Murder City_ Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields - Charles Bowden [103]
No, it will be a different kind of show with a different kind of speaker. Just bodies, severed heads, bullets, these can attend. It is time to listen and look and feel.
There are a few ground rules. If you say, the killings make you sad, well, you will be killed—a bullet right into your head. If you say, it is terrible how people live in Juárez, how the poverty is awful, well, you will be killed—a bullet right into your head. If you say, it is all caused by American imperialism, you will be killed—a bullet right into your head. If you say, it is really an issue of femicide, you will be killed—a bullet right into your head. If you say, it is all the result of NAFTA, you will be killed—a bullet right into your head. If you blame American drug consumers, you will be killed—a bullet right into your head. If you say, it is all because of a war between cartels, you will be killed—a bullet right into your head.
There is no telling how long the show will go on. Every hour new cast members are created. Just now as I sit here, four men turn up. They were kidnapped and then, a few moments later, taken to a vacant lot by an industrial park in Juárez.
They are between twenty-five and forty years of age.
They are arranged carefully on the ground.
They have all been shot multiple times—twenty empty cartridges are found by the bodies.
They each received a shot to the head, the tiro de gracia given as a courtesy.
They shuffle to the end of the line that already reaches far out the door and trails off into the city.
Ah, in back are three guys from a good home. One of them is a motocross champion. The fine home is gray and rose-pink with white bars on the windows and a clump of three fine palms in front. The lawn is green and neatly manicured. This is the safe place in a city of violence. All the big houses have huge garages.
The doors and bars on the windows have been pried loose, according to the police. The three men have been shot in the head.
Now one by one they roll out on gurneys and are wrapped in white sheets. The attendants bounce them down the steps in front, boom, boom, boom, and even this does not stir them from their slumbers. The late afternoon light feels soft on the street, and the colors on the fine houses glow, the green trees and grace seem to embrace life and wrap around every human being and give comfort. A cluster of city cops with their blue uniforms stands in the street talking and staring back at the killing ground. All is being taken care of.
Lights, blue and red, flash atop police vehicles.
The dead go down those steps one bump at a time.
The forensic people arrive to haul the corpses away for further study.
There are men with guns and uniforms and helmets. There are men with clipboards, and they wear fine latex gloves and note down everything so that this incident of blood can be translated through records into an incident of order.
The three men, of course, shuffle to the back of the line and await their turn to speak.
Or it is a poor neighborhood and the body lies in the street wrapped in a white sheet.
The light is much harsher here.
Men in blue stand at a distance and talk. A white bus hauls people to the factories as if to say the work of the city must continue. The official vehicles are here also flashing red and blue lights.
A car drives past the corpse, the woman in the passenger seat has black hair, dark skin, and she stares at the body without expression.
A boy rides by on his bicycle.
There are very few trees here, and everything is dust.
The body has seven bullets in the chest and one in the head.
The body wears Nike shoes.
And blue jeans.
The corpse in the white sheet also takes his place at the back of the line.
It will be a long night at the performance.
The city evolves just as scholars