Murder city

the long version

Ciudad Juárez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. Caught in the crosshairs of Mexico's warring cartels, Juárez is the border city that most brutally exposes the lies that we tell ourselves about globilization, NAFTA, immigration, corruption, and the war on drugs. Once only known as the place where women disappear, in the past year 2,660 people were killed, a murder rate that exceeds that of Baghdad or Mogadishu. In Murder City, Charles Bowden, one of the few journalists who has spent extended periods of time in Juarez, presents a devastating chronicle of a city in collapse. Interweaving stories of its inhabitants -- a raped beauty queen, a repentant hitman, a journalist fleeing for his life -- with a broader meditation on the town's descent into anarchy, Bowden reveals how Juárez's culture of violence will not only worsen, but inevitably spread North.