantial number of killings of women that dipped, but it quickly returned to high levels that have were labeled “femicides,” increased correspondingly. In only since increased. In 2008 there were about 1,600 1993 Juárez homicide totals surpassed 100 for the first homicides, more than 2,700 in 2009, more than 3,100 in time in recent history, and from 1994 on, total homicides 2010, and rates continue apace as of June. (While precise surpassed the 200 mark and remained there for the rest figures are often unobtainable or open to interpretation in of the decade (with the single exception of 1999, when many cases, the magnitude of the tragedy is beyond ques- they declined in the aftermath of Carrillo Fuentes’s death tion.) Social critics, activists, and victims’ relatives assert and the violent shake-up within the cartel that occurred that much of the violence is in fact perpetrated by these immediately after it). same soldiers and policemen, who also engage in fratricidal By 2000, , Amado’s brother, violence within their own ranks—with municipal cops regained control of the trafficking market, and the homi- killing other municipal cops, and city and federal police cide rates leveled off at about 200 to 300 a year as busi- engaging in shoot-outs with each other. Throughout, the ness returned to “normal.” Drug trafficking continued federal and local government claimed to be reforming the to produce needed revenue for thousands of Juarenses police forces. The municipal police were purged several and El Pasoans, locally known as Paseños. Many border times, police captains were replaced, and federal police people considered the violence inevitably produced by were rotated back and forth. The military was reinforced, the drug trade to be undesirable but not “out of control,” then partially withdrawn, then brought back. The federal although activists, relatives, and friends protested the dis- police took over from the military, and military forces were appearances and murders of their loved ones.4 Indeed, reduced substantially. The federal police proved to be so despite the increase in killings and disappearances that abusive, however, that many Juarenses now call for the began in the 1990s, Juárez remained a bustling, 24/7 city complete withdrawal of both it and the army. that was much livelier than El Paso.5 Violence and criminality—particularly the booming The ultra-violence that Juárez now endures began in extortion and kidnapping businesses—actually grew January 2008 with the drug-trafficking arrest in El Paso with the arrival of the soldiers and federal police. At the of a high-ranking Juárez police official, Saulo Reyes Gam- same time the Aztecas and other lesser or rival criminal boa, who reputedly cooperated with U.S. law enforce- gangs multiplied as the city devolved into a totally law- ment. Then a series of high-profile killings occurred in less nightmare—a war-ravaged landscape of burned-out rapid succession in Juárez. Knowledgeable local observers and abandoned buildings by day, a ghost town by night. attributed these deaths to attempts by the Juárez Cartel to Reportedly, more than 100,000 homes lie vacant, aban- kill disloyal members as well as to internal power struggles doned or destroyed. Perhaps as many as 20% of Juárez’s within the organization after the downfall of a once power- previous inhabitants have fled the violence for El Paso or ful leader. This internal battle was exploited by the cartel’s other destinations in the and Mexico.6 Since bitter rival, the Cartel, led by Chapo Guzmán, in 2008 there have been only a few days in which there an attempt to take over the Juárez drug-trafficking market. were no killings in Juárez. These few relatively peaceful As the violence continued, experts compared the Juárez days were primarily the result of extremely cold winter drug war to the 2004–2006 inter-cartel squabble between weather, which forced residents to stay in their homes. the /Zetas and the for control of Many of the victims of recent violence are not big- Nuevo Laredo and surrounding areas. time cartel members. They are street-level drug deal- By March 2008, the spike in Juárez violence attracted ers, small-time gangsters, small business people of all the attention of Mexican president Felipe Calderón, who sorts who refuse to pay extortive “protection” fees, sent thousands of soldiers and federal police into the city’s bystanders, municipal police men and women, hap- streets to stop the bloodshed. Military and police check- less smugglers who lost their drug loads, snitches or points, heavily loaded troop transport trucks filled with reputed snitches, and even drug addicts and homeless green-uniformed soldiers, and blue police trucks filled street people. Elderly people, small children, people in with federal cops in heavy body armor and ski masks, wheelchairs, and women of all ages have all fallen to the with their fingers on the trigger of automatic weapons, assassin’s bullet as crime organizations—in particular became ubiquitous sights in the border town. Juárez was La Linea, the dominant wing of the Juárez Cartel—have in a state of siege, essentially controlled by the military. expanded from drug trafficking into all manner of crimi- 20 MAY/JUNE 2011 report: mexico

nal activity. Young people have been the most victim- factory workers, in recycled yellow U.S. school buses, to ized social group. The degree of extreme violence and the manufacturing and assembly plants.7 torture—including decapitations and mutilations—defy Second, the global economic crisis closed many Juárez the imagination. Some of the most extreme examples maquilas and exported low-wage jobs to China. The laid- since 2008 include the following: off border workers were left with nothing to fall back on as the U.S. militarized its southern border with fences, • Eighteen recovering drug addicts massacred by a death walls, more Border Patrol agents, and a general crack- squad at a drug rehabilitation center in the Colonia down on undocumented immigrants.8 Crossing into the ­Bellavista; United States to find work was no longer an option for • Fifteen teenagers, mistaken for gang members, were most poor Juarenses. Crime became the main economic gunned down in Colonia Villas de Salvárcar; opportunity for unemployed youth. • Several Juárez journalists murdered, including legend- Third, ongoing political problems in Mexico after a ary crime reporter Armando Rodríguez; flawed transition to democracy brought the consolidation • Three people associated with the U.S. Consulate assas- of free trade and neoliberal policies begun in the 1980s. sinated; These policies abandoned the working class and poor, • Thousands of quartered, duct-taped, beheaded, burned, who represent the vast majority of the Mexican popula- sexually mutilated, or otherwise desecrated cadavers tion, in a time of reduced employment and wages.9 ­ The dumped in the streets; corrupt corporate state controlled for 71 years by the • A car bomb, killing a Juárez policeman and a respected Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), despite its myriad paramedic; flaws, had at least provided a modicum of jobs, social • One hundred and forty-nine policemen murdered in safety-net programs, and patronage. Moreover, the PRI’s Juárez in 2010; heavy-handed and corrupt rule limited the growth of • Three hundred and four women murdered in 2010; drug cartels to a degree. • Dozens of mass killings in bars, homes, drug rehab In contrast, the neoliberal model championed by the centers, private parties, shopping centers, restaurants, since discredited President Carlos Salinas and continued used car lots, junk yards, car repair shops, and other by the new National Action Party (PAN) administrations businesses; and from 2000 onward removed much of the social safety net • An estimated 20% of the homicides during the Mexican and broke down the old patronage networks that kept “drug war” have occurred in Juárez. drug traffickers in line. Furthermore, Mexico’s so-called democratic opening was mainly an opening for Mexican How do we explain this outrageous carnage? Beyond venture capitalists and international investors. Democracy historical particulars and the intra- and inter-cartel wars, neither improved the conditions of the poor nor allowed five main social processes coincided in recent years to them more access to political decision-making. After the produce the unprecedented violence in Juárez. These defeat in 2006 of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the processes each have differential time lines and cycles; left’s strongest presidential candidate since Cuauhtémoc they are not all unified and identical, but they have col- Cárdenas, the progressive movement fragmented and lost lectively produced the hyper-violence and lawlessness. much of the already scarce power it had over national First, the maquiladora model failed to produce economic affairs. The right-wing PAN and centrist PRI had control mobility or social “development” for the majority of the of the country, but their conflicts prevented creative polit- border population. From the 1960s onward, primarily ical action and social programs that might have lessened U.S.-owned maquilas brought thousands of migrants to the disaster already looming in Juárez. Juárez and consigned them to live in bare-bones neigh- Bitter battles between the PRI and the PAN administra- borhoods (colonias). The companies did not pay more tions of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón allowed little than subsistence wages and did not provide much train- or no cooperation between the federal government and ing, nor did they construct schools, hospitals, or parks state and local governments in Juárez and Chihuahua in worker neighborhoods. The captive maquila worker State when violence and criminality began to spiral out population lived in these often squalid, precarious condi- of control. The thoroughly corrupt federal, state, and tions with little protection from the state or its employers, municipal police in Juárez viewed each other as ene- with the exception of the bus service that brought the mies allied with rival branches of organized crime. The 21 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS report: mexico

chronically underfunded, criminally infested Juárez city began to conquer entire regions of Mexico and large parts ­government—especially law enforcement, which in the of cities like Juárez, becoming quasi–state entities. best of times was a hindrance to the local population— Opponents of this mafia-like criminal expansion, became a scourge. Poorly planned judicial reform and the whether politicians, journalists, unbribable policemen, federally mandated military intervention only worsened or activists, were tortured and decapitated, and their an already desperate situation. In Juárez crime paid, and bullet-­riddled bodies or body parts were hung from criminals were almost never caught or jailed. bridges and monuments or strewn in the streets. Cartels Fourth, Calderón’s ill-conceived “drug war,” launched created ­narco-spectacles of dumped, mutilated cadavers in 2006 and sponsored and promoted by the U.S. govern- and large-scale massacres in broad daylight to intimidate ment, became a disaster.10 Everywhere Calderón sent the the general population. These horrific, visceral displays military and federal police, the violence increased. In the were backed up by narco-propaganda messages in threat- states of Michoacán, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Durango, and ening narco-graffiti,narco-mantas (pro-cartel banners that others, the bloody story was the same. Human rights viola- attack rival cartel members and government officials), tions and homicides (including the femicides) sky­rocketed. and YouTube videos of interrogation and torture sessions, Although rival cartels had been killing each other for years, executions, and pro-cartel manifestoes. Simultaneously, Calderón’s improvised military mobilization threw gasoline drug traffickers celebrated their actions in upbeat narco- on the fire and turned a problematic criminal situation into corridos that espouse a gospel of brutality, drug abuse, a virtual civil war. The U.S. government pushed Mexico misogyny, money worship, and impunity. to fight the drug war, and are paying the price The counterculture of criminality became morbidly for it. As the U.S. executive branch now admits, U.S. drug stylish and a kind of primitive ideological justification demand and lax gun laws fuel Mexican drug trafficking for anti-state, anti-social, and even nihilistic violence.12 and related violence.11 Moreover, the success of U.S. law Crime groups, including corrupt local, state, and federal enforcement in closing Colombian and Caribbean drug police, engaged in a feeding frenzy of murders designed corridors altered the transcontinental geography of the to punish the real or perceived thieves of drug loads or drug trade, creating a new main channel of hemispheric informers, purge the ranks of traitors or disloyal mem- drug shipments from South and Central America through bers, take revenge for previous killings, exterminate busi- Mexico and across the U.S.-Mexico border. ness owners who would not pay la cuota, execute kidnap And finally, the rise of a “counterculture of crime” in victims to destroy evidence, or attack rivals or govern- Mexico beginning in the 1990s emerged hand in hand ment agents that got in their way. The fragmentation and with economic decline, political illegitimacy, and the dec- conflict among existing crime groups has produced mul- adence of law enforcement and the judicial system. The tiple new crime organizations. marginalized masses of unemployed and semi-employed The inability of the state and civil society to provide workers—especially the youth who are ignored and a viable, appealing alternative to the “counterculture of isolated in a rigid class hierarchy and now in a heavily crime” and violence means that it will continue if not consumer-oriented, neoliberal Mexican society—became grow indefinitely. Many border people feel that only the the shock troops for cartels, gangs, and kidnapping and victory and supremacy of one drug cartel in the city will extortion rings. Organized crime, in fact, is propelled reestablish a degree of order and peace. This discourag- by unemployment and the hunger for consumer goods, ing scenario exists in one of the most important industrial social mobility, and the cosmopolitan lifestyles advertised cities in the Western Hemisphere, located right on the in the omnipresent cyber/electronic/television imagery U.S. border. It is evidence of the long-term bankruptcy beamed to a Mexican populace that has less and less of U.S. drug war policy, neoliberal free trade agreements, means of obtaining them through legitimate means. and Mexican political leadership. In the face of all this, Illegal operations flourished with little opposition and valiant Juarense activists and protesters stage count- even overt cooperation from criminalized police forces. less marches, demonstrations, vigils, and peace rallies. Mexico became a world leader in the kidnapping and extor- These courageous actions are met with bloody repres- tion of legitimate businesses, as organized crime groups sion, politicians’ empty promises, or silence from a deaf expanded into domestic drug sales, the undocumented- and dumb government. As the conflictive 2012 Mexican ­immigrant trade, carjacking, kidnapping, extortion (known presidential election approaches, it is hard to envision as cobrando la cuota), prostitution, and sales of pirated any improvement. At present there is no end in sight to music, movies, and other goods. Organized crime groups the violence in Juárez. 22 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS notes

University of Mexico, 1980), 80–81. ­Contemporary Mexico (University of California Press, 2002). 8. Figures cited in Francisco Abundis, “Las drogas en la opinión pública,” El Universal ­ 10. Campbell, Drug War Zone, 265–74. (), August 19, 2010. 11. The Associated Press, “Clinton: U.S. Drug Use Fuels Mexico Cartels,” March 9. “Arrest File: José del Moral,” Caja 0729, Folio 128284 (Tribunal Superior de Jus- 23, 2011. ticia del Distrito Federal, Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City, October 27, 12. Howard Campbell, “Narco-Propaganda in the : An Anthropo- 1908). logical Perspective,” Latin American Perspectives (forthcoming). 10. Richard DeGrandpre, The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World’s Most Troubled Drug Culture (Duke University Press, 2006). The Daughters of La Nacha 11. James Q. Wilson, “Against the Legalization of Drugs,” Commentary 89, no. 2 (1990): 21–28. 1. Elaine Carey, “ ‘Selling Is More of a Habit Than Using’: Narcotraficante Lola la 12. Degrandpre, The Cult of Pharmacology, 120–1, 185–6. Chata and Her Threat to Civilization, 1930–1960,” Journal of Women’s History 13. Ibid. 21, no. 2 (summer 2009): 62–89. For a discussion of La Nacha, see also Howard 14. For some early examples, see Thomas Crittenden, “The Mexican National Campbell, Drug War Zone: Frontline Dispatches From the Streets of El Paso and Drink,” Current Literature 20, no. 6 (1896); “A Bad Mexican Habit,” The Broad Juárez (University of Texas, 2009), 40–52. Ax (Salt Lake City), October 29, 1898; “Along the Border, Curious and Interesting 2. Affidavit of W. H. Crook, The United States of America v. Ignacia Jasso ­Gonzalez Things on the Mexican Frontier,” The Ohio Democrat (New Philadelphia, Ohio), et al., September 16, 1942, State Department (RG 59), Central Decimal Files, November 18, 1897; A Seductive Weed,” Spirit Lake Beacon (Spirit Lake, Iowa), 1940–1944, 212.11 Gonzalez Ignacia Jasso, Box 105, National Archives II. January 21, 1898; “A New Opiate,” Marysville Tribune (Marysville, Ohio), March 3. Extension of Remarks of John J. Cochran, Proceedings and Debate of the 78th 23, 1898. Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record 89, no. 23 (February 10, 1943). Harry J. 15. William O. Walker III, Drug Control in the Americas, rev. ed. (University of New Anslinger Archive, Box 2, Folder 20, Pennsylvania State University. Mexico Press, 1989), 119–26; Luis A. Astorga, El Siglo de las drogas (México 4. Howard Abadinsky, Organized Crime (New York: Wadsworth Publishing, 2009). City: Espasa-Calpe, 1996), 52–53. Discussion with Elaine Carey, January 20, 2011, Queens, New York. 16. Bob Wiedrich, “Mexico Still Hard on the Soft Drugs,” Chicago Tribune, August 21, 1974. Marketing Violence in Mexico’s Drug War 17. Ken Ellingwood and Richard Marosi “Mexico’s President Opposes Marijuana Legalization,” Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2010. 1. Silvia Otero, “No investigan 95% de muertes en ‘guerra,’ ” El Universal (Mexico City), June 21, 2010. How Can We Help Mexico? 2. Jorge Ramos, “Muertes de civiles son las menos: FCH,” El Universal, April 16, 2010. 1. For numbers on illicit-drug users in the United States, see U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Results From the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use Machos y Putas and Health: Volume I. Summary of National Findings, Figure 2.1, “Past Month Illicit Drug Use among Persons Aged 12 or Older: 2009,” oas.samhsa.gov/ 1. Duncan Kennedy, “Domestic Violence Stalks Mexican Women,” BBC News, NSDUH/2k9NSDUH/2k9Results.htm#Ch2. May 22, 2007; Mexican government survey cited in Human Rights Watch, “The 2. Elizabeth Mendes, “New High of 46% of Americans Support Legalizing Mari- Second Assault: Obstructing Access to Legal Abortion After Rape in Mexico,” juana,” Gallup.com, October 28, 2010. Human Rights Watch 18, no. 1(B) (March 6, 2006): 11 (n. 11); rape statistic cited 3. See, for example, Karen Kaplan, “Let Them Take Heroin, Study Says,” Los Angeles in ibid., 9 (n. 4). Times, August 19, 2009; Benedict Carey, “Study Backs Heroin to Treat Addiction,” 2. Comunicación e Información de la Mujer, AC (CIMAC), “Hacia la construcción , August 20, 2009; John Tierney, “Prescription Heroin?” The de un periodismo no sexista,” (2009), cimac.org.mx/cedoc/publicaciones.../ New York Times, August 20, 2009. hacia_la_construccion.pdf. 3. For more of Castillo’s analysis, see her Easy Women: Sex and Gender in Modern No End in Sight Mexican Fiction (University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 39. 4. Marc Lacy, “The Mexican Border’s Lost World,” The New York Times, July 31, 1. For the sake of readability, the author has omitted copious references to the 2010. massive reportage about the Juárez situation. But he would like to express his 5. “Survivor of Mexico Slaughter Details Immigrants’ Final Moments,” Houston gratitude to others who have studied or written about the city and border is- Chronicle, August 25, 2010. sues, including Rico Ainslie, Cecilia Ballí, Eduardo Barrera, Charles Bowden, John 6. The New York Review of Books, October 28, 2010. Burnett, Julian Cardona, Alfredo Corchado, Gustavo de la Rosa, Richard Dugan, 7. Laura Poy Solano, “Ninis, 33% de jóvenes en Ciudad Juárez,” La Jornada (Mexico Josiah Heyman, Alejandro Lugo, Molly Molloy, Rafael Nuñez, Tony Payan, Alfredo City), April 14, 2010. Quijano, Sandra Rodríguez, David Shirk, Kathy Staudt, Pablo Vila, Ed Vulliamy, and 8. Quoted in Julia Preston, “Asylum Granted to Mexican Woman in Case Setting Melissa Wright. Standard on Domestic Abuse,” The New York Times, August 12, 2010. 2. Oscar Martínez, Border Boom Town: Ciudad Juárez Since 1848 (University of 9. Julian Cardona, “Pink Bikers Fight Mexican Drug War by Helping Poor,” Reuters, Texas Press, 1983). January 24, 2011. 3. Howard Campbell, Drug War Zone: Frontline Dispatches From the Streets of El 10. El Chilito (Tamaulipas), “Crónica: La histórica visita de Blake y Eugenio al Pueblo Paso and Juárez (University of Texas Press, 2009), 32. Mágico,” December 7, 2010. 4. Howard Campbell, “Drug Trafficking Stories: Everyday Forms of Narco-Folklore on the U.S.-Mexico Border,” International Journal of Drug Policy 16, no. 5 (2005): The Colombia FTA 326–33. 5. Campbell, Drug War Zone, 1–33. 1. “Barack Obama’s Feb. 12 Speech,” transcript, The New York Times, February 12, 2008. 6. Damien Cave, “A Mexican City’s Troubles Reshape Its Families,” The New York 2. Figure cited in Helene Cooper and Steven Greenhouse, “U.S. and Colombia Times, February 9, 2011. Near Trade Pact,” The New York Times, April 6, 2011. 7. On maquiladoras, see Alejandro Lugo, Fragmented Lives, Assembled Parts: Culture, 3. José Antonio Ocampo and Camilo Ernesto Tovar, Price-Based Capital ­Account Capitalism, and Conquest at the U.S.-Mexico Border (University of Texas Press, 2008). Regulations: The Colombian Experience, Economic Commission for Latin 8. Timothy J. Dunn, Blockading the Border and Human Rights: The El Paso Operation America “Financiamiento de Desarrollo” series no. 87 (Santiago, Chile: United That Remade Immigration Enforcement (University of Texas Press, 2009). ­Nations, October 1999). 9. Matthew C. Gutmann, The Romance of Democracy: Compliant Defiance in 38