Privacy Policy. He is now paralyzed and uses a wheelchair but has moved back to Tijuana and is running for mayor. “Suspects would come out of them beaten up. Lawlessness became commonplace. boundARIEs and do not represent specific locations. In Juárez, he says, he found a department with hundreds of aviadores, or “aviators,” government workers who show up just for their paychecks. In 2008 Juárez lost 90,000 jobs as the U.S. plunged into recession, marooning a flotilla of desperate unemployed. “There were five,” he says finally, “including us.”. David Alamillo, a Juárez restaurateur and bar owner, was living in Europe in 2008 when his managers began to call, telling him about robberies, murders, and terrified employees. Juárez is no longer on the list of the 50 most violent cities in the world. Fernández’s lip quivers. (This video was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.). ItalianoCriminalità a Ciudad Juarez Shows how much people think the problem in their community are property crimes (home broken, car theft, etc. The scene would have been unimaginable six years ago, when I last visited Juárez, the largest city in Chihuahua state. Not safe at all. These data are based on perceptions of visitors of this website in the past 3 years. The Juarez crime map provides a detailed overview of all crimes in Juarez as reported by the local law enforcement agency.

Many of them thought we were extortionists ourselves,” says Luis Hernández, who now commands the squad. But in 2008, Mexico’s largest and most powerful syndicate, the Sinaloa cartel, moved into the territory and declared war. In Mexico lucha libre, a style of pro wrestling with masked fighters performing scripted acrobatic moves, is a national obsession. Though still take all precautions if you intend to visit. Alamillo now has seven businesses, employing 300 people.
At their urging, Chihuahua’s legislators made kidnapping, extortion, and the murder of police officers, journalists, and three or more people punishable by life in prison. In 1996, when I first went to Juárez, it was a whirring cog in the emerging global economy. When he handed over the money, they pounced. Much of what weakened Juárez remains: low-paying, dead-end jobs; street gangs and drug cartels; more billboards than trees; and proximity to a neighbor with an insatiable appetite for drugs and few controls on guns. Juárez grew chaotically. There just wasn’t any investigation,” says César Muñoz, a short, dapper man who was the squad’s first supervisor and is now chief of the Juárez city police. The most violent inmates were sent to federal prisons. The state took it over in 2011. This city had the highest murder rate in the world in 2012. Blaring music from an iPod, Juan Manuel Alvarado Gómez rides a tricked-out, custom-made bicycle in the Santa María neighborhood, an activity that would have been dangerous not long ago. Still, many stores stand gapingly empty, their owners having fled. There the din of Ciudad Juárez recedes, replaced by grunts, slaps, and thuds—bam!—of supple young bodies slamming onto canvas. “We have to keep on.”. The San Antonio neighborhood was among the worst. The tragedy proved a turning point. We drive for miles past clusters of squat, white maquiladoras. Ten suspects were rolled up, but not El Junior, who would call Muñoz to taunt him. The key to success is to strengthen what’s local.”.