Ciudad Juárez ( sew-DAHD HWAR-ez; Spanish: [sjuˈðað ˈxwaɾes] ⓘ; "Juárez City"), commonly referred to as just Juárez (Lipan: Tsé Táhú'ayá), is the most populous city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It was known until 1888 as El Paso del Norte ("The North Pass").
It is the seat of the Juárez Municipality with an estimated metropolitan population of 2.5 million people. Juárez lies on the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte), south of El Paso, Texas, United States. Together with the surrounding areas, the cities form El Paso–Juárez, the second largest binational metropolitan area on the Mexico–U.S. border (after San Diego–Tijuana), with a combined population of over 3.4 million people.
Four international points of entry connect Ciudad Juárez and El Paso: the Bridge of the Americas, the Ysleta–Zaragoza International Bridge, the Paso del Norte Bridge, and the Stanton Street Bridge. Combined, these bridges allowed 22,958,472 crossings in 2008, making Ciudad Juárez a major point of entry and transportation into the U.S. for all of central Northern Mexico. The city has a growing industrial center, which in large part is made up by more than 300 maquiladoras (assembly plants) located in and around the city. According to a 2007 New York Times article, Ciudad Juárez was "absorbing more new industrial real estate space than any other North American city". In 2008, fDi Magazine designated Ciudad Juárez "The City of the Future".
History
As 17th-century Spanish explorers sought a route through the southern Rocky Mountains, the Franciscan Friar García de San Francisco founded Ciudad Juárez in 1659 as "El Paso del Norte" ("The North Pass"). The Misión de Guadalupe de los Mansos en el Paso del río del Norte became the first permanent Spanish development in the area in the 1660s. The Franciscan friars established a community that grew in importance as commerce between Santa Fe and Chihuahua passed through it. The wood for the first bridge across the Rio Grande came from Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the late 18th century. The original population of Mansos, Suma, Jumano, and other natives from the south brought by the Spanish from Central New Spain grew around the mission. In 1680 during the Pueblo Revolt, most of the Piro Pueblo and some of the Tiwa people branch of the Pueblo became refugees. A mission was established for the Tigua in Ysleta del Sur. Piro Pueblo colonial era settlements along El Camino Real, south of the Guadalupe Mission, included missions Real de San Lorenzo, Senecú del Sur, and Soccoro del Sur. Presidio del Nuestra Señora del Pilar del Paso del Rio Norte was established near the mission in 1683.
The population of the entire district was close to 5,000 in 1750 when the Apache attacked the other native towns and ranchos around the missions. Additional Presidios were established to counter them. One Presidio, San Elzeario, was established near El Porvenir in 1774, where it remained until being moved in 1788 to what is now San Elizario, Texas, where that settlement grew up around that Presidio. Another was Presidio de San Fernando de Carrizal, which was established in 1774 at the San Fernando settlement that became present-day Carrizal, Chihuahua.
During the Mexican–American War, the Battle of El Bracito took place nearby on Christmas Day, 1846. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo established the Rio Grande as the border between Mexico and the United States. The main channel of the Rio Grande had moved southwestward leaving the settlements of Ysleta, Socorro, and San Elzeario on the Camino Real on the north bank of the river, isolated from the rest of the towns, in Texas.
Other settlements on the east bank of the Rio Grande were not part of a town at that time; as the U.S. Army set up its installations settlements grew around it. This would later become El Paso, Texas. From that time until around 1930, populations on both sides of the border moved freely across it.
In 1853, a new border adjustment occurred when the territory of La Mesilla was sold in the Gadsden Purchase to the United States, after which the new border line on the Rio Grande began precisely at Paso del Norte, reinforcing its status as a border town.
During the French intervention in Mexico (1862–1867), Benito Juárez's republican forces stopped temporarily at El Paso del Norte before establishing his government-in-exile in Chihuahua. The city grew after 1882, in large part because of the arrival of the Mexican Central Railway. Commerce thrived in the city as more banks began operating, telegraph and telephone services became available, and trams appeared. These commercial activities were under the firm control of the city's oligarchy, which consisted of the Ochoa, Samaniego, Daguerre, Provencio, and Cuarón families. In 1888, El Paso del Norte was renamed to Ciudad Juárez, in honor of president Benito Juárez.
City expansion under Porfirio Díaz
The city expanded significantly thanks to Porfirio Díaz's free-trade policy, creating a new retail and service sector along the old Calle del Comercio (now Vicente Guerrero) and September 16 Avenue. A bullring opened in 1899. The Escobar brothers founded the city's first institution of higher education in 1906, the Escuela Particular de Agricultura. That same year, a series of public works are inaugurated, including the city's sewage and drainage system, as well as potable water. A public library, schools, new public market (the old Mercado Cuauhtémoc) and parks dotted the city, making it one of many Porfirian showcases.
Modern hotels and restaurants were built to cater the increased international railroad traffic from the 1880s onwards. However, national and foreign opposition to the "disloyal" commercial rivalry of the free zone was not long in coming and the Mexican government was forced to modify the status of the free zone in 1891. To this must be added the worldwide devaluation of silver and water scarcity, which generated a severe economic crisis in the city, causing a significant number of workers to flee to the United States. As a result of the collapse of commercial activities and population, Ciudad Juárez focused on tourism as an economic activity at the beginning of the 20th century, particularly promoting "diversions", thus beginning "the moment of scandal"
In 1909, Díaz and William Howard Taft planned a summit in Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, a historic first meeting between a Mexican and a U.S. president, and also the first time a U.S. president would cross the border into Mexico. But tensions rose on both sides of the border over the disputed Chamizal strip connecting Ciudad Juárez to El Paso, even though it would have been considered neutral territory with no flags present during the summit. The Texas Rangers, 4,000 U.S. and Mexican troops, U.S. Secret Service agents, FBI agents and U.S. marshals were all called in to provide security. Frederick Russell Burnham, the celebrated scout, was put in charge of a 250 private security detail hired by John Hays Hammond. On October 16, the day of the summit, Burnham and Private C.R. Moore, a Texas Ranger, discovered a man holding a concealed palm pistol standing at the El Paso Chamber of Commerce building along the procession route. Burnham and Moore captured, disarmed, and arrested the assassin within only a few feet of Díaz and Taft.
Mexican Revolution
The city was Mexico's largest border town by 1910. As such, it held strategic importance during the Mexican Revolution. In May 1911, about 3,000 revolutionary fighters under the leadership of Francisco I. Madero laid siege to Ciudad Juárez, which was garrisoned by 500 regular Federal troops under the command of General Juan José Navarro. Navarro's force was supported by 300 civilian auxiliaries and local police. After two days of heavy fighting most of the city had fallen to the insurrectionists and the surviving federal soldiers had withdrawn to their barracks. Navarro then formally surrendered to Madero. The capture of a key border town at an early stage of the revolution not only enabled the revolutionary forces to bring in weapons and supplies from El Paso, but marked the beginning of the end for the demoralized Diaz regime.
During the subsequent years of the conflict, Pancho Villa and other revolutionaries struggled for the control of the town (and income from the Federal Customs House), destroying much of the city during battles in 1911 and 1913. Much of the population abandoned the city between 1914 and 1917. Tourism, gambling, and light manufacturing drove the city's recovery from the 1920s until the 1940s. A series of mayors in the 1940s–1960s, like Carlos Villareal and René Mascareñas Miranda, ushered in a period of high growth and development predicated on the PRONAF border industrialization development program.
Beautification
A beautification program spruced up the city center, building a series of arched porticos around the main square, as well as neo-colonial façades for main public buildings such as the city health clinic, the central fire station, and city hall. The cathedral, built in the 1950s, gave the city center the flavor of central Mexico, with its carved towers and elegant dome, but structural problems required its remodeling in the 1970s. The city's population reached some 400,000 by 1970. In 1984, the city had a radiation incident after a private medical company illegally purchased a radiation therapy unit. It was dismantled, sold to a junkyard and later smelted to produce six thousand tons of rebar (which is used to reinforce buildings), exposing thousands to radiation.
Juárez has grown substantially in recent decades due to a large influx of people moving into the city in search of jobs with the maquiladoras. As of 2014 more technological firms have moved to the city, such as the Delphi Corporation Technical Center, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, which employs over 2,000 engineers. Large slum housing communities called colonias have become extensive.
Juárez has a long, notorious history of drug trafficking and the intense related violence. Mexico's first homegrown cartel, run by Ignacia Jasso, was seated in the city, and for a time controlled much of the border drug trade. Today the Juárez Cartel controls the routes in Juárez. Related violence in the city is responsible for more than 1,000 unsolved murders of young women from 1993 to 2003.
Geography
Climate
Due to its location in the Chihuahuan Desert and high altitude, Ciudad Juárez has a hot desert climate (Köppen: BWh). The climate was BWk (cold desert) before the current climatic table, because the average yearly temperature was lower than 18 °C (64 °F). Seasons are distinct, with hot summers, mild springs and autumns, and cold winters. Summer average high is 35 °C (95 °F) with lows of 21 °C (70 °F). Winter highs average 14 °C (57 °F) with lows of 0 °C (32 °F). Rainfall is scarce and greater in summer. Snowfalls occur occasionally (about four times a year), between November and March. On December 26/27, 2015, parts of the city received 40 cm (16 in) of snow within a 24-hour period beating the previous record of 28 cm (11 in) set in 1951. The record high is 49 °C (120 °F) and the record low is −23 °C (−9 °F).
Cityscape
Ciudad Juárez has many affluent neighborhoods, such as Campestre, Campos Elíseos, and Misión de Los Lagos. Other neighborhoods, including Anapra, Chaveña, Rivera del Bravo, and Anáhuac, would be considered more marginal, while the remaining neighborhoods in Juárez represent the middle- to working-class, for example, Infonavit, Las Misiones, Valle de Juárez, Lindavista, Altavista, Guadalajara, Galeana, Flores Magón, Mariano Escobedo, Los Nogales, and Independencia.
Demographics
Between the 1960s and 1990s, Juárez saw a high level of population growth due in part to the newly established maquiladoras. The end of the Bracero Program also brought workers back from border cities in the U.S. through Ciudad Juárez, contributing to the growing number of citizens.
The average annual growth in population over a 10-year period [1990–2000] was 5.3%. According to the 2010 population census, the city had 1,321,004 inhabitants, while the municipality had 1,332,131 inhabitants. During the last decades the city has received migrants from Mexico's interior, some figures state that 32% of the city's population originate outside the state of Chihuahua, mainly from the states of Durango (9.9%), Coahuila (6.3%), Veracruz (3.7%) and Zacatecas (3.5%), as well as from Mexico City (1.7%).
A March 2009 article noted there has been a mass exodus of people who could afford to leave the city due to the ongoing violence from the Mexican drug war. The article quoted a city planning department estimate of over 116,000 abandoned homes, which could roughly be the equivalent of 400,000 people who have left the city due to the violence. A September 2010 article in The Guardian said of Ciudad Juárez: "About 10,670 businesses – 40% of the total – have shut down. A study by the city's university found that 116,000 houses have been abandoned and 230,000 people have left."
Government
The city is governed by a municipal president and an 18-seat council. The president is Cruz Pérez Cuéllar, who won as a MORENA candidate in 2021. Six national parties are represented on the council: the PRI, the National Action Party, Ecologist Green Party of Mexico, Party of the Democratic Revolution, Labor Party and the New Alliance Party.