In Juárez, Border Militarization Poses Unique Challenges for Harm Reduction
Editor’s Note: This story is a collaboration between Puente News Collaborative and the Texas Observer.
CIUDAD JUAREZ – As the healthcare workers approach the small collection of makeshift shelters along the train tracks that cut through the northern Mexico industrial hub of this border city, the people who gather in this place to use drugs prepare for their arrival.
They’re ready to exchange used syringes for clean ones, a practice that helps prevent injury and disease. They prepare their kits in anticipation of the small packets of distilled water in which they can more safely cook heroin. The workers for Programa Compañeros, a nonprofit that provides supplies and assistance to vulnerable populations in Juárez, have invested years building relationships with people who use heroin in Juárez’s picaderos (a colloquial term equivalent to “shooting galleries”). Some of these locations are essentially tolerated by local authorities, allowing Programa Compañeros to develop established services; the group calls these “drug consumption sites.”…