Guillermo Cervantes

Ciudad Juarez 2008 - 2010: a Photographic Testimony of Our Pain Guillermo Cervantes

Publisher Marketing: BILINGUAL EDITION (English/Spanish) SECOND EDITION Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. 2008 changed our lives. During its first weeks the first executions took place. Alarmed, we wanted to believe these were just isolated events, underworld quarrels prone to end soon and everything would be just as it was before. However, the killings did not stop, and increasingly became more sadistic and violent. We would wake up just to find bodies hanging from our bridges as we drove to work or to drop our children at school. From their tribunes, our emboldened leaders ensured that organized crime was to be subdued shortly; they said they were about to prove that "no criminal group will be able to withstand the force of the Mexican State." Naively, they imagined that, by means of magic, the mere presence of thousands of soldiers would be enough to pacify the city. More than ten thousand businesses closed down, over one hundred thousand abandoned homes, more than five thousand homicides. These are the true achievements in this war against drugs. The intention of this work is to recount the version of common men and women. Ordinary citizens who strive and work. Honest people who have had their lives changed by power struggles between criminal groups and the lack of tact and determination shown by our authorities. It is simply a testimony in pictures. Pictures won't lie, they speak for themselves. A collection of photographs presented without notes, without captions, without references. Silent. No chronological or hierarchical order, not one is more or less important than another. Not intended to portray isolated events that occurred in this or that date; but intended to illustrate a reality that persists, that repeats itself, that becomes part of daily life. DISCLAIMER: This book contains graphic images."