At Ciudad Juárez, Mexico's assembly and garment factories, known locally as maquiladoras, murders, rapes, and kidnappings have long plagued the factories' thousands of female workers. In 2011 the New Statesmen reported that local Juárez paper El Diario put the total number of murdered women at 878, but residents say the actual number is in the thousands. Now a woman calling herself the "Huntress of Bus Drivers" is out to do her part to curb the violence.

20-year-old criminology student Marisol Valles became the bravest college girl in North America when she stepped up to be police chief of Guadalupe, Mexico's second-most violent city after Juarez. Nobody else would accept the position.

Almost 24,000 people have died in Mexico's drug war since 2006, nearly five times the number of US troop deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. An NPR investigation suggests that the Mexican government is helping one cartel rule Ciudad Juarez.