Murder City_ Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields - Charles Bowden [119]
Barrio Azteca assists the Juárez drug cartel in the importation of drugs and with killings in exchange for narcotics at discounted prices, Assistant U.S. Attorney Margaret Leachman said. The gang also offers members sanctuary in Mexico from U.S. law enforcement.
In one of the strangest twists in this month’s court hearings, it was revealed that the gang operates a drug rehabilitation center in Juárez for “la familia,” a code name for its members, located a few blocks from the U.S. border.
The rehab center was necessary because the gang, which has dealt heroin on El Paso’s streets, had some of its members fall prey to the highly addictive drug, gang enforcement officers said.
MARCH
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 1, 2008
IN TWO MONTHS, 76 MURDERS
Yesterday, the last day of February, there were four murders in three different zones of the city.
El Paso Times, March 1, 2008
JUÁREZ—A body tossed off a cliff landed in the backyard of a home minutes
before 3 A.M. Friday in the Felipe Angeles area of Juárez, police said.
The unidentified dead man’s hands and feet were bound with tape, which was also wrapped around his head. He was wearing gray pants, a blue sweater with black stripes and black shoes.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 2, 2008
Elements of the Federal Police discovered three bodies in a clandestine grave in the Colonia La Cuesta. In total, 12 bodies have been exhumed in investigations during the last 10 days.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 2, 2008
Families of disappeared persons denounced the lack of information and of a place where they can provide facts to assist federal authorities to identify the bodies found recently in Colonia Cuernavaca.
“We are fighting, because after we have given so much information and help, they recover the bodies and take them away. They should have a place here where the people here could provide DNA and other information. A place where we could go and say, ‘You know, we are family,’” said Patricia Garibay, member of the Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons.
“There is no way, there is no one who wants to take our information. There are 200 people with files at hand, but we have no data bank, no one has given us any idea where we can go nor to whom we could speak.”
Garibay was interviewed about the discovery of the remains of at least 9 persons buried in clandestine graves in the patio of a house in Colonia Cuernavaca. She said that the excavation revives the hopes that hundreds of family members feel, that finally, they could end the anguish at not knowing the whereabouts of their loved ones, the open wounds left by their loss.
And this week, she added, with the discovery of the remains of at least 9 persons in the house at Cocoyoc 1847 in Colonia Cuernavaca, the families renewed their search.
“You must realize that for us, it is like returning to the first day of the disappearance; yet again, they open up our wounds, and each time something like this happens, it pushes us to try to do something,” she said.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 2, 2008
Ricardo Fuentes Garcia, 38, an infantry captain in the Mexican army, was assassinated in a hail of AK-47 gunfire by an armed commando in Ciudad Juárez, Sunday at 3:00 A.M. as he was driving a red Dodge Neon in Fray Junipero Street. Captain Fuentes Garcia was head of the Rural Defense Corps in the Valle de Juárez. So far the defense forces have lost 33 men across Mexico in 2008, the majority of them in states with a high level of organized crime.
Another murder. José de la Luz Arreola García, 42, died at the Clinica Santa Maria after being knifed several times.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 3, 2008
Due to increasing criminality, Juárez residents are converting their houses into fortresses. Sales of closed circuit systems, access controls and other protection systems for houses and businesses have increased 50% in the last three years.
Las Cruces Sun-News, March 4, 2008
JUÁREZ VIOLENCE CONTINUES AS 7 ARE KILLED IN 3 DAYS
On Monday night, three unidentified