Murder City_ Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields - Charles Bowden [117]
El Fronterizo, Ciudad Juárez, February 16, 2008
MILITARY AND FEDERAL FORCES RETURN TO PRADERA DORADA HOUSE
At about 7:00 P.M., military personnel in at least two tanks as well as federal and state agents moved in on the house again and remained for several hours. Soldiers closed the roads and searched all the cars that passed by.
El Paso Times, February 18, 2008
Officer Juan Hernández Sánchez, a 12-year veteran of the force, was last seen Feb. 11, according to his colleagues and his family. His car was still parked at the police station.
Sunday, a homeless man found a bag at Venezuela and Ignacio Zaragoza streets, containing what appeared to be the belongings of Officer Hernández. There were uniform pants and a uniform jacket embroidered “J. Hernández,” and an undershirt with what appeared to be a blood stain. There was also some clear and gray adhesive tape, police said. Another officer, Jesús Enríquez Solís Luévano, also vanished, although the circumstances of his disappearance were not clear Monday. That case is also in the hands of state investigators, city police officials said.
Norte de Ciudad Juárez, February 19, 2008
FOUR MEN EXECUTED IN ASCENSIÓN AND PALOMAS IN 24 HOURS BY ARMED COMMANDOS
Martín Gonzalo Palacios, 35, alias El Cuiltra, and Horacio Ontiveros Muñoz, alias El Carolino, were taken before dawn, their bodies found along a dirt road.
In Palomas, the bodies of Javier Ortega Miranda, alias El Boby, and Adán Alonso Pérez Fuentes, alias El Oscuro, were found inside a Cadillac Escalade.
Due to such incidents, army troops now patrol the region searching for killers who have sown terror in these communities.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, February 20, 2008
Twenty-one men detained by the army last Saturday in a house in Campestre Arboleda declared that they were beaten by agents they cannot identify since they were blindfolded while being tortured. In their declaration before a judge, they retracted their confession to manufacturing small doses of drugs in the house as they had confessed to while being tortured.
Asrael Govea, one of the detainees, said to the judge: “The officers said to us, ‘Who hit you?’ And I said, ‘The officer.’ And they hit me again and again and kept asking me, ‘Who hit you?’ Until we finally said to them, ‘No one, Sir!’”
The uniformed and shackled detainees gave their declarations in a hearing room inside the state prison. When they raised their shirts, in addition to large purple bruises, some had pre-Hispanic symbols and the word “Azteca” tattooed on their bodies. Most said that they worked construction or sold things on the street and earned between seventy dollars and ninety dollars per week.
New York Times, February 21, 2008
DEADLY BOMB IN MEXICO WAS MEANT FOR THE POLICE
MEXICO CITY—Juan Manuel Meza Campos, 44, was trying to plant a bomb
in a police official’s car when it blew up and killed him on a busy avenue here last week. The blast unsettled residents of the capital, which had so far escaped much of the drug violence that has racked other parts of the country. Mr. Meza, who went by the nickname El Pipén, had links to drug dealers in a high-crime neighborhood called Tepito, where there is a lively trade in drugs and contraband goods.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, February 21, 2008
Before dawn yesterday the Mexican army arrested 8 men at different locations in the city who were supposedly working as spies for the criminal organization known as “La Linea,” composed mainly of current and former police officers. Unofficial sources said 12 were arrested.
The detainees were identified unofficially as: Luis Carlos Ramírez, César and José Vizca