Posted on 03/29/2008 4:44:27 PM PDT by television is just wrong
Murders and kidnappings on both sides of the border have significantly increased in recent years. The violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has increased so dramatically that the Juárez Mayor José Reyes Ferriz asked Mexican President Felipe Calderón to send more help as reported in the El Paso Journal. Only thirty federal officers had been sent at that time to Juárez despite repeated requests for more help.
It's necessary and urgent to have agents from the federal preventive police to patrol the streets the way that we need to confront this situation," Reyes Ferriz said in a news conference. The Mexican President responded by sending more than 2.000 Mexican soldiers which arrived in Juárez to fight drug traffickers waging a war in the streets of the city, Mexican officials said.
Mexico's defense secretary, General Guillermo Galavan said at a hastily called news conference today in Juárez Mexico that over 2.000 solders and over 400 federal police officers would patrol the streets and operate checkpoints at entrances to the city. Officials said the operation will go on indefinitely. There have been hundreds of killings in Juárez since the start of the new year.
Photo by Rudy Gutierrez El Paso Times
Mexican Federal Police patrolling the streets in Juarez Mexico across the River from El Paso Texas
Photo by Rudy Gutierrez/El Paso Times High ranking Mexican officials being escorted by Mexican soldiers to the airport in Juarez after hastily called news conference
Mexican federal police have reported discovering mass graves containing numerous unidentified human bodies including two severed heads, three torsos and limbs. Juarez police put the number of bodies at 36. All the victims remains so far have been found in two clandestine graves in the backyard of a Juarez home in the 1800 block of Cocoyoc Street in the Cuernavaca area of Juarez and in the yard of a home on Pedregal street in La Cuesta area of the city. As reported earlier the Journal learned that Mexican federal police raided the home and seized a large amount of marijuana and arrested two people, Francisco Javier Chavez Nieto, 47, and Sulema Yanir Felix Pinuelas, 37, According to the Mexican federal Attorney General.
The Mexican federal police investigating this mass grave site is the same police agency charged with investigating murders and kidnappings throughout the country of Mexico as well as the massive sex-related serial killings of young women in that city. Back in 1993 was the first year that the mass rape-serial murders of young women in Cd. Juarez became widely publicized. Those dead numbered more than 600.
Families of missing relatives are trying to determine if any of the bodies are their missing relatives. Juarez authorities claim dozens of anguished people from as far away as Mexico City, Torreon, Coahuila and the United States have made inquiries. These people are searching for loved ones who had earlier vanished into the border city’s violent streets. The El Paso Journal has reported that on the US-Mexico border, where powerful drug cartels and there enforcers murder people on a regular bases our investigation shows that during the last several years, hundreds of people from Tijuana to Matamoros have been forcibly taken by heavily armed men, many believed to be the infamous “Los Zetas.” This much feared group are believed to be the elite "special forces" of the Mexican military, trained in the U.S. at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia and sent to "wipe out" powerful Mexican drug cartels.
Investigators say the dangerous bands of ex-military elite forces are operating not only in Mexico but in Texas and other parts of the United States unchecked. These rogue Mexican commandos blamed for hundreds of killings and kidnappings along the U.S.-Mexico border has carried out at least five drug-related slayings as far north as Dallas, a sign that the group is extending its deadly operations into U.S. cities, U.S. law enforcement officials say.
There is a list of over 200 missing persons who disappeared in Cd. Juarez. The FBI has identified 32 of the victims as being U.S. citizens. Juarez newspapers say that the actual number of disappeared or missing persons in Cd. Juarez is much higher but many people are frightened to report cases to the authorities. Estimates of Cd. Juarez’s disappeared surpass 1,000 individuals if both men and women are counted.
Jaime Hervella, founder of the Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons in El Paso, said it was an anonymous telephone tip he received that led Mexican police to the house at 1847 Cocoyoc street. Officials with Mexico's attorney general in Juárez said they could not comment on the case.
"I received a phone call from an informer that at such and such a warehouse where they recently picked up marijuana, you will find some of the individuals that are on your list," Hervella said.
Hervella's group has maintained a list of about 200 men who disappeared in Juárez since the early 1990s and are believed to have been victims of drug traffickers. The informer called Hervella back several times, Hervella said, and had specific details and said the house was behind "the dance hall with the French name. The house stands to the back of the popular rental hall La Cité. The man allegedly gave Hervella the identity of two of the victims, one of whom was a U.S. citizen who disappeared in 1996, Hervella said. Hervella said it wasn't easy to persuade Mexican officials to dig up the patio because "we've gone on wild-goose chases before.
Hervella said he told association members to have patience because the bodies at Cocoyoc street are in skeletal form and it may take some time before they can be identified. But he said the discovery was exciting news for families who want to know what happened to their loved ones.
To fully appreciate the scope of the drug related violence in the border region, over a 1,000 drug related murders were reported in Tijuana from 2000-2008. Official Chihuahua state government figures reported in the Cd. Juarez’s El Diario newspaper registered a total of 1,000 or more murders in Cd. Juarez from 1995 to the end of 2007. In Sinaloa state, the birthplace of important border cartels, the press has reported close to 20,000 murders from 1980 to 2008. During the first two months of 2008 alone, murders were registered in the conflictive state, a place where rival bands of gunmen kill for control of the drug-producing Sierra. See
Juárez has been plagued by violence as Mexico 's crackdown on powerful drug cartels stokes turf wars among traffickers that have been linked to hundreds of killings in the past two years.
© Michael Webster - All Rights Reserved
“As we are fighting a war far far away...”
Good point. If Perry would deputize Texans and form a border militia with shoot to kill orders, they wouldn’t be crossing over here. There are many Texans who would sign up.
in the old west days you closed and locked the fort before going off to battle.
sorry...
DAMIEN!!!!!!!!!!!
Perry do something? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Point made!
funny.
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