Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, has become the murder capital of the world. Most vulnerable are Los Ninis, young men and women who earned their name from “ni estudian, ni trabajan”—those who neither work nor study.
Dominic Bracco Talks about "Los Ninis" of Ciudad Juarez
Published January 27, 2012
Over the course of two years, Pulitzer Center photojournalist Dominic Bracco spent time with Los Ninis—young people of Ciudad Juarez who have little education and no job prospects. Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, once held the promise of becoming a prosperous center for manufacturing, but today it is a major drug trafficking route with the highest homicide rate in Mexico. Economic decline and lack of infrastructure, especially schools, has pushed an increasing number of Juarez youth to the violent world of the drug cartels where murder-for-hire can cost as little as $50.
Editor's note: This video replaces an earlier version which contained a misstatement about the number and location of los Ninis.
Photojournalist Dominic Bracco II visits Davidson College to discuss his reporting on Juarez's Ninis—youth with little education and no job prospects living in the midst of Mexico's drug wars.
A former school drop-out, Esteban Ruiseco is the type of teenager Mexico's drug cartels prey upon. And he might have joined them, if the clarinet hadn't given him hope for a better future.
Gateways
Grantee
Dominic Bracco II specializes in documenting the effects of Mexican and North American policies on the border region where he was raised. He has degrees in journalism and Spanish literature from The...