Exactly 10 years ago, I was invited to the International Human Rights Film Festival in Mexico. The invitation was extended to Egyptian journalist Heba Afify, Yemeni human rights activist and journalist Afrah Nasser, Catalonia journalist Judith Torrea, and I.

We spent almost three weeks in the beautiful country, giving lectures about human rights in the developing world at various institutions of higher learning, including Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, the biggest university in Latin America. We also travelled across Mexico, going as far as the southern province of Morelos. But there was one part of Mexico that we were strongly discouraged from visiting, Ciudad Juárez, which lies in north Mexico and shares a border with El Paso, Texas, in the US...