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La Ciudad Del Crimen: Ciudad Juarez Y Los Nuevos Campos De Exterminio De La Economía Global (2011)

by Charles Bowden(Favorite Author)

3.54 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0307743470 (ISBN13: 9780307743473)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Vintage Espanol

review 1: Harrowing and hair-raising investigative journalism in a city which lays waste to many who try to uncover its secrets. Spoiler: although he lives, the author didn't escape and probably never will. Something about his time there seems to have broken Bowden, but he was able to spin his despair into some top-notch reportage. Much of the book is taken up with the reporter's (rather more literary) version of screaming and tearing at his own face and I agree with the many reviewers who've noted that the text falls apart in those places. So did I, a few times. Worth a read. TL;DR - well-researched, brutal, kind of disjointed but not enough to suck.
review 2: This is more than the story of a large city that has broken down. The difference between Ciudad Juarez and Det... moreroit is drug money. The enormous amount of money flowing through the city means that it permeates and corrupts everything, especially the various law enforcement agencies. The result is a virtually lawless society where the police are fearful of doing their job because of the cartels and the army that is supposedly policing them. Behind all of the anarchy are the maquilladoras that continue to attract thousands of migrants to the city with poor salaries and poor working conditions. The global economy that brought the maquilladoras cycles the workers with enormously high labor turnover. Bowden takes an interesting approach to his description of the city. Partially based on newspaper accounts, interviews, and his own experiences, he augments his observations through the lenses of the victims - including a hired assassin. The stories of a beauty queen and a reporter round out his book as the chapters interweave between them and the news accounts of bloodshed. Bowden is determined to inform his readers that the violence cannot be just warfare between drug cartels. He bases this on the fact that so many of the victims have no connection to the cartels, nor are cartel leaders among the victims. Rarely does he discuss the mass murders of women that have been sensationalized in the city. These numbers pale in In comparison to the total bloodshed in the city. He also blames the army for a great deal of the violence. He acknowledges that this is contradictory to common expectations; but he has interviews and news accounts to support him. The police protesting in the streets against the army is also damning. Overall, this is a cautionary tale. Detroit, with its high murder rate, is unlikely to become Ciudad Juarez. The drug money and near total break down in authority is to blame. However, Bowden stresses that prior to NAFTA and the maquilladoras, Ciudad Juarez was not nearly as violent as it is today. And the cartels were operating long before NAFTA. less

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