Ciudad Juarez, known as El Paso del Norte until 1888, is the most populous city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Located across the Rio Grande river from the American city of El Paso, Texas, it is a major transportation hub, and it had a population of 1,321,004 in 2010; its metro area had a population of 2,539,946. El Paso del Norte was founded by the Spanish in 1659 as a Roman Catholic mission, and, by 1750, it had a population of 5,000. During the French Intervention, Mexican president Benito Juarez established a government-in-exile in Ciudad Juarez, and the city grew after the arrival of the railways in 1882. In 1888, El Paso del Norte was renamed in honor of Juarez, and it was Mexico's largest border town by 1910. In May 1911, at the start of the Mexican Revolution, Francisco I. Madero's revolutionaries took over Ciudad Juarez from Porfirio Diaz's regime, marking the beginning of the end of the Porfiriato. Much of the city was destroyed during the 1911 and 1913 battles, and much of the population abandoned the city between 1914 and 1917. It recovered from the 1920s to 1940s due to tourism, gambling, and light manufacturing, and the city was industrialized and developed from the 1940s to 1960s. The city also underwent beautification, and it had a population of 400,000 by 1970. The 1980s and 1990s saw crime rates in the city spike, as it was a major center of drug trafficking as the home of the Juarez Cartel; it was also the site of over 1,000 unsolved femicides from 1993 to 2003.
Gallery[]
