Juárez

Mexico
Also known as: Ciudad Juárez, El Paso del Norte
Also called:
Ciudad Juárez

Juárez, city, northern Chihuahua estado (state), northern Mexico. It is located on the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) opposite El Paso, Texas, U.S., with which it is connected by bridges. Formerly known as El Paso del Norte, it was renamed in 1888 for the Mexican president Benito Juárez, who headquartered there in 1865–66 during his struggle against the French.

The city’s historic buildings include the Guadalupe mission (1662) and a late 19th-century customhouse. Among its cultural centres are the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez (1973) and a museum of anthropology and history.

Juárez’s service sector grew during the 1920s as large numbers of American tourists crossed the border to circumvent Prohibition. During the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s, however, the city’s economic troubles multiplied when thousands of Mexican labourers were deported there from the United States, swelling the masses of unemployed. For much of the 20th century, workers from other parts of Mexico were attracted to the city by its relatively high wages and its proximity to the U.S. border.

Juárez is the northern terminus of the National Railways of Mexico. The city is also a commercial and service centre for a heavily irrigated cotton-producing hinterland. Juárez—like its northern sister cities Tijuana, Mexicali, and Nuevo Laredo—has grown markedly since the 1970s, largely because of economic and legal incentives for maquiladoras (export-oriented assembly plants), as well as a thriving transnational tourist sector. Additional maquiladoras were established and the trucking industry grew more rapidly after the North American Free Trade Agreement was implemented in 1994. By the 2020s the manufacturing sector in Juárez had evolved to encompass the production of data-processing machines and electrical wires and cables, along with instruments and appliances used in medical sciences—all of which were predominantly exported to the United States. The population of nearly 545,000 in 1980 had more than doubled by the early 21st century. However, city services struggled to keep up with the swelling population, which resulted in widespread environmental pollution, extensive squatter settlements in outlying areas, and rising rates of violent crime.

Moreover, the city gained notoriety as a staging area for smuggling immigrants and narcotics into the United States. (Conversely, many assault rifles and other weapons seized in Juárez were traced back to the United States.) In the 1990s nearly 200 people, including dozens of young women who—it was later determined—had been raped and murdered, were reported missing in or near Juárez; many of them were presumably killed by drug traffickers. By the early 21st century, drug violence in Juárez had escalated, with rival cartels competing for control of the city. In 2008 alone some 1,600 people were killed there, including civilians and police officers. In March 2009 federal agents and thousands of Mexican troops were sent into the city to quell the violence and patrol the streets. Drug-related violence has remained an issue in Juárez, but by the 2020s it was no longer ubiquitous and instead was largely confined to economically depressed areas of the city, which benefited the city’s tourist industry. Pop. (2010) 1,321,004; (2020) 1,501,551.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Michele Metych.
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El Paso, city, seat (1850) of El Paso county, extreme western Texas, U.S. It is located on the Rio Grande, there bridged to Juárez, Mexico, just south of the New Mexico line. The largest of the U.S.-Mexican border cities, it lies at the foot of the Franklin Mountains (at an elevation of 3,762 feet [1,147 metres]) below a narrow pass where the Rio Grande issues from the bare southernmost spurs of the Rocky Mountains.

The strategic site was recognized in 1598 by Juan de Oñate, colonizer of New Mexico, who called it El Paso del Norte (Spanish: “The Pass of the North”). Franciscans established the Mission Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe there in 1659; the original church stands in the central square of Juárez. Spanish survivors of the Pueblo Revolt (1680–92) took refuge there and built other missions nearby, including one at Ysleta, site of the oldest town in Texas (now in El Paso). In 1776 the settlement comprised a string of hamlets and farms inhabited by 5,000 people. Not until after 1827 did a village exist on the river’s north bank at the present site of El Paso. It became U.S. territory in 1848, when an army post was built (commemorated by the Fort Bliss Replica Museum).

The town, laid out in 1859, was on the Butterfield Stage Route to California. It grew slowly until 1881, when four railways arrived; by 1890 its population had increased more than 10-fold to 10,338. Meanders of the Rio Grande to the south resulted in border disputes in the 1860s; Mexican claims to El Chamizal, a wedge of land on the Texas side, were first filed in 1895. The dispute, which involved the relocation of the river’s channel, was finally resolved in 1963 and is commemorated in the 55-acre (22-hectare) Chamizal National Memorial (1968).

Spanish language and culture distinguish the city. Its old adobe buildings are unmistakably Mexican, yet in general appearance El Paso is a modern American metropolis. It is the commercial and financial centre for an extensive trade territory where livestock ranching, irrigated cotton farming, and mineral production are major economic activities. El Paso has a highly diversified industrial structure centring on primary metals, petroleum and gas operations, food products, and apparel. Its copper-lead custom smelter and electrolytic copper refinery processes a significant portion of the nation’s copper. Fort Bliss (home of the U.S. Army Air Defense Center), the William Beaumont General Hospital, and nearby White Sands Missile Range (in New Mexico) augment El Paso’s economy.

A port of entry and an important foreign-trade and transcontinental crossroad on several major highways, it is served by both U.S. and Mexican railroads. It is a tourist gateway to Juárez and the interior of Mexico and to scenic areas of the United States. Downtown El Paso, with its winding streets and restored adobe buildings that house restaurants and shops, is popular with visitors. The city’s attractions include the El Paso Museum of Art and the El Paso Museum of History (1974; originally the El Paso Cavalry Museum). The University of Texas at El Paso originated as the Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy in 1913. Several of its original buildings were modeled on the Potala Palace of Lhasa, Tibet. The university sponsors the Sun Bowl, festivities held in conjunction with an annual postseason college football game. El Paso Community College opened in 1969. Inc. 1873. Pop. (2010) 649,121; El Paso Metro Area, 800,647; (2020) 678,815; El Paso Metro Area, 868,859.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Michele Metych.
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