Danny Don't Rapp Wrote:
Does El Paso, TX have anything to offer? I've never heard much about it but it would be a convenient stop between Austin and Santa Fe.
You would be well advised to
STEER CLEAR OF EL PASO AT ALL COSTS. It's right on the other side of the border from Ciudad Juarez, which is ground zero for the apocalyptic Mexican drug wars taking place right now. All sorts of horror stories about just what atrocities are being committed by those cartels, and El Paso is definitely too close for comfort.
Like Kramer told Newman when reviving The Merv Griffin Show inside his apartment, "El Paso??? I spent a month
there one night!"
Quote:
Recent violence among rival drug cartels has resulted in almost half of Mexico's 8330 drug related murders reported to have taken place since January 2007; Juarez now has by far the highest murder rate in Mexico. Recent murders in the city have grown not only in numbers, but also in barbarity. In late 2008, one murder victim was found near a school hanging from a fence with a pig's mask on his face, and another one was found beheaded hanging from a bridge in one of the busier streets of the city. Journalist Charles Bowden, in an August 2008 GQ article, wrote that multiple factors, including drug violence, government corruption, and poverty have unleashed a disordered violence that now permeates the city.
In January 2004, Ciudad Juarez police unearthed a mass grave containing 12 bodies in a backyard. Mexican investigators found 19 more bodies buried in the backyard of a house in Ciudad Juarez, increasing the tally of corpses found there to 36, officials said March 15, 2008. Federal agents began digging in the yard on March 1, 2008, initially finding six dismembered bodies. Ciudad Juárez has been plagued by violence as Mexico's crackdown on powerful drug cartels stokes turf wars among traffickers who have been linked to thousands of killings in the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. The body count in Mexico stands at 5,400 slayings in 2008, more than double the 2,477 reported in 2007, officials said, with over 1400 in Ciudad Juárez alone. The population of Ciudad Juarez had to change their daily routine and many try to stay home in the evening hours. Public life is almost paralyzed out of fear of being kidnapped or hit by a stray bullet. On 20 February 2009, the U.S. State Department announced in an updated travel alert that "Mexican authorities report that more than 1,800 people have been killed in the city since January 2008."
After being widely considered the most violent city in Mexico, "Nearly 2,000 Mexican soldiers and armed federal police poured into the border town of Ciudad Juarez" in late February. This move by the military came after it was reported that "250 people were killed there by hitmen fighting for lucrative smuggling routes" in the city.
On 12 March 2009, police found "at least seven" partially buried bodies in the outskirts of the city, close to the US-Mexican border. Five severed heads were discovered in ice boxes, along with notes to rivals in the drug-wars. Beheadings, attacks on the police and shootings are common in some regions.
