Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. 2008 changed our lives. During its first weeks the first executions took place. Alarmed, we wanted to believe these were just isolated events, underworld quarrels prone to end soon and everything would be just as it was before. However, the killings did not stop, and increasingly became more sadistic and violent. We would wake up just to find bodies hanging from our bridges as we drove to work or to drop our children at school. From their tribunes, our emboldened leaders ensured that organized crime was to be subdued shortly; they said they were about to prove that "no criminal group will be able to withstand the force of the Mexican State." Naively, they imagined that, by means of magic, the mere presence of thousands of soldiers would be enough to pacify the city. More than ten thousand businesses closed down, over one hundred thousand abandoned homes, more than five thousand homicides. These are the true achievements in this war against drugs. The...