2,600 People Killed in Ciudad Juarez  Due to Violence in 2008

 

Dec. 26, 09 (Hamsayeh.Net) - Even during what is normally a happy Christmas Season, Mexico is grappling with some of the harshest economic and social crisis the nation ever went through.

 

Mexico was hit hard with the recession that started in 2008 closing down over half million of its small to large-scale businesses. Since then powerful drug mafias have taken control of several cosmopolitan areas among them the city of Ciudad Juarez close to the American border town of El Paso.

 

In 2008 alone 2,600 people have gotten murdered one way or another due to incredible amounts of violence. ‘The last two years have been just unbelievable — the level of violence we are living each day. The level of violence is just incredible,’ Nelson Armenta a resident of Ciudad Juarez explained to local media.

 

Despite efforts by local authorities, drug cartels have been able to transform the entire city into a battleground for the control of drug smuggling routes to the United States.

 

Many poor local Mexicans still see cities like Ciudad Juarez as the land of promise and flock to the city in large numbers. But since there are no more jobs available many of them join gangs on the streets. ‘Since 2008 to 2009, we lost around 125,000 jobs and that represents almost 50-percent decline in factory jobs, the city's main source,’ a local resident said.

 

Thanks to NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), at this time on average 43 percent of the population lives in poverty without proper food, healthcare, education, social security and housing. Millions have lost their jobs by the neo-liberal initiated recession. 

 

Given these circumstances, this year, majority of Mexicans aren’t celebrating Christmas as they do every year because they worried over what the future may hold.