Drug Trafficking, Violence, and Repression – IRC Americas Program

Fiction: In the film No Country for Old Men (Cohen Brothers, 2007), evil, as represented by Javier Bardem’s excellently portrayed drug trafficker-paid hitman, moves implacably through the Chihuahua desert’s dusty Texan towns, injuring, killing, destroying, getting what he wants. Good, personified by Tommy Lee Jones’ also excellent tired old Sheriff, is impotent against the triumphant march of evil, which he watches, resigned, on the verge of his retirement.

The reality: Holy Week, 2008. Paloma de Villa, with less than 2,000 inhabitants, set in the Chihuahua desert on the border with Columbus, New Mexico. The police commandant and six officers, between them making up the entire municipal police force, resign. They hand in their notice because of the wave of drug-related killings and kidnappings and they exile themselves on the U.S. side of the border. In just 81 days, from Jan. 1 to March 21, organized crime has beaten all records for killings in the state of Chihuahua: 175 people murdered plus 40 corpses found in a Ciudad Juarez mass grave ups the macabre homicide figure to 215 for the year. In March alone, 107 people have been killed in this border town.

The law is impotent against the advance of evil.”*

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