Murder City_ Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields - Charles Bowden [70]
“Who sent you?” asks the dying comandante.
I keep making little lists, and I pretend these lists impose some reason on the killing. They do not, but still I scribble them in my notebooks as I sit in cafés drinking coffee and pretending to understand.
On January 16, 2008, Saulo Reyes Gamboa is arrested in El Paso in a drug sting. He is a leading Juárez businessman. From 1998 to 2001, he was the chief of police in Juárez.
On February 19, four men were executed in Ascensión and Palomas in a twenty-four-hour period. The reports describe the killers as armed commandos.
In late February, close to $2 million is found in an SUV entering Mexico, mainly in five-dollar and hundred-dollar bills. The vehicle is driven by a family from Kansas City, Kansas.
On March 1, a man’s body is tossed off a cliff around 3 A.M. and lands in a Juárez backyard. The man’s hand, feet, and head are bound with tape.
In early April, the Mexican army arrests ten Juárez policemen. The army says they possessed drugs and illegal guns.
Twenty-two employees of the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office are taken in by the Mexican army for questioning. The army says it is looking for links to organized crime.
On May 6, a municipal policewoman comes to her door in Juárez. She takes thirty-two rounds.
On May 15, the police bring wounded men to the city hospital in Juárez. Then armed men come and kill four people. The hospital staff calls the authorities for three hours. No one responds.
A new list of police yet to be executed is found outside a police station. At the bottom of the list of names is a simple thought: “Thank you for waiting.”
On June 4, two city cops die in a barrage in front of a school as they are dropping off their four- and six-year-olds. The woman is thirty, the man thirty-five.
She is scared of the killings in Juárez and wants to go live with her mom in El Paso. But she does not get out in time. She is sitting in a park with two girlfriends when some guys in a nice new Tahoe snatch them—the men are being followed by killers and want the girls as human shields. The girls make a break for it, and two get away. But Alexia, twelve, doesn’t quite make it. She takes a round in the head. The killers disappear with the guys in the Tahoe, and nobody has seen them since. The girl’s father insists he is not a narco but a Christian. It is Monday, June 9, and summer has yet to begin.
On Father’s Day, three Juárez businesses burn in forty minutes. The newspaper notes that armed commandos arrive early in the morning and torch the places with Molotov cocktails. One of the establishments is the Aroma café where Chapo Guzman dined. The owner is very upset. He says his fine restaurant had only been open a year, and very fine people dined there, people like the archbishop of Mexico. He realizes that someone thinks Guzman recently feasted there. He does not deny this story, but he does say that rich families often come there to eat, and naturally, they arrive with bodyguards who stand outside the building. And sometimes, five or six rich families are dining, and so, one can understand how in such circumstances, there would be a lot of bodyguards standing around outside. People might see such a sight and then start a rumor, perhaps a story that Chapo Guzman is eating inside the Aroma. No matter, he has no time to discuss such stories. He insists that the authorities must restore tranquility. Meanwhile, he figures that he and his family will move to El Paso.
In the last few days, fourteen nice bars and restaurants in Juárez have been torched, many of them once owned by the late Willy Moya, though the Juárez paper fails to mention this fact. Just as the paper reports the kidnapping of a prosperous Ju