Murder City_ Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields - Charles Bowden [48]
One night in early April, just days after the full military presence swarmed into the streets of the city, two photographers respond to a police call and find two municipal squad cars. One of the cops is a woman. They are to transport a sick man, but when the squad tries to leave, the army blocks them. They let one squad car go on, but keep the other vehicle carrying the policewoman. When finally rescued from the custody of the army, she is not in good shape and so her fellow cops take her to the police station. Her panties and bra are torn and she goes into shock, her face paralyzed. She cannot speak of what happened, because she says they would kill her if she talked. Three policewomen have been raped in recent days, but the department will not say if she is one of them.
Her adventure occurs on a city street at night and takes up a lot of time—and during her adventure, no one comes out of a house to see what is going on. When a photographer for the paper raises his camera to photograph her, she covers her face.
Later, he tells me that if he had not happened on the scene, he is not sure she would have come back from the embrace of the Mexican army.
Jaime Murrieta always has a smile and, with luck, a bottle of beer. When I first met him in 1995, he had already photographed hundreds of murders for the Juárez newspapers. On September 9, 2006, he was out cruising in the night, looking for his dream photograph. In this ultimate image, he will be holding his camera, the killer will come toward his lens, and Jaime Murrieta will faithfully record his own murder. I remember him telling me in the 1990s of this dream shot with a smile on his face and passion in his eyes.
But on that September night in 2006, he comes very close to his dream. He and two other members of the press stumble upon a street party of Aztecas and a herd of Chihuahuan state police, including three comandantes. They are drinking and having an impromptu fiesta. He raises his camera.
They beat him close to death. He winds up in a hospital with a police guard—and of course, given the circumstances, such a guard is hardly reassuring. He loses the sight in one eye—but luckily, not his shooting eye. He refuses to leave town even when I send him money for such a flight.
After all, he did not get the photograph of his dreams, although he came close to that ultimate image.
Of course, none of this can be really happening. Mexico was to become a modern nation, and then when Mexico did not become a modern state but lingered in the shadow of tyranny and poverty, this was papered over by successive American governments since a quiet neighbor was, and is, the best neighbor for a global empire. When Mexico became a trampoline for drugs to bounce from the cocaine belt of South America into the United States, then it was the fault of American habits and addicts. Finally, when even this rhetoric of deceit failed to paper the wounds, NAFTA was ballyhooed by the administration of President Bill Clinton and President Carlos Salinas (a man reputed to have stolen ten to twenty billion dollars for six years of service) as the answer that would bring prosperity and end illegal immigration.
The trade agreement crushed peasant agriculture in Mexico and sent millions of campesinos fleeing north into the United States in an effort to survive. The treaty failed to increase Mexican wages—the average wage in Juárez, for example, went from $4.50 a day to $3.70. The increased shipment of goods from Mexico to the United States created a perfect cover for the movement of drugs in the endless stream of semi trucks heading north.
American factories went to Mexico (and Asia) because they could pay slave wages, ignore environmental regulations, and say fuck you to unions. What Americans got in return were cheap prices at Wal-Mart, lower wages at home, and an explosion of illegal immigration into the United States. This result is global, but its