Juarez Professor on a Bloody Year for Mexico

On this last day of 2010 we revisit the story taking place in Ciudad Juarez, in Mexico. It’s a story that we’ve been sad to return to repeatedly, not just this last year, but over the last four years. Yesterday we heard reports of four more dead in the longstanding Mexican drug war between drug cartels and border troops. Gunmen believed to be linked to the cartels killed four police officers and a doctor in coordinated attacks around the nearby city of Monterrey.

Jessica Peña is a professor of sociology at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez. She is also the choir instructor there. Peña says that the situation is so dangerous in Ciudad Juarez that her choir members have all but stopped coming to rehersal, particularly since cartel members carried out several executions in the same building as the choir’s rehersal space.