20 Questions With… Molly Molloy
This is a highly recommended interview. Here are a couple of excerpts, but please read it all. It’s not very long.In 2009, more than twice as many people were killed in Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez (population 1.3 million) than in New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago (total population 15 million) combined. The violence, much of which is related to the drug trade, is hard to fathom—but not impossible to count.
Since 2008, Molly Molloy has done this macabre accounting on her Google Newsgroup “The Frontera List.” Working from reports in Juárez’s daily newspapers, Molloy, a reference librarian at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, tallies the number of people killed each day, and then translates and transmits the grim news to the listserv.
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In These Times interviewed Molloy via e-mail in August 2010.
Which media outlets, both American and Mexican, do you depend on for the Frontera List?
I get most of the information on the killings in Juarez from the online versions of El Diario and Norte de Ciudad Juarez. I look at Mexican national sources like El Universal, Milenio, Proceso, La Jornada and others. I also check websites including Lapolaka.com and Arrobajuarez.com. I also have several Google alerts for Juarez news and get postings from the mainstream press and a lot of blogs and websites that way. Also, there are reporters from the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Times, Associated Press, NPR, El Paso Times and various regional TV stations on the list. They will often let me know when they have a new story. There are also quite a few activists and academics on the list and they will send press releases or links to new publications. It is a real hodgepodge of sources.
[…]What’s the most common mistake the American media makes about Juárez?
Echoing government spokesmen who tell us that all of the dead in this war are guilty criminals without demanding one shred of evidence. Or repeating over and over like a mantra that the Mexican Army is a heroic and competent institution fighting a war against drugs.
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Every day, you aggregate and disseminate news stories detailing deeply disturbing violence. What effect does this have on you personally?I admit to being a bit obsessed with the numbers of people killed in Juárez and I lose some sleep to document it. But I think the work is important. I have the intention of organizing this digital archive into a database that will help to answer questions for future researchers.
Some people insist that my focus on the numbers denies the humanity of the victims and of those working for social change in Juárez. I disagree. The actual victims of the slaughter happening in Juárez disappear in the pages of commentary and policy analysis from government, academic and law enforcement experts in both the United States and Mexico. Poets and critics say that perhaps “Juárez has become a metaphor, an emblem of the future of the U.S.-Mexico border…” [See “Juárez is dying, prominent journalist warns,” El Paso Times, April 10, 2010.]
But Juárez is not a metaphor. It is a real place of great neglect and great suffering. It is a place where gangs of killers—organized and otherwise—commit murder with no fear of punishment. It is a place where the citizens can expect no protection from their government leaders or from their institutions.
My job is easy compared to the Mexican journalists in Juárez and elsewhere who risk their lives to gather facts and tell these stories every day. If it helps more Americans to open their eyes to a human rights disaster on our border, then I feel I’m beginning to do my job.
Molly Molloy