| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2009 
Many Say Military Hasn't Brought Safety
 Dudley Althaus - Houston Chronicle
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| | Despite efforts by the Mexican and American governments, drug related violence shows no sign of slowing down. (Reuters) | |
Ciudad Juarez - Three months into a military surge aimed at restoring peace to this gangster-choked border city, soldiers are being blamed for the deaths of as many as four men, the disappearances of eight others and the torture of still scores more.
"The guarantee of public security has been totally broken," said Gustavo de la Rosa, an outspoken official with the Chihuahua state human rights commission. "Juárez was better off without the soldiers."
Defense and national police officials deny that their forces have been involved in the deaths, disappearances or torture of innocent civilians. And President Felipe Calderón has given his strong backing to the military campaign in Juárez, which borders El Paso.
"We will defeat organized crime in Ciudad Juárez because our armed forces will never back off nor desist," Calderón said in a visit last month to troops here. "Our people trust in the army."
But the accounts of those who say they have been abused by soldiers are convincingly similar: Many say they are picked up by patrolling troops, blindfolded and driven to remote locations where they say they were beaten with fists, rifles and boards.
"They are all men who are not on any arrest list," said lawyer Javier González, 55, whose small municipal office fields abuse complaints against the federal forces, which total more than 500 since March. "The economically fragile zones are those that have been the most affected. The operations are more intense there."
In those neighborhoods, army patrols target addicts, suspected gang members and other men in the street and torture them to extract information about local drug dealers, human rights groups and residents say. Homes have been ransacked and possessions stolen, they charge.
Chihuahua state prosecutors and human rights groups are investigating some of the cases, but Mexico's defense ministry denies that soldiers have been involved in the four known killings and the disappearances of at least eight others.
Army and other government officials vow to investigate every accusation but say gangsters may be disguising themselves as soldiers to carry out the kidnappings and beatings, said Enrique Torres, a spokesman for the joint operation meant to stabilize Juárez. Torres said 85 percent of the complaints against the federal police have been resolved.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other advocacy groups say that requirements that accused soldiers be tried only in military courts have meant immunity for most crimes. The army Thursday announced a 15-day detention of soldiers who roughed up Juárez journalists on June 4 and pledged its commitment to "monitor the security to create a climate of peace, confidence and well-being."
With Mexico's police outgunned and deeply corrupted by the criminals, Calderon deployed the army and military-like national police in launching his crackdown upon taking office in December 2006. More than 45,000 federal troops have been patrolling the country's most gang-addled cities and towns in the 30 months since.
Sending in the army to stop the violence "was necessary because there was no one else who can do it," conceded Oscar Enriquez, a Roman Catholic priest and human rights activist in a poor neighborhood near Juárez's southern outskirts. "But it's not an adequate solution. The army is committing a lot of abuses."
And some say those alleged abuses have had deadly outcomes.
Among the dead is Javier Rosales, 21, who was walking with a friend to buy beer in central Juárez just before noon on April 7 when soldiers pulled up. They took Rosales and his friend Sergio Fernández, blindfolded them and threw them in the back of a military truck, witnesses told human rights investigators.
Fernández later told investigators the soldiers drove them across the city to what seemed like a house, stripped them to their underwear, and beat them with 2-by-4 boards on their backs, buttocks and feet.
The two men were dumped on a mountainside west of Juárez in the pre-dawn hours of April 9. Fernández stumbled into the city seeking help. Rosales' body was found April 10 where it had been dumped. An autopsy showed he died from a blow to the back of his neck.
"He had a strong character," said his mother, Margarita Rosales, 39. "Maybe that's why they beat him harder," she said of her son, displaying pictures of his beaten body from the autopsy report she carries in her purse. "Perhaps he was fighting back."
Fernández has gone into hiding north of the border, Margarita Rosales said.
De la Rosa, the state human rights official, said witnesses saw the two men picked up by soldiers. And he said descriptions of their torture match those given by other men detained by the military.
"We believe it to be true," de la Rosa said of the account of Rosales' death.
In a cluttered adobe hovel on a dirt-street neighborhood not far from Juárez's army base, other men tell stories of similar run-ins: picked up by soldiers, carried to secluded spots on the mountainside and beaten with fists, rifles and boards on their backs, legs, feet and necks.
"They kept asking who is selling drugs in the neighborhood," said Daniel, who washes cars for a living, adding that soldiers fired two warning shots near him after setting him free. "But they already know all that."
The troop surge was greeted with relief by many in Juárez at first.
"We had a lot of hope at first, but the violence of the gangs hasn't gone down much," said Juan Delgado, 36, a factory employee. |
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