About book La Ciudad Del Crimen: Ciudad Juarez Y Los Nuevos Campos De Exterminio De La Economía Global (2011)
Scorching.Charles Bowden knows the Southwest. He knows Ciudad Juárez. He's walked its streets, He's talked to its people. He has no patience for armchair pundits. He knows where the bodies are buried.Literally.Bowden's book is about Juárez in the year of 2008, when--as John Wesley Harding said a decade before--pointless death's become/A brand new way of life and the murder rate skyrocketed to several hundred in the single year. Bowden tried to keep track of them all before becoming disgusted. He tried to quit, but couldn't. He talked to the government and the police, read the newspapers, and found them full of lies, half-truths, and speculation.It was the drug cartels, said the officials, killing each other.Not quite, said Bowden. The geography of drug dealing had changed, making Juárez central, and certainly drug dealing had something to do with all the deaths. But the police, the military--they were killing and raping, too, with impunity, Juárez was lawless.Don't write it off as just a Mexico problem, though, Bowden says. We may be looking at the future: a time when the institutions of the state remain, but are ineffective. This is not a new social organization, but a new way of life. One is tempted to think that Bowden's perspective has been poisoned by all the pointless death he has witnessed, and maybe the whole thing is a bit too pessimistic. But then look at what's going on in Ferguson. Hell, look at what's going on in Wall Street. It's true that privilege has always excused itself, and shit has always rolled downhill. The question remains, are things getting worse?Bowden finds some bits of hope: a pastor--himself a former druggie--founds an asylum of sorts on the outskirts of the city, where the broken can congregate. There are a few journalists willing to call the powers-that-be on their actions, though they are certain to be put on a death-list.The writing is intimate, even poetic, Bowden at times addressing the reader straight on, at other times versifying news reports. The book is sometimes repetitive, the structure obscure, but that serves its ultimate point of showing the confusion, the mundanity of the horror.I couldn't help but wonder if Bowden at some point had read Charles Fort or Tiffany Thayer. His critique was essentially a Fortean one: experts knew nothing, newspapers invented stories that flattered the powerful, and the real mechanics behind the events are yet undiscovered.A very unsettling book. This book is disturbing. Disturbing in number of deaths. Disturbing in the questions of what is fact and false. Disturbing in the implications that the solutions to the problems in Juarez aren't working. Disturbing in it's entirety.At times the book reads like a poetic stream of consciousness lamenting the loss of innocence, loss of a people, loss of feeling for what is right and wrong, and a loss of humanity. Throughout Bowden's lament, stories of individuals surface. The people's stories weave in and out of each others and the violence surrounding them. An ever searching reason for why the violence doesn't stop permeates throughout. Living so close to where these events have taken place and are taking place is disturbing. Not because of proximity, but because I was so unaware of what was going on, and knowing that there is nothing I could have done, or do to alleviate the problem. Although I'm not sure how I feel about all the ideas presented in this book about why such violence is occurring, I applaud Charles Bowden for making the dead's stories known.
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Not for the faint of heart. Especially if you live in south or west Texas.
—Natasha
Depressing. The total breakdown of society.
—francianne
