Last week I watched a film called "Backyard," which is about the violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Located on just the other side of El Paso, Texas, Juarez is a city plagued by violence, corruption, and poverty. One of the most striking parts of the film: this place exists right on the edge of the US-Mexico border and these problems continue to exist. It's not as if people don't know about what's happening in Juarez, but for some reason the violence continues, unabated. In fact, since around 2008, things have only gotten worse.
The subject of Cuidad Juarez came up again on Friday, when I went to a lecture on campus about that explored the politics of violence, poverty, and corruption in the city. The lecture presented more of the same: a story about government corruption, rampant violence, and the urban youth who bear the brunt of a seemingly unstoppable "continuum of violence." The overall point: all of the brutal murders of young men and women are constantly being rationalized by the Mexican government (and others). The women, the narrative goes, are getting killed because they are out on the streets (ie they must be prostitutes), and the young men get murdered because they are the guilty associates of narcotraficantes. This creates a situation of impunity, in which the Mexican State basically forgoes the need to investigate these crimes, since, in effect, they claim that the victims themselves basically "had it coming."
One of the main points of the talk was that this climate of impunity has basically gutted the social movements that have risen up to try to stop this violence--the speaker told us that Ciudad Juarez lost nearly 20 percent of its population (mostly from the middle class) in just one year. Journalists have been silenced, or outright killed. The Mexican State, for its part, has increased the militarization of the city and claimed that the rise in violence is actually a sign of success. The military, says the Mexican State, is disrupting the narco-networks, and causing them to lose a grip on their power. This, supposedly, explains the uptick in violence. Meanwhile, the people of Juarez are caught in a seemingly impossible and brutal crossfire laden with corruption, murder, and violence.
All of this, right across the border. These are the kinds of things that seemingly abstract political boundaries can obscure. But we all play our part in looking the other way. Despite everything that has happened--and continues to happen--in places like Ciudad Juarez, the show goes on here in the US. How is this even possible?
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