Breathe
By Laura Carrera
In 2010, the government launched the "We are all Juarez" program, a response to the city that, at the time, had become the most violent in the world. Ciudad Juarez was marked by the brutality of murders, particularly of young girls, and Mexican society as a whole sympathized with the suffering of the mothers and residents of Juarez, who lived in fear and pain.
However, today, looking at the current panorama, I dare to say that, painfully, we are all Juarez, because the violence that was once concentrated in this city has reached many corners of the country.
What happened in Juarez is no longer an isolated case. What began with brutality in one city has spread throughout the nation. Now, it is no longer just the families of Juarez who live in constant fear, but families throughout Mexico. Murders, disappearances, and a growing number of clandestine graves that account for the pain and suffering of thousands of people, many of whom will never be found. Examples such as the case of Teuchitlán, Jalisco, a heartbreaking extermination camp, hits us in the face reminding us of the magnitude of the tragedy.
The breeding ground for all this began decades ago, when Juarez became a maquiladora city in need of labor. Thousands of people, mainly from other states of the country, arrived in search of employment. But instead of integrating them and offering them a dignified life, the authorities of that time only thought about profits and economic growth. The result was a city that, although prosperous in terms of jobs, lacked basic infrastructure: education, health, housing, transportation. And, of course, what happened was predictable: increasing violence, prostitution, alcoholism, drugs, and the dominance of drug traffickers in the streets.
In the 1990s, the murder of hundreds of young girls began to mark an unprecedented tragedy, but the authorities did little to stem the tide of violence. In 2001, with the discovery of the bodies of eight young girls abandoned in a cotton field outside Ciudad Juarez, the indolence of local authorities was cruelly exposed. By then, there were already hundreds of mothers and families searching, but visibility came when Marisela Escobedo, in her tireless struggle for justice, confronted the indifference, corruption and disdain of the prosecutors. It was she who, by not giving up, gave greater visibility to the tragedy. Today thousands of mothers and families are searching for their missing sons and daughters throughout Mexico, and this phenomenon, unfortunately, has transcended beyond Juarez. Today, we are all Juarez.
The suffering caused by violence affects not only the direct relatives of the victims, but society as a whole. The traces of violence are left on each one of us. Mothers and fathers who have lost their children, friends who have seen their loved ones disappear, co-workers who cannot stop thinking about the violence that surrounds us. We all live with a latent fear, even if we don't recognize it.
It is this fear that has turned us into a nation marked by stress, anxiety, and a sense of perpetual insecurity. Despite official figures, Mexico continues to lead international statistics in work-related stress, school violence, and gender violence. Emotions are overflowing, anger is at the surface, and explosions of violence are increasingly frequent. From the streets to the offices, from public transportation to homes, the malaise is palpable.
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