Today is our last day in Ciudad Juarez. I was going to write a long piece about our stay here, and the reality of the neighborhood, which they call the “maquila dormitories” for the umber of residents here who work in the sweatshops on the border, and I still might write that, but first a story from last night.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day in Mexico. In the house that I am staying in we had a small Mother’s Day celebration, and then the family went out to spend the day with with my host mother’s sister, whose birthday it was. They spent the day at the cemetery remembering their other sister, who passed away three weeks ago, and then came back to their house for a party.
By about ten o’clock there were thirty or so children and adults, some feeling the effects of a long day of drinking, dancing to reggaton in the front yard. Suddenly a noise like firecrackers was heard over the music. We looked down into the street and saw a few men and boys running and diving for cover, as more and more shots were fired. All at the same time people stopped dancing, turned off the music, and herded the frightened children inside. As I started for the door I saw two kids, maybe fifteen, run down the street and hide behind the car maybe twenty feet from me, apparently the targets of the shooting. In the middle of the street a man was walking cautiously holding a rifle.
We went inside and tried to console the children, most under the age of ten, who were crying and asking where their parents were. There were a few more bursts of gunfire. After a few more minutes, everybody slowly filed back outside. Eventually the music came back on, but nobody started dancing. There was a fifteen year-old girl who lived in the house and was dating one of the gang members who owned a rifle, and people wondered quietly if he had been involved. I asked my sixteen year old host brother if he knew what had happened, and he made the gun-firing motion, shrugged his shoulders, and said “It happens almost every day.” Although from what I have heard from the adults in the neighborhood this is a slight exaggeration, The disaffected way in which he talked about it struck me.
After an hour or two, the adults had had enough time and Carta Blanca to forget about the event, and a raucous dance circle started up again. Nobody talked about it for the rest of the night.
Monday, October 29, 2007
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