The Fight to Save Juárez: Life in the Heart of Mexico's Drug War
Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city with a population of approximately l.3 million, is located just across the border from El Paso, Texas. Since 2007, Juarez has been at the center of a turf war between the two leading Mexican drug cartels; at the same time, it has been the focus of Mexico’s federal government in its intensified campaign against the cartels. Ainslie, born in Mexico City, is a psychologist, author, and documentary filmmaker who currently teaches at the University of Texas. His portrait of Juarez as a city under siege is unrelentingly grim. The rate of murders, kidnappings, and other forms of violence became astronomical. The corruption, already a problem before 2007, became endemic as both the municipal police and the military were infected with money from the competing cartels. Journalists were intimidated, co-opted, or targeted by the cartels for death. At the center of Ainslie’s narrative is the mayor of Juarez, Jose Reyes Ferriz, a figure both heroic and tragic as he strives to fight against a scourge powered by forces that he cannot control, including the insatiable demand for drugs north of the border. This is a tough, depressing, but necessary read if one is to understand the consequences of the war on drugs. --Jay Freeman