September 4, 2009

Security/Human Rights News

While El Pasoans celebrate the festive Labor Day weekend with barbeques and brews, residents of neighboring Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, will attend mass wakes and funerals. The slaughter of 18 men at the Casa El Aliviane drug rehabilitation center September 2 pushed the murder toll in the Mexican border city to around 1500 for the year so far.

Only days before the massacre, the Mexico City-based Citizen Council for Public Safety (CCSP), released statistics that showed Ciudad Juarez was the most violent city in the world, registering 130 killings per 100,000 people; since January 2008, more than 3,000 people have been murdered in the Mexican border city. The only comparable violence in Ciudad Juarez's history occurred during the 1910 Mexican Revolution, when the city was the scene of several pitched battles.

"A murder victim every hour," read a recent headline in the local press. A more upbeat story commented how the day began in relative calm with "two executions at midnight and a wounded bullet victim" by the morning.

More than 320 people were murdered in Ciudad Juarez and the nearby Juarez Valley during the month of August, now regarded as the most violent in the city's history.

Thursday evening's killing, which was carried out by four heavily armed men who lined up presumed crack addicts and shot them El Salvador 1980-style, was the latest indication that Mexico's narco violence has taken a qualitative leap (or descent) from a struggle for control of drug routes and markets to a generalized war of extermination against anyone deemed a rival or potential rival. Press reports tied the victims to the Juarez Cartel-allied Aztecas gang, but one man who preferred to remain anonymous told a local reporter that other individuals who were genuinely seeking treatment were among the victims.

Chihuahua State Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez said a war without quarter between local criminal gangs was the reason for the El Aliviane slaughter.

"These are really terrorist acts that attempt to intimidate the population and acts that are intended, within the criminal groups, to exterminate rivals.," Gonzalez said.

Although Gonzalez pointed to Ciudad Juarez's proximity to the US consumer culture, the massacre at the El Aliviane drug rehab center was more proof that much of the recent bloodletting has more to do with domination of the local drug economy than export sales to the United States, as is frequently portrayed by Washington and the US press.

Opposition Chihuahua state lawmaker Victor Quintana of the PRD party demanded that authorities clarify the massacre, as well as previous ones at other drug clinics.

"We can't allow the State and society to view these types of massacres as part of the normal routine," Quintana said. "Significant, urgent, focused and committed actions are needed from the three levels of government to render public accountability on what is happening to society and to establish time-lines to end the terror in Chihuahua."

For his part, Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz declared "panic buttons" will be installed in drug rehabilitation centers.

A Sea Change in the Narco War

In the "Good Old Days" of Mexico's narco-economy, killings were strategically directed at high or mid-level operators, as well as lower-ranking individuals who were suspected of informing to the police, ripping off bosses or bungling loads. But in addition to the men killed at the El Aliviane clinic, numerous victims in Ciudad Juarez this year could only be classified as "little people" in the bigger scheme of things.

Large numbers of suspected retail drug dealers, addicts, street vendors and clowns, construction laborers, and others who could not by any stretch of the imagination be considered even middle-level players have fallen to bullets this year. From January 2008 to early August 2009, at least 132 people below 18 years of age were murdered. Another 15 people slain traveling to or from work are believed to have been innocent victims caught in cross-fire.

With more than 130,000 people involved in Ciudad Juarez's illegal drug market, the list of potential victims looms large.

To the immediate south of Ciudad Juarez, a valley that once nourished indigenous cultures and later gained international fame as a top-rate cotton producer has now earned the nickname "The Valley of Death" in the Mexican press.

Selective killings have turned into attacks against entire families, with some homes burned down. Hundreds of families have reportedly fled the violence-torn region.

All this has occurred under the noses of nearly 10,000 Mexican army troops and federal police officially deployed to curb violence. Despite the recent arrests of several suspected hit men accused of hundreds of murders, killings continue unabated. The day after the El Aliviane massacre, a man was chased on foot and shot to death before the eyes of hundreds of witnesses in a downtown market located, again, in a place usually teeming with police and soldiers.

The big honchos of the drug trade, meanwhile, remain free.

The late, legendary narco-lawyer Raquenel Villanueva, who survived numerous bullets and explosions before she was finally gunned down in Monterrey last month, lamented the breakdown of longtime criminal codes in an interview published not long before her death. The one time defender of drug lords blamed the rising consumption of illegal substances in Mexico for the loss of "values" in the business.

A Nationwide Social Cleansing?

As the body count mounts, the violence increasingly resembles the "social cleansing" carried out by death squads in Honduras, Brazil and other Latin American nations.

In Ciudad Juarez, many killings have occurred in the downtown area frequented by drug dealers and addicts but also slated for redevelopment under the Santa Fe Plaza project involving magnate Carlos Slim and other investors. The El Aliviane clinic is located in the rough Bellavista neighborhood next to downtown and only blocks from the pedestrian crossing to El Paso.

Whether intentional or not, the murder of longtime, activist street vendor leader Geminis Ochoa earlier this year removed one possible thorn in the side of developers or others with the mind of controlling downtown Ciudad Juarez.

In the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, meanwhile, at least 38 murders this year of suspected highwaymen and car robbers have been attributed to a shadowy group that leaves threatening messages against thieves. The murder spree coincided with the beginning of a special police operation against auto theft.

To one degree or another, the patterns of violence in Chihuahua and Sinaloa are present elsewhere in the Mexican Republic. Decapitations, body mutilations and "crucifixions" are the flesh and blood signposts of violence that's claimed somewhere between 12,000-14,000 lives since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006.

US Department of Homeland Security border czar Alan Bersin was recently quoted as saying that it might take Mexico 30 or 40 years to get a handle on the narco-fanned violence. Given that hundreds of thousands of people are immersed in the business, the eventual toll of such a conflict could easily take more than 100,000 lives if current rates of violence continue. And that's a simple projection not taking into account the unpredictable consequences of cross-generational revenge, possible regional conflicts and other unforeseen mutations that could evolve from the current spate of carnage.

Under present circumstances, slain street dealers and other low-level operators are quickly replaced. At a seminar in Mexico City last week, the citizen council of the Office of the Federal Attorney General revealed that the economic crisis was sending at least 300,000 additional young people into the ranks of the narco. Marcos Fastlight, council president, contended that organized crime controls 65 percent of Mexico's municipal administrations, which govern between 40 and 50 million people.

Other Possible Consequences of a Violent Breakdown

In a context of spiraling violence and wanton murder, many manifestations of meanness are taking hold among sectors of the population. In Tijuana last week, 15 "indigents," including two individuals in wheel chairs and a one-legged woman, were loaded aboard a police vehicle and unceremoniously dumped in the city of Tecate. After news of the El Aliviane massacre flashed, cyberwriters took to the Internet. An e-mail sent to Mexico City daily La Jornada cheered the killings of "cholos" and other undesirables.
Witnesses to the murder of seven men and one woman at Ciudad Juarez's Seven
and Seven bar last month reported seeing gunmen laugh and then mill around the parking lot for 10 minutes after completing their dirty work, while calls to the emergency operator went unanswered.

As the brutality of the narco war escalates, so goes the political and civic scene.

In August, two prominent social activists, bank debtors' leader Maximiano Barbosa and Sinaloa Civic Front leader Salomon Monarrez were shot and wounded in Jalisco and Sinaloa, respectively, while the president of the Guerrero State Congress, PRD leader Armando Chavarria, was assassinated. Chavarria was a former state secretary for the administration of Governor Zeferino Torreblanca, and considered a leading candidate for the governorship in the 2011 election. Like Chihuahua, Guerrero is a politically strategic place for the underworld. This summer also saw the murder of Guerrero journalist Juan Daniel Martinez Gil.

Routinely, the Mexico City-based Center for Journalism and Public Ethics zaps out communiqués that detail new instances of violence and intimidation against journalists. Most of the denunciations identify government officials as the responsible parties for the attacks against the press. In one of the latest incidents, El Diario de Juarez photographer Silvestre Juarez was allegedly roughed up by Chihuahua state police officers while attempting to cover a protest by Ciudad Juarez resident Rita Lozoya, who stripped down to her bra and panties in protest of her son's murder.

Ultimately, the next victim of the narco war-plus could well be Mexico's much-heralded transition to democracy.

Additional sources: Norte August 7 and 14, 2009; September 3 and 4, 2009. Articles by Herika Martinez Prado, Luis Carlos Ortega, Carlos Huerta, and Nohemi Barraza. El Paso Times, August 17 and September 4, 2009. Articles by Daniel Borunda and Stephanie Sanchez. El Sur/Agencia Reforma, September 1, 2009. Lapolaka.com, July 28, 2009; August 5, 6, 10, 14, 17,18, 29, 2009; September 1, 2, 3, 4, 2009; La Jornada, August 9, 26 and 31,2009; September 3, 2009 Articles by Javier Valdez Cardenas, Miroslava Breach, AFP, and Notimex.

El Universal, August 11, 16, 29, 31, 2009. September 1 and 3, 2009. Articles by Juan Alberto Cedillo, Silvia Otero, Javier Cabrera, Julieta Martinez, Luis Carlos Cano, Noemi Gutierrez, and editorial staff. El Diario de Juarez, August 18 and 31, 2009; September 1 and 3, 2009. Articles by Gabriel Simental and editorial staff. Proceso/Apro, July 29,
2009.

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces,New Mexico

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces,New Mexico