New Mexico True Crime

This thought-provoking book examines gang history in the region encompassing West Texas, Southern New Mexico, and Northern Chihuahua, Mexico. Known as the El Paso-Juárez borderland region, the area contains more than three million people spanning 130 miles from east to west. Mike Tapia examines this region by exploring a century of historical developments through a criminological lens and by studying the diverse subcultures on both sides of the law.

Ten sadistic killers. One state. Countless lives that will never be the same again. To the outside world, New Mexico is the epitome of art, culture, and pristine, picturesque landscape. For those whom have had the misfortune of bearing witness to what lies below the surface, behind the facade of majestic mountains and miles of beloved desert land, life in New Mexico will forever be jaded by the memory of heinous acts perpetrated upon those they loved.

Charles Bowden writes, “this book is not about how the world ends but how a new world is being born.” Murder City explores this new world, focusing on the idea that Mexico is collapsing into a permanent culture of violence. Bowden focuses on Ciudad Juarez, which lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, last year alone 1,607 people were murdered, a number that is set to accelerate in 2009.