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Introduction 1. Anay is a Mayan name, pronounced, roughly, as “an eye.” 2. The city is commonly called Juárez, honoring the beloved midnineteenth -century Mexican president Benito Juárez. In May 2011, lawmakers in the Chihuahua state capital officially changed its name to “Heroica Ciudad Juárez,” which means “Heroic Juárez City.” As soon as the change was announced, a flood of comments hit the media. The state lawmakers ’ intent was to honor the city’s important role in the 1910 Mexican Revolution; however, to those who anguish over the city’s current troubles , the name change seemed out of line with the prevailing conditions of violence and despair. I use the name Ciudad Juárez in this book—the official title before the May 2011 name change. 3. The ethnographer’s role is to enter a different culture and generate an ethnographic report to enlarge cultural understanding. But the researcher becomes ethically involved in the study, thus actively seeking reform and taking action during the course of the study, becoming a critically engaged activist researcher (Speed, 2006). I became a participant in the study as I became a part of Anay’s life. I, along with other friends in the United States, assisted Anay and her family with emotional and financial resources, thus positioning Anay and her family in a very different situation at the time of this writing from where they would be if we had never met. I believed that I had to intervene. It would have been impossible for me to be an objective observer in Ciudad Juárez, drive home to my luxury, and forget about what Anay was going through. As you will read in the chapters that follow, Anay’s economic needs are still vast as she Notes continues her struggle for higher education for herself and her children, and she continues to struggle against recurring cancer. Proceeds of this book will go mostly toward Anay’s education and the education of women in southern Mexico. 4. Neoliberal is a term commonly used for an open market approach to trade, that is, liberalized trading practices. 5. Public Citizen’s 2004 report, “The Ten-Year Track Record of NAFTA,” further documents the consequences of liberalizing great swaths of Mexican economic structures. Prior to NAFTA, there were about eight million Mexicans working in agriculture, mostly through a system of small plots, called ejidos, permanently deeded to small rural farmers. This small farming system, implemented in 1917, ensured stable prices and provided government loans and subsidies. The main crop was corn—a major component of Mexico’s agricultural and cultural identity. By joining NAFTA, the Mexican government agreed to move this agricultural system, along with many other programs, to private and sometimes foreign corporations. Some 1.5 million peasants lost their farms. “U.S. corn exports to Mexico have more than quadrupled since 1993, and have been sold at prices below what it costs U.S. farmers to grow it, causing a 70% drop in the real prices paid to Mexican farmers for their corn under NAFTA” (p. 2). Mexico no longer grows most of its own corn, instead depending on imported corn from the United States. The price of the Mexican food staple, corn tortillas, has increased by more than 50 percent since NAFTA (Public Citizen, 2004, p. 2). 6. Rafael Rodríguez Castañeda’s 2009 book, El México Narco, is a collection of articles from reporters with the Mexican magazine Proceso, of which Rodríguez Castañeda is editor. These reporters provide a narco map through the Mexican states with rich details of which cartel is where at what time and for what reasons. The reporters document the names of the main players in the narco business along with events that lead to their power positions and their falls. Rodríguez Castañeda confirms that the political actions previously listed are causes of the escalation of the violence but adds his belief that these actions were catalysts to a natural progression in growth of the drug industry. The large cartels outgrew their stability and broke into smaller families, roaming and slaughtering to try to claim dominance and the wealth that accompanied it. 7. Unless otherwise stated, money amounts are given as the approximate equivalent at the time of writing. 8. Perhaps the most valuable current resources for ongoing, grassroots information about the maquiladora industry in Ciudad Juárez are| 156 | Notes to pages 5–23 [18.191.157.186] Project...

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