Inferno and Purgatorio in Juárez

Update: 10.05.11  CNN ‘Two headless bodies found in Juarez, third body found at Church

23 February 2011 – The atrocities imagined in the 14th Century epic poem the “Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri seem to prognosticate the horror that encompasses the daily lives of the inhabitants of Juárez, Mexico. The town “stands on the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte), across from El Paso, Texas.

El Paso and Ciudad Juárez comprise one of the largest binational metropolitan areas in the world with a combined population of 2.4 million people. In fact, Ciudad Juárez is one of the fastest growing cities in the world, in spite of the fact that it is “the most violent zone in the world outside of declared war zones.”[1] With an average daily death toll at 12 a day and the most recent massacre of 16 innocent teenagers, Juárez is synonymous with senseless, brutal deaths and is the epitome of avarice and the inhumanity and depravity which are its natural by products.

The violent deaths and murders of both the innocent and guilty have shocked the world and anesthetized the inhabitants. Only in this cauldron of mayhem and destruction could Santiago Meza, known as “The Stew Maker,” find purchase and purpose.

Meza, a scruffy, non-descriptive man was known as “El Pozolero” because he dissolved the bodies of the enemies of a local drug baron in industrial drums of acid turning them into a gelatinous soup which he later poured his property.

Over several years he claims to have “disappeared” 300 enemies of Teodoro García Semental, a former henchman for one of the largest cartels in Mexico. Meza stated that he was paid $600 a week by García and during one interview he said, “they brought me the bodies and I just got rid of them. I didn’t feel anything.”

If Inferno or Purgatorio exists, the innocent citizens of Juárez must ask and wonder what they have done to deserve such a fate, while we ponder if there is justice in this world or the next for those who would blithely take human life over pieces of paper called the dollar.

• Mexico’s Drug War Brings More Carnage To Border
• Border Towns Across Rio, Worlds Apart in Drug War