The Rise and Fall of Juárez, Mexico

“Those who haven’t abandoned Juárez may be watching the death of it, both day and night.” Sarah Hill gives a tragic account of the Mexican city gone from boom to bust to nearly dust. “Can Juárez be saved? Will the factories reopen, as they have after past economic downturns, or is the city too dangerous for the business of making legal consumer goods? The economic questions are, perhaps, beside the point. For even if legal manufacturing returns, salvation may remain a distant goal. The economic model—low-wage export-oriented assembly—that investors celebrated also helped Juárez become the illegal narcotics capital of the Western hemisphere, perhaps indelibly.”