Juárez: the New Vice City

For years I have grown up exposed to the Grand Theft Auto franchise. I have every edition of the game, played out through multiple fictional cities. The game has been in my life for so long that everything contained within it passes through my mind as a norm, which disturbs me when I think about it, but I am disturbed even more when I think that it is based on things that happen in some cities in real life.

Horrid things like prostitution exist in most cities all around the world, and as does crime, however I saw a cringe-worthy documentary on the ABC channel just moments ago, Ross Kemp: Extreme World: Juárez, Mexico which altered the way I think about Grand Theft Auto and its effect on me and other video game players around the world. I have never witnessed such trepidation until I viewed most that goes on in Juárez in this documentary. I imagined myself placed in that city and wondered how it would be to go about my usual activities whilst cartel members or enemies or betrayers are being shot down or sliced up and dumped on roads near me, members who could also my members of my family. It is insane to think that this is a norm. That somewhere in the world, within Mexico, gang wars are a norm.

I hear about drug addictions and I begin to sympathise towards all those addicted. The demand for drugs must be so high. I would have never imagined the drug market to be so rapid in money gain and so dominant in a city not that significantly large in size. I know that the drug market brings one good money but hearing about one ex cartel member earning just under seven-hundred thousand dollars from one run then legitimises these peoples' actions, in my eyes, in terms of why they partake in these dangerous ways of life. People who struggle to acquire an education, to acquire a career and to bring money to their households, assuming if there are any, would no doubt turn to selling drugs or joining  cartel.

I do not blame these people. I blame the government. I blame the rich. I blame the world for not believing in equality in every possible way. I believe in he who first created money to be used as a tender and to be valued more than a human's life. Take the movie The Box starring Cameron Diaz as Norma Lewis, for example. This strange human arrives at Norma's doorstep and drops off a box with a big red button. If she was to press the button, she would immediately acquire a million dollars, under one condition: a spontaneous human dies right as the button is pressed; money or a life? She chose the money. That reminds me of the cartel and of society in general.

In a way all those not in the cartel act in a similar way. Take those working on Wall Street for example. Those who exploit others to make fortunes. Or the wolf himself, Jordan Belfort. Exploitation does not only exist in prostitution or drug dealing, rather in big money corporations. Remember that Joseph Kony hoax? Or how about a little hoax that happened quite locally, where a mobile phone recycling company asked students at my school to rid themselves of the burden of keeping their useless old mobile phones. These phones contain fragments of gold, which are the best conductor to place in these devices. This company has so many phones that it pulls out kilograms of gold and other metal goods and sells them to other companies in order to make money off people who do not have a clue about what is happening.

How about those people who act like the homeless? Like that old Asian man who knelt and looked as though he had no feet, and somebody scared him off in a way I could not remember so he stood up revealing his feet and ran away? I wonder how much money he made off people. Or that lady who was caught out asking for money to get back home at petrol stations, but then gets back into the car with her boyfriend and drives off with all of the money she obtains, only to return the next day and the day after for more?

But that Ross Kemp documentary really got to me because of the amount of dead bodies it shows. Grand Theft Auto does not have realistic graphics when it comes to dead bodies, nor do I think it ever will due to how gruesome they would be, however they do, in their simplicity, create a visual world where the goings on in places like Juárez become the norm for the game player.

Miranda Barbour

“I feel it is time to get all of this out… 

it is time for me to be honest and I feel the need to be honest.”

Emerging from Pennsylvania, soft-spoken and short, Miranda Barbour lurked the streets of Alaska, Texas, California and North Carolina, hunting those “who deserved it”, burying them under soil, claiming to pinpoint exactly where each body is on a map.

Miranda considers herself the real life Dexter Morgan, offering a response to the disbelief of her actions due to her small nature “looks can be deceiving”, and that her victims “did bad things and didn’t deserve to be here anymore”. Her first victim was chosen by the Satanic Cult in Alaska that she joined when she was just thirteen years old, whose leader prompted her to kill the man who owed them money – she “hate[s] guns”, yet she still shot him after the leader “took his hands and put them on top of [hers] and [they] pulled the trigger”, and she just “continued to kill”, and apparently when she “hit 22 [victims, she] stopped counting”. She would “lure these people in” and “stud[y] them.” She “learned them and even became their friend”.

Miranda and her husband, Elytte Barbour, had found their recent victim on Craigslist, Troy LaFerrara, lured in by a promise to rid him of the loneliness he felt. No longer was he empty on the inside, because soon after Elytte had popped up in the backseat of the car Miranda and Troy were in, strangling Troy, Miranda had decided to fill Troy’s emptiness with a knife, twenty times. Had it not been for the success of Craigslist sexual encounters, the world would not have known about the murderous capabilities of this nineteen year old mother, who just wants to “start over and forget what [she] did”.

The interesting thing about this murder is that Miranda did not intend on killing Troy. She had placed him in a test, unbeknownst to him. She lied to him when they were in her car, her husband hiding under the blanket in the backseat, ready for her cue, telling Troy that she “just turned 16”. He replied “that it was OK”. She told the interviewers that “if he had said no, that he wasn’t going to go through with the arrangement, I would have let him go”.  Her reasoning for his murder is that “he said the wrong things”.  

When she was just four years old, Miranda was sexually molested by an uncle at her sister’s house. He was sentenced to fourteen years of jail time, charged with the sexual abuse of a minor, who would later grow to be a major figure in the news. She had joined the Satanic Cult nine years later, possibly due to the fragility of her soul during childhood. She claims that she “wasn’t always there [mentally”, and that she “knew there was something bad inside [her] and the satanic beliefs [had] brought it out”. By becoming a member of the cult, she “embraced it”.

Miranda now claims that she has killed over twenty-two people. Infamous serial killer Jeffry Dahmer had killed seventeen, Richard Ramirez killed fourteen, and now Miranda has claimed to kill over twenty-two, probably a umber under Andrei Chikatilo’s fifty-three – perhaps Miranda’s amount of killings might surpass Andrei’s. An honest soul, she claims that “if [she] were to be released, [she] would do this again”.

Things brings to the foreground the question: who really is the criminal? The people subject to wanting to perform sexual acts with minors or the people who, using violent ways, are trying to put an end to it? Perhaps Miranda and Elytte’s approach to killing Troy was wrong, however their reasoning is indeed quite reasonable. Troy could have gone off to have sexual relations with other minors, and what is to say that he had not had sex with a minor before his murder?

Perhaps Miranda and Elytte are the modern-day Bonnie and Clyde with a Dexter Morgan twist – modern-day superheroes, who, at the verge of performing more atrocities for a supposed good cause, were caught. Or perhaps Miranda has had feelings of vengeance lurking within her ever since her sexual molestation, and has had her vengefulness grow along with her over the course of nine years, leading her to hate and want to kill those who have had sex with minors. Only time will tell, and only truth will tell, depending on how much of it will come from Miranda during her trial. She claims that she does not want to “glorify [the killings] or get attention”, rather she feels that she should be honest.

Either way, I certainly am anticipating to hear the rest of this story, as it unfolds.

                                                                                                                                                                                         

References:

The Daily Item's interview and report:
http://www.dailyitem.com/x1708329322/BODY-COUNT-AT-22

CNHI's News Service article:
http://www.cnhinews.com/cnhins_news/x1783673805/Teen-mom-says-shes-a-mass-murderer

Hollywood Life's article:
http://hollywoodlife.com/2014/02/16/miranda-barbour-craigslist-killer-who-is-she/