In probing the reason behind the explosion of homicides in his city, Cardona, a Juárez-based photojournalist, discounted the explanation from government officials that Juárez was experiencing a cartel war. “What you see, when looking at those people being killed, is that some of them were part of the domestic drug market, many of them were citizens who were suffering from kidnappings or carjackings or robberies,” said Cardona in December 2012, during an interview for the Bradley Center’s Border Studies Collection at California State University, Northridge, which examines issues of human rights, globalization, and economic violence at the US-Mexico border through photographic collections, newspaper archives, and oral histories with journalists. “The profile of the victims is very wide, as is the profile of the perpetrators — from the army to federal police, state police, municipal police, to all other kinds of people.”
LA Review of Books