Monday,
April 12, 2010
Democracy is at Risk Due to Mexican Border Area Violence
Frontera NorteSur
Upcoming
state and local elections [in Chihuahua, Mexico, scheduled for July 4,] could become another casualty of the violence ravaging
a rural region just south of Ciudad Juarez. Less than three months before voters go to the polls to elect a new governor and
other officials, no persons have registered for the mayoral candidacies of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) in
the municipalities of Praxedis G. Guerrero and Guadalupe Distrito Bravos. The center-left PRD party is experiencing similar
problems in finding willing candidates, said Victor Quintana, a PRD state legislator from Chihuahua City.
In January
human rights activist Josefina Reyes, a former PRD elected official from the Juarez Valley, was assassinated. Last year, a
city council representative for the PAN was shot to death in Praxedis, while a PRI city council member was murdered in Guadalupe.
Since
the beginning of the year, violence in the Juarez Valley between competing criminal groups has left scores of people dead,
at least another dozen people kidnapped and from 12 to 15 buildings burned. Thousands of people have reportedly fled across
the border to Texas, or to neighboring Ciudad Juarez and other places in Mexico. Prior to the escalation of violence two years
ago, about 20,000 people inhabited the Juarez Valley.
According to calculations by New Mexico State University researcher
Molly Molloy, the Juarez Valley currently has an astounding annual murder rate of 1,600 victims per 100,000 inhabitants.
In
an Easter letter to President Felipe Calderon and other high Mexican officials, the Ciudad Juarez-based Worker Research and
Solidarity Center (CISO) demanded security for the Juarez Valley.
"Many times massacres have happened in the valley,
when we have seen the murderers carry out their threats against a defenseless population," wrote CISO. "As part of the security
operations, (government forces) have confiscated pistols and rifles from the rural populations, leaving the inhabitants defenseless
against the hired gunmen."
In response to widespread complaints, Enrique Torres Valadez, spokesman for the joint federal-state
security operation in the Ciudad Juarez area, assured a Mexican reporter that federal police were busy patrolling the Juarez
Valley.
Residents of another disputed landscape, the neighborhood of Granjas de Lomas de Poleo on the northwest edge
of Ciudad Juarez, have long complained of being the target of violent tactics similar to the ones currently employed in the
Juarez Valley, with little or no response from the authorities.
Posting on El Diario de Juarez's website, a writer
speculated that the objective of the scorched earth campaign in the Juarez Valley could be to clear out all the old residents
and replace them with new ones.
Meanwhile, the remaining residents of the Juarez Valley's small towns spent Easter
weekend on edge after messages were posted in public and transmitted on the Internet that warned inhabitants to leave by April
4 or face dire consequences. As of Monday, April 5, no massive attack had been reported.
On the evening of Good Friday,
however, armed men set fire to the Catholic Church in El Porvenir. The blaze was extinguished by the quick response of locals
who answered a call for help from the church's priest. A parish helper going by the name of "Manuel" said soldiers took three
hours to arrive at the scene of the arson attack, even though the army maintains a camp only four blocks from the church.
In
other separate attacks in the valley over the weekend, one man was wounded and two slain. The murder victims, Pascual Eduardo
Carmona Gardea and Jose Gilberto Mejia Salinas, both 20 years of age, were gunned down April 3 in the cemetery of El Sauzal
while at the burial for another recent victim of the violence.
A prevailing climate of violence and terror makes political
participation in the Juarez Valley very problematic, to say the least. PRD lawmaker Quintana demanded that authorities step
up their vigilance of the zone. Susana Muriel, a state legislator for the PANAL party, conceded that trouble in hot spots
like the Juarez Valley threatened to blemish July's elections, but insisted the political exercise would go forward.
The
Chihuahua State Electoral Institute plans a special campaign this week to train election workers for valley towns closest
to Ciudad Juarez. However, a spokesman for the state agency said this week's training will not cover the violence-torn municipalities
of Praxedis and Guadalupe.
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Additional
sources: Norte, April 5, 2010. El Diario de Juarez, April 4, 2010. Articles by Blanca Carmona and editorial staff. La Jornada,
April 4, 2010. Article by Ruben Villalpando. Arrobajuarez.com, April 4, 2010. Lapolaka.com, April 3, 2010.
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Frontera NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
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Reprinted
with authorization from Frontera NorteSur, a free, on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news source; translation FNS
