In the annals of border history, U.S.-Mexico relations and global commerce, Ciudad Juárez has often played a pivotal role. Nudged against El Paso, Texas, and Doña Ana County, New Mexico, the northern Mexican city has been a place of revolutions and political upheavals with international repercussions, the passageway of migrants to the promised land of El Norte, and a prime source of cheap labor that first contributed to industrializing the United States and was later employed to help deindustrialize it.