Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields
Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields
Ciudad Juárez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A as soon as-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously identified as the spot exactly where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad. Last year 1,607 individuals were killed?a number that is on pace to enhance in 2009.In Murder City, Charles Bowden?one of the few journalists who has spent extended periods of time in Juárez?has written an extraordinary account of what transpires when a city disintegrates. Inter
List Price: $ 27.50
Value: $ 4.99
50 x 7.5 mm Economy Square Magnetic Stir Bar
 | US $3.95 End Date: Wednesday May-23-2012 13:41:11 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $3.95 Buy it now | Add to watch list |
A lot more Economic system Goods
Tags: juarez news killings for sept 06 2011, murder city ciudad juarez and the global economys new killing fields, fields, juarez killings tuesday september 6 2011, murder city novel, murder city book review, juarez, global, killing, ciudad, economy's, juarez deaths 2011 sept 6, murder, city, juarez murders 2011, ciudad juarez homicides september 2011
Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!
Compelling and worthwhile,
At the time I am writing this, there was only one other review, which gave the book a two-star rating. After finishing the Kindle edition,I have to say that I feel the other rating is unfair. At first I agreed with the other reviewer- and I had really wanted to like this book, after hearing a very moving interview with the author on NPR. The narrative in the beginning feels disjointed, and I found the constant references to "Miss Sinaloa" to be annoying. But stay with it, the book draws you in. As I read farther, I really began to understand how "Miss Sinaloa" is a metaphor for the City; she is beautiful, but insane and terribly damaged. And, in the end, the Author's imagining of an "Our Town" type play with the Sinaloa murder vicims as characters moved me to tears. I don't know if all the readers will agree with the author about some of the underlying reasons for the murders, but the book is interesting, provacitive- and worth reading.
Was this review helpful to you?
|A vitally important but disturbing book,
If the angels ever visited Juarez looking for the proverbial one good man, I'm afraid they'd either be kidnapped, murdered, or probably both before their search was over.
In his dark, non-fiction novel, Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields, Charles Bowden takes you by the hand and gives a guided tour of one of the lower hells that's just across the border from El Paso, Texas.
On your journey through this third-world dystopia, you travel to an impoverished insane asylum out in the desert ran by El Pastor, who collects from the streets of Juarez those whose lives were shattered by torture, drugs, gang rape, and a host of other horrors. From there you'll visit the "death houses" where underneath floors and patios the anonymous dead wait to be found. You'll cruise the streets at dawn to find the bodies bound with silver and gray duct tape at hands, feet, and mouth, deposited the night before. You'll also meet a sicario, an assassin, who speaks of his childhood, his time in the Mexican state police and the FBI academy, and finally his plunge into "the life" where he has since racked up over 250 murders becoming a highly sought after "murder artist".
At each point on your journey, Bowden stops and makes you look, he makes you bear witness as he has done for almost 20 years, to the unacknowledged, unreported disintegration of not only a city, but of an entire country.
From the nearly ubiquitous corruption in all branches of the Mexican government, military, and police forces to the members of drug cartels living like kings surrounded by grinding poverty to American factories paying starvation wages, Bowden drags it all into the light for us to see.
This book does not pull any punches: While Murder City is a vital, important work, it's also a dark and disturbing read. But throughout it rings true.
Charles Bowden has opened my eyes to a world I could never have imagined prior to reading Murder City.
Take the ride.
Was this review helpful to you?
|