MEXICAN DRUG WAR

00:00:05
VO: It's not without reason that Northern Mexico has been subject to US State dept. travel warnings since 2009. The US Border is the frontline in an ongoing war on drugs, a region where utter lawlessness has resulted in extreme violence.

00:22

The border city Juarez is one of the most violent cities in the world, and has been for a long time. There have been more than eleven thousand people murdered in recent years.

00:00:32:22

Watch out for these guys

00:00:35:14

VO: Death is a daily visitor here, in a city where no tourist or foreigner dares to come. And the locals are leaving in droves. Many neighbourhoods lie abandoned and deserted. The remaining inhabitants barricade themselves behind high walls and barbed wire.

00:00:56 (Eng)

Should we wait?

Let's go

00:01:03
VO: Photographer Julian Cardona and his colleague Luis Honijos have spent their whole lives in Juarez.

00:01:11 (Eng)

Q: Who is killing who?

Everybody is killing everybody.

00:01:18

VO: For thirty years Cardona has documented the fall of his home town. His photos paint a picture of a city in terminal decline. In Juarez, people can only survive instead of living.

00:01:36
VO: Sitting with Julian and Luis, at the edge of the hotel pool, it is hard to imagine this is a city with a death toll rising beyond that in Syria.

00:01:52:06 (Eng)

TITLE: JULIAN CARDONA - PHOTOGRAPHER

When visitors come to Juarez, they are expecting bullet ridden buildings and bullet ridden houses...

Like middle east.

...Like middle east. And they see a city that is perfect looking, like a normal city. And many people think "Where's the violence - is this a myth?"

00:02:15
VO: Juarez is a confusing city. The danger is not immediately visible to a casual visitor. Yet an indefinable tension hangs over the city ...

00:02:29 (Eng)

If you talk to anybody, any person just randomly, taken any person will have a story of violence, any person will have story of death.  Even within their inner circle or their friends or their relatives, there's a lot of stories of violence in this city, a lot

Q What is the best way for us to behave ourselves then, in order not to get in  trouble?

One of the first things is not to make any mistakes on the streets, day or night, using the camera, because if you take a picture just of a landscape, but inside that pictures is a guy, you could be in trouble.

00:03:29
VO: The story of this city intoxicated by crime is best told not from the streets, but by the residents themselves.

00:03:42:06 (Eng)(TV News clip)

Well the death toll from a massacre at a juarez party is climbing, and tonight we're finding out just how young some of the victims were.

Teens and young adults were the majority of the people inside the home at the time of the shooting. 14 of them were killed, another 19 were injured, and children as young as 7 were among the wounded.

00:03:59

I was on the floor while they were shooting. Hoping not to get shot. They stopped to reload guns. They let the women go. So my girlfriend went outside. I stayed on the floor and pretended to be dead.

00:04:25
VO : It later emerged that the gunmen had accidentally walked into the wrong house. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time can often be fatal in Juarez.

00:04:34

This is all I have left of him.

00:04:40
VO: Arcelia Medrano's son didn’t survive the shooting.

00:04:43

TITLE: ARCELIA MEDRANO - Parent of massacre victim

They took my son to hospital. He was riddled with bullets. He actually survived the first surgery, but then he was given a faulty blood transfusion and, in the end, he did not live.

00:05:19 (Eng)

Q: How does it make you feel when you here a story like this?

You have to take into account that we have heard these stories often over the past four and a half years we have accumulated more than 11000 homicides. It's not just a personal tragedy what i'm saying here. It's also a collective tragedy. A tragedy for the city, and a tragedy for the country.

The only difference between Mexico and the United States is that river.

Q: So where is america?

US, the downtown area of El Paso, is that, you see that, the buildings over there?

Q: The big buildings? yes.

That's El Paso - downtown.

00:06:04
VO: The American city of El Paso and the Mexican city Juarez appear to bleed into one another, but in reality they are two completely seperate worlds, divided by high walls. Everyday, fortune seekers hunt for a chance to cross the border and escape to the promised land, for chance to find work and escape the violence.

00:06:25 (Eng)

One of the problems we have, very, very hard, is that we are in the border with the country who consume the most drugs in the world. If a little guy, who has no mother and no father, he is hungry in his stomach, then the temptation is very bad.

Q: They offer him a hundred dollars.

Less than that sometimes.

Q: And then they kill him?

And then they kill him.

00:06:54
VO: The drug gangs can no longer claim sole responsibility for the violence. Thieves, kidnappers, extortionists and even serial killers populate the border, operating without fear of arrest.

00:07:04:23 (Eng)

Q: There is a lot of impunity?

More than 90 percent of the crimes, are not brought in front of the judge

Q: So you can easily get away with it?

In many cases it is easy to get away from.

00:07:30
VO: Julian Cardona is a photographer of death. His studios are the morgues and cemeteries of Juarez. Many victims are not being claimed by their families and they end up in anonymous graves.

00:07:44

All those hills you see here are the unmarked graves. There are new holes, and from time to time they bring more bodies.

00:08:00
VO: Surviving relatives are afraid of gangsters for whom even funerals are not holy.

00:08:04

They know relatives or friends are going to be attending the funerals. And there have bee several attacks at funeral homes. There have been bodies that have been attacked again, even when they are dead.

00:08:22
VO: Mexico is on the verge of becoming a failed state, unable to offer its population safety and security, or to guarantee the rule of law. The police force, guilty of widespread corruption, is unwilling and unable stand against the terror of the criminal gangs.

00:08:37

In almost any country there can be corruption. Don't take that as a sign that "oh in my country there is no corruption". All over the world is corruption.

Q: So we have to accept that that is a matter of fact?

No we have to fight it, but nobody can point out a country or a city that aren't as corrupt as ours.

00:09:01
VO: 17 year old Ricardo is incarcerated in the Juarez juvenile detention centre. He and his  fellow prisoners have been convicted of serious crime.

00:09:11

TITLE RICARDO - Inmate, Juarez Juvenile Detention Centre

Most of us are in here for carjacking, extortion, murder and kidnapping.

00:09:23
VO: Many inmates in Mexican prisons are minors. Gangs target the young as vulnerable new recruits, exploiting their often desperate situations.

00:09:30

Q: What's it like to grow up in such a violent climate?

It's hard to achieve anything under these circumstances. There's so much violence, so much uncertainty. You can't get ahead.

00:09:48

I was injured and I tried to get away. The noise from the guns had made me deaf. The room was filled with smoke. So I was disorintated. I had gunshot wounds in both my legs and I couldn't get up. I waited for help. I asked the first person I saw to get me out of there.

00:10:20

Q: Were you the only survivor?

Yes, in that room I was the only survivor.

To me it feels like it was only yesterday. He was my companion. My life. He gave meaning to my life. And now I'm alone. I have no one left.

00:10:42

The two bodies on the bridge are a warning sign to anyone who dares report drugs gangs to the authorites.

00:10:54
VO: Northern Mexico is in the grip of a death culture - a culture without compassion, sadistic and incomprehensible. Santa Muerte is venerated, the saint of death protecting frightened believers against the grim reaper.

00:11:05

I am the priestess of the sacred death religion.

00:11:12
VO: The cult of Santa Muerte has a clear appeal for the criminals of Juarez, who would prefer to be on friendly terms with death.

00:11:22

Criminals are not automatically members of our religion. They expect Santa Muerte to protect them. But they are wrong. Santa Muerte does not protect those who do evil.

00:11:37
Cordona's family lives just across the border, in the United States. They haven't dared to visit Julian in Juarez for four years now. But still he remains in the city, determined to capture its last breaths.

00:11:51 (Eng)

Q: Do you ever get used to this?

Well sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's acumulative, and sometimes it takes it’s toll. You're thinking about what's happened to your city, your family, in that way it's hard.