El Paso/Juarez

Today I drove through El Paso, TX, which sits directly on the border with Ciudad Jaurez, Mexico. Interstate 10 runs so close to the border that you can literally simply look out your car window and see Juarez across the Rio Grande (which looked more like a creek than much of a rio). I took photos of this as well as a video clip but can't get them uploaded at the moment, however this picture I found on the net is almost exactly what I saw:

Almost directly across from this scene is downtown El Paso, which looks like this:

Now, let's be clear, El Paso is hardly Shangri-La, striking me as a grimy border city for the most part, but it is still immensely preferable to Juarez. Two different economic systems and two very different results. In fairness let us also concede that Juarez suffers at the hands of U.S. drug policy that makes the city almost ground zero for organized crime, but it is nonetheless a stark illustration of the virtues of economic freedom.

Update: Here is my picture: