If you have stopped going to Juarez in recent months, here’s one reason to make the trip. Fuego y Espiritu opened on Thursday evening to a packed gallery at the Centro Cultural Paso del Norte. It is an exhibition of 99 photos by the staff of the Diario de Juarez that form an account of daily life during 2008, one of the most violent years in Juarez history. The photos, many of which were published in the Diario throughout the year, tell the story of a city living in fear under the horrors of the narco-violence that took more than 1,600 lives in 2008 alone.
Certain parts of the exhibition are difficult to look at, as is the reality itself. Some of the most graphic of these images include photos taken by Diario photographer David Cruz, like Trabajo Suicio, which shows the decapitated cadaver that hung from Puente Rotario in the middle of the city last November. The most graphic parts of the corpse are covered by a “narcomanta” (banners that have been made and hung by the perpetrators of these crimes, with threatening messages to their enemies and the public). Shots of dead bodies, some of them mutilated and in humiliating positions, are also on display.
But, like Juarez, the exhibition has much more to offer than violence. Many of the pictures show scenes of the everyday life that has continued in Juarez despite the brutality of 2008. There are images of children smiling, the surprised joy of a family playing with ice from a spring hailstorm, and a fantastic photo by Alvaro Avila, Con Sabor a Primera, that shows Indios players Carlos Casartelli and Edwin Santibañez in the moment that the Indios scored the point that pushed them into the first division league of Mexican soccer.
It has been easy for many of us in El Paso to stop going to Juarez over the past year, and to turn our backs on the violence that in large part is due to drugs that are sold in the United States and U.S. arms that are trafficked into Mexico. A visit to the Centro Cultural is a chance to revisit the grim but complex reality of our sister city, and to re-engage with the broad range of emotions, activities and struggles that occur there daily. The exhibition will run through May 31st. Admission is free.
Centro Cultural Paso del Norte (Sala de Multiusos)
Calle Henri Dunant
Zona Pronaf
011 52 (656) 173-0300
