IN PUERTO DE LA PAZ, a settlement of hardscrabble houses and shacks in the western suburbs of Ciudad Juárez, a new three-storey community centre offers taekwondo, five-a-side football and classes in baking and giving beauty treatments. It is one of 49 such centres in poorer parts of this sprawling industrial city jammed against Mexico’s border with Texas. Intended to offer young people alternatives to organised crime, they are a sign of change in a place that became known as “the world’s most dangerous city”.
There are other changes. Restaurants and bars are full. “There are parts of the city that are heaving with nightlife where a few years ago you wouldn’t have seen a soul,” says Nohemi Almada, a lawyer and activist. The local economy is booming. Factories lining Juárez’s urban highways, making everything from car parts to wind turbines, sport job-vacancy signs.
Between 2008 and 2011 Juárez descended into hell. It felt the knock-on effects of the offensive against drug mobs launched by Mexico’s then-president, Felipe Calderón. “Here the war on drugs was a massacre,” says Ms Almada. “We all grew used to seeing...Continue reading
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