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  • Carlos y Mí Ciudad / Charles Bowden and My Ciudad Juárez
  • Julián Cardona (bio)

In a country where life is worth nothing, a photographic negative, which represents perhaps the smallest part of a life, is worth infinitely nothing. Charles Bowden arrived at the photographic archive of Diario de Juárez late on a spring day in 1993. He was looking for a photograph of a missing woman and the clerk called me to find it. It was our first meeting. Neither of us realized at the time that we would end up collaborating on three books: Juárez: The Laboratory of Our Future (1998); Exodus/Éxodo (2008); and Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields (2010). Part of my task was introducing Chuck to my city and the newspaper world in which I worked.

"Archive" is a pretentious description of the narrow room where we photographers finished our work after an intense day during which some of us risked our lives. By routine, the man in charge, or his two subordinates, periodically destroyed original photos and negatives that were considered unnecessary, in order to make room for new material that, in time, would also go into the garbage. On the 10th anniversary of the 1986 international bridge-takings and blockades by the right-wing party protesting the electoral fraud, only one slide remained of what had been the biggest post-election challenge in the history of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). When I went looking for slides of a birth defect perhaps caused by a maquiladora worker's inhalation of toxins, I found that they had been discarded as "no longer good for anything." They also tossed slides of the April 1996 apprehension of Los Rebeldes, a gang of men accused of murdering several women. I had photographed tearful mothers of the murdered women confronting the state governor at the end of a public ceremony. As the only [End Page 123] photographer present, I had hesitated to submit the photos to the editors and had considered keeping them instead. No one would know. The possiblity of censure worried me less than the negligence with which the photographs would be handled. In the end, I turned them over and these images also were lost.

I began photographing for El Fronterizo. The day I was hired, my boss made me sign a waiver. It was his custom. I became the last photographer of the smallest newspaper in the city, a stage dominated by the staffs of Diario de Juárez (known on the street simply as El Diario) and El Norte. Jaime Bailleres, Manuel Sáenz, Gabriel Cardona, Raúl Lodoza, Héctor Dayer, and Octavio Díliz worked for El Diario, while Miguel Perea, Juan Antonio Castillo, Gabriel Mercado, and Ernesto Rodríguez worked for El Norte.

El Fronterizo and El Norte had allied themselves against El Diario. While Miguel Perea was the chief photographer at El Norte, Ernesto Rodríguez was acting for himself. He often showed up with his FM2 camera to share material with my boss. One afternoon I heard shouts of celebration in the newsroom: "We ousted Bailleres [as chief photographer of El Diario] and we screwed them."

El Fronterizo and El Norte frequently took advantage of news that El Diario did not cover, both papers publishing photos of these events on their covers. We El Fronterizo photojournalists were the lowest ranked. Protesters blockading the international bridges had received us very well, until they found out that we weren't working for El Diario.

On the other hand, working for less prestigious newspapers burdened us with fewer responsibilities. El Fronterizo's building was old; its darkroom looked abandoned and gloomy. We spent evenings listening in the dark to Jaime Murrieta's fantastic stories, while Jasso, the photo technician, rocked film from side to side in a tray of Dektol, then hung the extended rolls by their ends to dry before printing them on glossy photographic paper.

The three El Fronterizo photographers—Jesús Aguilera, Jaime Murrieta, and me—looked forward to Friday to indulge. A part of our paltry pay allowed us to eat at the Tragadero, a traditional restaurant...

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