I kept going out with the rescue workers and one day we came upon this scene that was so sad that the rescue workers gave me a vest to cross the police line. I shot the scene a bunch of different ways, but the way that worked best was just showing it from the front. These people were killed by one single bullet. The woman is far into her pregnancy. The hit man came in from the left-hand side of the car and fired a bullet into the man’s head when they were embracing and killed both of them.

The violence is really hard to show in a way that is humane. It is almost impossible to give any kind of dignity to the people that have died, because of how horribly they have been maimed. Taking pictures of those things, you feel like you are supporting what the narcos are doing because you are spreading out their message of horror. So I really became obsessed with making a picture that was intimate – while still showing violence – and encompassed humanity and dignity. I wanted to give these people a story.
posted by barnacles on Mar 25, 2012 - 7 comments

No one asks or answers this question: How does such an escalation benefit the drug smuggling business which has not been diminished at all during the past three years of hyper-violence in Mexico? Each year, the death toll rises, each year there is no evidence of any disruption in the delivery of drugs to American consumers, each year the United States asserts its renewed support for this war. And each year, the basic claims about the war go unquestioned. Who Is Behind the 25,000 Deaths In Mexico?
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 on Jul 27, 2010 - 60 comments

Federal officials in Mexico have officially dropped the investigation into the murders of hundreds of young women in Juarez since 1993. [previously]
posted by gottabefunky on Jul 26, 2006 - 19 comments

"The make him into something he wasn't." Today, on the 200th anniversary of his birth, a national holiday, Mexico both honors and reconsiders Benito Juarez (Wikipedia: Eng/Span): "Mexico's Lincoln," the nation's first indigenous president, who served two terms in the 1860s and 1870s. The capital city's airport, a border city of 1.1M, universities, and streets and monuments in just about every town are named after Juarez, widely considered a national hero. Politicians left and right invoke his name, especially this year as Mexico prepares to elect a new president in July. For many in the Latin American left, he's a regional icon in the vein of Simon Bolivar and Ernesto "Che" Guevara; Havana unveiled a bust (Span) of him last year. He's held up as a defender of the poor and the indigenous and an opponent to free trade. Today, however, some historians say he was neither. For those who read Spanish, a leading Mexican (right-of-center) newspaper, El Universal, also touches on the topic in "Juarez, a controversial icon."
posted by donpedro on Mar 21, 2006 - 5 comments

lacitedesmortes - documentary on women murdered in ciudad juarez -- lacitedesmontes.net is not in English, but through its flash presentation and navigation, it should explain enough about the brutality of the unfortunate events that took place in Ciudad Juarez. Since 1993, almost 400 women and girls have been murdered and more than 70 remain missing in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Mexico. While the region's law enforcement as well as state's attorney general were either incompetent or corrupt, more than a dozen women's rights groups were created to solve the murder as well as to stop the violence in the region. Thanks to international organizations such as Amnesty, UNIFEM, and IACHR, the number of violent murder on women in the region has degreased for a while, however, the battle still continues. More resources here.
posted by grafholic on Oct 13, 2005 - 11 comments