Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields (39 page)

“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 men were shot to death in a vehicle strafed by gunfire in a supermarket parking lot. On Sunday, Ricardo Fuentes Garcia, 38, possibly a Mexican army officer, was found fatally shot in the chest in a Dodge Neon at Paseo del Triunfo de la Republica and Fray Junipero. Fuentes had identification stating he was a Mexican army captain.

On Saturday, Luis Alonso Marrufo Armendariz, a 38-year-old officer with the Chihuahua State Investigative Agency, was shot in his police vehicle by people in a gray sports car on Manuel Cloutier Avenue. He died and another police officer traveling with him was wounded.

The body of Raymundo Martinez Alcantara, in his 30s, was found in a pickup truck Saturday on Tecnologico Avenue and Nayarit Street. He had been shot to death. José de la Luz Arreola Garcia, 42, was pronounced dead from stab wounds Saturday at Santa Maria clinic.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 4, 2008

Three men were killed in a hail of AK-47 gunfire in the parking lot of a mall in San Lorenzo. At the close of this edition, none of the dead had been identified. More than 100 shots were fired from a Windstar, Tacoma and Chevrolet Silverado that closed in on the Nissan Altima and fired at the occupants. The vehicles of the aggressors fled and could not be located despite police roadblocks. Minutes later, the Paseo Triunfo de la Republica, a main thoroughfare in the city, was completely closed causing traffic chaos.

ArrobaJuárez.com, Ciudad Juárez,
March 4, 2008

Two of the three transit cops abducted Monday in San Lorenzo were found, injured and unable to speak. Identified unofficially only by their last names, Molina and Uribe were found abandoned near a house whose residents called an ambulance. The director of the Transit Police said, “We’ve found two of our men, but Lieutenant Z5 is still missing.”

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 4, 2008

Yesterday, two women accused the Mexican army of being responsible for the disappearance of their husbands. “I was talking on the phone [early last Saturday morning] with my husband when he said ‘here come the soldiers’ and he dropped the phone but it was still connected and I heard him scream and I heard them hit him and since then I haven’t heard anything from him,” said Julia Escobar. She and Maridani Lopez are from Novolato, Sinaloa, and they traveled to the border to look for their husbands, who remain missing. They first went to the military headquarters where no one met with them and afterward to the offices of the Federal Attorney General.

Unofficial sources report that the detained were sent directly to Mexico City as the case is being handled by the Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime Investigations, whose offices are in the capital.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 4, 2008

The Mexican army yesterday presented 4 individuals in their custody to the media, among them an ex-state policeman from Sinaloa. The detained include Jorge Ibarra García, 32, from Novolato, Sinaloa, who professed to having executed 20 persons in a two-year period and to belong to a criminal organization known as La Linea. They also presented José Ángel Pérez Ibarra, 25, from Culiacán, Sinaloa, who, according to the army, is an organized crime hit man who confessed to killing 21 persons since 2006.

New York Times,
March 5, 2008

MEXICO: BACKYARD BODY COUNT AT 14

The federal attorney general’s office said agents had uncovered 14 bodies buried in the backyard of a house in Ciudad Juárez, a city that has gained infamy for its gangland slayings and the unsolved murders of hundreds of women. The agents began digging at the house in the neighborhood of La Cuesta, across the border from El Paso, last month, after a drug raid. They first found the dismembered bodies of nine victims, some of whom died more than five years ago. Five more bodies were unearthed in the last week. Prosecutors have yet to determine why the victims were killed, but they noted that agents found 3,700 pounds of marijuana in the initial raid.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 5, 2008

PUERTO PALOMAS DE VILLA—Two people were found executed yesterday before dawn near the fence separating this border community from the neighboring country, their bodies riddled by multiple high-caliber bullet wounds to the head and thorax causing instantaneous death. The dead were identified as Luis Armando Murillo Ponce, alias “El Nalguitas (Little Butt),” 26, and Javier Pardo Soto, 22, alias “El Marciano (the Martian).” This new finding is added to the list of executions in the region in the last 2 weeks, including a municipal police official from Nuevo Casas Grandes.

Last week, this border community witnessed a fearful wave of violence that has caused the authorities of the neighboring country to guard hundreds of children who cross to attend school and have been endangered by executions on busy streets in broad daylight.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 5, 2008

WOMEN EXCUSE AGGRESSIVE SPOUSES; PREFER ECONOMIC SUPPORT

Many women pardon the violence committed by their husbands and avoid pressing charges against them because they need their economic support. “It is common that they refuse to denounce them because if their husbands go to jail, they will have no resources to survive,” reported the Center for Prevention and Attention to Women and Children in Situations of Violence.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 6, 2008

Lieutenant Carlos Adrián de Anda Doncel appeared alive at 8:07 P.M. outside the San Lorenzo Bakery two days after he was abducted by an armed commando. He was immediately taken to the hospital, where he was reported in stable but delicate condition with wounds from beatings on various parts of his body as his abductors had tortured him to obtain information. He was reported to be hysterical. Gonzalo Díaz Rojero, director of the Municipal Transit Police, expressed gratitude to the kidnappers for freeing officer de Anda Doncel alive.

The officer had been abandoned with hands cuffed behind his back and his head covered by a hood at the entrance of the San Lorenzo Bakery. The bakery owner, Juán Rodriguez, said the man had asked for 3 favors: a glass of water, to call his wife and that he close the business so that his attackers would not return for him in the presence of his family and coworkers. Red Cross Ambulance 156 arrived and took him to the emergency room, under a heavy escort from fellow transit police.

Don Juán Rodriguez, the bakery owner, said that the man had been extremely terrified and after talking to his wife, he began to cry.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 6, 2008

Under heavy guard, Secretary of National Defense Guillermo Galván Galván made a stealth visit to Juárez yesterday for about 2 hours as part of a tour of the northern region of the country where a battle is under way against organized crime.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 6, 2008

According to statistics released by authorities, for every 5 victims of domestic violence, only one perpetrator receives therapy to prevent new attacks.

El Diario, Ciudad Chihuahua,
March 8, 2008

A confrontation before dawn today in the Rosario neighborhood of Chihuahua City left 7 presumed narco-traffickers dead, 4 arrested, and 3 soldiers and one official of the Federal Police injured. The identities of the dead were not revealed by the military nor by the Federal Preventive Police.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 9, 2008

A man was found dead lying in a pool of blood in the northbound lane of

the Casas Grandes highway, and another was taken to the hospital after both were apparently shot.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 10, 2008

MUNICIPAL POLICE OFFICERS HUNTED DOWN: 1 DEAD, 3 INJURED

Víctor Alejandro Gómez Márquez was killed; Mario Alberto Rodríguez Arámbula, Moises Casas Camargo and Commander Ismael Villegas Frausto were injured in an ambush in which 2 police patrol vehicles were chased, surrounded and then attacked by AK-47 rifle fire from gunmen in two other vehicles on Avenida Paseo de la Victoria. Villegas’s name appeared on the list of police officers to be executed posted on January 26.

The attack took place at 8:40 A.M. as commander Villegas was being escorted under guard to a meeting with the Secretary of Public Security, Guillermo Prieto Quintana. The patrol vehicles crashed into a wall while the attackers continued to fire shots in an attempt to finish the job. The injured waited about 15 minutes for ambulances that transferred them to the hospital.

The body of Víctor Alejandro Gómez Márquez was left in the passenger seat until after 11:00 in the morning, when it was taken away by the Forensic Medical Service.

The hospital was placed under heavy security with armed police on all sides of the building.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 10, 2008

A newspaper vendor was killed yesterday around noon by a gunshot to the

head, the motive as yet unknown. This killing brought yesterday’s murder total to 17. The man was identified by relatives as Job Abdiel Acosta Medina, 24.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 10, 2008

A woman’s body was found Sunday night in the passenger seat of a pickup truck, apparently dead from a laceration to her liver caused by a beating. She was identified as Rosa Lopez Moreno, 47.

According to witnesses, Lopez Moreno was traveling with her boyfriend, Catalino Mendez Ramirez, 35, and her daughter. The daughter reported that both adults had been drinking and began to argue. The girl went into a Laundromat and when she returned Mendez Ramirez told her that her mother had fallen asleep and drove to her home. The girl realized that the woman showed no signs of life and so she asked for help from the police and paramedics, who pronounced her dead. Mendez was detained for interrogation.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 11, 2008

The bodies of six gunmen killed Saturday in the shoot-out in Colonia Rosario may end up in a common grave as the state has not claimed the bodies, which remain under guard by the Mexican army.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 11, 2008

FALLEN MUNICIPAL POLICE OFFICER, VÍCTOR ALEJANDRO GÓMEZ MÁRQUEZ, TO BE BURIED WITH HONORS TODAY

“It is the most fearful pain anyone can feel, to lose a son is the most difficult,” said the mother of the fallen officer. She said that her youngest son had lived here in her house with his wife and daughter, that he had an honest way of life, that he had not used his job to make money on the side, that he had not been able to afford his own house.

El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 11, 2008