It was 11:30 at night in Ciudad Juarez just south of the U.S. border when we reporters heard on the police frequency that a man had been left hanging on the chainlink fence of the Seven & Seven bar, the same place where a few days earlier 11 people had been gunned down.

Once we were sure that the information was real, we approached the bar only after coordinating between ourselves via walkie-talkie. We arrived at the chilling scene, nervous about covering such an incident, and noticed several cars cruising the area around us.

We managed to work from a distance for a short time until the police sealed off the area, blocking our access. I managed to take several photos of the Dantesque scene in which I could see a man’s body with his hands handcuffed to the fence in the form of a crucifixion. We stayed nearby until they removed the body to be taken to the morgue.

Military and forensic experts inspect the body of a man who was killed outside a nightclub in the border city of Ciudad Juarez August 31, 2009. A man was handcuffed to a fence and shot several times by drug hitmen outside a nightclub, according to local media. The assailants also left a warning message, known as “narcomanta”, at the site of the shooting. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

Violence in Ciudad Juarez increases from day to day, in spite of the war against narcotraffic being waged by the city, state and federal governments. That war simply doesn’t work, and the number of dead has continued to increase since 2008, hitting a new monthly record high of 248 murders last July, the majority related to contract killings within organized crime.

This wave of violence has been increasing ever since President Felipe Calderon launched his “crusade” called Operation Chihuahua, which instead of reducing the violence, death and drug trafficking has seen them increase.

The death and violence has affected me as I capture the murders and executions of civilians and police with my camera. What moves me to cover this, in spite of the great personal risk, is the chance to show others what I live daily and reflect on it through a photograph.

Two women hug as forensic workers inspect a crime scene in the border city of Ciudad Juarez July 30, 2009. Local government deputy Claudia Lorena Pérez Marrufo and her companion were fatally injured after a drive-by shooting incident. More than 12,300 people have died in Mexico in a three-way war between rival cartels and the army since President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of troops against the cartels in December 2006. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

One cold night in November 2007, marked the beginning of the war between cartels. We still didn’t know anything about the rivals as we listened on the radio to an exchange of threats between La Linea, cartel of the Carrillo Fuentes family, and Los Chapitos, cartel of Sinaloa. They played narcocorridos (folk music that glorifies the feats of drug bandits) over the police frequency to announce an execution, and I remember the incredulous looks of the police agents to learn that their frequency had been intervened. They seemed to ask themselves, “Who will be the next to fall, gunned down, dead, where, when….?” This was after a “narco-list” had appeared with the names of agents targeted to be assassinated.

This violence in which I live now, incomparable to any time in the past, began to escalate with the 2008 arrest of former police chief Saulo Reyes Gamboa by agents from the U.S. and Mexico, when he tried to bribe an agent to smuggle five tonnes of marijuana into the U.S. Nobody expected such a violent reaction, neither local officials nor journalists. We never imagined what was to come - murders and executions in a war that never ends.

A relative reacts after arriving at a crime scene where 17 patients were killed at a rehabilitation center in the border city of Ciudad Juarez September 2, 2009. About a dozen hooded gunmen burst into a Mexican rehabilitation clinic near the U.S. border on Wednesday, lining up patients before killing 17 of them. The attack was one of the deadliest in President Felipe Calderon’s three-year war against drug cartels, despite the presence of 10,000 troops and federal police in Ciudad Juarez who constantly patrol the city’s streets. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

I remember that the first to fall dead were local policemen on duty. The image of a bullet-riddled patrol car with a dead sergeant draped over a bloodied steering wheel, his bulletproof vest perforated by high caliber bullets from an AK47 assault rifle, nicknamed the “goat’s horn” for its curved magazine, was the first in a long succession of images to begin the criminal unleashing never before seen in my city.

The days in which the war is at its peak are days of insomnia during which I go out before dawn to document rival narcos left crucified only a few meters from police stations, “narcomantas” (a large cloth with a threatening message written on it) left as wrapping to a bloody head, or mutilated bodies, and return home after midnight to my waiting family worried about my work and the risks I take.

Police investigators work at a crime scene where seven bodies were found gunned down in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico, November 25, 2008. The bodies of seven men with signs of torture and bullet wounds were found along side three banners, also called “narcomantas,” threatening rival gangs, according to local media. More than 4,300 people have been killed in drug violence this year as cartels from Sinaloa state try to dominate the Mexican drug trade, fighting rivals and the security forces. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

Many times my wife and my parents, tormented by the daily news, begged me to leave the newspaper, to look for another job, but my passion is greater. They now understand what I do and support me, but pray to God to watch over me each time they hear my radio sound.

It gets worse when we hear radio threats against specific policemen, “Mendez you’re next…you’re on the list….don’t run, we’re waiting for you..” When we hear a narcocorrido we know that minutes later there will be an execution someplace in the city. We know it’s happening, and just wait for the police to confirm.

We reporters aren’t free from the threats. Killers’ radio alerts often include the advice, “…to all the media and the Red Cross we warn you not to approach the injured, wait until they are dead, because if not we will kill you along with them if you pick them up still alive….” It is chilling to hear that on the radio.

But even our passion for journalism isn’t enough to take us too close the place where there is a “54 by a 66″ (death by firearm). On many occasions we would see people destroyed by the bullets from a goat’s horn. We’d often arrive before the police because they were afraid to get close, arriving in caravans with from five to 20 agents to seal the area. Then from less than a kilometer away would come the sad, raucous and piercing sound of bullets.

Forensic investigators inspect the body of a fugitive U.S. marshal, as soldiers gather around the crime scene, at a canal in the border city of Ciudad Juarez March 25, 2009. Mexican police have found the decomposing and badly beaten body in Ciudad Juarez, the main battleground in Mexico’s drug war. Picture taken March 25, 2009. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

When I return home in the early morning to my waiting family, after having received threats and seen the results of at least ten executions on my shift, I would see the streets desolate, no police patrols, only reporters heading home at the end of our shift, and others beginning theirs. The police would be in their barracks, afraid to leave even to attend a call for help. The support between colleagues, reporters, photographers, editors, is mutual. We watch over each other via radio, inform each other where we’re going and if we’ve arrived home safely. “Hey buddy ray, just reaching my 16 (home), everything 9 (fine)….where you headed, animal?”

The threatening narcomantas weren’t sent only to cartel rivals but also to high-ranking officials, Governor Jose Reyes Baeza, district attorney Patricia Gonzalez, Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz, commander of the Army’s Fifth Zone Felipe Jesus Espitia, and even to the president himself. One of them was placed at the scene of a massacre of seven men who were themselves accused of executions, extortion and kidnappings in the city.

Other narcomantas were placed on the bodies of different victims, including one on a victim whose decapitated body was placed with his muzzled head shrouded in a pig’s mask. Another body was found inside a pot used for boiling pork. They even make fun of some of them by putting Santa Claus hats on them.

A man lies dead among evidence markers at a crime scene in the border city of Ciudad Juarez July 13, 2009. More than 12,300 people have died in Mexico in a three-way war between rival cartels and the army since President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of troops against the cartels in December 2006. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

Several times when I was taking my daughter Enya to school I had to rush to one of these scenes, whether a shootout, execution or even a prison riot, with her beside me as there was no other safe place nearby to leave her. Enya was around five when she first began to understand my work. She would ask me where I was going and if there was an execution. I began to leave her in the car so she wouldn’t see the raw scenes.

Death threats are the norm rather than the exception among journalists. One colleague, Armando “El Choco” Rodriguez, was assassinated at the door of his house as he left to take his small daughter to school. Neither local nor federal police have been able to find El Choco’s killers, despite the repeated demands from guild leaders. This happened a few days after contract killers left a body hanging from an important bridge in Ciudad Juarez. The head from that body had been placed at the base of a monument named “Freedom of Expression” in Journalist Square.

Police investigators remove the body of reporter Armando Rodriguez from his car in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico November 13, 2008. Suspected drug gangs shot dead Rodriguez, a Mexican crime reporter who worked for El Diario de Ciudad Juarez, near the U.S. border on Thursday, the latest journalist victim of a brutal drug war in which traffickers are targeting the media. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

The wave of violence has altered my life, and that of thousands of Juarenses, in every way. Nightlife has been the most affected as bars, cantinas and restaurants remain deserted. Anyone who goes out at night does so at great risk.

Once, a group of contract killers arrived at a seafood restaurant looking for members of a rival band. They found them in a corner table, called out, “This is it, mothers..”, before opening fire on the nine of them, all of them youths. The scene caused a nervous crisis among all those present, customers and staff.

Killers sometimes will firebomb cantinas without worrying about who is inside. Life continues here but it will never be the same. We ask ourselves when it will reach its limit and then get better. In the meantime I have to keep working.

Sometimes it’s necessary to reach nearby towns like Samalayuca in the Chihuahua Desert, or Villa Ahumada where last February soldiers and contract killers had a shootout that ended with 21 dead - the scene was of the dead lying on snow, frozen cadavers with guns in their hands and bullet holes in their heads.

Policemen and soldiers carry one of 21 bodies after a shootout between drug hitmen and soldiers in the town of Villa Ahumada, some 130 km (80.7 miles) away from the border city of Ciudad Juarez February 10, 2009. Mexican drug gang violence near the U.S. border ended in a shootout with the army on Tuesday and killed 21 people. The killing spree began in the early hours of Tuesday when around a dozen suspected drug hitmen drove into the farming town of Villa Ahumada in SUVs and dragged nine people, including several police officers, out of their houses, sources close to the attorney general’s office told Reuters. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

These deplorable events that I live and relive daily happen in spite of the massive presence of the military and Federal Police participating in Operation Chihuahua. All the dead, including police and civilians, some of them innocent victims of circumstance of crimes that are sanguinary, unimaginable and inhuman, have been happening in what has been called “Mexico’s best border town….Ciudad Juarez,” a town that wants out of this war. Juarez doesn’t want to be owner of the war but it is simply immersed in it. The population is tired, we want to return to our normal life and not ask ourselves, “How many deaths did the sun rise to today?”

Every day I wake up thinking that this has to stop, and that in this city I will raise my children and try to give them the best life possible.

Bystanders look at a crime scene where a man was gunned down in the border city of Ciudad Juarez June 30, 2009. A massive army surge has failed to calm raging drug gang violence in Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city on the U.S. border that is at the heart of President Felipe Calderon’s drug war. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

The first time I met Angelica I didn’t know how to address him, as a man or a woman. To call him Angelica and then hear his man’s voice was very strange. The first thing I asked was how he wanted to be treated. He said that it depended on how I felt more comfortable. For me she was Angelica.

Angelica is an extraordinary person through whose story I began my own in my new country, Mexico. Mexico is enormous and full of contrasts, color, smells and flavors.

Angelica has a very unique family. Her daughter Shadra has a pet Egyptian rat. I thought, how can a girl have a pet rat and love it as any child loves a dog. She proudly wanted to show it to me and put it in my hands, but I screamed and told her I was sorry but I just couldn’t hold a rat. I was ashamed to be such a coward. Luckily she understood; she’s an 8-year-old girl with incredible maturity that allows her to accept her father as a man and as a woman at the same time. She respects and doesn’t show shame.

Angelica’s wife, Chatall, a lesbian, has always worked to give the best education to their children, Shadra and her other child from a previous marriage, with an open mind that also teaches values and principals. When Chatall realized that she also liked other women, she managed to overcome the barriers and live openly.

Throughout the years Angelica has learned to handle well the matter of her double personality. She has even helped others come out of the closet to show their real selves to society. This is her battle.

When I first arrived in Mexico four months ago I was alarmed by how much homophobia was on the minds of the people. Gay Pride day was close and I contacted the organizer of the event, who gave me Angelica’s name. I met her family one night and she told me her long story as I tried to understand the differences between the different labels – transgender, transvestite, transsexual. I put together a story plan, starting with visits in which I took no photos and we just spent time together to get them comfortable with my presence.

I’ve been a photographer for nearly 16 years, and one of the many marvels that this job offers is the chance to meet people like this, strange for some but wonderful for me, that give me the possibility of experiencing another world.

My last stint was three difficult years in Israel. There one sees conflict every day, even in daily life. One of the sayings there is, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” And that’s what the Israel experience gave me, strength.

What I found in Mexico is a place where there is also conflict, often much bloodier, that shows no sign of ending. As long as drugs are illegal and poverty exists the War will continue. But as a Colombian the subject of drug trafficking, jungle laboratories, coca and land wars is pretty commonplace. That’s why I wanted to begin my life in Mexico with a human story. I wanted to report on something different. The world is not all war, religion or drugs. I wanted to show in some way that in other realities there are happy people, people willing to open their door to show the world how an atypical family lives with mature, respectful and loving children.

News coverage is a daily activity for me, and however I get involved in a story it’s not just a job; it’s also what I enjoy doing. Sometimes I’m just an observer behind a camera, but other times I also end up being affected personally. When the new H1N1 flu virus broke out in Mexico there was an additional factor for me; it was impossible not to suffer the first days of the epidemic as the head of a family.

I thought of the photos that I wanted to take, but I couldn’t help thinking of my daughter, my wife and my mother. As Colombians living in Mexico City we were all exposed to the unknown virus. Fear and uncertainty dominated my family, friends and the millions of people with whom I share the streets of this metropolis.

Very early on Friday, April 24, I put on rubber gloves and a facemask that I bought from the corner pharmacy. The masks were still easy to find, but a day later their scarcity would become a problem. My daughter celebrated along with countless others of her age the sudden onset of vacation, not yet understanding that the break from school would become a virtual quarantine. It was recommended that children not leave their homes during the emergency. In the early days of the outbreak, the government said that the majority of the victims were young adults, but in normal flu outbreaks children and the elderly are always the most vulnerable.

Limited knowledge about the disease and the recommended precautions caused Mexico City residents to avoid physical contact, even between people who a day earlier would greet each other with two kisses, as is the custom in Mexico. Friends and colleagues began to stand at a distance in hopes of preventing the spread of something that we knew little about. But we were learning more about it minute by minute.

Early news about dying victims was disconcerting. Before the government declared that the current flu vaccine was useless for this strain, I went to a vaccination clinic where people were begging for the shot. I had hoped to get one for myself to be safe while covering the story, but I was denied as everyone else. People left the clinic with fear in their faces and voices when they asked each other, “What do we do now?”

Fearful of catching the flu, I climbed into a taxi to continue covering the outbreak. There were fewer people, fewer cars in the city’s normally congested streets. The human landscape changed to one of blue-masked pedestrians. By the end of the first weekend the population was better informed. Most were less frightened in spite of the fact that the virus was among us and spreading.

Monday was the beginning of the first full week with the virus in Mexico. The day was hot and strange, without traffic. Then, a few minutes before noon, the earth shook. My taxi tilted from left to right. Electric cables swung back and forth. I grabbed my camera and yelled to the driver, “Stop! It’s shaking!” I jumped out and the near-empty street was still trembling. I walked to the corner and saw people rushing out from buildings and houses all around me. I could see the fear in their eyes.

In front of Aragon Hospital the street filled with doctors and patients. Some couldn’t take the crisis and fainted. Dozens of people muttered, “…just what we needed…”

At that moment I remembered that my family was alone in our fifth floor apartment. I called my wife but she didn’t answer. I called my daughter’s cell phone but again, no answer. I kept taking pictures with one hand while calling with the other, and hoping that everything was alright.

In the end I confirmed that my family was fine and I felt momentary relief, but then I remembered my mother who had died just two days earlier. Just one day into the flu coverage, Saturday at 5 a.m., my mother, who also lived with us in Mexico City, passed away for reasons unrelated to the epidemic. In that difficult moment I had called my editors to tell them that I couldn’t continue with the coverage plan that day, and I was told to take all the time I needed.

I had the choice of not working due to my family emergency amidst the sudden appearance of the new flu virus. But then I realized that the best therapy for me and the best tribute to my mother would be to go out and report the news. Even in the most difficult moments I couldn’t stop observing the world and my own life through photography.

It’s 10 pm and there’s a cold wind blowing in the parking lot of a strip mall in Ciudad Juarez. This is our “base” of operations where two other photographers and I await news from a radio tuned to the police frequency. One of my colleagues reads a newspaper while the other describes to me his experiences covering the violence. His experiences are stories of terror.

Suddenly over the radio waves come the clear sounds of a “narcocorrido,” or Mexican folk music that glorifies the feats of drug bandits. One of the photographers jumps. “It’s going down,” he says. Baffled, I ask what he means. “The bandits interrupt the police frequency with that music as a signal that they’re about to deposit a package (victim’s remains).” It’s a sober warning and clear example of the power of narcos along much of Mexico’s northern border.

Forensic workers stand next to 11 of 16 slain bodies dumped in an abandoned lot in the border city of Tijuana September 29, 2008. Police found 16 bodies dumped in the seedy Mexican border city of Tijuana on Monday in what the state attorney general’s office said could be a revenge attack for the arrest of a local drug gang hit man. REUTERS/Stringer

Shadows come to life here. They move, threaten and make their presence felt. Silence is broken by the crack of bullets followed by sirens, the rumble of army and police patrols, sobbing, and finally more silence…It’s just another day on Mexico’s northern border. Two, three, ten…who counts them? The numbers make sense only to statisticians that keep tabs on the anonymous bodies that pile up in the city morgue.

Soldiers patrol a boulevard in the border city of Reynosa in the state of Tamaulipas December 8, 2007. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

What happens here is no different from what goes on in other places like Reynosa, Nuevo Laredo, Tijuana, Culiacan, Guerrero, Michoacan, and even Monterrey. It’s more of a feat to name places that do not suffer from narco-violence. Covering it is like covering a war. We have to deal with the threats of narcos and with the pressure put on us by the police and army. The military convoys, the dark uniforms of the federales (federal police), the checkpoints and the yellow tape that marks crime scenes are all part of the new landscape. My friends tell me that this is the new Colombia. I don’t doubt it one bit.

A federal police searches a group of passengers for drugs and weapons as others stand guard at a check point in the border city of Rio Bravo in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, Mexico January 10, 2008.  REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

The narco-culture has a long history in Mexico. The only thing new about it is the unprecedented level of violence. Residents of neighborhoods rich and poor receive undesirable visits in the form of hooded policemen investigating crime scenes, or assassins and soldiers in gunfights that often take innocent victims. Desperate parents listen to shots as they wait for their children to be evacuated from school.

A policeman carries a child away during a gun battle in Tijuana, in Mexico’s state of Baja California, January 17, 2008. A shootout on Thursday, after police agents moved in on a drug cartel group, left four people injured and forced the emergency evacuation of a school in Tijuana, according to the local media. REUTERS/Jorge Duenes

Friends of mine that live in cities like Tijuana almost never go out at night to drink or eat any more for fear of losing their lives in a shootout. And if a policeman appears in the same restaurant they will quickly ask for their food to take out, because so many policemen are publicly executed by narcos. The psychosis dominates daily life. Residents are hostages in their own homes, suspecting anything and anyone that is unfamiliar. The tourist areas dedicated to the permanent flow of Americans that cross the border to drink and dance are now all but deserted thanks to the U.S. government’s warnings. “Stay away from bloody Mexico.”

A woman reacts after arriving to a crime scene where a relative was gunned down in the border city of Ciudad Juarez August 22, 2008.  REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

Nobody knows for sure if the guy next to you is a narco soon to be executed or if he is the executioner. If you go to a dance hall and one of them wants your girl he will have her, by whatever means. It’s frightening to speak to police because you never know which side they work for. They take photos of us and arrest us for asking questions, as their way of finding out why we are there. Taxi drivers, gasoline pumpers and hotel employees are among the anonymous informants watching the movement of the police, the army and everyone else.

Forensic workers and soldiers carry the bodies of three soldiers found dead in the community of El Barro, some 20 km (14.9 miles) away from Monterrey, northern Mexico October 22, 2008. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

One night a taxi driver that didn’t know who I was began to describe in detail the assassination of soldiers that happened here last November. The driver was a “hawk,” an informant for the Gulf Cartel, and admitted it openly.

A simple phone call to a journalist or a newsroom turns into orders about what they can and cannot publish. Assassins converted into editors return to the crime scene to “peruse” photographers’ pictures and decide what they want published. Sometimes we get a direct threat to leave the area. “There’s nothing for you here, a——-. Leave now or you will be next.” And then there are the fake checkpoints where the details give them away – sneakers instead of boots, AK-47 instead of R-15 (the AK-47 is the narco weapon of choice). This is the Old West, except that the victims are counted in the thousands.

Mexican soldiers inspect a vehicle at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Tijuana January 6, 2007.  REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

It’s difficult to write a level-headed account of what is happening here. I find it especially hard for me because apart from having experienced it personally, my colleagues suffer it daily. Impunity is rampant, and we’re all victims.

The widow of slain state prison guard Rodolfo Garcia holds his photograph after a memorial service outside the state government building in the border city of Tijuana April 20, 2007. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

By many accounts this is just the beginning, with the worst yet to come. Meanwhile the state of the economy, ignorance and poverty continue to fuel the fire of this war that seems all but lost for now. All we photographers can do is remain on alert knowing that at any time a few more lives will be snatched in the endless dance of life and death. How many more? Only time will tell.

Forensic workers look at the slain body of police commander Mario Sanchez after being executed by unidentified gunmen in San Nicolas de los Garza, Monterrey May 19, 2007. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

There was great interest in the visit to Mexico by Cuba’s foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque, especially since Mexico’s previous President Vicente Fox had broken off diplomatic relations with the island nation. Adding to the expectation was the fact that the minister’s first attempt to visit Mexico this year was canceled when Cuba was hit by a hurricane.

Perez Roque’s trip was finally reconfirmed with a packed agenda, with one event closely following the next. The first was a visit to the monument to Cuba’s independence hero, José Martí, followed by a visit to another monument to Mexico’s own hero, Benito Juárez. The monuments are not far apart, but because of the tight schedule most photographers assumed that Perez Roque would be driven between them and they went ahead to take an early position. To the surprise of a few, including myself, the minister decided to walk the distance.

As I was running alongside the Cuban delegation, between them and other colleagues that had taken up a position on the sidelines, Perez Roque suddenly turned to me and said he’d like to take pictures of us for a change. He asked me for the camera I was carrying in my hand, exactly the one with the short zoom that I needed to shoot him from so close, so instead I offered him my second camera equipped with a longer zoom.

I keep thinking that maybe I was a little selfish when the minister asked me how to use the camera I was loaning him, and I only took the time to tell him where to look and which button to press. I was naturally more concerned with taking my own pictures than with teaching him how. I’ve always thought that politicians should stick to politics and photographers to taking pictures. And I also believe that while covering the news a photographer should remain as invisible as possible, so my question is whether or not I should have just ignored the minister’s request. I guess this type of anecdote serves to analyze what we can do and what we shouldn’t do as photographers. In a case like this of an informal encounter between a public figure and photojournalists, is it a valid news picture or not?

After transmitting my pictures taken with the short zoom I checked the card on the other camera that Perez Roque had handled, and I saw that he had indeed taken a couple of shots. So I put together a combination photo of one of his pictures and one of mine.