Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields
Read Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields Online
Authors: Charles Bowden
Table of Contents
DEAD MAN IN CANAL WAS A STREET CORNER CLOWN
Also by Charles Bowden
Killing the Hidden Waters
Street Signs Chicago: Neighborhood and Other Illusions of Big City Life
(with Lew Kreinberg)
Blue Desert
Frog Mountain Blues
(photographs by Jack W. Dykinga)
Trust Me: Charles Keating and the Missing Billions
(with Michael Binstein)
Mezcal
Red Line
Desierto: Memories of the Future
The Sonoran Desert
(photographs by Jack W. Dykinga)
The Secret Forest
(photographs by Jack W. Dykinga)
Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America
Chihuahua: Pictures from the Edge
(photographs by Virgil Hancock)
Stone Canyons of the Colorado Plateau
(photographs by Jack W. Dykinga)
The Sierra Pinacate
(by Julian D. Hayden; photographs by Jack Dykinga;
with essays by Charles Bowden and Bernard L. Fontana)
Juárez: The Laboratory for Our Future
(preface by Noam Chomsky;
afterword by Eduardo Galeano)
Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family
Blues for Cannibals
A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior
Inferno
(photographs by Michael P. Berman)
Exodus/Éxodo
(photographs by Julián Cardona)
Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing: Living in the Future
Trinity
(photographs by Michael P. Berman)
His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.
—ARTHUR MILLER, Death of a Salesman
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those.
—LEONARD COHEN, “FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN”
Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.
—ANATOLY RYBAKOV, Children of the Arbat, FICTITIOUSLY QUOTING JOSEPH STALIN
I shot a man in Reno
Just to watch him die.
—JOHNNY CASH, “FOLSOM PRISON BLUES”
Thank you for waiting.
—ANONYMOUS, THE FINAL WORDS OF THE FOURTH DEATH LIST OF COPS
POSTED IN CIUDAD JUÁREZ, JUNE 2008. THIS ONE WAS LEFT OUTSIDE THE
STATION.
DEAD MAN IN CANAL WAS A STREET CORNER CLOWN
Armando Rodriguez,
El Diario,
Ciudad Juárez,
November 13, 2008
The man assassinated
Tuesday night in the Diaz Ordaz viaduct
was
a street clown,
according to the state authority.
Nevertheless, this person has not been identified,
but it was reported
that he was between 25 and 30 years old,
1.77 meters tall,
delicate,
light brown complexion,
short black hair.
The victim’s face was painted as a clown,
green with a red nose,
reported the State Prosecutor’s office.
He wore a red polo shirt,
a navy blue sweatshirt, blue jeans,
white underwear,
gray socks labeled USA,
gray and white Converse tennis shoes
and a dark, cherry red beret.
The body was found in the Diaz Ordaz viaduct,
at Norzagaray Blvd in the colonia Bellavista,
on November 11 at 9:40 pm.
The body was found on its side,
with bullet wounds in the right side,
chest
and head.
At this time, the motive for the murder is unknown as well as the
identities of the murderers.
For Armando Rodriguez, who was gunned down
on November 13, 2008, after filing 907 stories on the
murders of that calendar year.
Like the rest of us, he was a dead man walking.
His last story appeared hours after he was killed.
BLANCA MARTÍNEZ RAISES THE PHOTOGRAPH OF HER HUSBAND, ARMANDO RODRÍGUEZ, WHILE REPORTERS AND EMPLOYEES OF EL DIARIO PAY THEIR LAST RESPECTS TO THEIR MURDERED COLLEAGUE. SHE IS ACCOMPANIED BY ROCIO GALLEGOS.
PROLOGUE
GET IN THE CAR
Here’s the deal.
We’re gonna take us a ride.
Now be quiet.
Time’s up, you gotta ride.
We brought the duct tape—do you prefer gray or tan? No matter, get
your ass in.
We have the plastic bag, the loaded guns.
You have been waiting?
Everyone is waiting, but our list is so long.
Everyone pretends we will never come.
But everyone is on somebody’s list.
Well, for you, the wait is over.
Let me tell you about a killing season.
What?
You don’t like violence?
I understand.
But get in the car.
You say it hard to see because of the darkly tinted windows?
You will learn darkness.
Miss Sinaloa is a detail. She was special, so fine.
Of course, she took the ride, my God, what a ride.
Okay, yes, there is the matter of cocaine and whiskey and sanity that might undercut her standing in the community.
See those people on the street pretending you don’t exist and this big machine with tinted windows doesn’t exist, pretending that none of this is happening to you?
That was you until just a few minutes ago.
The killings?
Murder itself is simply a little piece of life and so it can be dismissed as exceptional or irrational or extreme.
Though it is curious how, if you kill with style, it does get everyone’s attention.
Surely, we know that even at our best we can only know little pieces of life.
What, you are uncomfortable? The tape binding your hands behind your back is too tight?
Shut your fucking mouth.
You want this pistol cracked over your ugly face?
No?
That’s better.
Now shut up before I have to tape your mouth.
What was I saying?
Oh, yes.
We can still believe that destroying another human life is an extreme act.
Unless of course, the slaughter is done by governments. Or the killing is done to some vague group variously dubbed as terrorists or gangsters or drug dealers or people—and this varies with location—of other color or religious notions.
Still, you can see, there is really nothing to worry about since people know how to ignore whatever interferes with the way people want to think about the world.
Yes. I mean this. People can have murders all around them and have people vanish in broad daylight and still go on just fine and say, well, those people were bad, or it doesn’t happen that often.
What?
Stop shaking your head. You say nothing and do nothing.
You understand?
You are simply along for the ride. And all those things you said didn’t matter, well, now maybe you will change your mind, just a little bit.
The trick is to leave, fade away and stop thinking about the killings.
In the first eleven days of August, seventy-five go down. On Monday, August 11, fifteen are murdered.
Let it go, fade away, turn the page, change the music.
Let me tell you of an incident.
I come back from the shadows against my will.
What?
You don’t believe me?
Believe me.
This incident, yes, this incident. There is this woman, and she is very nice-looking, and a friend invites her to a party being hosted by men who apparently work in the drug industry. The woman, the one I am talking about, and damn you, listen as if your fucking life depended on it, well, this woman lives in southern Chihuahua and so she has little to do with Juárez just as Juárez has little to do with the real world, you know, the United States, Europe, all those kind of places where the real world exists.
When the car comes and she gets in it, her friend takes money from the men but does not come along for the ride.
For the next few days, she is gang-raped.