Chihuahua and Cd. Juárez:  Violence is Still Bad

Note:  it has been nearly a year since my last blog entry.  When you are 75 years old your time horizon of active life is quite likely to be in the mid-single digits, so you begin to be picky about your use of time.  I am, as advertised, still working on problems of governance in New Mexico at the moment trying to figure out just what the relationship was between Native Pueblo people and Spanish-speaking colonists in Northern New Mexico during the 18th century.  Unwrapping this, perhaps, may be relevant to certain problems of governance in New Mexico today.  Fortunately, a talented group of archaeologists and historians are working on similar problems, so I have a hefty reading list adding up.  I'm also trying to figure out some of the dynamics of growth and politics in various regions of New Mexico during the twentieth century.  Finally, as in many traditions ranging from Zen in Kyoto to Wittgenstein in European Philosophy to Kobe Bryant in basketball, I believe living in the moment is a critical element in happiness, and I find this is easy to achieve surrounded by pine trees and the company of my neighbor and friends Jerónimo and Eutimia, somewhere in Mora County.  All of this is a long-winded way of saying, I'm not sure what the future of La Politica New Mexico might be, and this is not for lack of serious thinking about it over the past year.

Update on Violence in Chihuahua and Juárez.

2019 was another bad year for violence in our neighboring state of Chihuahua.  Diario de Juárez (Jan. 1 2020) reports 2562 homicides throughout the state, of which 1499 occurred in Juárez.  For both the state and Juárez this is the worst year since 2011.  Juárez registered 1247 in 2018 and only 772 in 2017, according to the report, and Chihuahua registered only 2244 in 2018 and 2012 in 2017.

As reported here in a previous blog, in January of 2019 President Lopez Obrador created a National Guard as one means, he hoped, of stemming the mounting violence in most parts of the country.  On various occasions during 2019 the federal government announced efforts to achieve greater coordination among the various security institutions.