City of fear

A day in Juárez – once a party town, now the murder capital of the world

‘We’re not going to die, are we Dan?’ asked my friend Joe, a CBS radio reporter, shortly before we crossed from El Paso into Juárez, Mexico, murder capital of the world. ‘Nah,’ I replied. ‘Our guide is a priest. It’s a Sunday. The narcos will respect that.’

I was lying to make him feel better. In February, a sacristan in Juárez was killed, one of more than 1,000 drug-related murders in the city so far this year. Elsewhere in Mexico priests had been beaten and butchered: for the cartels, nothing is sacred.

Father Michael, an 86-year-old veteran of the second world war, was quick to inform us that his priestly status and the holiness of the day would offer us no protection: ‘Most killings occur during daylight and they increase on the weekend.’

Nor could we expect our journalistic status to grant us safe passage.