Murder City_ Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields - Charles Bowden [142]
Arizona Republic, April 21, 2008
MEXICO CITY—One of Mexico’s biggest drug cartels has launched a bizarre recruiting campaign, putting up fliers and banners promising good pay, free cars and better chow to army soldiers who join the cartel’s elite band of hit men. . . . The Mexican military has long had a problem with desertion. Between January and September 2007 alone, some 4,956 army soldiers deserted, about 2.5 percent of the force, according to the National Defense Secretariat.
Soldiers are facing more incentives to switch sides because of Calderón’s decision to use troops against the drug traffickers. . . . An army private earns an average of $533 a month. . . . “ . . . what’s true is that there is enormous desertion in the Mexican army and police force. They should be worried about that and take action to offer better working conditions.”
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, April 21, 2008
A nine-year-old child appears to have committed suicide by hanging himself in his house yesterday afternoon. His mother, Maria Isabel Tello Cofi, 28, had gone to a nearby store. When she returned from shopping, she found her son hanging from a clothesline rope. In addition to police and forensic personnel, state investigators and Mexican army soldiers came to the scene causing great disturbance to the family and neighbors, who considered their presence excessive considering the nature of the tragedy.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, April 21, 2008
Algae Amaya Núñez, 29, a schoolteacher, was shot to death Sunday night in the Juárez Valley while traveling with her 3-year-old son who was uninjured and a man who has disappeared. She was the sister of the ex-mayor of Guadalupe, Omar Alberto Amaya Núñez, killed by an armed commando in this town on September 24, 2006. Her father, Apolonio Amaya Fierro, also a former mayor, was killed in February 2007. State police found Amaya Núñez’s body inside a red 2007 Fusion with Texas plates. At the time of the shooting, her husband was driving the car and stopped to help the wounded woman, but he was apparently abducted by an armed commando, leaving the three-year-old boy in the car. Police rescued the boy, who was turned over to relatives who fled across the international bridge to the town of Fabens, where the dead woman had lived. The hit men chased the family along the Juárez-Porvenir highway, shooting at their car. Algae Amaya Núñez was a founder of a branch of the Cobach High School in Guadalupe. School director Adolfo Risser Ramos said, “She was an excellent teacher. . . . ” Family members said that she had been living for several years in the U.S. but that she visited regularly.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, April 22, 2008
Andrés Barraza López, 43, rescued by the Mexican army, was the owner of the drugs and weapons found in the house. He had apparently been kidnapped to settle accounts between members of organized crime.
El Paso Times, April 22, 2008
Margarita Crispin, the Customs and Border Protection officer arrested for allowing loads of marijuana to pass through her bridge lanes unchecked for four years, pleaded guilty to drug charges Monday morning and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Crispin, 32, also agreed to forfeit a 2002 GMC Denali, $16,000 in cash, jewelry and any other assets up to $5 million.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, April 22, 2008
Richard Raymond Medina Torres, identified as a member of the U.S. military, was detained yesterday on the Mexican side of the Free Bridge while driving a car with weapons and ammunition in his possession. Inside the car, police found an R-15 assault rifle with 13 clips and a .45-caliber pistol with 70 cartridges.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, April 22, 2008
“We are experiencing