Downtown Juárez

Downtown Juárez is a disturbing and compelling ethnography. In its detailed narratives, it lays out the many layers leading to the creation of what we could all experience given equivalent circumstances: mean streets, drug addiction, sex trafficking, corruption, and bare survival for some and certain destruction for others. This is a necessary treatise to understand how misery on one side of the border region is in part dependent on the luxury of the other as well as the corruption of police, politicians, and the movers and shakers of a city named after the Lincoln of Mexico.

— Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez, Arizona State University, author of Reflections of a Transborder Anthropologist: From Netzahualcóyotl to Aztlán

Howard Campbell's Downtown Juárez is a masterful achievement. He shows us the fabric of a city, in a sweeping and deeply researched study, to capture the underlying narrative of a misunderstood border community.

— Alfredo Corchado, Mexico Border Correspondent, Dallas Morning News, and author of Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter's Journey Through a Country's Descent into Darkness

[Campbell] constructs a detailed and personal account of how violence is produced in Juárez specifically and Mexico as a whole...The author's writing style transports us to the detailed accounts and experiences he went through in Juárez and brings light to those who have been pushed to the shadows...This book is a valuable contribution to the literature as it provides scholars, social workers, and law enforcement officials with a complex understanding of violence in Juárez and the processes of naturalization of violence that continue to perpetuate violence in Mexico.

— Small Wars Journal

This is a masterpiece of urban anthropology and one of the most significant studies of life in Ciudad Juárez in recent memory. It is a formidable work of scholarship that resonates far beyond academe.

— El Paso Matters

An extraordinary book...By telling the tragic tales of people who live in very dire conditions—and perform activities that are not ideal—in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Campbell seeks to offer a general explanation of the intense violence that takes place every day in the central part of this very complex border city...This text and its stories are the result of brave, humane, and exemplary ethnographic work that depicts the 'underworlds of violence and abuse.'

— NACLA Report

Through his detailed narratives...Campbell successfully details the complexities of Ciudad Juárez that lead some people to barely survive and others to certain destruction…Recommended.

— CHOICE

Campbell provides the reader with a gritty but very human account of the limited choices that those living in the Juárez underworld face, and shows how these limited choices become 'normal'...Downtown Juárez is a very compelling read...Readers will come away with an understanding of the everyday lives of the members of the Juárez underworld, and how violence has become a normal part of their daily experience.

— The Sociological Review

Campbell’s vivid and captivating ethnography of Downtown Juárez is not only accessible, well written, and engaging, but also makes notable theoretical and methodological contributions...Campbell’s ethnography neither romanticizes nor pathologizes everyday life in Downtown Juárez. Instead, he masterfully centers the lived realities of his informants and provides greater insights into their subjectivities and humanity...A must-read for scholars interested in violence, the borderlands, and ethnographic methodologies.

— Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

By understanding how individuals frequently fall into both [victim and victimizer], and indeed, how being a victimizer often leads someone to become a victim and vice versa, Campbell offers a nuanced reading of violence in the region, drawing attention to often underanalyzed dynamics...[Campbell's] narratives are vibrant and often nuanced. They are a pleasure to read.

— Latin American Politics and Society