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February 18, 2014 – Review
“A MadMax Community”
Adam Kleinman
Whether general improvements in a national economy benefit all members of society equally or not, the inverse—large-scale divestment—can certainty reap unemployment, ghettoization, a rise in crime, and other social ills. Consider Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican border city just south of El Paso, which has been the site of some of the most brutal and atrocious acts of violence committed during the still ongoing Mexican Drug War. While it would be reductive to call out just one root cause for the conflict, the desperation created as a highly corrupt government tanked the nation’s economy and devalued its currency in the early to mid-1990s helped to fan the flames.(1) Likewise, that same government’s collusion with drug lords,(2) not to mention the privatization of numerous public monopolies and a multiplicity of other factors, has also added fuel to the fire. In recent years, however, the crime rate in Ciudad Juárez has dropped, and the implementation of various reinvestment strategies citywide now point to signs of recovery.(3) Yet, just what these developments mean, and for whom they are undertaken, is something to be watched closely when few local residents currently have the capital or clout to get in on the action. Amid this complex …