‘We Were All Involved’: The ‘Great Violence of 2008–2012’ on the El Paso–Ciudad Juárez Border

Abstract

This article discusses El Paso–Ciudad Juárez residents’ experiences of the ‘Great Violence of 2008–2012’ in the border region between the United States and Mexico. As a result of the Mexican government’s ‘war’ on organised crime, launched by President Felipe Calderón in 2016, the region saw a wave of violence that created mayhem, thousands of deaths, and a vast sense of insecurity among the border community. The physical sites border residents had access to – or were denied entrance to – had a fundamental significance for their everyday existence. By the same token, the refusal to succumb to spatial restrictions, or claiming space for oneself despite ongoing atrocities, served as an empowering way to deal with the threat of violence. Drawing on 54 interviews and 22 written testimonies, the article claims that the intersection of spatiality and agency is central in conceptualising experiences of security/insecurity caused by the violence. It argues that spatial strategising provided tools with which the various parties involved exercised their agency in imposing, coping with and countering violence. The discussion concludes by problematising the intersecting issues of agency, involvement and complicity as broader ethical and epistemological questions invoked by the study of violence.