| | |  Health & Beauty | June 2009 
Addicts Latest Victims of Drug War
 William Booth & Travis Fox - Washington Post
go to original
| | Martinez fights for his fix by begging for money below the international bridge that connects Ciudad Juarez and El Paso. | |
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico - When you visit the drug rehab centers in Ciudad Juarez, what you notice are the arms. The addicts have arms that are purple with scars. The new guys have arms still raw from the needles. The counselors, former addicts themselves, have scars that are fading away, faint but still there.
They have been killing addicts in Ciudad Juarez. It is the latest outrage, in the most violent city in Mexico. A few weeks ago, gunmen burst commando-style into a gray cinderblock building where 60 patients were bunking down for the night. The assassins killed five. Motive unknown.
We visited the center and a young man reluctantly let us in. There was a cracked imitation leather sofa and image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The young man pointed to a spot on the floor, where we could still see the blood. Thats where his uncle died.
We later meet Guadalupe Martinez, a heroin addict all his life. He was in another rehab center three months ago that closed after drug gangs threatened an attack, and now he says there are more junkies on the streets than ever.
In the video above, Martinez fights for his fix by begging for money below the international bridge that connects Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, where each day thousands of people stand in line for hours waiting to walk into the United States. As they wait, Martinez stands down in the riverbed and shouts for dollars and pesos, and the crowds, bored, throw the money down. They laugh as Martinez and other homeless alcoholics and addicts run after the fluttering bills.
About this Project
The border between United States and Mexico is the land where straight lines blur, and where two national cultures collide and collude. The writer Alan Weisman, author of "La Frontera", called the borderlands "the most dramatic intersection of first and third world realities anywhere on the globe." There is a lot of good on the border, and these days, plenty of bad. The border is a militarized hot zone, where tens of thousands of Mexican soldiers are fighting a vicious drug war against well-armed, rich and powerful drug traffickers, who smuggle across these desert highways 90 percent of the cocaine so voraciously consumed in the United States. On the U.S. side, the federal government is pouring taxpayer money into border, promising to stem the flow of cash and guns heading south, while the border patrol continues its ceaseless cat-and-mouse search for Mexican migrants sneaking north.
We're setting out to drive the borderlands from Ciudad Juarez, across the river from El Paso, to San Diego's sister city Tijuana. Along the way, we're going to tell the stories of overwhelmed small town sheriffs, of drug smugglers and drug czars, of the Mexicans who struggle to survive in dusty villages and the Americans who fear that the drug war is getting way too close for comfort. We're going to talk to cops and mayors, some scientists and singers, and lots of regular folks, too. We've got a map, an ice chest, a video camera, and the laptops. We've got some stories planned but we also would like to hear from you. What do you think about the drug fight along the border, and what it is doing to the people? What dots on the map should we make sure to hit? Please let us know in the comments section below. You can also join the conversation on Twitter by using the #mexborder hashtag.
William Booth and Travis Fox |
|
| |
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us