Frontera NorteSur December 2000-January 2001

"Texas Kills Juarense," "Mata Texas a juarense," read the headlines of Ciudad Juarez's El Diario on Friday, November 10, 2000. Below a photo of people protesting Miguel Angel Flores' death sentence outside the Huntsville prison, El Diario ran a small photo of Flores, a photo of a prison clock, the timetable of events (18:14 Pronounces his last words, 18:15 First lethal injection, 18:17 Administration of injection concludes, 18:22 Flores declared dead) and his final words, "I want to thank my lawyers, Father Walsh. [Aunt] Silvia, I love you so much, and I want to thank the [Mexican] Consulate for everything. I want to say I'm sorry and that I said a prayer for all of you so that you can be in peace and I hope that you can forgive me. God is waiting, God is waiting for me."

Cd. Juárez coverage of the execution

The approach of Flores' execution has been followed for months in the Cd. Juárez press. The main legal argument against his execution, as expressed in the press, has been that Flores was not told by Texas authorities at the time of his detainment that he had the right to contact the Mexican Consulate for legal assistance. This is required under international legal treaties. A Texas court found that even though Flores had been denied this right he could still be executed.

A second line of anti-death penalty reasoning found in the Mexican press is that a state should not use its power to take the life of an individual. El Diario ran two articles along these lines on Friday, November 10, the day after Flores' execution. Amnesty International's Mexico section heavily condemned Flores' execution before it took place and said that, "The US violates fundamental principles of human dignity, [and] flagrantly disregards international agreements where states have promised not to resort to the death penalty." AI Mexico also accused the Mexican Consulate of not doing enough to stop the execution of Mexican citizens. Mexico has no death penalty.

Applying the death penalty in a "romantic and patriotic way"

In a separate article, Eduardo López Betancourt, doctor of law, told the press that the US applies the death penalty in a manner that discriminates against minority immigrant groups. He also said that the US should not apply the death penalty in a "romantic and patriotic way." Regarding the possibility of the establishment of the death penalty in Mexico, López said that the country should be careful in doing so given irregularities in the Mexican justice system.

The position of the victims

Minnie Tyson, mother of Angela Tyson (who Flores was found guilty of raping and murdering) said that even if it was possible to guarantee that Flores would be kept in prison forever, she preferred the death penalty in this case.

A front page El Diario article also stated that before dying Flores turned to Tyson's parents and said to them in English, "I want to tell you that I am sorry, that I prayed for you, so that you can have peace, and I hope that you can forgive me." Gerald Tyson, Angela's father, shook his head no that he did not forgive Flores.

Before the execution Gerald Tyson had already made his position clear to the press, "You would have to be an animal to do such a thing." His wife added to that, "This is a country of laws and when they are violated there is punishment."

El Diario reports Flores' last hours

Flores was awakened at 6:30 a.m. in Terrell Prison in Livingston, TX and was ordered to store away his belongings. At 7:45 he bathed and awaited the arrival of his family.

His grandparents, mother, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews were all crying. "Miguel Angel remained stoic and tranquil," said his lawyer Elizabeth Cohen.

At 4 p.m. they served him three meat and onion enchiladas, three cheese enchiladas with onions, rice, salsa, french fries, a hamburger with everything on it, pico de gallo salsa, a soda, a banana split and four quesadillas.

Of his family members only his aunt Silvia saw him die.

At 6:06 he got on a bed and his legs and forearms were strapped down.

Two minutes later he was given a substance to clean his veins.

At 6:14 he pronounced his last words and immediately the mortal liquid, administered by a machine in an adjacent room, began to invade his body: two minutes passed.

Outside the prison, protesters yelled in his support but others asked for justice for Angela Tyson.

At 6:22 he was declared dead.

The body of the executed Mexican was sent that same day to Houston and will be sent by plane to El Paso. From there it will be taken to San Elizario, where it will be buried near where his mother, Cesárea Flores, lives.

Flores became the fourth Mexican citizen to be executed in the US since the re-establishment of the death penalty in the US. Before him were executed Mario Benjamín Murphy, in Virginia, as well as Ramón Montoya and Irineo Tristán Montoya, in Texas.

Source: El Diario, November 10, 2000.

Arellano Félix Brothers Maintain Control of Drugs in BC

The Arellano Félix brothers continue to be the most powerful group of drug traffickers in Mexico and have converted Tijuana into a territory open to the use of various Mexican drug cartels, according to La Crónica. The Arellano cartel has established a fee-based system that permits criminal groups from Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Colima, Tamaulipas, Nayarit, Michoacán and Oaxaca to operate on the BC border according to an unnamed, high Mexican police official.

The Arellano cartel, according to the police source, charges 60% of the value of a 500 kilo or greater shipment of marijuana to organizations that want to use Arellano territory to ship drugs into the US.

La Crónica reports that according to Peter H. Smith, director of Latin American Studies at the University of California San Diego, an expert on international cooperation on the fight against drugs, the US and Mexico have achieved very little against the Arellano cartel.

Smith stated that even if the Arellano brothers were captured the problem of the BC-California drug route would not be solved because the base problem is not drug traffickers but drug consumption and its causes.

According to Víctor Clark Alfaro, director of the Binational Center of Human Rights (Centro Binacional de Derechos Humanos) the Arellano cartel is a organization formed of corrupting networks in Mexico's political and financial systems. The cartel has a great regenerative capacity with vision and a business structure, he stated.

Clark believes that the Arellanos are in a transition and adjustment phase since the July 2, 2000 Mexican Presidential elections. He also believes that the government has slowed its attack on the cartel since the elections and the arrests of two alleged, central Arellano figures, Jesús Labra Aviles and Ismael Higuera Guerrero.

Source: La Crónica, November 21, 2000. Article by Jorge Morales and Daniel Salina.

Investigator into Women's Murders Makes More Incendiary Remarks

After making remarks that angered missing women's groups, activists and academics at the Crimes Against Women Conference organized by UACJ, Colef, and NMSU and held in Ciudad Juárez, Suly Ponce, State Special Investigator into the Disappearances and Murder of Women, made more upsetting remarks from Chihuahua City where she went to look for Guadalupe Luna de la Rosa, "Lupita," the Juárez Tec student that has been missing for weeks.

"There is a psychosis in Ciudad Juárez," Suly Ponce said, "half an hour after a woman is late in returning home her family members ask for help to find her." Ponce told the press in Chihuahua that the number of missing women reports filed weekly is "alarming." The investigator said that police receive four or five missing women reports daily.

Ponce added that of the 482 women reported missing this year, only three have yet to be found. Cd. Juárez NGO's strongly disagree with these numbers and they have been a point of contention between authorities and activists.

Ponce said that so many cases have been resolved this year because most women have left their home, "run away with a boyfriend," or have gone to work in the US. Most cases she said do not involve a murder or a kidnapping.

Source: El Norte, November 15, 2000. Article by Edgar Prado Calahorra.

Carrillo Fuentes' Brother-In-Law Arrested

El Mañana de Reynosa reports that a brother-in-law, César Miguel Rivera Vargas, of the leaders of the Juárez drug cartel, Vicente and Amado Carrillo Fuentes, was arrested in Mexico City on November 16, 2000 and charged with a number of crimes including crimes related to organized crime, crimes against public health, possession of firearms of calibers legal only for military use, tax violations and doing business with goods of illicit providence. FNS believes that his arrest may be part of a rumored PRI, pre-Fox round-up of high-ranking people involved in the drug trade.

El Mañana also stated that the PGR believes that Rivera belonged to the Carrillo Fuentes' brothers criminal organization and that Rivera's relation to the family allowed him to have direct contact with Amado and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. Rivera married Florentina Carrillo Fuentes, sister of Amado and Vicente. Amado died in 1997, allegedly during cosmetic surgery to change his appearance.

Rivera was arrested by agents of the Anti-Organized Crime Unit (Unidad Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada, UEDO) after an arrest warrant was made by the Fifth Judge of the Distrito de Procesos Penales Federales, Olga Sánchez Contreras.

At the time of his arrest, Rivera presented a false voting card and a fake driver's license both under the name of Santiago Guarro González. Rivera may now face charges related to the false documents.

According to the Ministerio Público Federal, Rivera had two houses and two storage facilities in Mexico City that he allegedly used to "disguise the nature of his illicit activities."

Source: El Mañana de Reynosa, November 21, 2000.

Cd. Juárez Maquiladora Allegedly Ripped Off by Two Employees for US$1.3 Million

Chihuahua State Police (Policía Judicial del Estado) arrested two Thomson de México employees that have allegedly been stealing computer chips for some time from their employer. The company said that the total value of the thefts was US$1,300,000.

Enrique Zaragoza Castillo, 43 years old, and César Herrera Sánchez, 17 years old, were accused of theft by Thomson Televisiones de México SA de CV after discovering that the employees had allegedly for months been taking computer chips from the maquiladora.

Police arrested the two suspects when they went to eat lunch outside the plant. They were stopped and searched and police found 19 chips on Herrera. [FNS note: most maquiladora workers eat the free lunches their employers provide for them in corporate cafeterias. Skipping their free lunch may have appeared suspicious.]

Herrera told officials that Zaragoza would pay him US$50 for the chips and that he was only filling Zaragoza's "order." Zaragoza said that he would have sold the chips for US$400. It was not mentioned to whom Zaragoza sold chips. [FNS note: a typical maquiladora worker earns between US$4-7 per day].

Both employees took responsibility for having stolen the chips but Zaragoza said that it is absurd that they could have taken US$1.3 million worth of chips as the company claimed.

Source: El Norte, November 17, 2000. Article by Karen Chávez.

Mexico To Use Identification Code For Most Transactions

The Population Registration Code (Clave Unica de Registro de Población, CURP) will be necessary to make more than 300 state and federal legal transactions beginning next year.

This document will be assigned beginning next year by the Secretary of Government through the Civil Registry office.  The population of Chihuahua is estimated to be 3,036,883, of which 2,504,000 already have their CURP.

Reyes López, head of the Civil Registry's office, said that the only requirement to enable the creation of a CURP is for people to present their birth certificates issued from anywhere in the state. "A person presents a birth certificate at the Civil Registry's office, the principal issuing agent of the CURP.  After doing so, that same day, the documents are sent to Mexico City so that the Secretary of Government can put the last two digits on the code. The CURP number is then quickly sent back to Chihuahua."

"We need to end the issuing process by assigning the most CURPs that we can, because shortly this will become the only identification number that will be used to make a series of legal transactions," said Reyes.

The population registration document consists of 18 letters and numbers which are generated according to the data contained on an individual's birth certificate (or naturalization letter/migratory registration) in which both last names are used as well as the first name, birth date, city and state of residence.

Source:  El Diario, November 19, 2000  Article by Silvia Macías Medina.

Students Gather and Mayors Hug in Response to Increase in Young Drug Traffickers

While last year only seven minors between the ages of 11 and 18 were detained for drug trafficking by US authorities in El Paso, so far this year 175 minors from El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua have been arrested for the crime. Drug addiction in both countries is also a worry to the US and Mexican consulates in Cd. Juárez and El Paso. To combat drug addiction and trafficking by minors the consulates organized a human chain of students and mayors across the Córdova Bridge between El Paso and Cd. Juárez.

Standing over the dividing line between the two nations were the mayors of El Paso, Carlos Ramírez, and Cd. Juárez, Gustavo Elizondo. At one point the two mayors hugged, raised their joined hands high and took hands with those on the bridge beside them forming a long chain of students that went into both countries.

"Say no to drugs, say no to drugs," chanted a group of students that El Norte described as euphoric. However, no reply was received from the other people in attendance according to the newspaper. Students on both sides of the bridge held red, white and blue balloons filled with helium as part of the gathering

To help stop the involvement of minors in drug activity, authorities in Texas and Chihuahua have formed Border Ties (Enlace Fronterizo) that hopes to "stop the pathology [of using minors in drug trafficking] and in this way beat it and give better societies to youth," according to El Norte.

Border Ties is composed of work groups and headed by the consulates in both countries.

Source: El Norte, November 14, 2000. Article by Guadalupe Salcido.

Police Protect Pateros in Nuevo Laredo, Migrants Tell Their Stories

[FNS note: If pateros only helped migrants get into the US they probably would not be a worry to Mexico. However, pateros or criminals posing as pateros have a reputation for robbing the people they are supposedly helping to cross into the US. There have also been numerous cases of pateros abandoning migrants to die during extreme weather conditions. Rape and murder are also fears confronted by migrants. Finally, pateros buying police protection is reported from almost every major border city.]

El Mañana de Nuevo Laredo reports that "pateros," or human traffickers, also known as "polleros," operate with impunity in and around the Nuevo Laredo bus station. Authorities seem to have no interest in stopping the pateros' operations and police are even seen chatting with the human traffickers as they go about their operations.

While in summer hundreds of Mexicans arrive in Nuevo Laredo to cross to the US, in the winter they return to the Nuevo Laredo bus station to get transportation home for the holidays. However, at both times of year, the migrants are offered services by the pateros that El Mañana describes as "los delincuentes," or criminals.

El Mañana interviewed a number of Mexicans at the bus station known as the Central de Autobuses Foráneos as they changed busses for other parts of the country. These migrants said that they were constantly being approached by pateros and that they were bothered by their presence and feared being robbed by them.

"They're stupid because they no sooner see us than they come up and ask if we want to go to the other side," said Rogelio Buenrostro who said that he is a temporary worker in Oklahoma that returns home every year for the year-end holidays.

El Mañana interviewed another man named Oscar who said he had been in Nuevo Laredo for three days and had been approached on various occasions by people he suspected to be pateros. From Guanajuato, Oscar had come to the border to go to Chicago where he said he had family members awaiting him. He had tried to cross the Rio Grande once but found the waters to be too rough and cold.

Rodolfo, from the state of Mexico, stated that he arrived to town looking for a patero and quickly found one. "He asked me for US$200 up front and US$300 more when we arrived in Laredo, which I accepted," he said. Rodolfo later regretted that decision because when he, the patero and another man arrived at the banks of the Rio Grande they quickly robbed him of his money and fled.

Source: El Mañana, November 22, 2000. Article by Gastón Monge.

La Cronica Changes Story of US Citizens Arrested in Méxicali

La Crónica now reports that the FBI has not confirmed that two US citizens arrested on Saturday, November 11, 2000 in Méxicali are related in some way to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The newspaper also changed the names of the arrested individuals to Ricky Lane Reames, male, and Kelly Marie Daniels, female.

The two are now being held in the local prison, or Cereso, as it is known in Spanish. They are charged with crimes against public health and safety (delitos contra la salud). The press and state police do however stand by their story that the pair had bomb-making tools and a manual with them at the time of their arrest.

Also coming into doubt is the official version of the arrest of Reames and Daniels. The pairs' Méxicali neighbors in the Pedro Moreno neighborhood said that the two were arrested in their home and not on the street as previously stated.

According to neighbors who wished to remain anonymous the pair was never apart, only went out to go to the store or meet with other US citizens and they did not speak Spanish. Although they allegedly used crystal meth according to neighbors they only kept enough for personal use.

La Crónica reports that US officials are still waiting to hear the results of their extradition request and states that the State Attorney General's Office believes that the pair was in Méxicali only to escape US law enforcement.

Source: La Crónica, November 16, 2000. Article by Marco Vinicio Blanco.

Two Sought by FBI Arrested in Méxicali

Two alleged terrorists considered to be highly dangerous by the US FBI were arrested in Méxicali with what Mexican officials consider to be bomb-making material. The pair, who were also carrying doses of "Crystal," are originally from Oklahoma where five years ago the Alfred P. Murray Federal Building was bombed by US citizens. La Crónica reports that US authorities believe that the pair may have been involved in that April 19,1995 attack.

The arrested are Reamez Ricky Lane, male, and Daniels Kelly, female, according to Méxicali's La Crónica. Lane was identified by a driver's license. Kelly carried no documentation. Police have no idea why the two were in Méxicali or how long they were there. Both have outstanding US arrests warrants for drug possession and are sought by the FBI as well. The FBI has already asked that the two be extradited.

The pair was stopped for looking suspicious by an anti-robbery unit that thought they looked out of place in such a neighborhood. They had with them a metal box filled with different sizes of drill bits and other suspicious items. They had an English-language, bomb-preparation manual with them, plastic packets containing "Crystal," a syringe and a spoon with "Crystal" residue on it according to the State Police Unit (Policía Ministerial del Estado, PME).

Stopped on Benjamín Argumedo street in the Pedro Moreno neighborhood at 4 p.m. local time on Saturday, November 11, 2000 a police agent said, "It seemed strange to us to see two North Americans [norteamericanos] carrying a metal box filled with tools and other things that were out of the ordinary."

When the PME notified the FBI they were warned that the pair was considered dangerous and that they had been fleeing the US justice system for years. The FBI also told the PME that the man would have a scar on his right thigh from a bomb explosion, which the PME verified. The FBI then warned the PME that the pair's rooms could contain bomb traps and that they should proceed with caution. However, despite using a metal detector in the pair's apartment, the PME found nothing else.

Later, the case was turned over to the federal-level PGR that wants to find out why the pair chose to come to Méxicali.

Source: La Crónica, November 14, 2000.

Helicopter To Aid In Tijuana Security Operations

Carlos Besneirigollen Ontiveros, director of the Tijuana Police and Transit Department, has stated that the use of the helicopter "Pegaso" or "Pegasus" is an important part of the city's crime prevention and apprehension program.

The aircraft has been able to stop a number of business robberies and assists in emergency situations as well.

Besneirigollen said that police have been able to arrest a large number of people as they try to escape after committing a crime, especially in the case of stolen vehicles.  He showed gratitude to the Tijuana citizens for promptly using the 060 emergency line to report crimes.

Eduardo Sarquiz Ruvalcaba ,who is in charge of the aerial unit, said that rounds over each of the city's six neighborhoods (delegaciones) is conducted daily at different times hoping to help anti-crime programs and operations.

"Currently we are participating in interdistrict Police and Transit operations, two weeks ago we were in the La Prensa delegation and the week before that at the Playas de Tijuana," said Sarquiz.

Using "Pegaso" pilots fly over city streets to verify that all traffic signals are operating and to detect irregularities in traffic flow.  They also detect illegal activity such as illegal dump sites, tire burning, and wildfires.

"There are many advantages that the helicopter offers being that it amplifies the visual panorama and is able to cover more ground to prevent problems," Sarquiz commented.