Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields (46 page)

Norma Trosper doesn’t remember growing up with machine guns, burgeoning gangs or drug wars sprawling through the streets of her native town, Ciudad Juárez. That was then, in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Today, it’s a different story in the Mexican border town. “It’s like a war zone,” Trosper said of a recent visit. “I was so scared. I mean, you can feel it. It’s in the air. You just don’t know how many dead there will be for that day. You can almost smell death.”

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
April 20, 2008

Mexican army personnel yesterday rescued a man who had been held captive. When found, he was gagged and bound with brown-colored adhesive tape and had been tortured. The soldiers also confiscated an unknown quantity of drugs in the rear of a recent model Hummer H2 parked in the garage of the house where the victim was held. After being freed, the unidentified man said that he had been held for 3 days after being abducted by a group of men in green uniforms, similar to those worn by soldiers. After spending several hours at the house, the soldiers left with the rescued man. At press time, no official information had been released. In another incident, a motorcyclist was presumably abducted after being chased and shot by a group of men. Witnesses who asked for anonymity said that the motorcyclist had tried to hide in a nearby Dumpster but he was found and taken away by an unknown group of men.

Washington Post,
April 20, 2008

PUERTO PALOMAS, Mexico—Javier Emilio Pérez Ortega, a workaholic Mexican police chief, showed up at the sleepy, two-lane border crossing here last month and asked U.S. authorities for political asylum. In the past year, at least 10 gunshot victims have been dumped at the border checkpoint—taken there by friends or colleagues who believed their only hope of survival lay across the border. In the calculus of U.S.-Mexican border relations, the living were rushed to medical treatment—sometimes with law enforcement escorts—but the dead were not allowed across.

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 a spectacular lack of values and principles; the criminals no longer care if they kill children or if they are present at the scene of the crimes; our society is disintegrating around us,” declared the PRI leader in the Chihuahua state legislature, Fernando Rodríguez Moreno.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
April 22, 2008

Three municipal police officers traveling in a gray Lincoln were shot at about 7:30 P.M. today in the parking lot of an auto parts store on Avenida 16 de Septiembre. Abraham Carrillo Carrillo, 25, died at the scene. Felipe Galindo Reyes, 36, and José Nabor Alarcón were injured. According to news archives, Captain Galindo “Z-5 Galindo” was on the list of police officers to be executed as “those who continue not believing.”

Dallas Morning News,
April 24, 2008

Mexican president Felipe Calderón said that it is vital that his country receives a $1.4 billion U.S. anti-drug assistance package. “I’m not asking the United States for a favor. I’m asking for responsibility. . . . This is a shared problem that requires a shared solution.”

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
April 25, 2008

In Ciudad Juárez, reported cases of domestic violence increased to 6 per day compared to last year, when there was one complaint every 3 days, according to Municipal Public Security Statistics.

MAY

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
May 1, 2008

Roberto Velasco Bravo, the organized-crime-fighting chief of the Federal Police, was shot and critically wounded in Mexico City. It has not been established if the police chief resisted a robbery while driving his Ford Explorer or if it was an execution.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
May 1, 2008

MAZATLAN, Sinaloa—Three confrontations on Wednesday in Culiacán apparently between members of the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels, the Federal Police and the Mexican army left 5 dead, including State police agents Salvador Castellano Rivera and Jesús Martín Muñoz Cota.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
May 3, 2008

Even though murders in April decreased considerably compared to March, not a single perpetrator has been arrested. According to official statistics, there were 52 murders in April, 55% fewer than the 117 in March. In total, there have been 262 murders in the first four months of 2008. January—48 homicides, February—45, March—117, April 52.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
May 3, 2008

Ex-police captain, Sergio Lagarde Félix, 44, who served as bodyguard for the ex-municipal police director, Saulo Reyes, was shot to death yesterday in the Avenida Valle de Juárez. The victim had worked in several other state and Federal Police posts, most recently as chief warden of the local prison. He had resigned in January to administer a funeral business. Lagarde Félix was the second homicide in May. On May 1, Salvador Martínez Espinoza, 20, died after being shot six times near the Yáñez bridge on the Juárez-Porvenir highway.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
May 6, 2008

State police officer Berenice García Corral, 31, was shot 32 times by AK-47 rifle fire on the porch of her house at about 9:00 Monday night. Unofficial accounts say that the occupants of a red Dodge Ram pickup approached the house and called out. The officer was shot and killed as she opened the door of her house. The victim had worked for 7 years in the corporation and was currently assigned to the sex crimes unit of the state investigative police. So far this year, 15 security officers have been executed in Ciudad Juárez. Medical experts determined that the agent died from a brain laceration caused by gunshots to the head.

Ismael Maldonado, 20, died of gunshots received early Monday morning in the Colonia Durango. He had been walking with two others when he was shot from a white Lincoln.

Two others shot near the entrance of the State Public Security Agency were identified as Lorenzo Núñez Aguayo and Agustín Navarrete Damián. They were traveling in a gray Crown Victoria when they began to be pursued by an armed commando in a late-model white pickup and were shot by AK-47 rifle fire as the vehicles reached the installations of State Office of Public Security.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
May 6, 2008

13 HOMICIDES IN 5 DAYS

A man between 19 and 22 years of age was shot to death in the Colonia Durango, the 13th murder victim during the first 5 days of May. Salvador García Espinoza, 20, shot May 1 on the Juárez-Porvenir highway. Former municipal policeman, Sergio Antonio Lagarde Félix, shot in the head near the Sanctuary of San Lorenzo on May 2. Shriveled body of a woman found May 2 in the afternoon near the Campo del Tiro. That same night, Benjamín Gamboa Acosta, 28, shot to death in Colonia Revolucion Mexicana. Also that night, Eva Lorena Hernández, 34, killed by multiple gunshots at the Kit-Kat bar, where she worked. Saturday May 3, Alberto Hernández Pérez, alias “El Gordo,” shot to death in the Colonia Benito Juárez. Later José Inés González Carrillo, shot to death in the Colonia Salvárcar. Sunday, May 4 before dawn, José Manuel Mijares Ortega, 55, assassinated outside his house in the Colonia Morelos III. Same day at 6:30 A.M., Valentín Quiñónez Ibáñez, intending to commit suicide, was shot by municipal police. That afternoon, Héctor Carrillo Soto, 21, shot in the back by Federal Police in the Valle de Juárez. Lorenzo Juárez Aguayo, 29, Agustín Damián Navarrete, 38, assassinated at the entrance of the State Office of Public Security headquarters. May 5, 3:00 A.M., an unidentified man shot to death in Colonia Durango.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
May 7, 2008

Municipal Public Security Captain Saúl Peña López was shot last night at about 8:30 and died this morning from his injuries.

Reuters,
May 7, 2008

CIUDAD JUÁREZ—Mexican drug hit men killed a senior police officer in Ciudad Juárez despite a huge army deployment in the violent city across the border from El Paso, Texas. Gunmen with assault rifles on Tuesday night shot Saul Pena, who was due to be named one of city’s five police commanders. “It seems they were waiting for him,” said police spokesman Jaime Torres. “They shot him with AK-47s in the back, the stomach and the leg. He died in hospital this morning.”

Associated Press,
May 7, 2008

CHIHUAHUA—New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Wednesday that he has seen an improvement in security along the U.S.-Mexico border. “In my opinion, there has been a dramatic improvement in the last two months,” Richardson told reporters in Chihuahua, where he met with Chihuahua Gov. Jesus Reyes Baeza.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
May 8, 2008

Luis Alberto Mata Olivas, 37, was shot nine times inside of his house by four masked men. The gunmen forced Olivas’s wife and three children upstairs before shooting the victim in the kitchen. . . . Their getaway vehicle, a green Chrysler Grand Cherokee, was found abandoned near the scene.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
May 8, 2008

Reynaldo Longoria Ruíz, 68, a shopkeeper in the Valle de Juárez, was shot to death by AK-47 rifle fire last night, inside his store in the village of Praxedis Guerrero. According to witnesses, 2 masked men entered his store, shot him and then fled the scene in a late-model brown and green Blazer. Unofficial sources said the victim had received death threats on at least 3 occasions. He was known in the Valle as “El Caiman”—Alligator. This case brings to 20 the number of homicides in the first 8 days of May.