The bars of Juarez

Santa Fe Bridge: The walk to Mexico, Aug. 9, 2010
A reporter friend of mine and I had this exchange a couple of days ago at a little burrito joint in downtown Juarez just after I'd walked over from El Paso:

Me: I turned 30 last week.
Robert: I heard. With all the hand-wringing that brings?
Me: I realized that if my thirties are like my twenties, my forties are going to suck.
Robert: I'm living it.

Existential bellyaching is luxury in a war zone such as Juarez. I don't pretend to understand it, having visited for only a couple of hours, especially on a day when the headlines on the local paper announced that four federales had been assassinated in the previous 48 hours. All's I know is what my friend told me, that the city, tired of the murders and arson in the bars and clubs downtown, was paying owners to abandon the buildings, which were then razed. The vibrant tourism area was being hollowed out murder by murder, demolition by demolition. But there's almost nothing but turnstiles stopping an American citizen from paying 50 cents to walk across the bridge to ol' Mexico, to see the bar stoop where a dead body had lain (and been photographed by the local paper) the day before -- and to get a beer there, as the bar's open. Taxi drivers clamor for business in pristine English. A very friendly fellow approached and offered to escort me to a massage parlor -- "beautiful girls!" -- which I'm sure would do wonders for this roadtrip crick in my neck. (When solicited for prostitution, or its near-equivalents, I often wonder whether these nets are cast indiscriminately or whether I radiate affluence, deviance or both. In this case, given my current sporting of what is clearly a sex-tourist mustache, I'm going to speculate that it's the latter.) In Mexico, trucks full of masked and armed military police zip through the streets -- but no one even checks your passport as you wander into the country. Of course, the walk back across the river by a Mexican citizen is a sonofabitch, and some people spend their whole lives wishing they could visit El Paso, a pisshole by almost any American standards. What can you do to help Mexico? Starve the beast: Smoke only locally grown pot and stop snorting coke. (That shit'll fry your dopamine receptors anyhow.) Boycott violence. Or just legalize/regulate dope already.