Read Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields Online
Authors: Charles Bowden
TWO DEAD, ONE INJURED IN SEPARATE INCIDENTS
Juan Luis Ortega Herrera, 16, was shot to death at about 11:00 Monday night from a moving car near the corner of Francisco Martín López and Emiliano Zapata streets.
Jorge Soto Sandoval was killed at about 1:00 in the afternoon in the Colonia Torreon at Joe’s Sandwich Shop, where he worked.
Daniel Huerta Carrillo, 17, was injured by gunfire at the corner of José María Pino Suárez and Pablo López streets. The victim was taken to the Santa Maria clinic and his condition was stable.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 11, 2008
Transit Police Lieutenant Carlos Adrián de Anda Doncel, freed the night of March 5 after being held and tortured for 48 hours by an armed commando, has left the city and his current whereabouts are unknown.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 12, 2008
Officer Víctor Alejandro Gómez Márquez, executed last Sunday in an ambush . . . was buried yesterday afternoon. . . . The Secretariat of Municipal Public Security had publicized the hour of the religious service, nevertheless, the family rejected the presence of the media for unknown motives.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 12, 2008
Blanca Edna Páez Orozco, 22, died and her brother, Abel Páez Orozco, 20, was injured yesterday afternoon in a house fire in the Finca Bonita neighborhood. The mentally disabled victims were tied to a bed when the fire broke out. Initial reports said that the sister and brother had been playing with matches. Their father, Abel Páez, 65, had tied the victims to the bed in the morning.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 13, 2008
The Secretariat of Municipal Public Security reported that three persons died violently yesterday in less than 5 hours in different areas of the city. Julio César Soltero, 20, was killed by gunfire in front of a house in Colonia Granjas de Chapultepec. At about 9:00 at night, a man of about 47 was shot and killed in his car in the Colonia Altavista. Residents of the area identified him as “El Bello” (Handsome) who lived near the place where he was shot. The third violent death happened about 15 minutes later, when a man identified as Juan Adrián García, 19, was murdered by four gunshots in the Colonia Aldama. According to initial reports, García was murdered by the ex-boyfriend of his girlfriend, identified only as Raul, who was angry at seeing the woman with García.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 13, 2008
Two men were assassinated this morning and their bodies left in the public right-of-way in the Ampliacion Aeropuerto neighborhood.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 13, 2008
At about 2:00 in the afternoon, an ex-municipal policeman was shot and killed by an armed commando at the intersection of Durango and Paseo Arboleda streets. Unofficial sources identified the ex-officer as Ricardo Eloy Yáñez Gómez, 32.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 14, 2008
NARCO-CEMETERY IN LA CUESTA YIELDS 33 CORPSES
The Federal Attorney General’s Office reported that a total of 33 corpses have been found in a clandestine grave at a house in the Colonia La Cuesta. A forensic anthropologist said that the recovered remains have been buried for approximately 5 years and only 3 of them are women.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 14, 2008
This afternoon, two men were assassinated at the intersection of Puerto Mexico and Puerto Alegre streets. The bodies remained in the cab of a Silverado pickup with Texas plates 92JPW4.
El Diario, Ciudad Chihuahua,
March 14, 2008
CHIHUAHUA—Paulina Elizabeth Luján Morales, 16, the high school student missing since last Monday, was found dead yesterday morning. The girl died from a blow to the head and she had been sexually abused. The body was found in a vacant lot in the Colonia Valles de Chihuahua. Workers at a nearby farm found the body. They saw a bundle that they thought was clothes but when they approached, they realized that it was a woman and called the police. The body was dressed in gray pants, white T-shirt embroidered with the name of her school, black sports jacket with an orange hood, “Angelina” socks, a black belt and a key. The pants had black marks on them that looked like tire tracks. Family members came to the scene along with the father of Daniela Ivania Hernández Hernández, 13, missing since March 4.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 15, 2008
According to official and media reports, 64 execution victims have been found in narco-graves discovered in and around Ciudad Juárez in the last 8 years. In 1999, a mega-operation involving 500 Mexican soldiers as well as FBI agents excavated several ranches in a search for more than 100 bodies thought to be buried there. Despite the intense searching and worldwide media attention, only 9 bodies were found. In 2004, personnel from the Federal Attorney General’s office exhumed 12 bodies from the patio of a house at 3633 Parsioneros Street in the Las Acequias neighborhood. Most of these victims had been assassinated on site by strangulation to avoid being noticed by neighbors. An informant working for U.S. authorities, identified as Jesús Contreras, “Lalo,” Eduardo Ramírez or Guillermo Ramírez Peyro, participated in some of the killings that were carried out by a group of Chihuahua state judicial police under the command of Miguel Ángel Loya Gallegos, who is still a fugitive. So far in 2008, a total of 33 bodies have been found at two different sites in Juárez; none of the dead have been identified.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 15, 2008
Agrarian leader Armando Villareal Martha, founder of the organization Agrodinamica Nacional, was assassinated by AK-47 gunfire yesterday afternoon in Nuevo Casas Grandes. Villareal Martha was a well-known defender of the rights of farmers, especially in the struggle to obtain more affordable prices for fuel, electricity and other necessities in the countryside, and the murder was widely repudiated. The victim left his house accompanied by his son, who was driving the 2007 Dodge Ram pickup. The first shots were fired as they passed in front of a secondary school in the Colonia Centro. They tried to get away but the attackers caught up with them and fired directly at the agrarian leader, killing him and leaving his son uninjured.
According to an anonymous source, Villareal Martha was pursued last Thursday after arriving at the Juárez airport on a flight from Mexico City accompanied by two other members of Agrodinamica Nacional. They were followed along the road to the town of Ascensión, where Villareal was able to evade their pursuers.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 15, 2008
A municipal police lieutenant was assassinated last night after being “hunted down” by a group of armed men. The officer was identified as Mario Moraz of the Delicias district and his death leaves behind a young daughter.
Before the murder of Lieutenant Moraz in the same sector of the city, a police patrol discovered a bundle lying in the street. Upon inspection, they realized it was the body of a man as yet unidentified. In the pocket of his pants, they found a plastic bag containing a hypodermic needle. It appeared that the body had been thrown from a moving car and showed no evidence of bullet wounds. A few minutes later at about 10:30 P.M., another body was found in the Colonia Hidalgo and a source reported that this person also carried a hypodermic needle.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 15, 2008
RELATIVES SEEK IDENTITIES OF THE BURIED BODIES
Short of breath and almost sobbing, José Luis speaks hesitantly about the possibility of ending his family’s long nightmare when 4 years ago, one of his loved ones “disappeared.” “We believe that he will be among the victims. I can’t tell you why, but we believe that our search may soon be over,” said the man who asked that his identity be concealed. Their odyssey began in 2004, when a family member was captured and never heard from again. Each time narco-graves are discovered, they think they might find their missing relative. “Other times we have struggled a lot and this time also, but it’s very likely he will be there as the dates coincide.” As of yesterday, they had received no information on how to make an inquiry with the authorities on the process of identification. “And when you go there they look at you as if you are a criminal . . . but we are just relatives and we want to give him a Christian burial.”
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 15, 2008
Those living near the warehouse in La Cuesta, where 33 bodies were exhumed, were shaken up to find the clandestine cemetery in their neighborhood. “We never imagined they would find so many bodies.” The federal organized crime investigators stayed at the scene for 13 days and then left as silently as they came, taking with them the heavy equipment, forensic anthropologists and cadaver dogs.
Some of the neighbors interviewed said they had sometimes heard strange noises in the house that they attributed to tortured souls, but an older man living next door discarded this idea. “Look, here you have to be more afraid of the living than the dead.”
Yesterday, several relatives of the disappeared went to the morgue to solicit information, but the state delegation of the Federal Attorney General released no information.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 15, 2008
Yesterday afternoon an armed commando executed three men in a 300C Chrysler in broad daylight and in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in the city. Municipal police at the scene said there were more than 200 bullets fired at the car. Witnesses said that the driver tried to continue after the gunfire stopped, but due to his mortal wounds, he lost control of the car, which crashed onto the sidewalk at high speed and finally stopped with the driver dead at the wheel.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 15, 2008
A woman remains unidentified more than 24 hours after her body was found on the Camino Real highway and police have not advanced the investigation. At about 5:00 P.M. last Friday, someone called Emergency 066 to report that they had seen several people toss a body out of a car. When police arrived, they found the female body on the sidewalk near a pile of rocks, face up with outstretched arms, two bullet wounds visible on her right cheek.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 16, 2008
The State Investigative Agency reported that three men were killed Saturday night. A double homicide took place in the Colonia Alvaro Obregon at about 10:35 P.M. The unidentified bodies showed no external signs of violence. One had a tattoo on his left arm of a mouse wearing a hat. The second had four tattoos: the word “Juareño,” on the shoulder, an eagle devouring a snake on the back, “Hecho en Mexico” on the upper left arm, and “Xicotencatl” on the chest, indicating membership in the “Mexicles” gang.
At 11:58, in the Colonia Pancho Villa, Pedro Pablo García Colorado, 18, was murdered in a gang fight between “Los Chicos Trece” and the “Veteranos.”
Agencia Reforma, Mexico City,
March 16, 2008
The number of executions related to organized crime thus far in the administration of President Felipe Calderón has risen to 3,008. During 2008, the number of killings has risen by 30%. . . . Security expert Ernesto Mendieta says that the violence will continue because current government strategies do not attack the roots of the problem, nor are the killers arrested. “There is not a single intelligence investigation that will stop the groups doing the killing. If you want to kill someone, you kill them.”
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 16, 2008
The Federal Attorney General’s Office announced today that three more bodies were exhumed from the property on Sierra Pedregal Street in Colonia La Cuesta, bringing the total to 36. The bodies were buried in 16 graves and the victims were murdered and buried by members of the Carrillo Fuentes cartel.
Present at the scene were the anthropologist who directed the recovery of the bodies and her 5 collaborators, 15 federal agents and “Rocco,” a 2-year-old Belgian Malinois who participated in the work. The anthropologist, who asked that her name be withheld, demonstrated the recovery process for the reporters.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 17, 2008
Four people were assassinated and their bodies found this morning discarded around the city. A male, approximately 35, brown skin, thin beard and mustache was found in the Emiliano Zapata neighborhood, the word “Juárez” was tattooed across his stomach. A little later, three murdered men were found in the Colonia Papalote with multiple signs of beatings in different parts of their bodies.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 17, 2008
This morning three bodies were found in Colonia Papalote. Two of the unidentified victims are men, while the third is a woman. The bodies were found semi nude with visible signs of violence. According to neighbors, the victims were not from that area.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez,
March 17, 2008