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December 12, 2003 On November 20, 2003, Félix Velázquez Moreno and Eleuterio Martínez Hernández were detained in Chihuahua City by state police after taking photos and notes at a public event which Chihuahua Governor Patricio Martínez had attended. State police officials said that Velázquez Moreno and Martínez
Hernández first tried to tell them that they were journalists. Later,
while in custody, police say that the men stated that they were working
for military intelligence. The newspaper also reported that the men had identification cards which stated that they work for the Physical Security Services of Pemex, Mexico's national oil company, in Ciudad Camargo, Chihuahua. The men's work IDs were signed by General de Brigada Diplomado del Estado Mayor Víctor Manuel de la Peña Cortez, a general. Besides his worker ID, Martínez Hernández also had a digital camera registered to Pemex and the two men were using a truck registered to Pemex. The men had a cell phone and a satellite phone, according to El Diario. From Spying to Conspiracy to Kill the Governor By December 10, the case against Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández had changed. According to Antonio Piñon, an assistant attorney general for Chihuahua, the men were detained because they were preparing to kill Chihuahua Governor Martínez. They were posing as journalists to find out how they could get close to Governor Martínez to murder him. Alleged Torture Now, after nearly a month in custody, Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández are saying that they were tortured into signing documents that they had not read, according to a doctor that met with the men and the men's wives. While the doctor, Víctor Talamantes, said that he could see no bruises on the men, he stated that enough time had past for such wounds to heal. The doctor said that Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández told him that they were beaten the first two days they were held by the state police. The men's wives told El Diario that their husbands were missing between November 20 and November 24. When they first met with their husbands, they said the men were covered with bruises. They also said that their husbands had been forcibly bathed in water with ice as a means of torture. Reporters from El Diario were allowed to meet with the men for a few minutes on December 9. They said that Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández spoke with shaky voices and seemed scared and confused. When asked why they were being held, the men said, "There has been no crime, they are not accusing us of anything." Pemex scenario most likely? While representatives from the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) would not at first comment on whether Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández worked for the Secretariat, Sedena eventually denied any relationship to the men. Manuel Flores, the head of the Oil Workers Union in Camargo, confirmed that the men did work as security guards for Pemex, however they were not members of the union, he said. He also confirmed that as part of their jobs they monitored outbreaks of violence in the region. Anonymous sources in Pemex told El Diario that the ID numbers on the men's work identification cards did correspond to Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández. They also confirmed that the men's truck belonged to Pemex. El Diario's sources also stated that the case had been made known to people at the highest level of Pemex. In El Diario's December 10 edition, Pemex was reported as acknowledging that the men have been employed for six years and that they are assigned to watching gas lines around Camargo and Jiménez. The men's wives confirmed that their husbands worked for Pemex and noted that for years they have gone to the same November 20 parade to see who is in attendance. Men that work in security with Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández at Pemex said that "data gathering" like what the two were doing does not just take place in Chihuahua but throughout Mexico. Despite the declarations of coworkers and wives, the men's relation, if any, to military intelligence is still unclear. However, El Diario did mention in its December 10 edition that an army general visited Camargo to speak the men's superiors just days after they were detained. An unmentioned possibility is that the men might be on Pemex's payroll but also do intelligence work for Sedena. The Case Becomes Politicized On December 11, El Diario reported that the Partido Acción Nacional, or PAN, the party of Mexican President Vicente Fox, said that it had fully assumed the legal defense of Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández. This is according to Guillermo Luján Peña, the PAN's coordinator in the Chihuahua congress. The PAN became interested in the case after Arturo Zubía Fernández, a deputy in Chihuahua's Congress from Camargo, said that he had known Velázquez Moreno and Martínez Hernández for years as Pemex employees. Zubía told Luján that the men collect information pertaining to the security of Pemex. When Zubía was a Camargo city official, the men would come and ask him about what "movements" were active in the region, he said. According to Zubía, the PAN's lawyer Jesús Díaz will defend the men. "As far as I know it's not a crime to watch someone," Zubía stated. Two More Men Detained, Allegedly from the AFI According to Vicente González of the Chihuahua state police, agents showed up at a house in Chihuahua City with an arrest warrant for a person that allegedly lived in the house. The person was not at the house but the agents looked in and saw a computer hooked up to loudspeakers. After a short inspection, a telephone specialist was called in and he discovered that the computer was connected via an illegal line to the phone system. González was then detained along with Marco Antonio Fuentes Arenas who said that he is an administrative coordinator. It was not mentioned for whom he works. Eventually, state police officials determined that the computer in the house could be used to monitor calls anywhere in the state or country. At an improvised press conference in the house, it was explained that the system was connected to a line from a "conector general" (general connector) to the phone system. There were a number of recording devices found in the house. From these, interesting conversations could be stored on a computer and then sent to anywhere. Also found in the house were three cell phones used to intercept signals, known as "receivers," and three functioning cell phones and two laptops among other things. One apparent contradiction between the police story and the newspaper account is that El Heraldo reports that the downstairs of the house was totally empty of furniture and held just junk food wrappers. The stairs to go to the second floor are near the front door. At the back of the second floor, in what would be a bedroom, is all the alleged phone tapping equipment--which El Heralod reports that the police say they saw from the front door of the house. Sources: El Diario, December 9-12, 2003. El Heraldo de Chihuahua, December 12, 2003.
December 4, 2003 According to city statistics, Ciudad Juárez has approximately 55 million square meters of roadway. Of this amount, just over 28 million square meters are unpaved, or approximately 51% of city streets. While this figure of 51% is frustrating for drivers and implies dust-related health problems for city residents, it is an improvement from the past. In 1995, according to Ciudad Juárez's Urban Development Plan, 60% of the city's roadways were unpaved. Indeed, in 2003, the city paved 1.33% of its dirt roads. José Luis Rodríguez Chávez, the general director of Public Works in Cd. Juárez, says there is only one reason why there are so many unpaved roadways in the city: a lack of economic resources. According to El Diario, the average cost to pave a meter of roadway is 250 pesos (approximately US$22). This means that it would cost Cd. Juárez over 7 billion pesos (US$608 million) to finish paving all its existing roads. This is a considerable amount for a city with a 2004 budget of 1.7 billion pesos. Put another way, this is more than 5,800 pesos (US$500) for each person in a city of 1.2 million people. By border standards, Cd. Juárez does not have the worst record for unpaved streets. Other cities with explosive growth like Tijuana and Mexicali have 55% and 44% of their respective streets in need of pavement. Who paves Cd. Juárez? There is also the Sistema de Urbanización Municipal Adicional (SUMA) which puts city residents on payment plans so that they can have their streets paved. To take advantage of this program, residents put down 25% of the cost of a project and then pay off the remaining 75% over a 12 to 18 month-long period. Once the money has been received by SUMA, paving begins. When working with SUMA, city residents are not totally on their own to come up with all the money for the project. To pave side streets costs between 200 and 210 pesos per square meter. City residents pay 160 pesos per meter and the city funds the rest (streets where busses run cost 300 pesos per meter but the city pays 50% of the cost). Since 1999, SUMA has paved 0.9% of city streets. One reason for SUMA's lack of progress is that many Cd. Juárez residents cannot afford to make monthly payments. Lidia Ortiz López complained to El Diario that her family cannot
afford monthly payments of nearly 2,600 pesos (US$226) to SUMA. Ortiz says
that her household only earns the equivalent of US$8 per day. Source: El Diario (Ciudad Juárez), December 4, 2003. Article by Gabriela Minjáres.
November 26, 2003 Norma Andrade, a leader of the Cd. Juárez-based group Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa (Return Our Daughters Home) and the mother of victim Lilia Alejandra García Andrade, and Norma Ledezma, a leader of the Chihuahua City group Justicia para Nuestras Hijas (Justice for Our Daughters) and the mother of Paloma Angélica Escobar Ledesma, told the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada that although President Fox had met with them in the afternoon they wanted to have a protest because it had already been scheduled and because "we know that it was international and national pressure that obligated Fox to meet with us." "We march to tell the President that we hope he keeps his promises because words can be taken away on the wind. We want him to know that we will be watching to see if he keeps his promises, and we hope that he does keep them now, since it took him three years to receive us," the women said. Mothers and family members of the Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua City serial-killing victims led the protest through the streets of Mexico City along with Rosario Robles Berlanga, the former head of the PRD political party, and Rosario Ibarra de Piedra and other members of the Comité Eureka, the group that looks into Mexico's political disappearances of the 1960s and 70s. As the crowd moved through the city streets La Jornada reported that their cry was, "Fox, punish the killers, you know who they are; if you don't act, you're an accomplice." This is perhaps in reference to information divulged in an October 31, 2003 La Jornada article in which some of the last names of people allegedly involved in the crimes were published. The names mentioned in that article were "Molinar, Sotelo, Hank, Rivera, Fernández, Zaragoza, Cabada, Molina, Fuentes, Hernández, Urbina, Cano, Martínez, Domínguez and others." In its November 26 coverage of events, the newspaper again listed some of the names, although some were dropped and others were expanded: "the Zaragoza Fuentes, the Fernández, the Domínguez, Hank Rohn, Sotelo, Molinar, Urbina and Cabada, among others." The meeting with Fox After the meeting with Fox, the mothers told La Jornada that they heard Fox's "sensitivity, emotion and promise as the head of state." "He gave us his word and we hope that later we will not have to say that he did not keep it," they stated. Also present at the meeting was Interior Minister Santiago Creel Miranda and Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha. Fox told the mothers that he had already instructed Macedo to establish a DNA bank to help identify bodies and to help solve the crimes. The mothers that attended the meeting told La Jornada that Fox instructed Creel and Macedo to work actively, in a coordinated manner, to get results in the cases. Fox received the mothers by saying that he wanted to listen directly to them and that "justice sometimes becomes scarce in nations, and in ours, in particular, this happens." Source: La Jornada (Mexico City), November 26, 2003 and October 31, 2003. |