A day in Juárez – once a party town, now the murder capital of the world
‘We’re not going to die, are we Dan?’ asked my friend Joe, a CBS radio reporter, shortly before we crossed from El Paso into Juárez, Mexico, murder capital of the world. ‘Nah,’ I replied. ‘Our guide is a priest. It’s a Sunday. The narcos will respect that.’
I was lying to make him feel better. In February, a sacristan in Juárez was killed, one of more than 1,000 drug-related murders in the city so far this year. Elsewhere in Mexico priests had been beaten and butchered: for the cartels, nothing is sacred.
Father Michael, an 86-year-old veteran of the second world war, was quick to inform us that his priestly status and the holiness of the day would offer us no protection: ‘Most killings occur during daylight and they increase on the weekend.’
Nor could we expect our journalistic status to grant us safe passage. Only last week, following the killing of a 21-year-old photographer, the local newspaper, El Diario de Juárez, published a frontpage editorial begging the cartels to stop targeting their staff. ‘What do you want from us?’ it said.
Father Michael has lived in Juárez for almost 20 years. He has seen its decline from industrial centre and party town to post-apocalyptic dystopia, complete with ancient US school buses rattling around like something from the Mad Max films. We toured the rubble. ‘This is where the souvenir stalls used to be; the bars and clubs were here — and this is the red light district.’ A lone prostitute squatted in the wreckage. God, on the other hand, was thriving. Juárez cathedral holds six masses on a Sunday, each heaving with sinners.
Suddenly a jeep containing masked men with machine-guns zoomed past. ‘The Federales [the Mexican equivalent of the FBI],’ said Father Michael. ‘President Calderon sent them to end the drug war. I’m from Chicago. I remember Al Capone. Prohibition was a disaster.’
Fr Michael’s house was in a poor, dusty, neighbourhood of adobe dwellings. Inside, the walls were decorated with headshots of ‘martyrs’ of Latin American regimes. As an enthusiastic ex-inhabitant of several oppressive and lawless states, Fr Michael understood the rules of survival. He immediately explained that he couldn’t criticise the Mexican government. But it was open season on the USA: many of Latin America’s problems, he explained were the result of ‘oppressive’ US policy. The drug war was absurd; everything should be legalised; Marx had supplied the best analysis; the ultimate problem facing the world was ‘the corporations’. ‘The people must take control,’ he explained.
Fr Michael arranged for a few of his friends to meet us. Among them was Felipe, a former policeman who railed against Mexican politics. ‘The drug war is a fraud! President Calderon sent in the army to punish one side but not the other. He is the brother-in-law of Chapo Guzman, boss of the Sinaloa cartel!’ ‘Is that confirmed?’ I asked. ‘No, but there are many reports.’
The military and the Federales were worse than the cartels, Felipe insisted. ‘In the past, if you didn’t cross the narcos, they left you alone. Once Calderone sent in the army, everything changed. The violence destroyed the local economy so people started running protection rackets. They would kidnap you for money. The cartels pay more than the government so corruption is rife. The soldiers have quotas so they arrest people just to fill them. Many simply disappear, never to return. The families don’t know who took them. Was it the narcos? The Federales? The army? They’re too scared to ask. It’s chaos.’
Felipe paused. ‘Actually … who are you guys?’ ‘I work for CBS radio,’ said Joe. Felipe turned green. ‘Don’t say my name! Just that I’m a former policeman from the Chihuahua region. That’s all.’ He left, only to return ten minutes later, wild-eyed and pouring with sweat, pleading with us not to reveal his identity — so I have given him the president’s name.
The threat of violence is an immensely effective tool of control: I had never seen this level of terror before, not even in Turkmenistan, Central Asia’s most repressive dictatorship. Felipe’s fear was contagious. After five hours of horrifying stories about Juárez, I was deeply concerned about the journey back to El Paso. Father Michael had left for Mass, I couldn’t remember the way to the border, and neither Joe nor I spoke Spanish. This trip was the stupidest thing I had ever done.
Fortunately, Father Michael’s colleague, a 76-year-old nun named Sister Peggy, was going to El Paso. Rather than take us straight back, however, she decided to lead us first through the ‘Valley of Snakes’, a cluster of ramshackle huts, all of which looked like ideal locations for having your head sawn off by masked men with kitchen knives, as is the local custom. Cheerful, spry, and almost entirely desensitised to violence, Sister Peggy told me about her neighbours. ‘Even before the war, there were lots of killings and overdoses here. The people in the house one behind ours, they’ve been killed. The first family that lived there, they got killed over drugs. A relative from Houston came and took over but he was killed too. I’m not sure who’s there now.’
The death tour kept going. ‘A girl was found raped and stabbed over there. And see that bus stop? That’s where a man was stoned to death in front of his son for being an informer. Just down there local children were playing soccer when killers shot somebody in front of them. The police saw everything, but let them escape.’ Sister Peggy pointed towards a two-storey building across the street. ‘That’s a pharmacy,’ she said. ‘The owner was kidnapped, and his family were told to pay 100,000 pesos to get him back. They came to me, panicked. They couldn’t go to the police, or the kidnappers would have killed him. They raised the money but I don’t know how.’ The misery of life in Juárez was palpable. ‘You should come back,’ said Sister Peggy. ‘Stay a few days … ’
Eyes followed us through the Valley of Snakes, more confused than hostile. No outsiders visit Juárez any more, the expressions seemed to be saying, what are these freaks doing? I was relieved when we reached our bus stop. Stay alive another 30 minutes and I’ll get out of here, I thought, striving to vanish into the shade.
Suddenly a jeep containing black-clad Federales turned the corner, heading straight towards us. A bunch of young males dressed like ninjas and carrying machine guns, they didn’t look dedicated to restoring law and order. A day later I learned that 23 people had been killed while I was in the city.
To my surprise, Sister Peggy raised her arm and waved. ‘They’re just boys, really,’ she said. ‘They have mothers too.’ Beaming, one boy lifted a hand from his assault rifle and waved back.
Daniel Kalder’s most recent book is Strange Telescopes, published by Faber.