Mexico’s City of Dogs–Al Jazeera America

The dogs of Ciudad Juarez as a metaphor for the ambitions, corruption and failure of people. Published September 4 on Al Jazeera America.

Excerpt:
Imagine, then, the upheaval that upended this imperfect but functioning system when a manageable 20,000 street dogs morphed into a teeming population of 200,000 mutts, German Shepherds, Labs, and the favored dog of city dwellers for years — the Poodle.

The bond between man and his best friend was corrupted. One man nailed a dog to his fence. A gang of 10 children lassoed a cat, hurling it up onto the street cables high above, leaving it to dangle there.

….

But to this day, the dogs still roam the streets. Their miserable bodies betray the lasting legacy of violence, their wretched lives warning that the human conditions — which ushered in the crisis and determined their sad fate — persist.

Read the entire story here.

City of Dogs was a featured selection by Vela Magazine: Women We Read This Week

“This story is about much more than dogs – it is about international corporations paying poverty wages, about people forced to abandon homes and pets, about a culture in which it has become easy to blame violence on “brutality” or “immorality” without actually analyzing the economic violence at the roots of it all.”