I was sitting outside Oasis today, on the curb, talking to a woman and watching some children play. In front of Oasis there is a small, family-owned convenience store (tienda de abarrotes), which is pretty much maintained by sales to the rarámuri from Oasis. A woman who owns another store just down the street, and who is a good friend of mine, had advised me not to become too friendly with the family who owns the store in front of Oasis. She said the two sons, who I had already seen on previous trips to the store, were involved in sketchy affairs. I took her advice with a grain of salt and continued visiting the store once in a while, to buy a drink or lollipops for the Oasis children.

Today, as I was sitting outside Oasis, a van pulled up in front of the store and a man got out. He went inside the store and a few seconds later, the owner of the store, a middle-aged woman, came out behind the man sobbing hysterically. A couple other people followed her out of the store--I don´t know if they were relatives or neighbors--but they were sobbing as well. Soon, other people came out from the side entrance to her house, and before long they were all sobbing as well. Adult men, teenage boys, young women...there was a group of about eight or nine people, all of them sobbing so loudly that it left no doubt in my mind that they had received news of an unexpected death. The mom's hysterical cries were the worst. I saw her grab the shirt of the man who had arrived in the truck and apparently delivered bad news. She pulled on it and he hugged her tightly while she cried into his neck. The rarámuri woman that I was with and I just sat there, watching.

After a couple minutes, we saw a rarámuri man go up to the group to inquire what was wrong. He passed by us after a minute, on his way to Oasis, and told us the woman's son had been shot and killed. I asked if they knew why, and he shrugged and said, "everyone around here knows he was involved with the narcos. He even did a stint in rehab." No one told the rarámuri man officially that the store owner's son had been killed by narcos, but in this state, and knowing this young man's history, there is no doubt about who murdered him. That is how common drug-related murders have become in this state.

I have felt perfectly safe these last four months that I have been in Chihuahua. Apart from taking normal precautions, like not walking alone at night, I have not felt the need to do anything extra special to stay safe. I ride the buses everywhere, I walk during the day with no worries. All this while, I have felt that Chihuahua is nothing like Ciudad Juarez, and that this city has been unfairly labeled as dangerous just because it is four hours from Juarez. I still feel that way, but today I witnessed first-hand as a family received the news that every Chihuahuense fears. It was kind of surreal, a story out of the newspaper. The rarámuri and I just sat there and watched as the family tried to cope with their grief, right in their front yard.