The Latest News From Ciudad Juarez

[La China Poblana]

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Thirteen Mexican state police have been arrested in the killings of 11 people found buried around a safe house for drug traffickers near the U.S. border, a federal official said Thursday.

Federal Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la *#*#*#*#*#*# also said at least four other officers, including a state commander, were on the run. The commander, Miguel Angel Loya, has not shown up for work since Monday, said state police spokesman Mauro Conde.

The officers were arrested in northern Mexico and brought to Mexico City.

The 11 victims apparently were bound, gagged and suffocated or shot by suspected drug traffickers, then buried in shallow graves at a house in Ciudad Juarez connected to the Vicente Carrillo drug gang.

Macedo de la *#*#*#*#*#*# has said the victims apparently were rivals of the cartel and had been dead for as long as a year. The bodies were found over the weekend.

The house was rented by Alejandro Garcia, who allegedly told police he helped kill and bury victims in his backyard at the behest of a top Vicente Carrillo drug gang leader and several Mexican state police officers — and he believes there are still more dead to be found.

Mexican investigators said the property apparently was used by Humberto Santillan, who was arrested Jan. 15 across the border in El Paso, Texas. Mexican authorities identified Santillan as a chief lieutenant for the gang.

Garcia said he worked with the Carrillo cartel for a year.

The 13 arrested officers worked the night shift, starting at 8 p.m. and getting off at 8 a.m., Conde said. The money from drug trafficking is "too tempting for people who are not committed to public service," he said.

The arrests expose a police force long believed to be inept and corrupt. For a decade, hundreds of slayings have gone unsolved, particularly those involving a string of young women killed in a similar manner.

Some people said they were not surprised by the arrests.

"We all knew they were behind this," said Luz Elena Caraveo, whose brother disappeared along with his friend a year ago — allegedly after being kidnapped by police.

"One is always afraid to talk and look (for answers) because one could easily become a target."

State officials have tried to purge the police ranks of corruption, firing some 300 officers in the last two years, Conde said.

"Since they started these investigations, we have cooperated with the attorney general," he said. "We have always tried to clean up these bad elements."

Lorenza Benavides, vice president of the Association of Relatives and Friends of the Disappeared, said her organization has received reports of 197 missing men and the number keeps growing.

"We have always said police officers are involved in all of these crimes," Benavides said. "But our complaints have always fallen on deaf ears."

Benavides said her organization has asked federal authorities to search three homes around Ciudad Juarez where neighbors reported hearing screams and seeing many people come in and out.

Deputy Attorney General Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos said those homes will be searched soon. A total of six homes in Ciudad Juarez are involved in the investigation, he said.

[sidspaceman]

Rebeca Contreras' body was found March 10, raped and strangled, in a desolate waste lot on the outskirts of Mexican border town Ciudad Juarez. As gruesome as it was, there was an aspect of this discovery that one government official found positive.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ct/20040405/cr_ct/in400juarezmurderssomeprogressbutfewanswers

[La China Poblana]

Not related to the murders in Ciudad Juarez, but an article from the Chicago Tribune about the disparity between rates of solved homicides in the Latino community and other ethnic communities.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0404200254apr20,1,479162.story?coll=chi-news-hed

[La China Poblana]

Report: No Serial Killer in Mexican City

MEXICO CITY - A federal probe of notorious slayings of women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez found no evidence of a serial killer but rampant incompetence by local officials in the first 50 cases studied.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&e=3&u=/ap/20040603/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_border_slayings

[La China Poblana]

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A federal prosecutor on Thursday called for criminal probes of 81 Mexican officials -- from prosecutors to police detectives -- for their handling of the killings of hundreds of women in the past decade.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=3&u=/nm/20040603/wl_nm/crime_mexico_juarez_dc

[La China Poblana]

MEXICO CITY - Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans wearing white staged a silent march through the heart of their nation's capital Sunday to protest kidnappings, violent crimes and the failures of law enforcement to curb them.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=589&e=3&u=/ap/20040627/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_crime_protest

[La China Poblana]

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Mexican authorities have arrested a 28-year-old construction worker in the killing of a woman that had similarities to string of sexually motivated slayings in this rough border city across the border from El Paso, Texas.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=589&e=5&u=/ap/20040811/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_border_slayings

[La China Poblana]

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - The government of a northern Mexico state has promised to give free homes to 47 mothers of women killed in a string of sexually motivated slayings, angering some activists who say the gifts gloss over the lack of results in the criminal investigations.

Thirty families in Chihuahua state will receive the houses later this month, with the rest distributed after the new government takes office in October, said Victoria Caraveo, head of the Chihuahua Women's Institute.

"The houses are part of a program that aims at helping the mothers rebuild their lives," Caraveo said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&e=2&u=/ap/20040916/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_border_slayings

[corazon_de_CHIVA]

I used to live in Juarez and I have many family members there. If I can input one thing about the law there is....THERE IS NONE! Everyone knows that the same people in the police department are most likely the ones involved with these killings of women and this sudden takeover by drug lords. How funny that no one has been caught yet? It's all some coverup ******** by the corrupt ass local government there....that city has beame a drug lord capital in a matter of 5 years.

[La China Poblana]

CHIHUAHUA CITY, Mexico -- When Miguel David Meza Argueta heard last year that his cousin Neyra, a 20-year-old computer student, had disappeared, he said he immediately flew to this city in northern Mexico to help search for her. Hundreds of young women in the border state of Chihuahua, mainly in Ciudad Juarez, have been murdered in the past decade, so Meza said he feared the worst.

He and the family searched everywhere, even driving around in the desert where scores of bodies of raped and mutilated women have been dumped. He led protest marches against the police to complain that they didn't seem to be investigating. As his family grew more angry, he called the state attorney general incompetent.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20289-2004Oct9.html?nav=rss_world

[La China Poblana]

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - A judge on Wednesday found a bus driver guilty of eight slayings, giving prosecutors their second conviction in the decade-long series of murders of women in this border city.

Victor Garcia Uribe was sentenced to 50 years in prison on each of the counts, the maximum under Mexican law, for the deaths of eight women whose bodies were found in a vacant lot in Ciudad Juarez in 2001.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=589&e=4&u=/ap/20041014/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_border_slayings

[La China Poblana]

MEXICO CITY - Some police may have been accomplices in a decade-long string of women's slayings in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, a federal official said, citing the case of an ex-officer who recruited young girls to a prostitution ring.

Criminal investigations should be launched against 51 local law enforcement officials — in addition to 49 others previously targeted — for abuses and allegedly mishandling cases, according to a report presented Monday by Maria Lopez Urbina, the top federal investigator in the case.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=589&e=2&u=/ap/20041026/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_border_slayings

[La China Poblana]

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Caravans carrying activists from as far as Canada arrived Sunday in Ciudad Juarez to demand authorities find the culprits behind a string of unsolved killings of women since 1993 in this rough border city.

Mexican authorities say 340 women have been killed over the past decade in Ciudad Juarez, a city of about 1.3 million people across the U.S. border from El Paso, Texas.

The activists came from Toronto, Seattle, Boston, Minneapolis and Laramie, Wyo., visiting 56 U.S. and Canadian cities along the way to drum up support for their cause.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=589&e=4&u=/ap/20041101/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_border_slayings

[La China Poblana]

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Ten alleged gang members were convicted Thursday in the killings of 12 women, some of the hundreds who have been found slain in this border city in recent years.

Four bus drivers, all thought to be loyal to a criminal gang known as "Los Toltecas," were sentenced to between 40 and 113 years in prison for premeditated homicide, aggravated rape and criminal association in the slayings of six Ciudad Juarez women.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=589&e=1&u=/ap/20050107/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_border_slayings

[La China Poblana]

UNITED NATIONS - Mexico is guilty of "grave and systematic" violations of the rights of women for mishandling investigations into the killings of more than 300 women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, a U.N. committee said Thursday.

The committee released the findings in a report that was the result of an investigation into the killings and whether Mexico had violated the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050128/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/un_mexico_killings_1

[La China Poblana]

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - The prosecutor assigned by Mexico's attorney general to investigate the slayings of hundreds of women in this border city has failed to bring the true culprits to justice despite recent convictions, victims' relatives say.

The criticism came as Maria Lopez Urbina prepared to release a progress report Monday, the third since her appointment to the politically sensitive task a year ago.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=589&e=1&u=/ap/20050131/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_border_slayings

[La China Poblana]

MONTERREY, Mexico - President
Vicente Fox said Tuesday a majority of 12 years of killings against women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez had been solved, angering activists and victims' family members still upset over his suggestion the deaths had been blown out of proportion.

Referring to a report by the former prosecutor in charge of the cases in Juarez, Fox said 323 women had been killed in the city across from El Paso, Texas, since 1993, and added that 230 cases have been solved.

"This shows the work done so far, but we're aware there are still other cases that need to be solved." he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050601/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_border_slayings;_ylt=AmdJaaHQk54vrIFuOP.pADO4IxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[fdp]

Roughly 3 to 4 years have passed since Lisa started this thread.

What is the latest news coming out of Ciudad Juarez.

Has progress been made?

I am ashamed to state, that as most people tend to do, what was and quite possibly still taking place in Ciudad Juarez had been put on the back burner of my mind until I forgot about it all together.

Recently I saw the following movie on the shelf of my local rental store and decided to rent it.

Ciudad Juarez - Tan Infinito Como El Desierto.

http://shopping.yahoo.com/video/images/muze/dvd/sm/98/1325698.jpg

Although a very difficult film to watch, I recommend viewing it.

Truly stirs the emotions from sadness to anger...

Note: It is an Television Azteca production.

[Robert_08]

Juarez is one of the best cities in Mexico!
Their is always fun stuff to do!
It's crazy out here!
Every time you go out you have to make shur you don't go alone or you take protection, shit is scary!
I live in El Paso but they also sell Juarez newspaper here(El Diario), so when my dad buys it I also read it and damn! their is always someone murderd(most of the time it's cop) or a redada in the jail!
Im kinda scared of going to Juarez!

[mixtil36]

I heard Juarez is a rough town, not too long ago there was an article in the LA Times about one of the hitmen that just got busted, he was 16 years old and had already killed like 30 people. Seems like you grow up real quick over there, sucks.