Street gangs, not drug cartels, are behind most murders in Juárez these days, the city’s mayor said Monday.

Juárez Mayor José Reyes Ferriz told a crowd of more than 100 people at the University of Texas at Austin that law enforcement efforts have made it more difficult for drug cartels to transport cocaine into the United States.

He said the increased patrols forced the cartels to find alternate routes. That, he said, created a separate battle between Juárez gangs that are now hunting for additional income.

“For the most part, the killings between the Sinaloa cartel and the Juárez cartel have ceased in Juárez,” Reyes Ferriz said. He blamed the majority of the 2,600 killings in the city during the past year on the feud between warring gangs.

He said the Aztecas and their rivals the Mexicles and Artistas Asesinos (Artists Assassins) are now fighting for control of the retail distribution of drugs in Juárez. The Aztecas are linked to the Juárez cartel, and the Mexicles and Artistas Asesinos are linked to the Sinaloa cartel.

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- via http://elpasotimes.com / photo: the ap

After a two-year battle that has killed more than 5,000 people, Mexico’s most powerful kingpin now controls the coveted trafficking routes through Ciudad Juarez. That conclusion by U.S. intelligence adds to evidence that Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel is winning Mexico’s drug war.

The assessment was made based on information from confidential informants with direct ties to Mexican drug gangs and other intelligence, said a U.S. federal agent who sometimes works undercover, insisting on anonymity because of his role in ongoing drug investigations.

The agent told The Associated Press those sources have led U.S. authorities to believe that the Sinaloa cartel has edged out the rival Juarez gang for control over trafficking routes through Ciudad Juarez, ground zero in the drug war.

Other officials corroborated pieces of the assessment. Andrea Simmons, an FBI spokeswoman in El Paso, confirmed that the majority of drug loads arriving from Juarez now belong to Guzman. And Mexican Federal Police Chief Facundo Rosas told the AP that while authorities are still working to confirm the U.S. assessment, “These are valid theories.”

“If you control the city (Ciudad Juarez), you control the drugs,” the federal agent said. “And it appears to be Chapo.”

- via the ap

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Related: Is The Calderon Administration Protecting “El Chapo” Guzman & Who’s Who in Mexico’s Narco Wars?

Starting today, Juárez will do away with its militarized strategy and instead rely heavily on the federal police, Mexican officials said.

The Mexican army will not withdraw from the violence-plagued border city, said Enrique Torres, a spokesman for Coordinated Operation Chihuahua.

Instead, they will carry out specific operations to combat drug trafficking, Torres said. Soldiers patrolling the streets in Jeeps will no longer be a familiar sight.

“Now, basically all you will find is federal and local police,” he said.

The presence of federal police will dramatically increase in the heavily-guarded city, where at least 4,800 people have been killed since 2008.

- via elpasotimes.com

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun directing deported criminals away from Ciudad Juárez amid concerns of mounting bloodshed in the border town, U.S. and Mexican authorities said. Starting March 4, Mexicans who have served time for crimes in the U.S. and who were set to be deported into Juárez, the Mexican city next to El Paso, Texas, have instead been transferred to other entry points into Mexico, including Eagle Pass, Laredo and Del Rio, Texas, according to a law-enforcement official in Washington who wasn’t authorized to speak about the changes publicly. ICE deported 136,126 criminal aliens last year, the vast majority held for crimes committed in the U.S. Of that number, more than two-thirds—about 104,000 former prisoners—were from Mexico. Central Americans were the next-largest contingent, with more than 6,000 each from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala—three countries that have endured decades of warfare by drug gangs. Not every deportee removed by ICE is a violent gunman. Most were in jail for relatively minor infractions such as driving without a license. Under U.S. law, any individual detained by the authorities who subsequently is found to be in the U.S. illegally may be incarcerated and then turned over to ICE for removal. Redirecting convicted criminals is only a temporary measure, the U.S. law-enforcement official said, and was in response to Mexican complaints that deported criminals were joining the deadly cartel war in Juárez.

- via wsj.com

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Crowds of protesters slammed President Felipe Calderon’s military crackdown on drug cartels as he flew to Mexico’s most violent city on Tuesday, three days after gunmen killed two Americans and a Mexican linked to the local U.S. consulate.

Hundreds of demonstrators held signs reading “government assassins” as Calderon arrived in this border town with U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual to meet officials and try to reassure Mexicans and Washington that his army-led crackdown on drug gangs is the best way to curb their violent turf wars.

“Calderon has no idea what he is talking about. He lives on another planet,” said Susana Molina, one of many activists gathering around the hotel where Calderon was due to speak and which was surrounded by dozens of soldiers and elite police.

Calderon sought to shift some of blame for Mexico’s drug trafficking problem, suggesting Washington should do more to cut Americans’ drug consumption. “It is crucial that the fight against organized crime be tackled with a shared responsibility between both countries,” he said.

Violence has exploded in recent months as ruthless, heavily armed cartels flush with profits from U.S. drug sales battle for control of the desert manufacturing city across the border from El Paso, Texas.

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- via reuters.com 

Killings Fuel Concern Over Mexico’s Drug Offensive 

The killing of an American consulate worker and her husband over the weekend in the shadow of the bridge that links this ramshackle city with the United States has become a public symbol of the mounting concern here that President Felipe Calderon’s strategy for attacking Mexico’s drug cartels is veering far off course.

The city braced for a visit on Tuesday from Mr. Calderón, who has been forced by the relentless violence here to recalibrate his approach and acknowledge that merely concentrating firepower on the drug gangs is not working.

In an about-face, the Mexican government has begun refocusing much of its energy on attacking social issues in Ciudad Juárez, in what officials say privately could be an experiment for other Mexican cities that are consumed by drug violence.

American officials say they have encouraged and supported the new approach, pointing to the lack of opportunity here.

United States officials reiterated on Monday their support for Mr. Calderón’s battle against Mexico’s drug gangs, which first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration have backed with more than $1 billion in aid. The money has been spread across an array of agencies charged with fighting the drug war. It has bought helicopters for the army, X-ray equipment for customs, training for judges and a new police academy for federal police recruits.

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- via nytimes.com 

Mexican President Felipe Calderón will be back in Juárez today, three days after the city’s daily violence became an international issue because three people with ties to the U.S. consulate were shot and killed in broad daylight.

Calderón’s agenda and the time of his visit were not released Monday. A statement from Juárez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz confirmed the visit, but said only that the president would review public-safety issues.

Reyes said the visit was part of the ongoing initiative called “We Are Juárez, We Will Rebuild the City.” The federal government sent $700 million pesos (about $55 million) to Juárez for economic development as part of the campaign.

This will be Calderón’s third visit to Juárez in a month. He visited Feb. 11, days after 15 people were massacred at a birthday party. He returned Feb. 17, promising to send specially trained federal police to investigate kidnappings and extortions, byproducts of the cartel drug wars.

During those visits, Calderón was met by thousands of protesters who said they were fed up with the violence. On this visit, Calderón will have to deal with the ramifications of Saturday’s killings, which sparked an immediate reaction from the United States.

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- via elpasotimes.com 

Three slain in Juárez tied to U.S. consulate

Mexican police said the three victims were attacked after they left a social event in Juárez at the home of another employee of the U.S. consulate.

Redelfs and Enriquez were traveling in a white 2009 Toyota Rav 4 with Texas plates when they left the gathering.

Witnesses said a group of armed men in a vehicle began following the couple at around 2:42 p.m. Saturday in the vicinity of 5 de Mayo and Malecon.

The couple tried to elude their pursuers by driving toward the Juárez city hall building, which is between the Paso del Norte and Stanton Street international bridges.

The couple may have been trying to get to the U.S. side of the border.

The pursuing vehicle fired on them at the corner of Francisco Villa and Norzagaray, causing the driver to lose control and veer into a lane with oncoming traffic. Then, the Toyota crashed into other vehicles and came to a stop.

Police said the couple died at the scene.

Although their vehicle received multiple gunshots, investigators found only a single bullet casing in the area from a 9 mm handgun.

Relatives said the couple’s 7-month-old baby girl was safe, and was turned over to family members.

Chihuahua state police said Salcido was in a white 2003 Honda Pilot when unknown assailants shot at his vehicle.

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- via The El Paso Times

Mexican authorities on Saturday arrested a third man in connection with the massacre at a house party last month in Juárez that left 15 people dead.

Chihuahua Joint Operation officials said former municipal police officer Aldo Favio Hernández Lozano, 36, allegedly worked as a hit man for the Juárez cartel, also known as La Linea.

Officials said Hernández Lozano told authorities he killed at least one person who tried to escape the shooting Jan. 30 at a birthday party in the 1300 block of Villas del Portal. Eleven of the victims were teen agers.

While officials said some of the victims were gang members, most were identified by friends and relatives as students and athletes.

In another development, Mexican Federal Police on Friday arrested Tiburcio Ramírez Arrellanes, who is believed to be related to and work closely with Crispín Borunda, an alleged leader of the Juárez cartel.

Borunda is wanted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in El Paso on charges of continuing criminal enterprise and conspiracy, according to the agency’s records.

Angel Torres, spokesman for the Mexican attorney general, said federal police detained Ramírez early Friday in Chihuahua City.

Ramírez is under arrest, but has not been charged, Torres said.

Also Friday, the Chihuahua state police and the Mexican army arrested 10 suspects — eight men and two women — in connection with the kidnapping of 12 people in Juárez.

By Aileen B. Flores

- via http://www.elpasotimes.com/

The slaughter last month of at least 15 young people with no apparent criminal ties has galvanized the Mexican public in ways not seen here in more than three years of bloody drug warfare and has forced the government to enact long-resisted policy changes to combat violence.

Some in Mexico are wondering if this is their nation’s tipping point, a moment when public outrage that has bubbled along finally overcame the fear and fatalism that until now largely silenced or intimidated Mexican society.

Led by parents of the victims in the Jan. 31 massacre, citizens of Ciudad Juarez have marched, protested, challenged Mexican President  Felipe Calderon  and demanded a new strategy for reducing the gruesome crimes that have made their city one of the world’s deadliest. Joining grieving parents in their wrath have been civic leaders, entrepreneurs, politicians, educators and priests.

“For the very, very first time, people, civil society as a whole, have come together and decided, this is enough,” said  Marcos Fastlicht , a prominent Mexico City businessman who heads an organization dedicated to the uphill task of promoting citizen participation in crime-fighting. “And they’ve said that to Calderon … to his ministers … that they are not going to take any more” neglect and broken promises.

Calderon, an often aloof leader seemingly impervious to criticism, has responded by apparently heeding the complaints and making the remarkable concession that his military-led war on drug cartels has proved insufficient.

He traveled to Ciudad Juarez twice in less than a week’s time, amid noisy street demonstrations demanding that he resign and with key Cabinet ministers in tow, and received long litanies of grievances from the beleaguered public. He quietly took a tongue-lashing from a middle-aged maquiladora worker, mother of two teenagers killed in the massacre, who confronted him abruptly at a town meeting.

“President, I cannot welcome you here,”  Luz Maria Davila  started, voice raised; Calderon waved off an aide who moved to whisk Davila away. “We are living the consequences of a war we did not ask for.”

It was a highly unusual rebuke from a humble woman in a country that retains paternalistic tendencies and demands a certain reverence for presidential figures.

Almost since its inception when Calderon took office in December 2006, the president’s anti-drug policy has been roundly criticized for emphasizing military and police repression and largely ignoring other components of the multibillion-dollar drug-trafficking industry. Poverty and lack of opportunity send thousands into the ranks of cartel foot soldiers in Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas. The Mexican city became the extreme, terror-gripped example of the policy’s shortcomings.

Even as 10,000 army troops and federal police were deployed, someone was killed in Ciudad Juarez last year about every three hours on average and up to half a million residents fled, a quarter of the population. As early as last summer, authorities told the Los Angeles Times they were reviewing and planning to make changes in the strategy for combating organized crime in the troubled city — a pledge made throughout the rest of the year, but never put into action.

Calderon now has been forced to offer a mea culpa and act. Embracing the citizens’ slogan, “We are all Juarez,” he acknowledged that his strategy had neglected socioeconomic factors and established a $50-million fund for new schools, clinics and job-creation programs, while also promising to assign a large contingent of judicial investigators to Ciudad Juarez.

“By hearing the demands and the indignation directly,” political analyst  Alfonso Zarate  in Mexico City said, Calderon “has an opportunity to rectify and to act differently.”

Skeptics accuse Calderon of moving now because it’s an election year. Both the governorship of Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juarez is located, and the mayor’s post in the city are held by Calderon’s chief rival party and are up for grabs in voting scheduled in July.

Whatever his electoral calculations, however, Calderon is also keenly aware of the corrosive political damage of the Ciudad Juarez disaster on his government, an erosion that goes far beyond the screaming crowds in the border city’s streets.

A poll out this week showed a dramatic decline nationwide in support for Calderon’s government. An overwhelming majority said violent crime had increased substantially in the last six months, and solidly half the nation said the president’s war on drug cartels was failing. The poll by Buendia & Laredo sampled 1,000 people in face-to-face interviews and had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

And there has been a busy confluence of voices of criticism from segments of society, such as the Roman Catholic Church, that had remained until now largely on the sidelines.

A member of Calderon’s own National Action Party, legislator  Manuel Clouthier Carrillo , accused the government of playing favorites in going after drug gangs, leaving the largest and most powerful of them, the so-called Sinaloa cartel led by fugitive kingpin  Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman , untouched. Clouthier was not clear about what Calderon’s alleged motives might be, but the suggestion stung and his colleagues are demanding that he retract it.

So far the citizen outcry in Ciudad Juarez has been channeled toward demands the government change course and withdraw the army (Calderon refused). It has not focused on residents’ own responsibilities in challenging drug gangs.

Many Mexicans have in effect become complicit by failing to speak out. But there were signs of that changing too.

Heriberto Galindo , one of the dozens of community leaders petitioning Calderon in Ciudad Juarez this week, scolded his neighbors for consistently lashing out at the government and army but never the traffickers.

“We have to assume our own portion of blame as well,” Galindo said. “It is not always the government that is responsible for the killing of a child.”

The only other recent incident that provoked a level of outrage similar to that generated by the deaths of the young people in January was the 2008 kidnapping and killing of a boy from a wealthy Mexico City family, a tragedy that unleashed angry marches across the country. But the response quickly lost momentum.

It is possible that once again, the furor — this time over the killing of the youths in Ciudad Juarez — could disappear in the ephemera of rhetoric absent concrete action. Already, several Juarez activists are complaining that the issue of human rights, much violated in recent months, was given short shrift in the talks with Calderon.

“The first step is to regain the public’s trust,” said Ciudad Juarez Mayor  Jose Reyes Ferriz , “and that is not done with a government decree.”

By Tracy Wilkinson

- via http://latimes.com/

A reporter says federal police beat him and three colleagues while they tried to interview protesters outside the Camino Real Hotel, where Mexican President Felipe Calderón was meeting with people.

David Fuentes, reporter with Juárez television station Channel 5, said police asked him to move from the area where protesters had gathered.

“They threw us to the floor and started beating us up,” he said.

He said police also beat two radio reporters and a reporter for La Polaka, an Internet news operation.

Police executives were not immediately available to respond to the allegations.

Dozens of protesters displayed banners with the words “Calderón asesino” — Spanish for Calderón assassin.

In the hotel, about 700 people listened to representatives of various Juárez groups who shared ideas with Calderón in areas such as public safety, health and education.

Calderón will speak later today at the Camino Real Hotel in Juárez. This is his second trip to the city in a week.

Juárez has become one of the world’s most violent cities. More than 2,600 murders occurred in Juárez last year.

Business owners in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, at the centre of the country’s drug-fuelled violence, have learned that rising crime is not only measured as a body count, but as a factor hitting hard on their financial bottom lines.

According to estimates by the local chamber of commerce, the increasing violence has forced more than 5,000 shops to close since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed security forces in the area for a head-on confrontation with the cartels.

The head of the business chamber of the state of Chihuahua, where Juarez is located, has said up to 100,000 people have left the city in the past few years.

A local businessman, who prefers not to be named, has experienced this trend first hand.

Of the six food shops his family owns in Ciudad Juarez, two have had to close and he expects the rest to follow suit soon.

“In the last nine months, we’ve been robbed three times and they twice tried to kidnap us,” he told the BBC from El Paso, Texas, where he now lives and has opened new shops.

“They can either run away from the country, or pay the cuota”
Daniel Murguia

He says the “juarenses” who, like him, have managed to leave the city are the “lucky” ones. The others, including his employees, remain in a city hit hard by violence.

More than 2,600 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez in 2009 in drug-related crime.

The toll the violence has had on the city’s society - including its business sector- has become a major focus of debate.

President Felipe Calderon is expected in Juarez this Wednesday after a much-publicised visit last week during which he announced the creation of a task force to draw up a new economic plan for the city.

Despite deep poverty in some areas, Ciudad Juarez, with 1.3 million inhabitants, is not one of Mexico’s most deprived cities.

Local government figures say it produces almost 45% of the GDP of the state of Chihuahua, mostly thanks to its manufacturing industry.

There are more than 300 maquiladoras - the factories that reassemble imported material and then export the finished product, mainly to the US - in and around the city.

Soledad Maynez, president of the Juarez association of maquiladoras, says what is at stake is Juarez’s consolidation as a major industrial hub on the border with the US.

Extortion

Earning the reputation of being the most violent city in the world does not help, she says. It has added to the financial difficulties for an industry reeling from the impact of the US economic slowdown.

For example, a project to build clinics in the city for US patients wanting to avoid the high costs of healthcare back home was relocated to a different Mexican state, Sonora, because of security fears.

Ms Maynez says that particular investment would have created seven much-needed jobs for every patient who had opted for treatment south of the border.

In addition, many maquiladoras have had to make unexpected substantial investments in security systems such as CCTV, alarms or safety training for employees, she says.

But the violence in the streets of Ciudad Juarez is more palpable for small shop owners.

Some of them have spoken of weekly visits by “people” - who they refuse to identify openly - who demand the payment of a “cuota”, an extortion fee, in exchange for protection.

If left unpaid, they say, the retaliation can amount to increased pressure, even the burning down of their premises or physical violence against the owner and their families.

Daniel Murguia, head of Juarez’s local chamber of commerce, says the owners have two options.

“They can either run away from the country, or pay the cuota. That’s the only choice they are left with. They must pay because there is no institution that helps them,” Mr Murguia told the BBC.

This is the type of frustration President Calderon is aiming to address.

His promise last week to “rebuild” the city seems like a daunting task, one the business people in Juarez know too well.

Thousands of people belonging to civil organizations and residents of Ciudad Juarez marched peacefully Saturday through this city to commemorate the slaying of 15 youths last Jan. 31 and to repudiate the presence of the Mexican army in the town.

The most numerous of the demonstrations, marching under the slogan “SOS Juarez – march of courage, pain and apology,” had some 3,000 participants, according to the organizers.

In this march, called by the Citizens’ Popular Front and the Resisste group, was Luz Maria Davila, a woman who lost two of her children in the massacre of 15 young people, and Gerardo Fernandez Noroña, lawmaker of the leftist Workers Party, or PT.

The protest march set out at 10:00 a.m. local time (1800 GMT) from the Benito Juarez monument downtown and headed for the Santa Fe Bridge, one of the international border crossings connecting this city with El Paso, Texas.

The legislator Fernandez Noroña asked that the army leave the city, considered the most violent in Mexico, in the belief that the troops treat the people in an “undeserved, violent, arrogant, unconstitutional and abusive” way.

“There is now more army in Juarez than ever, there are more federal police than ever…and today there is more crime than ever in Juarez,” the politician said.

Among the demonstrators’ banners were some demanding an end to violence, impunity and breaking the constitutional order. Others demanded justice for innocent families killed and still others slammed the alleged human-rights violations committed by the police and the military.

Protesters shouted slogans like “Ciudad Juarez is not a barracks. Army, get out of here,” against the military presence, which Mexican President Felipe Calderon has decided to maintain.

Marchers also demanded the resignations of Jose Reyes Baeza, governor of the state of Chihuahua where Ciudad Juarez is located, and of the local mayor, Jose Reyes Ferriz.

Cipriano Jurado Herrera, representative of the Popular Front, said that the goal of the protest was to demonstrate against the violence that has plagued this border town over the last few years.

Also marching this morning, from the city’s airport to the downtown area, was the so-called “Walk in prayer for peace,” with some 250 taking part and organized by an Evangelical pastor.

“In the violent times in which we live, Juarez needs everyone,” one of them said.

The marches took place two days after the visit to the city of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who announced the launching of a new strategy against violence.

Calderon admitted that “the deployment and presence of the army and federal police are insufficient” in Ciudad Juarez to stop the violence and promised social initiatives that will “help diminish and prevent crime.”

The president returns to the city next Wednesday, Feb. 17.

Around 300 people have lost their lives in Ciudad Juarez to date in 2010, while in 2009 there were 2,635 homicides, and in 2008 there were slightly more than 1,600, in killings often related to organized crime.

- photo credit: ap photo/alexandre meneghini

- via http://www.laht.com/