Characters from the film #2

Somewhere on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico – the border town now darkly infamous as the world’s most violent city – sits an asylum for the mentally ill and indigent. It’s run by a local man, José Antonio Galván, aka El Pastor – painter, activist and savior. In the words of author Charles Bowden – who has written extensively about the horrors taking place just south of Texas – the man responsible for this small refuge amid chaos and danger, “is an ex-street addict, ex-convict and a full-time healer in a city of pain. He sells love in a city of death, Ciudad Juarez, demonstrably the most violent city on Earth. He expects to be murdered; he prays he will not be tortured first … Now he has begun to paint, and his pictures are not pretty, but they are searing.”  (from an article in City Weekly by Jacob Stringer)