“Everyone to grab their own crutch”. Violence in Ciudad Juárez, an approach from the youth

Abstract

The youth population in vulnerable situation at Juarez City frequently face structural violence that the State produce and an social environment highly violent. The conflictive areas match with areas of high marginalization, where there are conditions of poverty, here the presence of drug trafficking is more evident. This creates an optimal scenario for recruiting young population into organized crime networks. Faced with this reality, the State responds by financing the operation of public security forces and civil society crime prevention initiatives, as well as penalty through the criminal judicial process. But the strategy has not worked, after a period where criminal statistics were steadily declining, in 2019 intentional homicides returned to alarming levels.