Violence in Ciudad Juárez, From Male to Juvenile Homicide

Violence can be understood as a transgression of human rights, which favors the deliberate and intentional use of force from a position of power used by one or more individuals to harm; it can result in emotional, psychological, physical, and economic damage, or even death (^{Cervera & Monárrez, 2010}). It can occur in any type of social bond, including the State, its security forces, organized crime, or any other social institution with respect to certain social groups, such as women, youth groups, indigenous groups, or LGBTQ+ and religious groups.

Violence directly and indirectly affects and transcends materiality (politically, economically or socially), since it includes what it represents and what it means by way of its symbolic vein, that is, the immaterial, the implicit and the latent, hence its capacity to endure over time and to influence the way in which social practice is built (^{Nateras, 2016}).

One of the most frequently used indicators to measure violence is the number of murders taking place at a specific time, place, and population (^{Cervera & Monárrez, 2010}); although this crime represents only one expression of criminal activity, it can be associated with what ^{Nateras (2016)} calls “violence of death.” Along with forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions, murder is perhaps one of the most significant crimes due to the direct effect on the individual victim and the social effect on the context. These irreparable crimes affect not only the victims themselves but also their social context (^{México Evalúa, 2012}). They take away one’s fundamental right to life, therefore, they represent the most serious transgression of social norms and laws (^{Martínez & Howard, 2006}).

As a social phenomenon, murder is a synonym of social pain since it affects moods, emotions, feelings, effectiveness, behaviors, and attitudes (^{Nateras, 2016}). Additionally, when the phenomenon is intense or constant, social trauma will persist over time, taking hold in the collective memory and affecting members of society as a whole because it deeply alters the social structure, the norms governing coexistence, and the institutions that regulate everyday life (^{Kovalskys, 2006}). In the case of Ciudad Juárez, violence has generated permanent feelings of fear and terror among its inhabitants due to the risk of insecurity and death that takes place on a daily basis, as well as a de facto suspension of constitutional guarantees and civil rights, which ^{Domínguez and Ravelo (2011)} call the “dismantling of citizenship.”

Types of murder include femicide and homicide, which are malicious acts with different but closely related causes since they refer to asymmetries of power around gender, class, and social age (^{Cervera & Monárrez, 2010}; ^{Cruz, 2014}). For women who are murdered by men simply because of their gender or men who kill each other as a result of the systematic use of violent relational practices, both situations affect mostly young and poor people who, in addition to being the victims, are permanently stigmatized or criminalized because of their gender, lifestyle, social condition, place of residence, or identity ascription.

Male homicide is not a new phenomenon in Ciudad Juárez (^{Martínez & Howard, 2006}), although it grew exponentially over the past decade due to the uncontrolled presence of organized crime. Mortal violence found most of its victims among young people (^{Cruz, 2011}; ^{Monárrez, 2017}), which amounts to what ^{Valenzuela (2015)} calls juvenicide. This is a condition in which specific sectors of the youth population are stigmatized, discredited and murdered. Mortal violence involving processes of economic and social scarcity, the banalization of evil, the discrediting of institutions and the spread of corruption, impunity and death. This is always due to the complicity of the State, either due to omission, such as its inability to guarantee the rule of law, or action, especially when it criminalizes and persecutes certain youth sectors.

Thus, deadly, gender-based, and often juvenile violence became part of everyday life for the people of Juárez. It is also a structural expression of the social reality and subjectivities that take place in the city (^{Domínguez & Ravelo, 2011}; ^{Sánchez et al., 2015}). ^{Cruz (2016)} states that more than 9,500 male homicides occurred in Juárez from 2008 to 2011; 4,000 of the victims were people under 29 years of age. These people are systematically criminalized, pejoratively and contextually classified as “cholos,”⁴ “delinquents,” “narquillos,” and “from the west,” regardless of their their identity ascriptions or the role they play in violent acts. In general, they tend to be young people with few or no opportunities to access education, housing, social recreation, dignified treatment, culture and a life project in their current circumstances (^{Nateras, 2016}).

The existence of these young people takes place amidst abandonment, violence, and social exclusion (^{Almada, 2012}). As expressed by ^{Díaz (2008)}, nobody cares about these people; they come from poor and vulnerable families, they are the children of migrants or single mothers and are often abandoned because of work in the maquila. They lack basic education and have few alternatives to build a decent life. They live between informality and illegality. Part students and part criminals, many of them are drug users. They are seen as “cannon fodder” by drug trafficking groups, who take advantage of their disadvantageous social conditions to recruit them, sometimes forcibly, in exchange for a “salary” that, although precarious, exceeds considerably what they could earn by working in a blue-collar job or learning a trade, which are the types of jobs they can usually access (^{Cruz, 2014}).

^{Núñez and Espinosa (2017)} have stated that drug dealing can be thought of as a “gender- sex” power device that produces ideas, values, attitudes, perceptions, practices, relationships, subjectivities, and sexual and gender identities. A mechanism or device rooted in domination. This concept makes it possible to understand the ease with which young men from the region become involved in criminal activity and access the power it produces, although their positions are those of highest risk and lowest privilege, often leading to their deaths.

Due to its geographical position, Ciudad Juárez is in an advantageous location for the smuggling of drugs into the United States, the largest drug consumer market in the world. Traditionally, this territory had been controlled by the Juárez Cartel, however, in 2007, the Sinaloa Cartel decided to fight for the territory, leading to a bitter and deadly war. The drug cartels took advantage of old disputes among local gangs to form some of their armed extensions, among them the Aztecs (part of the city’s cartel) and the Mexicles los doblados, who work for the Sinaloa cartel. Both groups, made up of mostly young men without formal weapons training are also in charge of drug dealing and other crimes in the territories that they control.

Violence rates have decreased significantly in Juárez over the past years. The decrease is associated with the implementation of governmental and civil society strategies, the withdrawal of armed forces, and especially with agreements among drug trafficking cartels (^{Sánchez et al., 2015}). Cartels themselves “ended” the violence by agreeing on the areas each would de facto control; the north-west-center is governed by the local cartel, whereas the south-east by the outsiders. This pact is evident because in the drug-trafficking network in the city and the recent escalation of violence associated with the re-capture of the visible leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín Guzmán Loera (“El Chapo”), which resulted in internal rearrangements and new disputes.

In this context, male homicide and juvenicide are closely associated with asymmetries of power and ideologies of extreme domination. These inequalities are represented in social forms such as the patriarchal system, characterized by its privileging the masculine over the feminine, but also by its advocating the hegemonic masculinity over other types of masculinity. Thus, men are also excluded and impacted in different ways as generic subjects classified by such order, stratified and alienated, either because they confront dominant discourses (^{Núñez, 2004}) or because they actively participate in them (^{Cruz, 2011}; ²⁰¹⁴, ²⁰¹⁶).

Therefore, many of the homicides in Ciudad Juárez can be thought of as a type of deadly transaction involving men, such as those described by ^{Foucault (1988)}, that is, violent relationships around power that act on the body and use force to subdue and destroy the other, closing the door to all possibilities because and taking young men’s lives; passivity and absolute submission are the alternative to this transaction. Hence the need to analyze the construction process of young men’s identities in specific contexts such as the west of Ciudad Juárez.

Violence in the West of Ciudad Juárez, a Long-Established Phenomenon

Violence had been present in the west of Ciudad Juárez since before ten years ago, when drug-trafficking groups occupied the region. For decades, local men have been socialized along lines of domination and control that use violence as their main relational medium, often with deadly consequences. Jose Luis, a 25-year-old man who currently works as a supervisor in the maquila said that one of his most painful experiences was the assassination of one of his symbolic brothers because they were actively involved in the barrio. This homicide occurred 12 years ago, before the period of exacerbated violence associated with disputes among drug cartels:

The first thing that happened when one of my friends died, well he was like my brother, was my best friend who died, we were fourteen, fifteen, and so because we were in the street and stuff, unfortunately one of died... And all of us in the barrio were talking, we were just chilling and some guys from the other barrio came and stated making trouble, and what we saw was that one of our guys messed up because he made a graffiti in one of their walls knowing that we weren’t allowed to go there, and so they got pissed at us, and they brought a gun, and when they drew it out practically all of us ran away but my friend was in shock and just when he was going to flee they got him, like, damn! He was shot three times in the back, and he fell to the ravine practically at once (José Luis, personal communication, March 29, 2017).

Young Men from the West, Recurrent Victims of Violence

Violence has killed thousands of young men in Ciudad Juárez over the past decade. It has also resulted in other victims, who suffer in silence most of the time and are constantly and permanently made invisible. Young people who are not spoken of or thought of, who have experienced painful and often traumatic experiences associated with the murder of a loved one or with aggressions that have endangered their lives or the life of someone close to them.

Fredy, a 21-year-old man who is currently employed by the maquila, is one of the thousands of indirect victims of deadly violence in the region. This young man described the murder of one of his friends, which took place in 2013, during his life as a student. This violent experience, which he considers the saddest part of his life, has had a negative impact on his emotions and severely hampered his exercise of the social bond which reinforced his decision to drop out of school. His account reflects a criminalization of the direct victim:

Well, the saddest thing ... when they killed my buddy, he was from high school, we were always hanging out together, to have lunch or to his house or mine; so, we would do that, and then one day I found out that he had been killed because he was doing shady stuff… We were very close, no shitting, that was the saddest thing… When he was killed, well, I didn’t want to go out anymore, I didn’t want to do many things, we used to hang out with out girlfriends, our friends, and like, ‘I won’t give up because of this!,’ ‘We’ll go through, right?,’ I better go from home to school and from there back to my place, and that’s it (Fredy, personal communication, March 26, 2017).

For these young people, the phenomenon of violence is not impersonal or abstract. For them, direct victims turn out to be their siblings, friends, or parents and they often experience a high degree of involvement in the violent events, an intensity that usually becomes traumatic and has harmful effects that endure over time. Jesús, a 19-year-old young man who likes to play soccer, reports that the most painful thing he has experienced occurred in 2014, when he saw his father, an ex-convict accused of distributing drugs and attempted homicide, being shot. Jesús thinks that his father is a member of Los Aztecas, a gang in permanent conflict with its enemies:

When my dad got out of the CEFERESO (prison)6 I saw how he got shot, and I saw everything because I was staying at his place, he told me we would go get some “menudo” and I said: Sure, let’s go! A truck came and asked him for “two bags” [of marihuana] and when he turned around to get them, there it was, bang, bang, bang. I was very impressed, I thought: ‘He’s fucked!,’ and then in shock just watching him lying there, and then a friend came along running, he grabbed a gun and went after the guys on the truck and bang, bang, bang, he got one of them. We took my dad straight on the pick-up and ran, he spent one week in intensive therapy. Sometimes I can’t sleep because I have this image of him lying on the street, with blood and all shot (Jesús, personal communication, October 26, 2017).

Young people in the west are often direct victims of violence by drug trafficking groups in the region. Although they did not lose their lives, they suffered violent traumatic experiences that significantly disrupted their identity. In the next interview fragment, Israel accounts how the Mafia was about to assassinate him due to his identity practices as a young man in the Western Zone:

So, one time they came, but they were out for me, they told me to get inside and what could I do? They had a gun. So, I got inside and they started hitting me. They started asking me about my barrio and slapping me, hitting me, and I said that we painted graffiti and stuff, and they said, ‘you want us to kill you?’ ‘No!’ Now I was freaked out. ‘We don’t do anything wrong; we just stand out ground.’ They let me out the next day around eight in the morning and I went home, thinking, while my wounds healed (Israel, personal communication, March 25, 2017).

Some Subjective-Relational Consequences of Violence

Although violence has become part of the culture and everyday life in this city, its harmful effects remain strong and are often traumatic. When the experience is close in relational or affective terms, it evokes meanings associated with pain. Pain, however, is not the only adverse effect of the homicide of a relative or friend, but also frustration and helplessness before the power asymmetries that indirect victims perceive in relation to the alleged perpetrators. Most of the time, due to the type of violent practices used for killing, murderers are assumed to be members of drug trafficking groups. These crimes take place in a social context of impunity that prevent the victims’ families from having real access to justice. In addition, young men experience certain pressures and limits imposed by traditional gender stereotypes concerning the verbalization of emotions such as fear or sadness, which are certainly common in this type of experience.

Gabriel, a young 18-year-old athlete, was visibly moved by the loss he has experienced. He described two experiences associated with the death of loved ones, both very different from each other. The first, a natural death caused by disease, although painful, was easier to elaborate subjectively and relationally. The second was a homicide, a phenomenon characterized by the opacity of both the motives and in the identification of the perpetrators. These circumstances made it very difficult for the interviewee to elaborate the experience, and he refers certain difficulties in recognizing the emotions associated with death:

…They didn’t kill hum [the grandfather] or anything like that, he died when he came to the hospital, he died of a disease het had ... He [the stepfather] was also killed, murdered; that was about five years ago… He was drinking with some friends and suddenly a truck came, and they were forced inside and that’s it, they threw him out near the Camino Real, we didn’t find out anything else, it was difficult, especially for my mom (Gabriel, personal communication, October 26, 2017).

Male homicide also confronts young people with the possibility of being killed in the same circumstances and by the same people, especially when the victim turns out to be another young man, someone from the peer group with whom there was a strong bond based not only on concordance but also on affection. Israel narrates how the murder of his comrades gave rise to a fear of dying that contributed to the transformation of his identity:

…I learned this from my own experience and from others’ because I saw how my friends fell… and when it was my turn, I said, ‘I better run, fuck it,’ I left, because next time it’ll be me, and so I left the barrio and the streets (Israel, personal communication, March 25, 2017).

Regardless of their daily practices, young people in the west live permanently under threat from the violence that pervades the city. Jesús narrates how the violent practices associated with the father's lifestyle threatened his integrity and provoked a relational and emotional distancing with him:

I don’t feel like going there, because he [the father] is still the same, with the drugs and the guns, and the last time I went there they wanted to take me because I’m his kid, and I don’t know how I just fled and said, ‘fuck it, I’m out of here,’ I ran fast and those guys were after me and I got to a house and a man said, ‘Come on, get inside, it’s ok,’ and I got into the backyard of some house and ran away, and I said ‘I’m not going down there anymore! .” I think it was his enemies, because my old man is an Azteca and The Mexiclas are at war with them, so I haven’t been back (Jesús, personal communication, October 26, 2017).

Another effect of the violence is forced displacement, which sometimes mobilizes entire families, usually within the same region. Young people such as Israel or Jesus were forced to abandon their place of residence in order to safeguard their integrity or a family member’s. Tomás, an extremely shy 18-year-old young man, narrated that he is always out on the street, just getting high. He indicated that, in 2016, the violence of drug trafficking groups forced the family to move to the neighborhood where the interview took place:

It’s not because we wanted it, but we had an issue at X and we had to come over here… they got into our house, they broke our windows, they threatened to kill us, they said that they had a lot of people here and in Mazatlán and elsewhere, that they can come here and stuff. Since that day when they told us they were going to kill us, I haven’t seen any movement, but better safe than sorry (Tomás, personal communication, October 26, 2019).

Although the new neighborhood is expected to be a safe environment, it usually has similar social practices compared with the former neighborhood. It is a symbolic alien territory where newcomers are systematically and violently excluded, especially if they seek to participate in the public space. They experience pressure and physical aggression from their peers based on the dominant juvenile and gender norms in the region. Tomás described about some of the violent practices taking place among young men in the west, which also affect women, who are treated as objects:

It was only the first three months that nobody would talk to me, I got into trouble over some girls, and I honestly don’t think it’s worth it, much less if she goes out looking for it, if she starts telling stories, and other guys come picking a fight, I get upset, they punch me or something and I that pisses me off (Tomás, personal communication, October 26, 2019).

Youth Identities as Subjective and Relational Responses to Violence

The violence described thus far in this paper is imposed upon young people in a massive and intense manner, forcing them to develop different positions that allow them to safeguard their integrity and remain part of their social context. These positions include moving away from their place of residence, relinquishing everyday social interaction, and even refraining from forming close emotional bonds with people, as it represents risk. These measures are conflictive and painful because they are forced and sudden, and sometimes experienced as a true loss of self since they attempt against their own identity. Visibly confused, Israel describes the most difficult thing he has ever lived and the terrible transformation of his identity:

The hardest part?... I don’t know... living this life... I’ve had a couple of problems, but they’re hard to move over, you know? The hardest thing… well, I don’t know, not to do the things or other dudes do, not going to friends’ houses, not being present because it’s like not being there, the hardest thing was when I lost those guys, it’s the hardest thing I’ve lived and they let me go really beat-up (Israel, personal communication, March 25, 2017).

In addition to poverty and vulnerability, violence precipitates the formal entry of young people into the labor market, mostly in the maquila, which represents low salaries and poor conditions but is one of the few options young people have for accessing a life project within the legal framework that guarantees certain security based on a contract. Nevertheless, many of them are forced to limit their socialization practices, especially with their peers, to closed spaces that provide better conditions of security and self-regulation.

Many young people, such as Israel (personal communication, March 25, 2017) continue to “party, more pot, more beer, between homies, but always drugs, sometimes a girl, but now we finish early because we have to work tomorrow.” Others, such as Fredy, although they continue to use drugs, “a small puff every now and then, a beer” (personal communication, March 27, 2017), they do it at a friend's house, and almost always on weekends after work. While others, as in the case of Jesús (personal communication, October 26, 2017), reorganize their everyday life between old and new practices: “some days work, others party, others a girl, and sometimes beer.”

In the same vein and when they have some money, young men in the west also use information technologies to establish emotional, amorous, or erotic relationships. A type of contemporary bonding that also allows them to protect themselves from violence.

There are young people who attend previously unappealing contexts such as the church, the community center, the park, or artistic activities, from which they develop new identity ascriptions that bypass the limitations imposed by violence. These transformations are not always favorable; for example, after being forced to move, Tomás built a new identity as a drug addict based on lingering at the park. He damages his health and suffers discrimination, but this praxis has allowed him to become part of the masculine social organization of the youth in his new neighborhood, although he occupies one of the lowest hierarchical positions:

Well, I’m always in the streets, well, not always, not all the time, but almost every day I’m here at the park, dusk till dawn, and since everybody is here, it’s all I do. Also, because I just quit my job, coming here is all I do, getting high all the time. I’m a drug addict now, as people say, and I resent what people say about me. Smoking all day and in the streets, what would you call somebody like that? A drug addict, right? (Tomás, personal communication, October 26, 2019).

There are other cases, such as José Luis’, in which young people use the arts (for him it’s rap music) to process their violent experiences and transform themselves and their identity as well as their social context. Young people are taking on much more active roles in the non-violent recovery of public spaces, as long as their integrity is not at risk:

They say that this neighborhood has a very bad reputation, and yes, they [other people in the context] have gone through some bad experiences, but this neighborhood has truly changed since some of us began doing rap, because the movement is really going places here, and thanks to rap I’ve been able to move on, it’s what’s helped me change my life, there’s an event we do on Sundays, we want to do a movement here in Juárez… it’s for getting together every Sunday, the guys who rap, so we can do something together (José Luis, personal communication, March 29, 2017).