WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING in Juarez, Mexico, Photographers Expose the Violent Realities of Free Trade by Charles Bowden

REP 0 R T

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING In Juarez, Mexico, photographers expose the violent realities of free trade By Charles Bowden

Te white eye of the blank screen and kill them." Them? Oh, he contin- tion and poverty and pockmarked with waits in the dark room. A few moments ued, you know, the young girls who billionaires is perceived as an emerging earlier, Jaime Baillereswas nuzzlinghis work in the maquiladoras, the foreign- democracy marching toward First thirteenth-month-old child and walk- owned factories, the ones who have to World standing. The snippets of fact ing around in the calm of his apart- leave for work when it is still dark. Of that once in a great while percolate ment. His wife, Graciela, puttered in course, I knew that violence is normal up through the Mexican press are ig- the kitchen, and soft words and laugh- weather in Juarez. As a local fruit ven- nored by the U.S. government and its ter floated through the serenity of their dor told an American daily, "Even the citizens. Mexico may be the last great home. A copy of a work on semiotics devil is scared of living here." drug experience for the American lay on the coffee table, and the rooms That's when it started for me. The people, one in which reality gives way whispered of culture and civility and photographers, like Jaime showing me to pretty colors. These photographs the joy of ideas. Outside, the city of his slides, are the next logical step to literally give people a picture of an Juarez,Mexico, waited with sharp teeth understanding the world in which economic world they cannot compre- and bloody hungers. Now the lights beaming seventeen-year-old girls sud- hend. Juarez is not a backwater but are offasJaime Bailleresdances through denly vanish. The cities of Ciudad the new City on the Hill, beckoning us a carousel of slides. Juarez and El Paso, Texas, constitute all to a grisly state of things. I am here because of a seventeen- the largest border community on earth, I've got my feet propped up on a year-old girl named Adriana Avila but hardly anyone seems to admit that coffeetable, a glassofwine in my hand, Gress. The whole thing started very the Mexican side exists. Within this and as far as the half-dozen photogra- simply. I was drinking black coffee and forgotten urban maze stalk some of the phers present for the slide show are reading a Juarez newspaper, and there, boldest photographers still roaming' concerned this is my first day of school tucked away in the back pages, where the streets with 35-mm cameras. Over and they're not sure if I've got what it the small crimes of the city bleed for a the past two years I have become a takes to be a good student. After all, no few inches, I saw her face. She was student of their work, because I think one comes here if he has a choice, and smilingat me and wore a straplessgown they are capturing something: the look absolutely no one comes to view their riding on breasts powered by an uplift of the future. This future is based on work. The photographers of Juarez bra, and a pair of fancy gloves reached the rich getting richer, the poor getting once put on an exhibition. No one in above her elbowsalmost to her armpits. poorer, and industrial growth produc- El Paso,separated from Mexico by thir- The story said she'd disappeared, all ing poverty faster than it distributes ty feet of river, was interested in hang- 1.6 meters of her. I turned to a friend wealth. We have these models in our ing their work, so they found a small I was having breakfast with and said, heads about growth, development, in- room in Juarez and hung big prints "What's this about?"He replied matter- frastructure. Juarez doesn't look like they could not really afford to make. of-factly, "Oh, they disappear all the any of these images, and so our abili- They called their show Nada. Que Ver, time. Guys kidnap them, rape them, ty to see this city comes and goes, "Nothing to See." mainly goes. A narion that has never Beginning in the early 1980s, pho- Charles Bowden's last piece for. Harper's hosted a jury trial, that has been dom- tographers began to show up with uni- Magazine,"Laughter, Gunfire, and Forget- ting," appeared in the September 1995 is- inated by one party for most of this versity degrees and tattered copies of sue. He lives in Tucson, Arizona. century, that is carpeted with corrup- the work of New York's famous street

44 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/DECEMBER 1996 shooter, Weegee (Arthur Fellig). A power. Alfredo says, "All these young ample, in Mexico you are counted as tradition of gritty, unsentimental, and kids dream of being Amado Carrillo." employed if you work one hour a week. loving street shooting that has all but The competition is rough. Yester- In 1994, millions of poor Mexicans perished in the United States was re- day, Juan Manuel Bueno Duenas, walked away from their dying earth born in juarez, in part because the pa- twenty-three, got into a dispute with and headed north. About one million pers offered a market but mostly be- a drug dealer. Juan belonged to Los managed to cross into the United cause the streets could not be denied. Harpys. Today at 4:30 P.M. he was States. The rest slammed up against The street shooters ofJuarez are main- buried in the municipal cemetery by the fence in places like Juarez. Since ly young and almost alwaysbroke. Pay his fellow gang members. The campo then this exodus has increased. Juarez at the half-dozen newspapers runs from santo was crowded with people, the af- is part of the Mexican gulag, the place fifty to eighty dollars a week, and they terflow of the Day of the Dead obser- for the people no one wants. must provide their own cameras. Film vance. Carloads of guys from Barrio Adriana Avila Gress was found is rationed by their employers. "We Chico, rivals of Los Harpys, opened about a week after her disappearance are like firemen," Jaime Bailleres ex- fire on the procession. No one is cer- in a desert tract embracing the city's plains, "only here we fight fires with tain how many people were wounded. southern edge, a place called the Late our bare hands." The gangs of juarez, los pandi/las, kill at Bravo. Adriana worked six days a week The slide presenta- tion clicks away. A child of seven is pinned under a massive beam. He and his father were tearing apart a building for its old bricks when the ceiling collapsed. Jaime says that the child is whimpering and saying he is afraid of death. He lasted a few minutes more. Alfredo Carrillo stares intently at the images asJaime giveshim tips on how to frame dif-· ferent scenes. A hand reaches out from under a blanket-a cop cut down by AK-47s in front of a mansion owned by Amado Car- rillo Fuentes. Carrillo is a local businessman. THE CORPSE OF A RAPED AND MURDERED GIRL MUMMIFIED BYTHE DESERT SUN U.S. authorities cal- culate that he moves more than 100 least 200 people a year. Accepting such in a foreign-owned factory making turn tons of cocaine a year across the Rio realities is possible; thinking about signals for cars like the one you drive. Grande and into EI Paso. He is esti- them is not. Survival in] uarez is based She took home about five dollars a mated to be grossing $200 million a on alcohol, friendships, and laughter, day. In a photo of her body that I saw week, and to the joy of economists, much laughter. But this happens in in the newspaper morgue, her panties this business ishard currency and cash- private. The streets are full of people were down around her ankles as the and-carry. To my untrained eye the wearing masks. police circled her still form. At least dimensions of the dope business are In this city of sleepwalkers, ele- 150 girlsdisappeared in the city during simple: without it the Mexican econ- mentary facts, such as the population, 1995, and the government said that omy would totally collapse.' A gold are given scant attention. No one most ran off with boys. When more ring gleams on the cop's dead hand; for knows how many people live now in bodies were found, the police blamed Bailleres it is a study in the ways of Juarez, but the ballpark figure is 2 mil- an American serial killer and handily lion. Since December 1994 Mexico's arrested a suspect. But girls I Former president Carlos Salinas de Gar- tari figured Mexico's drug cartels net $30 currency has lost over half its value, continued to disappear. billion a year, more than the U.S. bailout of prices have more than doubled, and Mexico. In 1995, Salinas fled the country jobs have disappeared wholesale. Jaime Bailleres has projected a under suspicion of ties to the drug cartels. Real numbers hardly exist-for ex- beautiful black carved mask on the

Photograph by Jaime Bailleres REPORT 45 screen. The head is tilted and the face bread is the First Wodd and the Third Summer brings water problems to a issmooth with craftsmanship. The hair World. We are the baloney." Julian, head (Juarezwill run completely out of is long and black. It takes a moment for about thirty, is a tall, long-legged, water within five years unless some- me to get past this beauty and realize thin man with a deep voice. On the thing is done), more disease, and that the face isnot a mask. She is a six- street they call him El Cornpas, the batches of murders by the street gangs. teen-year-old girl with a forgotten compass. He laughs easily and always The cool days of fall open a new sea- name. She was found in the park by a seems to be watching. One night at son of battles between colonias, and bridge linking Juarez to El Paso; the the newspaper, as I plowed through a then, with the holidays, the photog- park on both sides of the Rio Grande thick stack of negatives, he watched raphers return to the drug killings and is dedicated to friendship between the Christmas suicides. As Manuel the two nations. The girl's skin has Saenz, the photo editor of the blackened in the sun, and the face morning paper, puts it, "Anything contracted as it mummified. She can happen here at any time. It was kidnapped, raped, murdered. can blow at any second." That is Jaime explains that the newspaper the inside of the sandwich. refused to publish this photograph. Julian, like many of the street The reason for this decision is very shooters, sees his work as a mis- loud. The lips of the girl pull back, sion. Juarez is the fourth-largest revealing her clean white teeth. city in Mexico and is historically Sound pours forth from her mouth. famousfor vice and violence. Since She is screaming and screaming the end of World War I, it has been and screaming. a place that draws Americans for "We don't give a damn about women and dope. Since 1991 the the editors," Jaime snaps. "We can homicide rate has increased by at educate people. To look. To watch. least 100 percent (given crooked We work in a jungle." cops and crooked government, sol- The face floats on the screen as id numbers are hard to come by). music purrs through the stereo What ishappening in the city isof- speakers. No one will ever publish ten dismissed by simply saying that this photograph, Jaime tells me. I many cities are violent, that gangs start to argue with him but soon occur in the United States as well, give up. I can't deny one jolting that strife and dislocation are just quality of the image: it isdeafening. the normal growing pains of a so- It is after midnight when Jaime's ciety industrializing, and so forth. photo show breaks up, and I head All of these statements make a lot downtown. A wind whips across of sense, and all of them are lies. Juarez.The city often sprawlsunder The photographers of Juarez know moving walls of dust since so little CHILDREN PLAY IN THE SHADOW OF A SMELTER they are lies and believe body and of it is paved. The whores are out, soul that their work will state the sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds. me like a hanging judge. Finally, I truth. They say their cameras are more There is no way to tell if they are full- plucked a negative of a cop holding up deadly than AK-47s. time prostitutes or factory workers the shoe of a dead girl found in the Julian Cardona is on his way home making an extra buck. The peso has desert. Cardona looked at it and for at 7:00 A.M. after twelve hours ofprowl- lost another chunk of its value in the the first time allowed himself a small ing for the blood of the city's night. last day or so. smile. "This is a good image," he said, He glimpses of a small crowd and pulls "How much?" I ask. almost with relief. over. A man has been stabbed thirty She leans into the car window and Like all the shooters in Juarez,Julian times, and the arms are frozen in rigor saysthe equivalent of fourteen dollars. is keenly aware of the seasons. In No- mortis. A police technician iscrouched "How long?" I say. vember and December, there is a over the chest, photographing forensic "How long can you resist me?" she bumper crop of drug murders as the evidence. Julian shoots a few asks with a laugh. merchandise moves north and ac- frames. There are ways to measure the deep counts are settled. Then around Christ- movements of an economy that are mas and New Year'speople hang them- Snapshots brieflymake Juarezstand more accurate and timely than the selves.The first few months of the new still. You can run from photographs bond market and this girl with year bring fires and gas explosions as but you can't really hide. This fact her mask of thick makeup the poor try to stay warm. Spring seems to keep the photographers going. "l is one of them. means battles between neighborhoods A shooter is desperate to get the shot (or colonias) over ground for building of a man who has cut off his own gen- uarez," photographer Julian shacks aswell asoutbreaks of disease in itals. But by the time the photogra- Cardona explains, "is a sandwich. The a city largelylacking sewagetreatment. pher arrives, the mutilated man is in an

46 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / DECEMBER 1996 Photograph by Manuel Saenz ambulance and the doors are closed. or shove in the blade, he raises his moments when I love Mexico. While So the shooter pops open the back camera and gets the ultimate murder the captain and I savor Kentucky to- doors and clambers in. The man lying photograph. "I will die happy," he in- bacco, Murrieta scurries to the crime there is in shock, his crotch a pool of sists. At the moment, he's been scene. His face is absolutely serene as gore. He raiseshis head just as the pho- warned that a contract killer is look- he crouches over the body. Hernandez tographer leans forward and goes click. ing for him. He is not that easy to wears trousers and boots, but his coat The photographer isno fool; he knows find. It has taken me days to ren- is almost offand the wound in his chest this picture will never be printed. dezvous with him because he comes is visible in the good light that all pho- His name isJaime Murrieta, and he and goes from the newspaper without tographers pray for. A pool of brilliant is thirty-five years old. He never turns warning, and probably lives more in red blood frames his head like a halo. off his police scanner. He beats the his car than under any other roof. The storefront is pure white, with a cops to many crime scenes and once In Colonia Juarez,the body we have painting of Mickey Mouse. A sign over got a medal for rescuing someone from come to see sprawls in front of the the doorway saysSiempre Coke. Across a blaze when he arrived ahead of the doorway of a corner grocery store. the street is a pink house where drugs firemen. He has photographed over Three rounds from a .38 Special went are sold. A fat girl smiles at the body. 500 murders. Once he crouched over through the head, and five tore up the Her T-shirt says KISS ME, I'M YOURS. the bloated body of a girl who had chest. That was twelve minutes ago. There was a killing at this very cor- been raped and murdered just as it The victim, El Pelon, is also known ner four months ago. burst. He sighs when he thinks of the as Francisco Javier Hernandez. Ac- El Pelon's mother stands a few feet Pentax he used. It never worked again. cording to optimistic police figures,he from his corpse. Her hair is gray and Now we are in a car moving through is murder number 250 this year in she cradles her face in her hands. She downtown Juarez at about sixty miles Juarez. At 5:00 P.M. he was twenty is angry at her son. Only a week before, an hour. The streets are clogged with years old. He was a junkie, and he 'al- LosHarpys tried to kill him and still he people, and we miss hitting them by so sold drugs. He belonged to the did not take precautions. "This hap- inches. I feel like I am in a long dolly pandilla called K-13, a group noted for pened," she says, "because he is a pen- shot from an Indiana Jones movie. It its arsenal of guns. A crowd of his fel- deja, a fool." is 5:07 in the afternoon, and Murri- low gang members stands silently in A twelve-year-old girl strolls down eta has just heard of a shooting in the street. Jaime Murrieta leaps out of the sidewalk, drawn by the possibility Colonia Juarez down near the river. the car and hits the street running. At of excitement. She has dyed red hair He is exploding with sheer joy. "1love first the police keep him back, but then and the smooth, serene face of a child. violence," he tells me. I offer the captain a pack of Lucky She pushes through the crowd and sees The other night around eleven, two Strikes and the officer's face bright- the body. It is her brother. The con- women and a twelve-year-old girl ens. I light one for him-there are tours of her face disintegrate as if she drove a Dodge Ram Charg- er down the streets of Juarez. Each was shot in the head with a .45, a caliber favored by the federal police. Murrieta got some nice shots of them slumped in their car seats. This morning he covered their funer- al and was beaten by the women's relatives, who were narcotraficantes. He keeps changing vehicles so that the gangs don't recog- nize what he is driving. Re- cently, seven rounds ripped through his car and some- how missed him. "Yes, I am afraid," he ad- mits. "But I love my work. I am on a mission, and every- thing has its risk. God helps me." He has this dream of his death. Someone is com- ing at him with a gun or a knife, and there is nowhere to run. As they fire at him POLICE PHOTOGRAPH EVIDENCE AT THE SCENE OF A STABBING

Photograph by Julian Cardona REPORT 47 were a plate-glass window through practically drill the actual wages into ed States and Mexico in 1965 so that which a rock has suddenly been hurled. someone's head, he or she will counter Americans could exploit cheap Mex- Two girls take her arms and hold her by sayingthat the cost of living ismuch ican labor and yet not pay high Mex- up as she slumps toward the ground. cheaper in Mexico. This is not true. ican tariffs.Although the products that Murrieta stops shooting. He is out Along the border, Mexican prices on come from the factories are counted as of rationed film, but he got what he average run at 90 percent of U.S. exports (and thus figured into GDP), wanted. prices. Basically, the only cheap thing economists figure that only 2 percent Murrieta is a legend among the oth- in Mexico is flesh, human bodies you of material inputs used in maquila pro- er street shooters. They love to tell a can fornicate with or work to death. duction come from Mexican suppli- story about him. He is in bed with a What is happening in Mexico betrays ers. All the parts are shipped to Mex- woman, and his police scanner is on. our notion of progress, and for that ico from the United States and other Murrieta is just about to climax when reason we insist that each ugly little countries, then the Mexicans assemble he hears a murder report crackle on statistic is an exception or temporary them and ship them back. Two or the radio. He gets up and starts to dress. or untrue. For example, in the past three thousand American managers commute back and forth from EI Paso every day. Juarez is in your home when you turn on the mi- crowave, watch television, take in an old film on the VCR, slide in- to a new pair of blue jeans, make toast in the kitchen, enjoy your kid playing with that new toy truck on Christmas morning. Politicians and economists speculate about a global economy fueled by free trade. Their spec- ulations are not necessary. In Juarez the future is thirty years old, and there are no questions about its nature that cannot be answered here. The maquilas have caused millions of poor people to move to the border. Most of the workers are women and most of the women are young. By the late twenties or early thirties the body slows and THE MORNING AFTER A SHANTYTOWN FIRE, A BOY PLAYS AMID THE RUBBLE cannot keep up the pace of the work. Then, like any used-up The woman asks, "What are you two years wages- in the maquiladoras thing, the people are junked. Turnover doing?" have risen 50 percent. Fine and good. in the maquilas runs anywhere from "I must go," he answers. "It is an But inflation in that period iswell over 50 to 150 percent a year. It is com- obligation." 100 percent. mon for workers to leave for work at "You'renot going to finish?" Juarez is an exhibit of the fabled 4:00 A.M. and spend one or two hours "No." New World Order in which capital navigating the dark city to their jobs. moves easily and labor is trapped by Sometimes they wind up in the Lote In a simple sense the photographs borders. There are a total of 350 for- Bravo. The companies carefully screen come from cameras, but there isa deep- eign-owned factories in Juarez, the the girls to make sure they are not er point of origin. The floor under the highest concentration in all of Mexi- pregnant. Workers at one plant com- gore of Juarez is an economy of facto- co, and they employ 150,000 workers. plain of a company rule requiring new riesowned by foreigners,mainly Amer- The twin plant system-in Spanish, female hires to present bloody tam- icans. I keep having the same experi- maquiladoras-was created by the Unit- pons for three consecutive months. ence when I talk with Americans The workweek is six days. After work about the foreign-owned factories in 2 Figures on pay in these factories are al- some of the girls go downtown to sell Mexico. I'll tell them the wages- most universally exaggerated. In October of their bodies for money or food. At least three, four, or five dollars a day-and 1995, Newsweek pegged the average wage 40 percent of Mexicans now live off at $15 a day. When I showed this issue to they'll nod knowingly, and then a few the underground economy, which Mexican reporters, they insisted it must be a minutes later I will realize that they typographical error. Wages vary from one means they stand in the street and try have unconsciously translated this dai- border city to another, but a fair range is to sell things, including themselves. ly rate into an hourly rate. When I from $20 to $35 a week. Workers who lose their jobs receive

48 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ DECEMBER 1996 Photograph by Gabriel Cardona essentially no benefits beyond sever- no zoning oppresses. Like the fabled one of them. Then he took up the ance pay. Mexico has no safety net. Pilgrims, the people of the shanty- .video camera and went to work for a Independent, worker-controlled towns have largely escaped the notice television station. But it is his dedica- unions barely exist, and anyone trying of their rulers. Electricity isstolen from tion to his work that gives the street to organize one is fired, or murdered} power lines. (Jaime Bailleresonce took shooters pause. They feel that he has It is almost impossible to get ahead a photo of a man up gone too far, that working in the maquilas. Real wages a power pole ille- he cannot survive have been falling since the 1970s. gally clamping into living as he does. And since wages are just a hair above a high-voltage line. Rafael Cora, starvation level, maquilas contribute The man was inept. better known asLa practically nothing toward forging a As Bailleres took Pantera, works consumer society. Of course, as ma- his picture the man twelve hours a day, quiladora owners and managers point was electrocuted.) seven days a week. out, if wages are raised, the factories Water is more diffi- He has not missed will move to other countries with a cult to acquire, and a tour of his ap- cheaper labor force. in many of the pointed rounds in And so industry is thriving. Half a shanty communi- eight years. He million cargo-laden trucks move from ties it must be works only at juarez to El Paso each year. Boxcars bought off trucks. night, and his rumble over the railroad bridge. New Land for housing is name comes from industrial parks are opening up. Labor also scarce and is his eerie ability to BLOATED CORPSE PULLED FROM A RIVER is virtually limitless, as tens of thou- often stolen. Gab- get to murders be- sands of poverty-stricken people pour riel Cardona, another juarez photog- fore the police do. Sometimes he into the city each year. There are few rapher, has recorded a land invasion. videotapes things the police do not environmental controls and little en- It begins when a woman notices that wish to have publicized. He is thirty- forcement of those that do exist. El Pa- her portrait of Christ is weeping. Soon two years old and has a quiet and re- so/Juarez is one of the most polluted her colonia has built a shrine out of served manner. His camera has stared spots in North America. And yet it is scavenged wood, and the painting is at 800 murders. Five times the police a success story. In juarez the econom- surrounded by hundreds of votive can- have beaten him and destroyed his ic growth in 1994 it was 6 percent, and dles. This miraculous painting inspires equipment. Narcotraficantes also view last year it registered 12 percent. Ac- the local people to invade some vacant him with disfavor. La Pantera wears a cording to Lucinda Vargas, the Feder- land and throw up huts. The next pho- bulletproof vest. Although his face has al Reserve economist who tracks Mex- to is of a man returning from a never appeared on television, he issaid ico's economy, juarez is a "mature" maquiladora to his home. It has been to have one of the highest-rated pro- economy. This is as good as it gets. bulldozed by the police, and he stares grams in the city.4 His day begins with With the passage of NAFT A, narco- at his bed and a bucket and a few oth- darkness and ends with light, and in traficantes began buying maquiladoras er items piled up on the scraped earth. between he roams alone in an old in juarez. They didn't want to miss out The two daily newspapers in El Pa- black pickup truck; a police scanner on the advantages of free trade. so, the city of half a million that squats always plugged into his left ear. He The street shooters are seldom al- thirty feet from juarez, can go days shoots murders, car accidents, suicides, lowed to take photographs inside the without a single story about the mil- gang fights-all the violence of the factories. And yet it is impossible to lions of people living in grinding pover- night. take a photograph in juarez of any- ty right before everyone's eyes. A re- For several years he rode with an as- thing without capturing the conse- cent killing sums up this attitude. sistant, and then they fell in love and quences of the maquiladoras. The fac- Someone slaughtered a retired juarez married. She continued riding with tory workershave created a new school cop, jose Munoz Rubalcava, and two of him, and one night when she was nine of architecture that is not seriously his sons. They tied them with yellow months' pregnant the labor pains came studied by scholars. They build homes rope and made a yellow bow. Then and La Pantera made a brief pit stop at out of odd material-cardboard, old they put them in the trunk of a car, the hospital so that their daughter could tires, pallets stolen from loading docks. drove to the midpoint of a bridge be- be born. For his eighty-four-hour work- The structures are held together with tween El Paso and juarez, and aban- week he is paid $100. He cannot live nails driven through bottle caps-a doned the vehicle so that it straddled on this, so during the day he is a part- cheap bolt. The designs flow unham- the boundary line. The plan worked. time fumigator. His daughter is now pered by building codes. No school of Neither country would accept the four, and sometimes she rides with him aesthetics scolds, no committee votes, responsibility for invest i- "so she will learn reality." ~ gating what had happened. 3 Last spring the boss of the big worker- 4 Over 90 percent of Mexican families have a dominated bus company in Mexico City was ~here is a hesitation when the television. In the barrios, where the houses found dead. The government determined are cardboard and the electricity is pirated, that he had committed suicide. He had shot street shooters of juarez mention La you will consistently find televisions. This himself in the heart. Twice. Pantera, the Panther. Once he was part of the fabled globalvillageactually exists.

Photograph by Gabriel Cardona REPORT 49 La Pantera is convinced that if he lv does a ISO-degree pan around to ily, created a need. For the women, the shows people what their city is like, his back. Then the camera zooms in assembly plants are sometimes liberat- then they will change their city. That again to one of his feet. It is touching ing, but more marriages and families iswhy he left newspapers and still pho- the ground. During the hours he collapse.Mexico had to create one mil- tography: televi- spent hanging here lion jobs last year for young people en- sion, he believed, alone, the man's tering the economy. Instead, the coun- would reach more neck stretched and try lost one million jobs. And most people with more now he is firmly importantly, the fabled pull of the bor- force. He worries planted on the der brought hordes of almost Neolith- about being killed, earth again. ic peasant families to a city where their but he cannot seem When I leave skillswere worthless. In Juarez you face to stop. Being the station, La Stone Age parents staring helplessly around him has the Pantera walks me at Computer Age children. Nothing quality of visiting out into the 2:00 the adults know or can provide has someone on death A.M. street. He much value, and the fabric that has row. In your heart, touches my shoul- held familiesand Mexico together tears you know he can't der and says, "Be right before your eyes. You can actual- possibly make it. careful. This is a ly hear the tearing. I'll be standing at Once he came up- very dangerous a murder scene, the shooters will be on Jaime Murrieta city'.Do not stop at feeding on a ftesh corpse, and as I make being pounded by any stop signs. notes I can hear the gang kids mur- narcotraficantes in a They will leap our muring about me. When I look up I bar. La Pantera and take the car." see very hard eyes, and I know every- leapt in to help Every morning one but me is packing. There is noth- him, and they both at 7:45 A.M. La ing to be done about this. I am like were beaten almost JUGGLING CLOWNS BEG FOR MONEY Pantera's program everyone else here: I simply go about to death. "I can runs as a special my business as if death were not a few keep doing this forever," he insists qui- eight- to ten-minute part of the feet away disguised as some twelve- or etly to me. "This is a mission for jus- morning news. The segment is thirteen-year-old with a gun and eyes tice." In his spare time, he and his called "While You Were older than I can ever hope to be. wife work with the Red Cross. People Sleeping." This new world makes stabs at beau- come to him for help in finding the ty. Juarez historically is a cultural caul- missing. He is a faceless legend. He re- In 1991,Nicholas Scheele, the head dron where folk Mexico conftonts and fuses to appear on the air because he of the Ford Motor Company in Mexi- fabricates life out of the high does not want his personality to get co, said in admiration of the govern- technology of its American neighbor. in the way of the stories, the montages ment's control, "But is there any oth- In the 1940s, pachuco culture with its of horror he constructs every night. "I er country in the world wher.e the zoot suits exploded out of Juarez. Black like to take the tragedies," he explains, working class... took a hit in their pur- velvet painting also started here. The "and make people feel them." chasing power of in excessof 50 percent pandillas, like many U.S. gangs, at first He is very proud of his work, and over an eight-year period and you spray-painted signs on walls and then shelf after shelf in the station sagswith didn't have a socialrevolution?" Maybe started doing full figure paintings. Ot- the results of his nocturnal labor. He you get something you don't have to to Campbell, a noted Juarez artist, be- plucks a cassette and insists I watch. A define as a revolution. There are over came interested in their work and of- man is being beaten, blood coursing 200 gangs in juarez. They, not the po- fered to teach them. And so he did. down his face, the soft voice of La Pan- lice, define the borders in the city. Julian Cardona holds a large photo- tera narrating. They, not the government, represent graph of a mural painted by the La Pantera silently watches his tape authority to the human beings in the pandilleros on the Puente Negro, the with the calm pleasure of a connois- colonias. They provide work selling black railroad bridge linking El Paso seur. He fast-forwards the tape, and narcotics. And they kill and steal all the and Juarez. The image is taken from the people shouting and crying sound time to protect their spheres of power. the Mexican side. American officials like cartoon characters. Then he slows They are not a progressive force; they have erected massive sliding doors on the tape and the camera pans a suicide. are simply the force that growswhen a the bridge to block people from cross- The man is quite young and wearing society offers no progress. They have ing, and the pandilleros have painted a bulky blue sweater. By his feet is a blossomed over the last three years as these doors in the style of the old mas- five-gallon bucket. The rope around several factors made them inevitable: ters from the revolution. Peasants are his neck is tied to a small tree in a the slowdecomposition of the Mexican marching along the bottom of the mur- city park. His neck is bent, but the government created a vacuum; the ex- al. Above them are the girdersand ma- rope is straight and taut. The camera plosive growth of the drug industry ere- chines of modem industrial life, and frames the man and the tree, then ated a livelihood; the death of the main blood is spilling from this future. zooms in to peruse his body, and quick- bulwark of Mexican culture, the fam- In the photograph taken by Jaime

50 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 1996 Photograph by Julian Cardona Bailleres, the doors are opening as two derstand? He wonders: Is this man now shantytown about ten months ago, U.S. Customs officialspush them apart stored somewhere in his camera Ama- when three years of drought ended to permit a train to enter Mexico. The do Carrillo? But this thought is dan- their lives in a village in Durango. A locomotive is blue and huge and with gerous. Later, when I mention the half-dozen murdered, mutilated, and its white beam stares out like a Cy- name out loud at a bar, he looksaround raped girls have been found about a clops. It looks like the train will move quickly to see if anyone has overheard. hundred yards from their shack, and forward and kill the peasants any sec- His eyes for a few seconds show true this frightens the teenage girls. Each ond. Cardona stabs at the photograph panic. Jaime is hardly a coward, but he morning they rise at 3:30 A.M., cook and tells me, "This is a great image. is certainly not a fool like me. over bits of wood, and have some cof- The hands that can make this painting, We all have a deep need to ignore fee. After a cold tortilla, they walk out those hands kill 200 people Juarez. We write off what is going on into the darkness with their few pos- in this city every year." by saying that it is something our sessions (a pan, a plate, knife, fork, grandparents or great-grandparents spoon, and cooking oil) and bury them A fter several months, things in went through. We tell ourselves that secretly in a hole; otherwise they will Juarez begin to haunt me. I try to put there are gangs and murders in Amer- be stolen while they are gone. They are my finger on what exactly is bothering ican cities. This is true, but it does not the lucky ones: five of them work in me. I tell myself it is not simply the deal with the reality of juarez. We are American-owned maquiladoras. The poverty-I remember being in delta not talking about darkness on the edge fifteen-year-old girl is a welder at 160 shacks in the segregated Mississippi of of town or a bad neighborhood. Weare pesos a week (about $21.62 at current the 1960s and people living almost talking about an entire city woven out exchange rates). Bus fare consumes like animals deep within the bo- som of my own country. When I lived with these people for weeks and weeks, I ate what they ate- wild greens picked by the road and fried in grease,bootleg liquor made in the thickets by the river. Also, I can remember working on the west side of Chicago in districts that had the look and feel of Berlin in, say, the summer of 1945. But Juarez is different in a way that ta- bles of wages and economic stud- ies cannot capture: in Juarez you cannot sustain hope .. In the shadow of a maquiladora sprawls a Community for Pub- lic Defense barrio, one of at least twenty-six in juarez, The police are afraid to enter CDP settle- ments. The residents work in maquilas and sell drugs, guns, and cars stolen from the United States. They also make bricks. It is dusk, and they have fired up their kilns U.S. CUSTOMS AGENTS PART THE PUENTE NEGRO MURAL TO LET A TRAIN CROSS THE BORDER using tires for fuel. Black tongues of smoke lick the shacks. The main of violence. We tell ourselves that jobs about half her salary. Today, the Car- dirt lane of the colonia is blocked by in the maquiladoras are better than ranza kids are fixing to plant eight pine a circle of people sitting on buckets. nothing. But we ignore the low wages, seedlings. Tomorrow, they begin their They are having a community meet- high turnover, and shacks. Then there six-day weeks at American factories. ing. This is the order in the new world. is the silent thought: after all, they are The United States begins fiftyyards There are other hints of the emerg- Mexicans, not U.s. citizens. This kind away, where the North Americans are ing order. Jaime Bailleres is in a night- of shrug brings to mind Rene Descartes constructing a steel wall to keep Mex- club and at his editor's insistence takes nailing his family dog to a board alive ico at bay. In fact, the First World is so a picture of a beautiful woman for the and cutting it up to deter- near that every few days a band of newspaper's lifestyle section. A man mine if it had a soul. Anapra residents gather around 8:00 at another table isaccidentally included P.M. and walk the short distance to the in the frame. Suddenly two bodyguards Iam standing by the Carranza sis- border, where an American railroad lay their hands on Bailleres. They do ters' cardboard shack in a part ofJuarez almost brushes against the fence. Then, not want this picture published, un- called Anapra. They moved to the as the bend in the tracks slows the

Photograph by Jaime Bailleres REPORT 51 train, they expertly crack open a dozen tographs ofher corpse in the morgue of and then I hear a click and color ex- or more boxcars, tossgoodsout to wait- the same newspaper. I can't find her plodes. The photographers do not ing hands, and rush back into Mexi- family, so I'm hard-pressed to prove know whether this is art. It is not for co-ail in less than the two minutes it that she ever existed. them to say.Nada Que Ver. I faceagain takes for cops to arrive. U.S. newspa- That same day, an American drug the open mouth and clean white teeth. pers periodically print stories about conference takes place at Fort Blisson "Why do you want this picture!" these train robberies (600 in the last the edge of El Paso. The attorney gen- Jaime Bailleres asks me. "You know it three years) and call the Carranzas' eral, the drug czar,the head of the FBI, will never be published. No one will neighbors the new Jesse [ameses. and the head of the INS will be there, print it." Jaime Bailleres says, "Sometimes I and for days the newspapers have bub- I have never told him the truth. I feel like I am in Bosnia." He tells me bled with stories that the next candi- have never told him that the first night a story to make sure my feeble gringo date to make the FBI'smost-wanted list I saw the girl's face I thought it was a mind graspswhat he means. The paper will be one Amado Carrillo Fuentes. carved wooden mask, something made wanted a soft feature on the lives of the The night before, I by one of those quaint rich, so one Saturday a photographer was taken by a Mexi- tribes far away in the and his editor strolled through an en- can reporter to a man- Mexican south. Nor clave of wealth looking for the right sion in EI Paso sur- have I told him that I image. The photographer brought rounded by high walls keep a copy of it in a along his wife and two children. As a and featuring elec- folder right next to rabbit hopped across the lawn of a tronic gates and an ar- where I work and that mansion, the camera came up. Sud- ray of security sys- from time to time I denly two bodyguards appeared with tems. I was told that open the clean mani- AK-47s, and one said, "Give me that the building belonged la folder and look in- fucking camera and film." They forced to a family with seri- to her face. And then the photographer facedown on the ous organized crime I close it like the lid of pavement with the automatic rifles at connections and that a coffin. She haunts his head. Then, in front of his wife for the past week Car- me, and [ deal with and children and editor, they beat him rillo had been staying -this fact by avoiding about his head, ribs, and genitals. Po- there to get some it. [ have brought a HOMELESS JUAREZ GIRL lice stood nearby and watched. That is peace. I can't prove pile of photography the end of the story. that Carrillo is inside the mansion; I books to Jaime's house to add to the None of this matters. It is all a de- couldn't do that if [ entered and shack- communal archive maintained by the tailor an exception or an illusion. The led him. No one really knows what he street shooters of Juarez. They are all authorities announced back in No- -looks like. Besides, I've gone native. here at this moment, sitting in the vember of 1995 that 520 people had Reality comes and goes for me. room staring at the screen. Weare ami- disappeared in Juarez that year and "an I come and go into Juarez, and then gas now. I have rustled up a curio-a important percentage of them are fe- return to a different world where things bottle of wine called NAFT A, with male adolescents." By last March, the still seem to work, where payday comes the label Mexican, the wine U.S., and mothers of the missing were demon- now and then, and where over a good the bottle Canadian. Everyone smiles strating and demanding justice. Then dinner what I know and have seen can at this farcical vintage. The photogra- in April, the police made a sweep of be buried. Alive. After all, I would phers tell me after we have been drink- the red-light district, bagged 120 sus- rather smile and feel the sun against my ing for hours, "You give us hope." It pects, and announced that the slaugh- face than think about Juarez or all the must be the wine. ter was the work of eight apparently places like juarez-that are growing qui- [. look up at Jaime Bailleres. The gregarious sociopaths who hung out etly like mold on the skin of the plan- girl's face is still floating on the screen. in a bar called joe's Place. The next day et. When I go to the United States, no "Yes," I tell him. "You are right. No the mothers of the accused protested one ever mentions this place. It simply one will ever print this photograph. the police torture of their sons. And, ceases to exist, even if I only travel to But I want them to see it whether they of course, the killings and disappear- EI Paso. I used to wonder print it or not." ances continue-though reports of about this fact. He sighs,the wayan adult sighs over them were censored for a while. the actions of a child. Then, in July, one of the Juarez Igo back to the glowing screen in [ look up at the girl on the screen. I dailies published a front-page list of the dark room. I must see that black- tell myself that a photograph is worth missing girls found dead in the Late ened face again. Soft music calms me, a thousand words. I tell myself pho- Bravo over the last year. Adriana Avi- the blackness of the room caresses me, tographs lie. I tell myself there are lies, la Gress was not on the list. It doesn't the roar of the fan on the projector is damned lies, and statistics. I tell myself matter that I read of her disappear- oddly comforting. The beam of the I am still sleeping. But she stares at me. ance in the same newspaper or read white light defines reality now and The skin is smooth, almost carved and the account of her body being found in keeps it locked up within a rectangle. sanded, but much too dark. And the the same newspaper or examined pho- Jaime Bailleres installs a slide carousel, screams are simply too deafening. _

52 HARPER'S MAGAZINE! DECEMBER 1996 Photograph by Alfredo Carrillo