Murder City
The Leonard Lopate Show | May 10, 2010
Ciudad Juárez sits across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. Once a thriving border town, it now has a murder rate that exceeds that of Baghdad—in 2009 more than 1,986 people were killed in Juarez. Charles Bowden, one of the few journalists who’s spent extended periods of time in Juárez, describes what’s happening in that disintegrating city. In Murder City: Cuidad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields he interweaves stories of Juarez’s residents with a broader meditation on the town’s descent into anarchy, its culture of violence that he warns will spread north.
