Violence and Hope in Ciudad Juárez, México

Another writer specializing in the subject will now be featured on Salem-News.com.

Image: Ciudad Juárez 2008 - 2010

(CIUDAD JUAREZ) - Forward by Editor: Salem-News.com welcomes the Professor Guillermo Cervantes Ph.D. of El Paso, Texas to our team of writers. He is the author of Ciudad Juárez 2008 - 2010 A photographic testimony of our pain, and a tireless advocate for peace in the border region dividing the U.S. and Mexico.

Guillermo's efforts to public raise awareness of the intense violence and suffering along the border region are both successful and important; though the road is long and full of endless obstacles. Much of his work can be found at his Website: Ciudad Juárez 2008 - 2010.

Without question, the violence stemming from the Mexican drug cartels is under-reported in the U.S. The type and level of violence is not known in the states. In Mexico, cartel members gun down people in drug rehab clinics. People migrating north illegally from South America are forced into lives of crime; those who refuse are murdered sometimes en masse. Mexico in the last year has seen mass murders of over 50, in one event, and more than 70 people in another.

Then there are the border crossings and attacks on American ranches located close to Mexico; the same region that was invaded by Francisco 'Pancho' Villa, a century earlier.

Many people believe U.S. drug laws create the environment that keeps the cartels in business. Regardless of whether or not that is true, it is a fact that Mexico decriminalized the possession of small amounts of drugs to minimize the criminal violations.

From the Website of Guillermo Cervantes, regarding his book, Ciudad Juárez 2008 - 2010 A photographic testimony of our pain:

During its first weeks the first executions took place. Alarmed, we wanted to believe these were just isolated events, underworld quarrels prone to end soon and everything would be just as it was before. However, the killings did not stop, and increasingly became more sadistic and violent. We would wake up just to find bodies hanging from our bridges as we drove to work or to drop our children at school.

From their tribunes, our emboldened leaders ensured that organized crime was to be subdued shortly; they said they were about to prove that "no criminal group will be able to withstand the force of the Mexican State." Naively, they imagined that, by means of magic, the mere presence of thousands of soldiers would be enough to pacify the city.

More than ten thousand businesses closed down, over one hundred thousand abandoned homes, more than five thousand homicides. These are the true achievements in this war against drugs.

The intention of this work is to recount the version of common men and women. Ordinary citizens who strive and work. Honest people who have had their lives changed by power struggles between criminal groups and the lack of tact and determination shown by our authorities.

It is simply a testimony in pictures. Pictures won't lie, they speak for themselves. A collection of photographs presented without notes, without captions, without references. Silent. No chronological or hierarchical order, not one is more or less important than another. Not intended to portray isolated events that occurred in this or that date; but intended to illustrate a reality that persists, that repeats itself, that becomes part of daily life.