I make off for my first taste of Ciudad Ju rez. From the soiled architecture, the hum of air conditioning and the sombre, depopulated streets of a provincial Texas town you hit the bewildering bustle of an exploding Latin American city. This is the Latin America I know and love. Anapra, the newest colonia on the outskirts of the city, is laid out in a precise grid across the bare desert. In two years it has grown from nothing to some 5,000 people.
Houses begin with wooden pallets and roofing felt and grow through cement blocks into brick.
Here, in a cloud of reeking dust, one of Mexico's multitudinous co-operatives controls an extremely efficient operation scavenging for scrap. I say this is as near as I can conceive to hell on earth. Nobody should have to live like this when they're within spitting distance of the richest country on earth,' he says. At the day centre and health clinic he runs for women and children he poses for a photograph in front of the water tanker that doubles as a fire engine. Flash fires periodically engulf the shacks and anyone inside them.