Their city in turmoil, Juarez residents dig in and adapt

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is in Ciudad Juarez this morning, where three people affiliated with the U.S. consulate were killed over the weekend. The trip comes, not in response to this weekend’s killings, but following the horrific massacre of at least 11 high school students at a party in Juarez in late January. Calderon is expected to announce an initiative to make city residents safer.

Ciudad Juarez has been ravaged by violence stemming from a fierce war among members of Mexico’s competing drug cartels. We’re taking a look at how life has changed for residents of this town in torment with Jessica Peña, a professor of sociology at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez, who has called the city her home for 35 years. Peña says she believes that by now every resident of Juarez knows someone who has been killed by drug-related violence, but says, as a native of the city, she simply will not leave as so many others have. Sara Miller Llana is Latin American bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor and has just returned from a reporting trip to Juarez, where she looked at how gangs with ties to the drug trade are emptying neighborhoods and terrorizing local businessmen and women.