The Academy Award-nominated film, the title of which translates to ‘assassin’, tells the story of the inextricably linked worlds of US law enforcement agencies and Mexican drug cartels. 

Sicario follows FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), who leads an Arizona-based kidnap response unit. After she and her team lead a successful raid on a cartel hideout, Macer is recruited to work with an inter-agency special ops team led by CIA agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin).

Alongside Graver’s partner Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro), Macer and the Delta Force team launch operations to capture the main narco-cartel players in the city of Juárez. She quickly learns how blurred the lines are in the USA’s inglorious war with Mexican cross-border drug cartels.

Jolin began by praising Sicario’s cinematography, describing it as a “slow-burning fuse, a mix of horror and sci-fi.” He said: “I’m a sucker for an effective score and beautiful cinematography – and that film has both.

“It posits this extreme reaction to dealing with the war on drugs. It takes you into a morally alien world. And the cinematography makes you feel like you’re in another world. When I came out I was thinking, ‘I don’t know what is wrong or right anymore’,” he said.

Vulliamy, who has worked extensively in South and Central America as a reporter for the Guardian, has visited Juárez frequently. One of the film’s opening sequences depicts decapitated corpses hanging from a bridge in the city – a scene which confronted Vulliamy during a recent trip.

But Vulliamy rejected the film’s depiction of the “darkness” of the city. “I’m actually one of the few people who still goes there for my holidays,” he said. “The more I spend time there the brighter its gets, and the decency of people grows more infectious and wonderful.”

Vulliamy said that that the war on drugs is “the first truly 21st century war.” He added: “It is our society that is irrevocably dependent on cocaine and it is our banks that keep accommodating the cartels by laundering their money. It is a totally post-modern, post-political war that is about nothing.”

Vulliamy praised Sicario for showing that the war on drugs in Mexico “is the future” and that in the murky war, “order is the best thing we can hope for.”

He said: “What you see in the film is the CIA putting people back into Mexico who are the only people who can run the system.

“The instruments of state need people like Chapo Gúzman [the recently recaptured cartel leader] on their side and that’s why they keep letting him out of jail, because he can keep the pax mafiosa.”

At the screening of Sicario at @frontlineclub. A tough game between reality and morality. pic.twitter.com/mEj2BjYUyZ

— Federica De Caria (@FedericaAntea) February 5, 2016

However, Vulliamy criticised the film for failing to depict the lives of real Mexicans. “I can’t understand why Hollywood can’t make a film about Mexico that is actually about Mexicans.

“Our sense of Juárez is nil. There’s no sense of poverty, and no real attempt to go there. It’s still Rambo.”

But Jolin defended Sicario’s focus, commenting that “the film is putting Americans at the heart of it and saying, ‘we can be just as bad as them’.”

Au audience member asked why the US government does not push for the legalisation of hard drugs.

Jolin said legalisation was the right path, but that politicians would never dare advocating it because it would lose them votes. Vulliamy suggested that “it would be great for Greenwich Village and on university campuses,” but that poverty-stricken areas of South America where the drugs are produced would not be improved.

“It’s not going to make anything worse. I just don’t think it’s the answer,” he said.

On Thursday 12 November, award-winning reporter Sandra Rodríguez Nieto spoke with author and journalist for the Observer and the Guardian Ed Vulliamy about life and death in Juarez, the Mexican murder capital of the world.

The evening at the Frontline Club began with a touching dedication to a close friend and colleague of Rodríguez‘s, Arnando Rodriguez, “who was brutally and horribly murdered… He became a symbol of our profession at its most noble.”

Rodríguez cited the murder as a turning point for her: “After Armando got killed, it was just the opposite reaction to fear [for her colleagues at El Diario]. We were committed to keep on writing, to honour him.”

Death became a part of Rodríguez and her colleagues’ everyday conversations while working as a crime reporter for El Diario de Juárez. “We started to share our last wills: ‘If I get killed, don’t let anybody open my coffin’.”

In her latest book, The Story of Vicente, Who Murdered His Mother, His Father and His Sister: Life and Death in Juarez, Rodríguez uses 16-year-old Vicente’s murder of his entire family to highlight how a culture of impunity has destabilised Mexican society.

Rodríguez said: “Vicente might be a sociopath but he convinced two other kids from different backgrounds to help him… and that killing a family was totally easy. When I asked him why, his answer was a revelation for me: ‘Because this is Juarez; this is Mexico’.”

The culture of impunity in Juarez, and Mexico as a whole, is a topic that dominated much of the discussion. Rodríguez was adamant that “we have not just a problem of violence but of impunity, sending the message that killing is easy… and these kids are internalising this environment. A whole generation of kids in Mexico believe that murder is basically legal.”

Rodríguez made clear the extent of corruption in Mexico. She noted that “there is no single institution that you can trust… Not the police, not the army, not the judiciary.”

She expressed her deep belief that a lack of prosecution for crimes is central to the continuation of violence: “If a state doesn’t prosecute crime, it’s sending the message that human life isn’t worth it and that’s the tragedy of the country.”

She also highlighted the multi-layered and interweaving nexus of corruption in Mexico. “Corruption doesn’t start with the bottom of society, it starts at the top and spreads to the bottom.” When she questioned the state attorney in Juarez about an FBI indictment in which eleven out of twenty  cartel members were found to be former police officers, he told her: ”I don’t prosecute organised crime – it’s not my business.”

You can’t sustain a society where.. you work you don’t make money, you get killed nobody cares but that’s Mexico.” @frontlineclub — Molly (@mollykathleenv) November 12, 2015

But Vulliamy also noted the hypocrisy present in much of the discourse on Mexico. “I always get wary of sitting in London talking about endemic corruption in Mexico. HSBC was caught laundering money and none of them went to jail either.”

Rodríguez also pointed out the injustice of the divide between neighbouring El Paso, Texas, and Juarez: “One is the safest place in the US, the other is the murder capital of the world.“ This is because “when narcos in El Paso want to kill, they do it in Juarez.”

When questioned about legalisation, Rodríguez strongly criticised the war on drugs. “The first killer in Mexico is diabetes caused by the consumption of sugar… That’s the drug that’s killing Mexican people.”

She continued: “I want to challenge the narrative of the war on drugs. It’s obviously not working… the prohibition is totally wrong.”

Following an audience question on the role of community solidarity and development, Rodríguez sounded a note of hope. “Juarez is full of grassroots movements. Juarez surprised the country by the level of organisation among the people.”

Among the audience was Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who said: “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.”

One Mexican audience member was moved to tears when thanking Rodríguez for her valuable work in exposing the endemic corruption and violence in her country: “You and good journalism: that’s the solution. We will change Mexico with people like you.”

Ciudad Juárez, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua just across the border from El Paso, Texas has a reputation as the most murderous city in the world.

At the age of sixteen, Vicente Leon Chavez, along with two of his high school friends murdered his mother, his father, and his little sister. Through this inexplicable triple murder, journalist Sandra Rodríguez Nieto has sought to explore the culture of extreme violence that has developed in Juárez. Her in-depth investigation offers an insight into the thought process of the three young boys, the fabric of the city they grew up in and the drug cartels that wage war in its streets.

We are pleased to welcome Sandra Rodríguez Nieto to the Frontline Club in conversation with Ed Vulliamy, writer for the Guardian and Observer. They will be discussing the poverty, deep levels of corruption, incapacitated government institutions and US meddling that have combined to create an explosion of violence in Juárez.

Sandra Rodríguez Nieto has won international plaudits for her reportage in Mexico, including the Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism, the Reporteros Del Mundo award from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo for outstanding work in a conflict zone, and the Los Angeles Times Media Hero list for reporting in one of the most dangerous cities on earth. In 2012, she published La Fábrica del Crimen (The Crime Factory) and this year The Story of Vicente, Who Murdered His Mother, His Father and His Sister: Life and Death in Juarez.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

On Monday 22 June 2015, the Frontline Club screened Mark Aitken’s new film Dead When I Got Here.

The film is centred on Josué, a former psychiatric patient who oversees the day to day running of a mental asylum in the Mexican border town of Juárez. Through Josué, Aitken tells the story of both the asylum and a town left gutted and destitute by the drug trade.

The evening was hosted by Ed Vulliamy, a writer at the Guardian and the Observer and author of award-winning book Amexica: War Along the Border Line. Vulliamy also maintains a strong connection to the city of Juárez.

Mark Aitken (left) and Ed Vulliamy

“He’s a poet,” said Aitken about Josué, “nothing less than a poet. None of [the film] was scripted, he just came out with those lines. I’ve recorded hours with him and there’s a lot more besides.”

Josué has a very dark past, and spent decades in prison for his involvement with drugs. He has now found solace in his work at the asylum and, through the documentary, has been reunited with his daughter.

This film is not, however, about redemption. “I don’t believe in redemption,” said Aitken, who told the Frontline Club audience that he was keen to avoid a clichéd Hollywood narrative. “If this was a Hollywood version you’d have Josué playing with his grandchildren and running [a franchise of asylums]. But it’s not,” he said.

One of the motivations behind the film was to show the connection between us in the West and those who we perceive as being ‘others’.

Mark Aitken

Vulliamy was keen to stress the economic connection that globalised capitalism creates between the developed world and places like Juárez.

“Juárez is… the carberetor under your car, it is the electronics in your mobile phone. It’s all made, if not there then in places like that,” said Vulliamy. “We’re not watching another world, are we Mark? We’re watching very much a part of our lives.”

There is an exploitative relationship, Vulliamy argued, which is shown in films like this one. “They make us,” said Vulliamy, referring to the town’s manufacturing past, “and we use them.”

Aitken told the club that initially he was somewhat scared of the patients at the asylum, but he gradually grew to respect them. “These are survivors,” he said, “they could teach us a few things.”

“You know we’re just more fortunate, that’s the only difference. So this ‘us and them’ dichotomy of us somehow being superior because we’re comfortable is all back to front. It’s the wrong way round,” said Aitken.

Making the film was very challenging for Aitken. The act of filming itself was easy, even ideal, a she only ever had one complaint from the patients. “Most people tended to repeat their actions…”

Ed Vulliamy

Daily life at the asylum was likewise very repetitive, giving Aitken the opportunity to get the shots he needed. “Every day they do these routines, so every day I filmed the same thing, the same people, and I could film it in different ways. And once I’d exhausted it I would move on.”

The difficulty came in the responsibility that he had as a filmmaker to ethically tell the patients’ stories. The people that he was filming were very uninhibited. “They haven’t really got the capacity to say ‘no, fuck off, don’t film me,’” said Aitken, “… I don’t want to just be a voyeur here, I have to do something with this and show them in a particular way.”

What Aitken wanted to show is that we are the same as the people in the asylum, and that we are also all connected.

“If we’re constantly told that we’re different, and the trouble is over there and not here, then it make us feel better,” said Aitken. “Maintaining that fear is very much to do with, ‘well, look at them over there, they’re falling off boats trying to get to Italy from Africa… lucky it’s not you’.”

There is reluctance, both Vulliamy and Aitken agreed, to accept that poverty and drug money are directly connected.

“I mean this seems to be the huge… why it’s not ‘them and us’, why we are them. The money out of that misery [in Juárez and similar environments] is being spent on the golf courses of Connecticut and in the wine bars of Holland Park and Canary Wharf,” said Vulliamy.

“There is this kind of abyss that you [Aitken] and I spend our lives trying to cross, trying to tell people, ‘this is you and you are it’,” he said.

Mark Aitken (left) and Ed Vulliamy