Country ... Mexico
The drug economy

Fault Lines : Mexico: Impunity and profits

COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Fault Lines : Mexico: Impunity and profits

Once known as a booming industrial city and a model of economic progress in Mexico, the border city of Juarez has become infamous as the murder capital of the world.

More than 8,000 people have been killed there since 2008, when Mexican President Felipe Calderon sent in the army to carry out his offensive against the drug cartels.

The official story is that the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels are fighting for the city and the access it provides to the multi-billion dollar US drug market only a few hundred metres away.

On this episode of Fault Lines, Josh Rushing travels to Ciudad Juarez, and asks how human life there came to be worth so much less than the drugs being trafficked through.

Episode first aired June 13, 2011 2230 GMT on Al Jazeera English.

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/faultlines/

See all episodes of Fault Lines: http://www.youtube.com/show/faultlines?s=2010