| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico 
Aspiring Journalist Covers Mexico’s Ongoing War on Drugs
 Daily News
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February 18, 2010
| | FGCU student, Alex Pena (R), experiences Mexico’s war on drugs firsthand. | |
Florida Gulf Coast University student and Naples Daily News intern Alex Pena traveled to Juárez, Mexico, to cover the violence surrounding drug trafficking. While in Juárez for three days, there were more than 50 murders, including the slaying of two policemen and a drug cartel leader. Pena, 20, aspires to be a war correspondent, and planned the trip to get experience covering breaking news.
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As the 6 o’clock news transmission begins in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, 22-year-old Luis Chaparro and his girlfriend Cecilia know that it’s time to stay inside.
“They try to kill people in the scale of the news,” said Chaparro, a college student in Ciudad Juarez, which is now considered Mexico’s most deadly city. “You have to stay at home, at least until the news ends.”
Ciudad Juarez’s centralized location, sharing the border with El Paso, Texas, has caused the city to fall siege to warring drug cartels who use the streets of Juarez to push billions of dollars worth of Illegal drugs into the United States.
“The news stations will broadcast at 2 o’clock, 6 o’clock and 8 o’clock,” said Chaparro. “You can not go out at this time.”
Cartel hit men, referred to by locals as “sicarios,” use the news cycles as a timeline to kill. They use the live newscast to broadcast their latest murders to the city and use the news camera’s images as an intimidation factor and a message to rival cartel members.
Chaparro knows that if he goes out just before or during a live newscast in Juarez, his chances of being shot and killed or hit with a stray bullet are much higher. This is a daily reality for teens and young adults in the deadly border town.
“I used to be out all day,” Chaparro said. “Now I have to constantly look at my clock, if it’s 2 o’clock, I have to stay where I am.”
For students like Luis and Cecilia, it’s not easy to secure a safe and honest future in this town.
“I try to stay away from the drugs,” Chaparro said. “It’s what makes them powerful, but I am not respected for it.”
According to Chaparro, no area in Juarez is considered “narco” free. Not even college campuses.
“There is a bunch of students who are involved in kidnapping and drug trafficking,” he said. “I have known that a gang of kidnappers whose ages ranged from 17 to 20 years old, had a member from (University of Texas at El Paso).”
Students experience a sort of psychological terror just living in the city.
“I always have extreme paranoia. Who’s following me? Who’s watching me? Who’s calling me?” Chaparro explained. “These are questions we are constantly asking, and it’s really starting to affect me.”
Although Mexican President Felipe Calderon deployed around 7,000 federal soldiers and 2,000 federal police into the streets of Juarez in 2008, the death toll hit 1,600 in 2008, an average of 8-10 murders a day. As 2009 ended, the number of drug related murders was more than 2,560. Juarez accounted for more than one-third of the 6,000 drug related killings in Mexico last year.
These numbers have dismantled the daily routine of young adults who live in this city, who now plan their days around a live news broadcast.
“Even if you don’t want to change your daily routine,” Chaparro said, “you have to, it’s too dangerous not to.”
According to Jose Reyes Ferriz, the mayor of Ciudad Juarez, in the past year, the city has grown its police force from just 1,600 police officers to more than 3,000.
“The only reason we could do that was because we had the support of the Army,” Ferriz said.
So oftentimes, students like Chaparro find themselves asking how, with military presence and a much larger police force, why violence continues to engulf the streets of Juarez.
“Criminals rearrange themselves, and they can do it very easily,” Ferriz explained, referring to the two main drug cartels, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juarez Cartel, who both operate out of Ciudad Juarez. “They started working on a new system where they now operate out of very small cells and neighborhoods. So if they want to kill somebody, they don’t travel throughout the city. They just call the guy in the neighborhood cell and say, ‘Can you please kill this guy.’ So for him it’s very easy to travel a couple of blocks, kill someone and come back. The patrol car is not going to stop him cause it’s a small trip, and that is mainly what is happening right now.”
Yellow caution tape is draped across an inner city street as police and joint task force units in Mexico gather around the fifth murder of the day in Juarez.
It’s only 6 o’clock.
His name is Gumaro. He was 36 years old and he is now a statistic in this ongoing narcotics war.
“He had his habits,” said an elderly woman who was his neighbor.
The majority of murders in Juarez are drug related.
“But he was a hard worker,” she said. “He used to work sweeping restaurants. He was respectful. There’s a lot of violence and no security. This could have been anybody at anytime.”
As the clock hits midnight in Ciudad Juarez, the 12th murder of the night just takes place. Bullet holes are present across the walls of an outdoor taco and burrito shop. Mexican officials say the victim was chased across the street with a stream of bullets coming from a hitman’s automatic weapon. The .223 caliber bullets caught up to him as he made an attempt to save his life as he ran down a dark city alleyway. That would be his final resting spot. Officials say he was just 26 years old. His mother arrives at the scene to identify the body. She quickly recognizes her son and screams out. She blames the police.
“Please no, no. You don’t handle this!” she shouts out as she bangs on the chest of a federal police officer in full body armor and facemask.
Part of the way Ferriz plans on combating this violence and police corruption in the city is through a third party crime stoppers program.
“It’s the first agreement in Latin America for Crimestoppers,” said Ferriz. “And it’s the first agreement worldwide with a government.”
Residents of Ciudad Juarez will be able to report anonymous tips and information to an international tip line outside of Mexico. Residents of Juarez don’t report crimes or tips because they feel the majority of the local police department is corrupt. So this is what the mayor is calling his next move in the war on drugs and the war to fight corruption in his own government.
“Once we get this information, somebody is going to tell us, ‘The killer in our neighborhood is this guy, and he lives at this place,’” Ferriz said. “Then, we’ll go and get him.”
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