Frontera NorteSur
December 2002-January 2003

January 28, 2003
Exchange Rate Hits 11.05 Pesos to the Dollar

On Monday, January 27, 2003, the US dollar was selling for up to 11.05 pesos at Ciudad Juárez banks. According to the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Diario, the peso is at a low not seen since September, 1998 when repercussions from the Russian economic crisis struck Mexico. The pesos recent fall has come as a shock to border residents, many of whom have stopped exchanging money in the uncertain financial market. Last January, the dollar was selling for approximately 9.3 pesos. 

Across Mexico, the weaker peso is being presented as both an economic benefit and a liability. With the dollar gaining in strength against the peso, Mexican goods are cheaper in the US and could aid Mexican exports. Also, Mexican labor and assembly look better for foreign investors as the peso becomes cheaper. However, Mexicans also fear that the weaker peso will make imported goods more expensive and will drive up inflation. 

José Luis García Arenas, president of the Asociación de Centros Cambiarios (Exchange Centers' Association), said that the dollar is rising in value in Mexico because of fears of a war with Iraq and how a possible war could affect the Mexican economy. Seeing the dollar above 11 pesos has stopped people from either buying or selling currency in Cd. Juárez, he stated. García also said that some money-exchanging businesses reported doing no business on Monday, January 27. 

Salvador Orozco, an analyst with Grupo Financiero Santander Serfín in Mexico City, agreed that the uncertain situation between the US and Iraq is the cause of the peso's fall. Other Mexico City bank representatives said that exchange rate volatility will continue through the end of the week. 

Source: El Diario, January 28, 2003. Article by Rocío Gallegos. 

January 22, 2003
Eight Lost Busses: The New Juárez Bus Project, A Waste of 60 Million Pesos?

Over the years, many Ciudad Juárez residents and the city's planning office, the Instituto Municipal de Investigación y Planeación (IMIP), have determined that this metropolis of 1.3 million people needs better, more efficient public transportation. IMIP's recommendation was to start with two routes with new busses that would run back and forth north to south and east to west. 

Instead of the old school busses that currently circulate the city, the routes would use modern busses including some double-long, articulated busses. As part of this plan, riders would wait in nice bus stations. Now, an investigative article in the Ciudad Juárez newspaper El Diario asks if the city has wasted the approximately US$6 million that it has spent so far on its new transportation program. 

Although twenty Volvo busses were purchased in April 2002 for over 40 million pesos (approximately US$4 million), none has entered service and eight of the busses, the 160-passenger articulated vehicles, are lost and neither the city nor the state government knows where they are. Calls made by El Diario to José María Fernández, the current head of public transportation for the city, Jesús Delgado, the current mayor, José Reyes Ferriz, the previous interim mayor, and Alvaro Navarro, a representative of the state government to Ciudad Juárez, found that none of these men knew where the eight articulated busses were. 

The other 12 busses, each with a capacity of 95 passengers, are still at the Volvo bus dealership in Cd. Juárez. The head of sales at the dealership, Rafael González Rodríguez, says that he has been maintaining the busses and changing their oil so that they do not get ruined from sitting too long. He said that he is doing the work for free because the city has no money to do it. 

Another 19 million pesos (US$1.9 million) were spent on 40 bus stops that were not built to city planning specifications. Many of the unused buildings, which cost the equivalent of US$47,500 each, have been vandalized and at least 12 will be demolished because of poor construction or other reasons. 

The stations were built with cement block walls but IMIP, the city planning agency, had originally recommended that a lot of glass be used in the work. Glass better resists graffiti and allows people to see into the station which improves security concerns. 

Currently, city and transportation officials are trying to figure out how to fix the program, define the routes and get service going. However, no timeline or opening date was mentioned in the El Diario article. 

Rosa María Pecina Martínez, the 42-year old mother of a six-year old girl and a four-year old boy, lives in a poor neighborhood and said that does not care about the politics or costs associated with building a better bus system. What she wants is a safer and faster system. While she described her current bus service as average, and would not call it bad, she did complain that busses only go by her home once every hour. 

Two teenage girls that live in the same neighborhood as Pecina told El Diario that the large majority of people in their neighborhood do not have cars and have to travel everywhere by bus. Both their parents work and must take six different busses in their roundtrip voyage to and from work. 

While the new Cd. Juárez bus system is based on those of Curitiba, Brazil and Bogotá, Columbia, Bogotá has 7 million inhabitants, 72% of whom use public transportation. Additionally, Bogotá has just 850,000 private vehicles. By comparison, Cd. Juárez officially has 1.3 million inhabitants, of whom only 21% use public transportation. The city also has an estimated 500,000 privately owned vehicles, according to El Diario. 

Source: El Diario, January 21, 2003. Article by Rubén Terrazas Sáenz. 

January 17, 2003
Juárez Federal Anti-Drug Office Raided Like Others in Mexico

As part of the fallout from the January 10, 2003 raid on the Tijuana office of the Mexican federal anti-drug agency, the FEADS (Fiscalía Especializada en Atención de Delitos Contra la Salud), 17 other offices around Mexico were raided by 500 soldiers from the Mexican Army on Thursday, January 16, 2003. Among the offices closed was the FEADS facility in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Offices in Sonora, Tamaulipas, Nayarit, Chiapas, Guerrero, Baja California, Oaxaca, Sinaloa, Tabasco, Yucatán and Jalisco were also raided by Army units. 

Angel Buendía, a high-level investigator with Mexico's Procuraduría General de la República (Attorney General's Office, PGR), stated that his office was "cleaning house" and that Army units were employed in the raids so that no compromised law-enforcement officers could help corrupt FEADS agents escape. The Army is also entrusted with preserving any possible evidence within the FEADS offices. 

Buendía said that the PGR is investigating FEADS for the possible protection of drug cartels, unjustified investigations, suspicious release of crime suspects, illegal seizures, and other crimes such as keeping seized drugs for personal gain. 

Wherever FEADS offices around the country were raided, their personnel was sent to Mexico City. This also applied to the Cd. Juárez FEADS office. 

The FEADS office in Cd. Juárez has been previously involved in scandals. In August, 2001 a local police officer claimed he was beaten, disarmed and handcuffed when he asked FEADS agents for identification when they were carrying assault rifles as they exited a vehicle. 

In October, 2001, César Antonio Dávalos Flores was killed when the FEADS Suburban he was driving was machined gun. Dávalos was not a FEADS official and it has never been made publicly known to whom the Suburban had been assigned. 

One month later, in the Los Nogales neighborhood, neighbors to the FEADS office complained to the State Human Rights Commission that federal officers had them living in fear because they would stand outside with assault rifles, sometimes drinking beer. 

Currently, 15% of the approximately 160 FEADS officers stationed in various states throughout Mexico are under investigation for complaints initiated by the government or individuals, according to Buendía. 

Buendía also stated that the six remaining FEADS offices in the country may also fall under investigation. 

The so-called "house cleaning" inside the FEADS began after the arrest of agents from that organization stationed in Tijuana. They are accused of holding alleged drug traffickers for millions of dollars in ransom and of agreeing to return more than four tons of marijuana if the ransom was paid. 

For more on the Tijuana arrests go to: http://frontera.nmsu.edu/Tijuananews.html

Source: El Diario, January 17, 2003.

January 13, 2003
Chihuahua and Federal Police Brawl at Juárez Airport

On Tuesday, January 8, 2003, Chihuahua state police and Mexican federal police traded blows and struggled over a loaded assault rifle at the Ciudad Juárez airport. Civilians at the airport ran for cover and a flight was delayed.

Tensions soared around 12 p.m. on January 8 when the state police escort of Chihuahua Governor Patricio Martínez García arrived at the airport to meet Martínez. The state police officers (Policía Judicial del Estado, PJE) were met by the Federal Preventative Police (Policía Federal Preventiva, PFP) stationed at the airport and were told that they could not take their weapons into the airport. 

Much to their dislike, the state police officers were forced to receive the governor without their weapons. That Governor Martínez needs an armed escort is partially substantiated by the fact that he was was shot in the head on January 17, 2001 in an attempt on his life--allegedly by a former state police officer, Cruz Victoria Loya Montejano.

A few hours later, when the governor had finished his business in Cd. Juárez, the state police escort got him on his plane and went back outside to meet with the PFP. The two forces began a physical confrontation and the state police called all units in Cd. Juárez to the airport. Approximately 80 state officers soon arrived at the scene. 

During one point in the brawl, Armando Meléndez, commander of the State's Special Projects Team (Equipo de Proyectos Especiales del Estado, EPEE), brought out an AR15 assault rifle and cocked the gun. He confronted the federal commander Leonel Chávez who dared Meléndez to shoot him. 

According to the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Diario, Chávez then began punching Meléndez in the face. Meléndez called for help and the state police attacked the PFP at the scene. 

In the end, one federal agent had to be taken to the hospital after he was beaten to the point that he no longer moved on the ground. 

Currently, both the state and federal governments are investigating the case. 

A January 13 article in El Diario reports that state police fear that federal elite forces are on their way to Cd. Juárez to arrest state officers. In preparation for their arrival, the state police have begun adding satellite-tracking equipment to their cars along with better radio equipment. State police agents will also work in groups so that they can not be easily arrested. 

Source: El Diario, January 8, 11 & 13, 2003. Articles by Armando Rodríguez.

January 7, 2003
Professional Minimum Wage Raises Announced: Juárez Journalists at US$12.54/day

Unlike the US, Mexico has numerous minimum wages.  Higher than the Mexican general minimum wage, are the nation's professional minimums. For 2003, Mexico's National Commission of Minimum Wages gave professionals the same percentage raise that it gave to general minimum wage workers: 4.5%. 

In Mexico, minimum wages also vary by region depending on the cost of living. There are three geographical minimum wage tracks. Being an expensive, industrial border city, Ciudad Juárez workers are on the highest-paying track.  The lowest minimum wages are earned in more remote and/or agricultural regions. 

The minimum wage in Cd. Juárez for journalists working at daily, printed newspapers rose from 126.25 pesos (US$12.10) per day to 130.75 pesos (US$12.54) per day at today's exchange rate. However, given the changes to the exchange rate, Cd. Juárez journalists would actually have less to spend today in El Paso than they would have one year ago. On January 7, 2002, journalists were making the equivalent of US$13.81 per day at 9.14 pesos to the dollar. In contrast, on January 7, 2003, journalists are making the equivalent of U$12.54 per day at 10.43 pesos to the dollar. 

Other workers deemed professionals by the Commission now have minimum wages set at the following daily rate:

Carpenter--63.60 pesos

Cashier--56.45 pesos

Sewer--56.35 pesos

Truck driver--65.10 pesos

Gas station attendant--56.35 pesos

Some other professional job classifications with minimum wages are: bulldozer operator, typist, bar worker, cook, tile layer, iron worker, plumber, elementary school teacher, shoe maker, multicolor offset press operator, autobody painter, tailor, etc

Source: El Norte (Cd. Juárez), January 7, 2003. Article by Gabriel Simental.

December 20, 2002
US Master's Degrees Awarded to 24 El Diario Writers

On December 16, 2002, 24 writers from the Ciudad Juárez newspaper El Diario received their Master's Degrees in investigative journalism from Florida International University. The journalists received their diplomas at the FIU campus in Miami, Florida. 

As graduate students, the journalists were taught by FIU faculty that flew to Cd. Juárez and Chihuahua on a weekly basis to participate in the joint FIU-ITESM program. ITESM is the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey which has a campus in Chihuahua City. 

The graduation also included a tribute to Osvaldo Rodríguez Borunda, the president and general director of El Diario. Modesto A. Maidique, the president of FIU, pointed out that El Diario is the first newspaper in Latin America to sponsor the postgraduate work of its writers in such a way. 

A dean from FIU also noted that the program was made possible by the leadership of the Chihuahua City campus of ITESM. Previously, on Thursday, December 12, the El Diario writers  received their Master's Degrees diplomas from ITESM. 

Source: El Diario, December 20, 2002. Article by Lorena Figueroa. 

December 17, 2002
Murderer of Casa Amiga Crisis Center Worker Sentenced to 14 Years

Ricardo Medina Acosta was sentenced to 14 years in prison for the December 21, 2001 murder of his wife, María Luisa Carsoli Berumen. Carsoli, age 33, was the mother of four children, then ages 2, 3, 6 and 8, and an employee of the Casa Amiga rape and abuse crisis center in Ciudad Juárez. 

Carsoli's first contact with Casa Amiga was as a victim of her husband's physical abuse. 

The two had been separated for some time when Medina stabbed Carsoli to death in front of Casa Amiga. 

Convicted of "homicidio simple intencional" (simple intentional homicide), Medina could have received a sentence of between eight and twenty years. At one point in the legal proceedings, a more serious murder charge with a twenty-year minimum sentence was nearly brought against Medina but it was dropped. 

New AG Director for Northern Chihuahua

In other news related to violence against women in Cd. Juárez, Elfego Bencomo López resigned as assistant attorney general for Chihuahua's northern zone. Bencomo and other state officials have been heavily criticized by women's rights groups for their lack of progress against the Cd. Juárez serial femicides. 

Taking Bencomo's position is Octavio Valadez Reyes who was previously the director of the Office of Preliminary Investigations. Valadez is the seventh person to hold the assistant attorney general position since Governor Patricio Martínez took office. 

While Bencomo said that he was resigning for personal reasons, El Diario noted that Bencomo's resignation came days after it was discovered that someone had put a "freeze" on the arrest warrant for former Cd. Juárez mayor Ramón Galindo Noriega. 

Local business leaders reacted to the news by complaining about the inefficiency of the attorney general's office. The representative of a business owners' groups said that she was unsatisfied that there are 4,000 arrest warrants that have yet to be acted on in the area.

Source: El Diario, December 17, 2002. Articles by Roberto Ramos, A. Rodríguez and A. Quintero. 

December 12, 2002
Ciudad Juárez Women's News: Lawyer Beaten, Links Found in Disappearances

Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, a Ciudad Juárez labor lawyer, university professor, women's activist and former prison director, was pulled over, beaten, robbed and threatened between 12:00 and 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday, December 11 while driving to his home near Cd. Juárez. 

The four men that attacked de la Rosa tried to stop his car three times but he escaped on the first two of these occasions. When he was finally stopped De la Rosa had a gun pointed at him, was severely beaten and told "not to be so brave or outspoken." His wallet, passport and cell phone were also stolen from him.

Because of the lights the pursuing vehicle used and the men's weapons, de la Rosa believes that his assailants were police officers. De la Rosa also believes that robbery was not the motive for the attack because he is not a wealthy man, drives an old car and the warning or threat meant that the men knew who he was. 

De la Rosa told the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Diario that only two people are angry at him: State Attorney General Jesús José Solís Sliva and a local maquiladora owner. De la Rosa believes that he angered the attorney general when he spoke about the investigation of crimes against women in Cd. Juárez. De la Rosa is also the lawyer for a group of Cd. Juárez maquiladora workers and said that the owner of the facility has threatened him a number of times. 

Local police officers seen in a car near where the men first tried to stop de la Rosa did nothing to help him, de la Rosa said.

At one point during his career, de la Rosa was head of the prison where Abdul Latif Sharif Sharif was being held. Sharif is a suspect in some of the Cd. Juárez rape murders. 

The Attorney General's Office also maintains that Sharif used a cell phone while in prison to organize gang members and bus drivers to rape and kill women in his style so as to make it look like state police had arrested the wrong person. However, while in Las Cruces in early 2002, de la Rosa said that he was sure that Sharif could not have made the alleged calls. 

Women's Disappearances and Murders Linked

An article in the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Norte states that María Isabel Mejía Sapién and Gloria Rivas Martínez, who both disappeared within three months of each other, both worked for the same company with branches just a block from the ECCO computer school which is mentioned in other rape murder investigations. 

Mejía and Rivas, between 15 and 16 years old, worked for the same store, La Estrella, but at different branches. Mejía disappeared in May, 2002 and Rivas in October. 

El Norte says that Rivas' body was found in October but this has not been confirmed. The newspaper also reported a rumor that Rivas was kidnapped and held alive in a drug house for a few days on the western side of Cd. Juárez. 

Other employees of La Estrella say that they have been chased by people upon leaving work. 

While the La Estrella and ECCO cases may be the result of one or more people stalking the area near the stores and school, ECCO's Chihuahua City branch is also allegedly related to some of the cases. 

According to an article in El Diario, on April 6, 2002, at least two ECCO employees are among the suspects in the Chihuahua City killing of 17-year-old Paloma Escobar. Escobar was reported missing at the beginning of March, 2002.

An El Paso Times article, also from April, 2002, went on to look at ECCO connections with murdered young women in Cd. Juárez.

Liliana Holguin de Santiago's body was found in 2000. She was 15 at the time of her death and attended ECCO. She also worked across the street from ECCO on a part-time basis.

Lilia Alejandra García, 17, attended ECCO. She was abducted on February 14, 2001. Police said she was held alive for approximately two days before she was murdered. She was abducted after leaving work.

Maria Acosta Ramírez, 19, worked at a Philips maquiladora and was last seen on April 25, 2001 leaving ECCO. Her body was one of eight found in a field in November, 2001.

Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, 15, had met with ECCO recruiters at her house a few days before her death. She was one of eight young women found in the cotton field in November, 2001. 

Cd. Juárez women's rights activists have pointed out to Frontera NorteSur that Acosta's, Holguin's and Herrera's cases have already been closed because of the arrest of bus drivers Víctor Javier García Uribe and Gustavo González Meza. How this affects the investigation of ECCO employees is unknown.

García and González have both repeatedly stated that they were tortured and coerced into confessing to the murder of Acosta, Holguin, Herrera and eight other women.

Earlier this year, El Diario reported that Oscar Maynez, the state police evidence expert, resigned from the state police because he was asked to fabricate evidence against the two men.  

Source: El Diario, December 12, 2002. 
El Norte, December 10, 2002. Article by Rosa Isela Pérez.

December 9, 2002
El Paso Human Rights Group Documents Abuses

Seeking to meet with residents of El Paso and Southern New Mexico to document violations of human and Constitutional rights, 40 volunteers with the El Paso-based Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR) went door to door and set up tables in El Paso, colonias east of El Paso and in the New Mexico communities of Sunland Park, Anthony, Berino and Vado.

Flora Flores, who filed a report with the BNHR, told the Ciudad Juárez newspaper El Diario that a police officer responding to a problem between neighbors called the Border Patrol when she could not give the officer an official piece of identification. Flores believed that the officer’s call to the Border Patrol violated her Constitutional rights. Flores said that she later proved to a Border Patrol agent that all of her children were US citizens and the Border Patrol agent left the scene telling the police officer that there was nothing he could do.

El Paso resident Maria Noriega, who also participated in the BNHR documentation campaign,  said that during a traffic stop she was verbally abused in front of her daughters by a police officer when she answered his questions in Spanish. The officer's questions were in English, she said. Pulled over because her daughters were allegedly not wearing their seatbelts, Noriega was kept on the side of the road for 45 minutes until a Spanish-speaking officer could arrive at the scene.

Both Flores and Noriega told El Diario that although they had not filed a complaint with authorities or law enforcement out of fear of arising from their encounters with the police, they felt safe sharing their stories with the BNHR.

Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, said that the Networks’ volunteers went into communities to document abuses because of the fear that law enforcement officers are inducing in area residents.

Javier Sambrano, spokesperson for the El Paso Police Department, said that he did not know about the cases but added that not all officers speak Spanish and that sometimes everyone must wait until a Spanish-speaking officer is free to respond to a situation.

Sambrano also stated that the police never contact the Border Patrol when officers respond to a complaint or go to help the victim of a crime. However, information is shared in some instances as when someone is pulled over for a traffic violation and appears to be transporting undocumented foreigners, he said. 

Source: El Diario, December 9, 2002. Article by Julián Reséndiz.

December 5, 2002
Study Finds More Drunk Youth Returning Nightly from Ciudad Juárez 

On a typical weekend night, 1,600 youth between 18 and 20 years of age are returning drunk to the US from Ciudad Juárez, according to a study of cross-border drinking done by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. This is up considerably from a low of less than 400 per night after a 1999 El Paso anti-drinking initiative. 

Forty percent of the 18 to 20 year olds returning from Cd. Juárez have a blood alcohol content above .08 and twenty percent of those returning plan to drive, the study found. On a typical night, 2,000 to 3,000 young people go to Cd. Juárez to consume alcohol. 

An article in the El Paso Times quoted Robert Voas, a senior research scientist with the institute, as saying that "We have the problem that these young people come back having drunk so much they're close to passing out. We have situations where fellas are actually carrying back their dates because they've drunk so much."

While the Cd. Juárez government has prohibited serving alcohol to people from the US under 21 years of age, it is apparent that many bars and clubs are not observing this regulation. 

Source: El Paso Times, December 4, 2002. Article by Darren Meritz.