Review
“As crime-beat reporter for the local paper (a job that cost her closest colleague his life), Sandra Rodríguez lives and narrates the brutalization of her city, Ciudad Juárez, at a range so close and raw it is painful to read. Yet this book—on intimate terms with Mexico’s narco-carnage, and from under its skin—draws us irretrievably into an abyss we need to know; this is the masterpiece of reportage from the murder capital of the world.”
—Ed Vulliamy, author of Amexica: War Along the Borderline
“Sandra Rodríguez is a reporter the corrupt want to keep at a distance. Untiring, exhaustive, intelligent. This is the only kind of reporter who could turn a case like that of Vicente, a child-murderer, into a story about the world of the mafia and the impunity of violence that reigns in Ciudad Juárez and in Mexico. If you want to understand Juárez, you have to read Sandra.”
—Óscar Martínez, author of The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail
“Sandra Rodríguez Nieto has got some guts. For more than a decade, she has reported from one of the world’s most dangerous cities to be a journalist—Ciudad Juárez. And in The Story of Vicente she paints a shattering portrait of that boomtown’s deadly violence and how it ruined the life of an ordinary boy.”
—Somini Sengupta, author of The End of Karma: Home and Fury among India’s Young
“Her book, like no other recent book written about Juárez, adds layers of understanding that make the reader appreciate the complexities of the problem, moving away from facile explanations and solutions advanced by government officials on both sides of the border.”
—José Luis Benavides, California State University, Northridge
“Rodríguez paints a dismal portrait of a border city in distress. It’s a necessary portrait that government officials and other promoters of Juárez might prefer we not view or ponder.”
—Ramón Renteria, El Paso Times
“Frontline performs a fantastic service of giving voice to journalists who are reporting what many are afraid to. Sandra Rodríguez is one of many who does this. We need to get out there what happens when governments fail to deal with the deep corruption of both banking and narco trafficking.”
—Jeremy Corbyn
About the Author
Sandra Rodríguez Nieto began reporting for the Ciudad Juárez daily newspaper El Diario in 2003. She has received the Reporteros Del Mundo prize from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, the Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists, and the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. She was a Harvard University Nieman Fellow in 2014. She now reports for Sin Embargo.
