Frontera NorteSur March 2003

The possibility of war in Iraq and the US's move to a terror alert status of orange has impacted Mexican border society in numerous ways. Waits to cross into the US from Mexico are at their longest since the months following September 11 and, in Cd. Juárez, they have again reached three hours in duration. 

In Tijuana, immigration officials are paying extra attention to Iraqi Christian refugees who for years have used that city as a gateway to California and other parts of the US. All along the border, Mexican health and emergency officials in major cities are looking at plans to deal with weapons of mass destruction that might be targeted at cross-border US cities. Some cities are also seeing the return of Mexico's Federal Preventative Police, especially intelligence units, which were recalled to Mexico City in January 2003 for customs training. 

In Nuevo Laredo, health officials are working closely with US officials, taking daily samples of Rio Grande water, and making regular reports on the sorts of illnesses they encounter, said Bernardo Rodríguez Mante, director of the Jurisdicción Sanitaria V, a local health office. 

Rodríguez said that given the expectation of war between the US and Iraq, health officials are not ruling out a bioterrorist attack against the waters of the Rio Grande. Water quality is being monitored on a daily basis with help from the local water utility, the Comisión Municipal de Agua (Comapa). Their intent is to discover unusual bacteria in river water. 

Rodríguez acknowledged that the US is ahead of Mexico in preparing for an attack on the Rio Grande. While US water utilities could use other sources of water in case of an attack on the river, Mexico could not do so and would have to respond by treating sick people and turning off the water supply, he said.

At a recent Nuevo Laredo meeting attended by Rodríguez and the leaders of other city entities, city government was criticized for not looking for alternative sources of water in case of an emergency. 

Mexican Army General Harold Henry Rabling Torres said at the meeting that the Army would help supply needed goods to the Nuevo Laredo in case of a terrorist attack. However, he noted that the Army's current focus in the area is to stop drug trafficking. 

Besides the efforts being made to secure the Rio Grande water supply in case of terrorist attack, Nuevo Laredo health officials are making monthly, weekly and even daily reports of diseases they encounter, especially any strange diseases. This is being done in hopes of catching any terrorist released diseases before they can cause harm. 

Source: El Mañana (Nuevo Laredo), February 21, 2003. Article by Javier Claudio. La Crónica (Mexicali), February 14, 2003. El Diario (Ciudad Juárez), February 21, 2003. 

Three or Four More Women's Bodies Found in Juárez

The bodies of three or four more young women were found on Monday, February 17, in northeast Ciudad Juárez at a site that is within easy view of El Paso. While the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Diario reported that three bodies were discovered, the El Paso Times said that four were located.

According to El Diario, some of the bodies were discovered with arms bound, dresses pulled up, and with large chunks of cement partially covering their bodies. The corpses were located near the Cristo Negro mountain, on land owned by Pimsa, a sand and gravel company. 

Teenagers discovered the first two bodies when they went out with their dogs to scour Pimsa's property for material that they could sell to recyclers. The dogs quickly found the bodies and the authorities were notified. 

One of the teenagers that found the first two bodies said that one woman had died recently but that another was just bones.

The third body was found by women from the Fronterizo neighborhood which is near the Pimsa land. 

"We were playing a game, trying to see who could find the next body and there was a horrible odor coming from one of the piles of waste. This led us to look for the source of the odor and that's when we found the girl," said Guadalupe Martínez García. 

The women yelled that they had found another body and reporters and city police ran to the scene. Later, the women criticized the state police (the organization responsible for the investigation) for not making a wide sweep of the region and just standing around the previously discovered bodies trying to keep the press outside the roped off crime scenes.  

Details on the discovery of the fourth body are not available at this time. . 

In October 2002, according to the El Paso Times, the bodies of two other young women were found in the same area. One was identified as sixteen-year old Gloria Rivas. 

While the area where the latest bodies were found had been recently swept by state law enforcement officials, they had found nothing there. 

Since 1993, approximately 90 young women have been raped and murdered by one or more serial killers in Cd. Juárez although no one had been convicted of any of the crimes. 

Sources: El Diario, February 18, 2003. Article by Armando Rodríguez. 
El Paso Times, February 18, 2003. Article by Diana Washington Valdez.

Suspect in Juárez Women's Killings Dies while in Custody

Gustavo González Meza, one of two bus drivers arrested in November 2001 for the murder of eleven young women, died on Saturday, February 8, 2003 while in state custody. An autopsy determined the official cause of death to be cardiac arrest stemming from a blood clot. The death was ruled to have been from natural causes but González's family has called for an independent autopsy. 

"They are killing us one by one"

Two days before his death González underwent surgery for a hernia. González's lawyer, Sergio Dante Almaraz, said that González received the hernia while being beaten into a false confession by state law enforcement in 2001. 

Like the González family, Dante himself had questions about the way in which his client died, "I don't know of anyone that has died from a hernia. Besides that, they took Gustavo González out of the prison [for the operation] without anyone's permission. Who asked for the operation?"

Dante also said that state authorities "are eliminating us one by one." This is in reference to the February 2002 killing of Mario César Escobedo Anaya, a previous lawyer for González, who was shot to death by state police agents that said they mistook him for a drug dealer. The death was investigated but no charges were made against the agents involved. 

For more on the irregularities surrounding Escobedo's death see http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/mar02/feat2.html

Widow will fight to clear husband's name

Blanca López de González, age 23, González's wife and the mother of his four children ages eight, five, four and one, said that she will move "sea and land" to get a second autopsy done on her husband. "This is cruel," she told the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Norte, "we don't believe the official version of events, it was bad enough that they kidnapped him from his home, arbitrarily jailed him and continued torturing him until they injured him and then the authorities still decided to end his life." Despite her young age, López de González said she will keep fighting until she clears her husband's name and until her children succeed in life. 

Other accused man's wife is threatened with death

Miriam García, the wife of Víctor Javier García Uribe, the other man arrested along with González, told the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Norte that she believes that someone purposefully killed González. According to García, a few days before González's death, she was visited by two state police officers that threatened her, her husband and González with death if she attended the Friday, February 7, 2003 gathering against violence in Cd. Juárez where Eve Ensler, creator of the Vagina Monologues, and Lourdes Portillo, director of the film about the Cd. Juárez serial-killing victims, "Srta. Extraviada" addressed a crowd of hundreds. 

García said that she did not go to the demonstration because of the threat against them. "They killed him, they killed him, they killed him--they did it even though I didn't go to the demonstration in front of the Attorney General's office . . .," she said. 

That García might have attended the Friday event is very possible given her presence at a November 2002 commemoration of the discovery of eight young women's bodies in a cotton field in central Cd. Juárez. At that event, despite the fact her husband was in jail for the murder of the eight women, García approached some of the young women's mothers and families to talk about her husband's situation. Like almost all of Cd. Juárez society, the victims' families see González and García as scapegoats tortured into confessing to crimes they did not commit. 

Jail cell confession to press

While González and García were originally being held at a facility in Cd. Juárez, they were later transferred to Chihuahua City where González died. Despite protests from family members and their lawyers, state officials went ahead with the transfer because of what they called security concerns. 

In November 2002, four journalists from the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Diario interviewed González and García about their time in jail and life after their arrests. During the interview, García stated that he named González as an accomplice in the murders while he, González, was being beaten by state law enforcement. García said he thought of González because the day before he had ridden on a bus driven by González. 

During the interview, both men denied that they had ever been close friends but they known each other for some time as fellow bus drivers. 

González told the El Diario reporters that he had no hard feelings toward García for implicating him in the murders. He said that he was in prison because of his own bad luck and had resigned himself to it. 

To see a Frontera story about the initial arrest of González and García go to: http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/nov01/today.html

An article about problems with DNA evidence in the cases is at: 
http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/oct02/today.html

Source: El Norte, February 9 and 10, 2003. El Diario, February 11, 2003. 

Sonora Felt Safer in 2002

Two years ago, the Instituto Ciudadano de Estudios sobre la Inseguridad (Icesi) did its first state-by-state survey of Mexicans in which they were asked if they worried about their safety in their place of residence. In 2002, 29% of Sonora residents responded that they were concerned about their personal security, down from 37% in 2001. The national average for 2002 was 44%. 

Dedicated to generating information about public safety and studying the design of Mexican public security programs, Icesi and its survey is endorsed by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, the "Este País" Foundation, the Confederación Patronal de la República Mexicana (Confederation of Business Owners of the Republic of Mexico), and other organizations. 

The 2002 Icesi study, done during the first half of 2002, and presented in Mexico City on Wednesday, February 12, 2003, found that Colima residents felt safest with only 10% worrying about their safety in the state. 

The Distrito Federal had 83% of its residents worrying about their safety in 2002, the highest in the nation. The DF was followed by Baja California at 62%. Looking at other border states, Chihuahua was ranked number ten at 45%, Coahuila was twelfth at 40%, Tamaulipas was ranked fifteenth at 35%, Nuevo León was sixteenth at 35%, and Sonora was 23rd at 29% (percentages were rounded off by Icesi).. 

The study also found that in the first half of 2002, more than two million homes were affected by crime along with 3.7 million people. Only 17% of victims reported crimes to officials and 45% of incidents involved some sort of violence. Of the people that did not report crimes, 43% did so because they lacked the necessary time that would be involved and 16% did not go to authorities because they did not trust them. 

Twenty-two percent of Mexicans admitted to having modified their activities or habits because of their fear for their personal safety. Mexicans felt least safe while using public transportation or on  the streets. 

Of Mexican crime victims in the first half of 2002, 54% were robbed in the street and 42% of these robberies involved a gun. 

The study also indicated that the average age of the criminals involved in crimes was 26 and 40% of crimes occurred while the perpetrator was under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Sixty percent of victims believed that their aggressors were professionals. 

Source: El Imparcial (Sonora), February 14, 2003. Article by Juan Carlos Zúñiga. 

A Pauper's Burial for 225 People in Tijuana

Between April 2002 and January 2003, the Tijuana morgue has buried 225 unidentified bodies in its common grave. Arturo Bañuelos Barragán, head of the city morgue, said that the number of unidentified bodies buried in Tijuana is quite high when compared to other Mexican cities. He believes that the city's high immigration rate is partially responsible. Many people go to Tijuana for jobs or to cross to the US and some of them die while in the city but have no relatives in the area to claim their bodies, he stated. 

Bañuelos wants to dispel the myth that unidentified individuals buried in the common grave were involved in the drug trade or were committing other sorts of crime. 

Before unidentified persons are buried, Bañuelos says their faces are photographed along with any other distinguishing marks or characteristics. 

Sometimes people come to the morgue looking for family members but only have rough descriptions of the persons they are looking for, states Bañuelos. This makes identification difficult, especially in cases where the face has been disfigured prior to or after death. 

Source: Frontera (Tijuana), February 17, 2003. Article by Said Betanzos. 

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.

Chihuahua Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Complain About NGOs and Press, Statistics Inconsistent

Just days after at least three young women and a six-year old girl were found murdered in Ciudad Juárez, the state attorney general, Jesús José Solís Silva, complained to a team of journalists from El Heraldo de Chihuahua that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) struggling to end the serial rape-murders in Cd. Juárez are unjustly accusing him and his team of being human rights abusers, killers and drug traffickers. "It's as if we authorities were from another planet, they don't respect our human rights," he said. 

Although Solís does not like the way he is treated by international and Mexican human rights groups, he says that the Chihuahua group Mujeres de Negro (Women in Black) is the worst because their attacks are almost personal. "They accuse people, from the governor on down, of being killers, criminals, drug traffickers and there's no one to stop them," he told the Chihuahua City newspaper El Heraldo.

Solís cited a specific incidence in November, 2002 when he went to Washington D.C. for an international meeting. At the meeting, Solís alleges that Mujeres de Negro accused him of being the Chihuahua government functionary with the most Human Rights Commission findings against him. Solís said the alleged accusation is false because he has no state, national or international findings against him. 

Authorities unclear on statistics 

According to Solís, Mujeres de Negro "are the ones that most frequently go [to D.C.] and make accusations and the last time they went to Washington they said in front of me that 30 women were killed last year, which is completely false, but there they say it and nothing becomes of it."

When a reporter asked him about statistics and numbers related to the killings of women in Cd. Juárez, Solís responded that he does not know why the NGOs keep statistics because they only confuse people. 

However, the government itself often gives contradictory figures. In October, 2002, state police investigator Manuel Esparza Navarrete, who works with the Special Investigator of Crimes Against Women in Cd. Juárez, said that there have been 67 serial killings since 1993. This contrasts with a figure of approximately 90 serial killings used in October by some NGOs, the El Paso Times and an academic study. Adjusted for the discovery of three more young women's bodies in February, 2003, this number would now be 93--exactly the number given by the president of the Chihuahua Supreme Court. 

Pablo Zapata Zubiaga, the head of Chihuahua's Supreme Court, told El Heraldo de Chihuahua that the Attorney General's Office recognizes that there have been 93 sex-related serial killings but added that some NGOs put the number at more than 300. 

Press Cautioned

Zapata went on to tell El Heraldo that Mexico has been heavily discredited because news of the Ciudad Juárez serial killings has spread around the world via the media. Zapata requested that the media think about the consequences of publishing information about the serial killings, especially the local media, because that is where national and international news providers get their information. 

Source: El Heraldo de Chihuahua, February 23, 2003.