Murder City_ Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields - Charles Bowden [74]
Meanwhile, the killing plods on. No one really pays much mind to it anymore because everyone grows numb. In January, the city was stunned when 40 human beings were executed. In March, almost a 120 crossed over. Then, the army took over and April was such a relief, only 52 dead. So Juárez tasted a solution that was even bloodier than January. May topped 100. In the first nine days of June, 48 souls go to paradise. The missing are no longer counted, and many of the dead remain unidentified, just tossed in those common graves.
The city now is murder, extortion, arson, kidnapping, rape, robbery, car theft, and the sweet haze of drugs and alcohol. The temperature bumps 110, but the marijuana and the cocaine and the heroin and the cold beers save the human heart from the human violence.
I see no problem.
I see a future.
I see the way things will be here now and the way things will be where you live in good time.
I see a city where basic institutions erode and then burn or die, and yet in the morning, my fellow human beings get up, smell the coffee, and continue on with their lives.
I see Alexia’s funeral, her little brown twelve-year-old face in the open coffin, her mother weeping and a lot of pink balloons because that was her favorite color, and she was going to graduate from elementary school in three days and so all her friends are there.
A friend of mine is taking photographs at Alexia’s funeral when the army comes and grabs him. This could be bad since people who leave with the army tend not to come back. But the crowd holding those flotillas of pink balloons storms over and says, “Hey, leave him alone, go find and catch the bad guys.” And the soldiers let him go and so he is fine.
Yes.
We’re gonna have us a time.
Juárez is where we are learning the very first steps of the dance that will come sweeping through our lives.
But we turn a deaf ear to the music of Juárez. We think this act will keep us sane and safe.
I sit under towering cottonwoods near the border, and hundreds of birds feed on scattered seed, a squirrel forages under a feeder hanging from a pole, and just then, in the early rays of morning, a Cooper’s hawk banks against the stand of carrizo and the air explodes with wing beats as the birds flee for cover. But I notice that the squirrel, busy feeding, does not even look up.
I am sitting with a contract killer, another sicario, in that café, and we are eating carnitas as he softly tells me of his work. A few tables away, a trucker in a dirty T-shirt and faded blue jeans shares a meal and beers with a blond woman spilling out of her half-unbuttoned blouse. They drink beers, and it is clear that she is bought and paid for and is by no means a wife. But what I notice as the killer murmurs his account of slaughter and drug movements and gang wars is that they are oblivious to the death machine a few feet away from their carnal dreams.
This is my Juárez, a place that seems normal if you make the effort not to see or hear. Or feel. A place where many die, but they are the bad people and we are the good people and so death will not come to our door because the Lord of Hosts will spare us.
So I sit here and tally the dead, and try to keep an honest count of the killing. But most moments, as the stench and dust of the city floats over me, and I sit in some flyblown café and drink a beer or a cup of coffee, none of the deaths really exist for me, and the violence of the city does not exist either. I am sure that Miss Sinaloa is sitting outside somewhere and birds are singing in a patio around her and she smiles and cannot really be sure that she was gang-raped in Juárez and then went to the crazy place and met the true love of her life. I understand the feeling. I often have coffee at a small café that is two blocks from where