| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2009 
Drug Gangs Take Low Profile in Juarez
 Julian Cardona - Reuters
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 |  | Criminals are taking a different approach, using pistols not assault weapons and driving around in small, old cars to reach their rivals, ditching their SUVs.
- Enrique Torres. |  | | |
Ciudad Juarez - Gangs in the northern border city of Juárez are currently keeping out of the spotlight so that the Army will leave, a local drug dealer told Reuters.
The dealer, who gave his name as X, said the Juárez cartel and its wing of corrupt police known as La Línea, or The Line, ordered foot soldiers to lay low so the Army would leave.
"They don't want any military taking over their turf and they can see they are not leaving, so they are again fighting [their rivals]," he told Reuters.
In spite of official counts to the contrary, some media and police tallies say that killings between rival drug cartels are rising again in Mexico's most violent city - despite a massive Army deployment that temporarily slashed the murder rate on the U.S. border.
The tactics have apparently changed too.
"Criminals are taking a different approach, using pistols not assault weapons and driving around in small, old cars to reach their rivals, ditching their SUVs," said Army spokesman Enrique Torres.
The government says the Army has cut drug murders by between 70 and 90 percent percent since soldiers arrived in March - but gangs killed 12 people on May 1 in one of the bloodiest days this year.
The 231 drug murders recorded in Ciudad Juárez in February dropped to 64 in March, the Army says. But the number crept up to 81 in April and is already over 30 for the first week of May, according to police and media tallies.
The nation's most-wanted man Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, is trying to drive out the Juárez cartel from the manufacturing city to control the prized smuggling route into the United States as well as dominate the local drug market, according to the authorities. |
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