City in Focus: Juarez, Mexico
Texans have a name for Juarez, Mexico: Baghdad on the Border. Not a bad moniker for the city that has eclipsed the more famous Baghdad in annual deaths to become the murder capital of the world. Notoriously lawless and a hotspot for gangs, Juarez has long been a battlefront for the war on drugs. Increasingly, however, Juarez is gaining a reputation as a city fraught with human trafficking. And the victims of the sex-trade flow in the same direction as the drugs: north.
Police have detected a strange icon of the Mexican drug culture, a specious saint who’s ubiquitous image can be found everywhere from tatoos, to roadside shrines, to entire rooms dedicated as shrines. Santa Muerte, a dark replacement of the Virgin Mary, means “Saint of Death,” and is depicted as a skeleton-prostitute. Drug-gangs actually pray to Santa Muerte who they believe grants them protection in the extremely volatile streets of Juarez. But Santa Muerte is a fickle “saint,” and can just as easily mete out death to those who do not pay proper homage.
The sinister powers that drive human trafficking are visible in this border-town perhaps unlike any other border town in the earth. Border towns on the fringes of civilization are typically havens for smugglers and traffickers of all types who live just outside of the reach of the rule-of-law. Juarez is still mostly known for drug trafficking, but if the scantily-clad bones of Santa Muerte are any indicator, human trafficking is on the rise as the part-and-parcel accompaniment to the drug trade. Now is the time to stem the tide of the sex-trade through prayer and fasting to see Jesus glorified and human trafficking brought to an end.
Prayer Points
Pray that God would send revival to Juarez
Ask that King-pin gang leaders would be brought to Justice.
Ask God to pull back the veil on the drug-trafficking industry at large.
