Photographer Julián Cardona reported and documented on the conditions of Ciudad Juárez since 1993 when he started his career at El Diario de Juárez. Between 2009 to 2013, he was a reporter for Reuters News Agency. His work has appeared in numerous exhibitions and has been featured in many publications. He collaborated with journalist and author Charles Bowden for the publication, Exodus/Éxodo (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2008). Cardona's work documents violence in the border region, migration, the effects of globalization, and the changing landscape of the Mariscal District, Ciudad Juárez, and other locations in Mexico and the United States. The physical collection contains negatives, slides, large prints, ephemera, and publications with bulk dates from the year 1994 to 2006. The digital collection includes born-digital images from 2008, the year the level of homicides reached its climax, to the end of 2012.

Born in 1960 in Zacatecas, Mexico, Julián Cardona migrated to the border city of Ciudad Juárez with his family as a small child. One of his jobs early in life was working in a maquiladora, a foreign-owned cheap-labor manufacturing company on the U.S.-Mexico border. In 1993, Cardona started his photojournalism career at El Fronterizo and El Diario de Juárez. Working for El Diario de Juárez, Cardona documented violence in Juárez from 1993 to 2012. In the 1990s, the city had several industrial parks and hundreds of maquiladoras. Job opportunities lured between 50,000 to 70,000 citizens, paying $5 to $7 a shift. Population growth and the meager wages led to the growth of the drug market in the mid-1990s. Many victims of the drug violence were poor and worked in the maquilas. Cardona captured the experience and culture of working inside the maquilas and the individual lives affected by the industry.

13.04 linear feet

Copyright for unpublished materials authored or otherwise produced by the creator(s) of this collection has been transferred to California State University, Northridge. Copyright status for other materials is unknown. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.) beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owners. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.

This collection is open for research use.