Juárez: Presente y Futuro, A Children's City Drawn

"Juárez," Child's drawing from the JUÁREZ: Presente y Futuro project, 2010.

This project is dedicated to the Juárez that we knew and loved.¹

Juárez: Presente y Futuro began when I returned from a four-month tour of Mexico in May of 2008. My home, made up of the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, was almost unrecognizable, at least on the Mexican side of the border. Ciudad Juárez had become a battleground after President Felipe Calderón declared an open war against the drug cartels. The result was a turf battle between the Juárez and Sinaloa Cartels over the largest Mexico-U.S. border crossing.² All of northern Mexico was affected with an outbreak of violence, but Juárez was especially devastated.

In June of 2008, over five hundred cartel-related homicides had been reported in the city since the beginning of the year,³ including over a dozen police officers suspected of corruption.⁴ These targeted killings were so brazen that the cartels even listed officer's names on sheets posted for public viewing. On each list of names, the names of dead officers had been crossed off; the remaining officers on the list were yet to be dealt with.⁵

The deterioration of law enforcement created an unexpected backlash as extortion and kidnapping became new lucrative lines of work.⁶ The violence became so extreme that the military was ordered into the city.⁷ For the first time in my life, soldiers appeared on the streets of Juárez, guarding street corners, AK47s nestled at their hips.

When the initial shock settled, it was replaced with confusion and anger. The community was paralyzed with fear. My thoughts turned to the future of Ciudad Juárez. It was not the staggering number of deaths, the injustice, the impunity with which the cartels acted, nor the absolute lack of investigation which worried me most. My question was larger: What kind of future can we expect from the children witnessing this if nothing is done to counter the wave of death, violence, drug culture, and more importantly, their effects on the survivors? Motivated by these concerns, my sister, Mariana, and I decided to approach the children of Juarez. Thus, Juarez: Presente y Futuro was born.

Juarez: Presente y Futuro

This project uses art as a form of therapy for the children of Juárez. We wanted to explore the children's sense of identity while living day to day in such unstable surroundings. Amidst all this violence, children have few outlets for expressing their emotions, fears, or personal struggles in dealing with loss or trauma. With this in mind, we asked children of a targeted age group to draw their city, both to document the sentiments of the youth during this critical time in Mexico's history and to provide them with a form of therapy.

After consulting with psychologists and teachers, both in Juárez and in Texas, to determine what ages would be most appropriate, we settled upon working with children in the third, fourth, and fifth grades as our targeted age groups. While these children are still young, they are old enough to be cognizant of their surroundings. Although the project is not yet completed, eventually it will encompass approximately ten percent of the three hundred fifty elementary schools in Juarez.

Initial Experience

When this project began, all of the schools in Juárez were closed to the public. More and more ordinary civilians were being affected by extortion, but an unprecedented peril had surfaced: the schools began to receive threats.⁸ An invisible line which criminals in Mexico had never crossed before was breached. Extortionists were demanding teachers' yearly bonuses in exchange for the safety and well-being of the students. As a safety measure, the schools shut their doors.

It took a year to get access to the schools, and the impact of the violence was apparent at the first...