Chuck Bowden wrote about Juárez for over fifteen years, disseminating clarity and compassion on a brutal world made more opaque by official excuses and ignorance. His best selling books include Murder City, Down by the River and Juárez – The laboratory of our future. As an American living just across the border from Juárez, Chuck simply stated, I don’t know how to be aware of such a slaughter and not report it.
Chuck also wrote for Harpers, GQ, Mother Jones, New York Times Book Review and Aperture among others. Before Chuck collaborated on Dead when I got here, he co-produced the film, El Sicario Room - 164 with Director Gianfranco Rosi. The film is a stark documentary about a Mexican assassin. Molly Molloy subsequently wrote the book, El Sicario - Confessions of a cartel hit man, based on the film.
On 30th August 2014, Chuck died peacefully in his bed at his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He was 69. The loss of this man cuts deep for anyone who knew him. The least they might say is that they were lucky to have done so.
Chuck always dismissed the title of journalist. He was a reporter who wrote of life as much as he exposed killing.
I live in a time when death is off the table, the thing unsaid. We wish to live forever and because of this desire, we hardly live at all. I am trapped in the great age of caution, of watch out, of fear. But I was blooded in the age of desire and lust and love. I will always be a mesquite waiting for the rain and knowing it is coming even in those summers when it never comes at all.
Gone Deeper
Chuck Bowden 1945 - 2014
