Monday,
August 16, 2010
Social Fuses are Burning Shorter and Shorter in Mexico
Frontera NorteSur
In Ciudad
Juarez and other parts of Mexico, the social fuse is burning short. Sparked by corruption, insecurity and impunity, different
manifestations of social discontent have erupted in recent days. Journalists, prisoners, policemen and other social actors
organized demonstrations, staged uprisings and issued new calls to action.
In an unusual protest, between 200-300 federal
policemen wearing hoods and toting weapons blocked one of Ciudad Juarez's main streets on Saturday, August 7, demanding
that action be taken against a commander who allegedly forced officers to pay "quotas" from extortions and kidnappings of
residents to him.
The protesters charged that Commander Salomon "El Chaman" Alarcon Romero framed one of their colleagues
and intimidated other subordinates by threatening to plant drugs on them.
In comments to a Ciudad Juarez reporter,
unnamed dissident officers complained their superiors were uninterested in protecting the public, and the campaign against
organized crime amounted to a simulated exercise.
Reportedly, cocaine, marijuana, guns and ammunition, and photographs
of numerous persons, mostly men who might have been targeted for kidnapping, were confiscated from Alarcon's room at La Playa
Hotel by mutinous cops. They also accused Alarcon, who was beaten and held for
several hours by the rebels, of planting drugs on common citizens to extort money.
Work-related complaints included
unfit for human consumption food, 12-hour shifts, charges for ammunition clips, and $40-$200 fees for permission to visit
family members.
In between blows and ridicule, Alarcon vehemently denied the accusations and pointed the finger at
another commander, Ricardo Duque Chavez, as the individual responsible for setting up the officer whose detention sparked
the rebellion. Duque later dismissed the rebels as lazy, undisciplined officers who were hastily enrolled in the Federal Police
from other law enforcement agencies.
At one point during the protest, anti-Alarcon demonstrators fought with the commander's
escorts.
In a swift response, the Federal Secretariat of Public Security (SSP) suspended Alarcon and three other commanders
from their jobs and turned the officials over to the federal attorney general's office in Mexico City for investigation. On
Sunday, August 8, before rank-and-file officers could say anything more to the press, the presumed participants of the anti-corruption
uprising were hastily flown from Ciudad Juarez to Mexico City.
"Internal affairs will proceed with the pertinent investigations
to establish the responsibility of the parties involved in the conflict and sanctions will be applied to those found involved,"
the SSP said in a statement.
According to the federal agency, 248 officers are now being investigated for "irregular
conduct" because of their participation in the Saturday demonstration.
"The Federal Police repeats its commitment to
protect and serve the community," the SSP statement concluded.
Once uncommon, cases of extortion and kidnapping-for-ransom
have soared in Ciudad Juarez since the mass deployment of Mexican soldiers and federal police as part of the anti-organized
crime Operation Chihuahua more than two years ago. Even small-time tortilla makers and burrito sellers have been targets of
extortionists, according to reports.
Prior to Sunday's mass transfer of federal police from Ciudad Juarez, an unidentified
officer admitted that not all the officers were "little angels," but that "95 percent" came to put their lives on the line
and clean-up the town. "There should not be commanders who don't comply with the law," he asserted.
Other on-the-job
pressures could be behind the police discontent. Increasingly, federal police are cannon fodder in the conflict with armed
gunmen affiliated with the Juarez drug cartel. Last weekend was no exception.
In addition to a street ambush of federal
forces only hours after Saturday morning's demonstration, the diced-up body of an apparently kidnapped federal officer was
found scattered at the entrance to the Plaza las Torres shopping center on the morning of Sunday, August 8. By the evening,
two other federal officers lay dead in downtown Ciudad Juarez, gunned down in public while off-duty.
The attacks against
federal police, who are hunkered down in several once-popular tourist hotels, resemble those of urban guerrillas constantly
pricking at the enemy.
Not far from the police demonstration, about 100 local journalists gathered in front of the
local office of the federal attorney general in a silent protest against attacks on their profession. The action was part
of an August 7 national protest against the killings of at least 67 journalists and the disappearances of more than a dozen
others since 2000.
"I don't want to become the story," read a placard at the Mexico City demonstration which drew an
unprecedented 2,000 participants.
In a Tabasco speech the day before the action, Mexican Supreme Court Justice Olga
Sanchez said the government should do more to protect journalists. "What good is a modern, constitutional and democratic state
if it does not give security to its citizens?" Sanchez mused.
On another front, two uprisings occurred last week at
the problem-plagued state prison on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez. In the first riot on August 1, two prisoners were killed
and seven injured. Disturbances also rattled penitentiaries in Chihuahua City and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, where 14 prisoners
were reported killed in fighting on August 6.
August also was ushered in with a renewed call to action against gender
violence in Ciudad Juarez. A newly-formed network of non-governmental and governmental organizations, REDAPREV, denounced
the August 3 killing of 15-year-old Ana Karen Santana, who was reportedly raped and then murdered.
At a press conference,
network representatives noted the slayings of 144 women from the beginning of the year until August 6, and demanded action
on the ongoing disappearances of women to avoid the "repetition of such cases."
On August 8, however, the decomposing
body of an unidentified woman who was apparently raped and strangled was discovered in an abandoned home in the El Barreal
neighborhood by two children playing.
Bringing together groups and agencies which sometimes have been at loggerheads
in the past, the REDAPREV includes the official Chihuahua Women's Institute, Ciudad Juarez Women's Roundtable and Casa Amiga,
the rape crisis center and shelter founded by the late Esther Chavez Cano, among others.
On a recent Ciudad Juarez
visit, Emilio Alvarez Icaza, former president of the Federal District Human Rights Commission, heard first-hand testimony
about the city's reality. In his El Universal column, Alvarez wrote how gunmen
snatched a 14-year-old girl from her family's car and gave the parents an impossible choice: give up the girl or prepare for
the entire family to die.
Alvarez urged greater government attention to Ciudad Juarez. In a reflection on his visit,
Alvarez posed a question: "What viability does a city have where any of us can have a daughter ripped away just like that?"
Finally,
reports are growing of citizens taking justice into their own hands. According to the El
Diario de Juarez newspaper, at least 12 instances of "lynching" have been reported this year.
In Mexico, "lynchings"
typically consist of citizens beating up suspects before turning them over to police or, in extreme cases, involve mobs hanging
or burning alleged wrongdoers to death.
In one instance late last month, residents of Ciudad Juarez's Colonia Industrial
neighborhood trapped a robber with the aid of a dog. "We are fed up of them robbing our belongings" an unidentified female
resident was quoted. "Who protects us?"
Gabriel Rodriguez Leos, ex-president of an association of criminologists in
the state of Chihuahua, said the neo-vigilantism has both good and bad aspects. On the plus side, spontaneous citizen actions
could be a sign that people are overcoming their fears and reclaiming the social landscape. On the negative side, Rodriguez
added, mob justice could soon spin out of control and result in "extreme situations" if authorities do not begin doing their
jobs.
So far, neo-vigilantism in Ciudad Juarez hasn't reached the level of places like the Mexico City suburb of Milpa
Alta, where hundreds of people from two communities confronted police and nearly lynched several suspected thieves on two
separate occasions recently.
The Milpa Alta incidents drew a smattering of praise in cyberspace. Identified as Manuel
Payan, a writer on La Jornada's website wrote that it was time for citizens to
take matters into their own hands, just as they did in the 1810 War of Independence and 1910 Mexican Revolution. The Mexican
people, Payan insisted, are "capable of writing a new social history. Justice Now!"
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Sources: El Diario de Juarez, August 7, 8 and 9, 2010. Articles by Gabriela Minjares, Luz del Carmen Sosa and editorial
staff. Lapolaka.com, August 7, 8 and 9, 2010. Proceso/Apro, August 8, 2010. Article by
Marcela Turati. El Sur/Agencia Reforma, August 8, 2010. La Jornada, August 7, 2010. Arrobajuarez.com, August 7 and 9, 2010.El
Universal, July 30 and August 8, 2010. Articles by Emilio Alvarez Icaza and Claudia Bolanos.
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Frontera NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Reprinted
with authorization from Frontera NorteSur, a free, on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news source; translation FNS
