Mexico Week In Review: 09.29-10.05

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 09.29-10.05
=================================================================
Published since 1994, 'Mexico Week In Review' is a service of the
Committee of Indigenous Solidarity (CIS).  CIS is a Washington, D.C.
based activist group committed to the ongoing struggles of Indigenous
peoples in the Americas.  CIS is actively supporting the struggles
of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico while simultaneously combating
related structures of oppression within our own communities.

To request free searches of our news archive or to contact us
directly, write: cisdc at zzapp.org

"Para Todos, Todo; Para Nosotros Nada"
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MEXICO CITY'S URBAN INDIGENOUS CALL FOR AUTONOMY

Nine years after the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) burst
into the limelight, they have yet to win the Indigenous rights they
seek, but their campaign has inspired other Indigenous groups to push
for autonomy as well.  Even in the megapolis of Mexico City, small
groups of Nahuatl Indigenous, who are descended from the Aztecs, are
trying to reclaim land they say was taken first by Spanish
conquistadors then by the Mexican state. The Indigenous of Milpa
Alta, an area on the outskirts of the capital, style themselves on
the Zapatistas who are setting up autonomous communities in the
southern state of Chiapas. "We have been Zapatistas in Milpa Alta for
some time," said Agustin Martinez, sitting below a photograph of the
legendary peasant leader Emiliano Zapata. "It's not just Chiapas, not
just little outbreaks in different places. We are everywhere."

Twelve Indigenous communities in Mexico City are demanding that the
government recognize them as autonomous municipalities, which can
elect their own representatives and use their lands and other
resources according to custom.  "We have been arguing with the city
government that they must recognize us as owners of communal land,"
said Silverio Arroyos, who represents the community of San Pedro
Actopan in Milpa Alta. "We're the ones in charge here." But the city
has barely acknowledged the demands, said Francisco Garcia, head of
the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, in Milpa
Alta. The PRD controls city government.  "There has been little
response from either the local government or the federal government;
meanwhile urban sprawl is encroaching on us," Garcia said.

The Zapatistas' struggle has put the focus on the demands of Mexico's
estimated 13 million Indigenous for greater rights.  Most are trapped
in rural poverty, but those in Milpa Alta live in the nation's
political power base.  Some 100,000 Indigenous live in Milpa Alta's
adobe houses. On 66,700 acres they grow vegetables, corn and nopal,
an edible cactus popular in Mexico. They cannot touch the forest
under preservation laws passed in 1947.  Mexico City, a conurbation
of some 18 million people, has devoured other Indigenous communities
over the centuries. But 33 remain.  Mexico City gives them access to
the largest market in the country for their products, and some
families have prospered enough to build brick homes. They have water,
electricity and other services that many of their country brethren
lack.

But the city chips away at their traditional lifestyles.
"Modernization traps us, of course; it destroys the sense of communal
life," Humberto Jurado, a teacher from the Milpa Alta community of
Santa Ana Tlacotenco. "Urbanization absorbs political power,
identity, but we're fighting it off here."  Indigenous communities
struggle to pass down customs, art, history and language orally from
generation to generation. In Milpa Alta some of the old people teach
the Nahuatl language to youngsters. Young people participate in a
traditional dance group and villagers hold annual Indigenous
festivals. "At the end, one is proud to have a culture thousands of
years old," Jurado said. Indigenous activists say greater autonomy
would be key to helping preserve their cultures by allowing
communities to develop through their own resources and customs.  Most
often, they remain on the margins of development, in dirt poor
communities, with migration the only possible route to a better life.
"The government allows what has been going on for 500 years to
continue," said the Oxcacan Indigenous federal deputy Hector Sanchez.

Source: Reuters: 09/29
====

US TO DOUBLE MILITARY ASSISTANCE FOR MEXICO IN 2004

The United States will double its military assistance for Mexico in
2004 through the International Military Education Transference
(IMET), the El Universal daily reported. Without giving official
details, the daily, citing a US report, said the Mexican armed forces
received 51.7 million US dollars in military assistance in 2002
through the IMET program.  US military assistance for Mexico in 2003
valued at 26.84 million US dollars, compared to 31.02 million in
social assistance.

Next year, 51.52 million dollars will be poured into Mexico through
IMET, meaning that between 2002 and 2004, total US military
assistance to Mexico would reach 130 million dollars. According to El
Universal, many members of the Mexican military have received
training in the United States as part of a "cultural exchange." In
terms of training and special courses, Mexico ranks fourth among the
Latin American countries receiving US military assistance. The Latin
American countries altogether will receive 874 million dollars in
military assistance during 2004, El Universal said.

Source: China View: 10/01
====

CIUDAD JUAREZ FEMICIDE: UN EXPERTS TO HELP SOLVE KILLINGS

A group of U.N. criminal justice experts was traveling to Ciudad
Juarez to assist investigators struggling to explain the deaths of
more than 100 women in the border city over the past decade.  The
members of the U.N. Commission on Drugs and Crime were scheduled to
meet with prosecutors, investigators and forensic experts assigned to
the federal Homicides Against Women in Ciudad Juarez task force
office, the attorney general's office said in a statement.  The team
was also planning to meet with Chihuahua state investigators and
their forensic scientists and prepare a report evaluating both
federal and state authorities' handling of the cases.

The government reports that more than 250 women have been killed in
Juarez, located in Chihuahua state, across the border from El Paso,
Texas, since 1993. Independent human rights groups say three times as
many females have been slain there over the same period.  Prosecutors
offer different numbers on how many cases remain unsolved, but
officially acknowledge that 108 homicides are unexplained and that 93
of those appear to involve a similar pattern of sexual abuse or
mutilation.  The cases have long fallen under the jurisdiction of
Chihuahua prosecutors, but the federal attorney general's office took
over 14 of those investigations in May, after uncovering evidence the
victims may have been killed to harvest their internal organs.

Source: Associated Press: 09/27
====

IMMIGRATION NEWS: MEXICO CHEERS SUSPENSION OF U.S. PROGRAM

The Mexican government cheered the end of a U.S. pilot program that
deported migrants hundreds of miles from where they crossed the
border in an effort to discourage them from trying again.  The
Mexican government said its diplomatic protests were responsible for
ending the program. However, U.S. officials denied Mexican pressure
had anything to do with it, saying the program was a month-long test
set to end Tuesday. American authorities called the program a success
and said they are studying whether to run it again.

Most of the immigrants were caught in Arizona deserts, then put on
planes by the U.S. Border Patrol and sent to Mexican cities along the
better-guarded border in Texas. The U.S. authorities say the practice
cut migrants' links to smuggling networks in Arizona. The program
deported 5,600 migrants - or about 300 a day.  The office of Mexico's
Interior Secretary Santiago Creel sent notes of protest to the U.S.
government, saying border towns were ill-equipped to handle the
influx of deported migrants. It also complained about the U.S.
practice of handcuffing migrants with chains around their waists
during the airplane ride.  "We take this decision as a response to
the demands of the Mexican government on this issue," Creel said.
Creel announced the suspension of the program as a "special and
breaking piece of news," even though U.S. officials had confirmed a
week ago it would be ending. "This U.S. decision appears to improve
the climate of understanding on migration issues, and that is
something we celebrate today," Creel said.

However, Gloria Chavez, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border
Protection in Washington, said the pilot program was due to last 24
days, then be evaluated and reviewed by U.S. Customs and Border
Protection "to see if a program of this nature could be possible in
the future." Chavez said it was too early to say when that could
happen.  "But at this time I can assure you the program has been a
success and since the beginning has provided encouraging results,"
she said.  A press release from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico said the
program "saved lives," pointing out that there were "only four
recorded deaths" in the scorching desert of Arizona since the program
began. Prior to the program, the embassy said, the area averaged a
death a day.

Source: Associated Press: 09/30
====

POLICE CLASH WITH SQUATTERS ON PARK LAND

About 400 Mexico City police trying to clear public land of
illegally-constructed shacks clashed with squatters armed with sticks
and stones.  Police supported by helicopters fired tear gas to clear
residents protesting the eviction from the 115-acre (52-hectare) lot
in the southern suburb of Tlahuac, local media reported.  Several
people were reported injured in the clash, but no information was
immediately available on their condition. An estimated 450 people
lived in shacks built of tin, wood and cardboard on the property.
City officials said it is park land, while the residents claim it had
been sold to them by farmers who held collective title to it.  The
police finally took control of most of the property, and began
destroying the shacks.  The city is struggling with squatters groups
who frequently invade public land, pressed in part by a severe
shortage of housing in the city.

Source: Associated Press: 09/30
====

CARDINAL'S MURDER UPDATE: CATHOLICS MARCH SUPPORTS CARDINAL

Thousands of Mexican Catholics marched in support of one of the
country's leading clerics who has been accused of laundering money on
behalf of drug gangs.  About 5,000 protesters, most dressed in white,
marched toward the center of the western city of Guadalajara to back
Cardinal Juan Sandoval, under investigation by the attorney-general's
office on suspicion of laundering money for traffickers.  They
carried Mexican flags and banners reading "We Believe In You" in the
biggest march organized by the church in the city, Mexico's second
largest, for more than 70 years.

The cardinal denies the accusations which he says are intended to
deflect attention from claims he has made that former politicians
were behind the 1993 killing of his predecessor, Cardinal Juan Jesus
Posadas. A government inquiry concluded that Posadas was caught in
the cross-fire of a shootout between rival cocaine cartels.
Investigators have said top officials in the government of former
President Carlos Salinas, who ruled Mexico from 1988-94, may have
ordered the churchman's killing because he knew about links between
senior politicians and drug trafficking and prostitution.

Source: Reuters: 09/28
====

GOVERNMENT SNIPERS TRIGGERED '68 MEXICO MASSACRE

Once-secret government files show a massacre of student protesters 35
years ago was touched off when snipers under the command of the
Mexican government fired into the crowd. At least 360 government
gunmen were present, the documents indicate. Government officials at
the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on
Oct. 2, 1968 - 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by
Mexico - by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack
of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38
to several hundred. As Mexicans prepared to hold an annual march to
mark the anniversary of the shooting at Tlatelolco plaza, the files
obtained by The Associated Press added to evidence backing up claims
by student protesters that government operatives initiated the
massacre.  The Supreme Court ordered the federal Attorney General's
office to investigate how big a role the government played in the
massacre, but the investigation by a special prosecutor has faltered
because those in charge at the time of the attack refuse to testify.

Researchers say newly uncovered files with police names and the
number of snipers may give new momentum to the case. Investigators
say there is evidence top officials, including then-Interior
Secretary Luis Echeverria, knew much more than they originally
claimed. In 1970, Echeverria became Mexico's president.  The
documents say that some snipers moving from window to window above
the plaza scurried through an apartment that belonged to Echeverria's
sister-in-law.  Echeverria, who was in charge of Mexico's domestic
security, has denied any direct involvement in the attack, and he and
his assistants refused to comment to the AP. Called in for
questioning last year by Special Prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo,
Echeverria refused to talk, citing his constitutional right to remain
silent. "You think Echeverria didn't know that they were firing from
the apartment of his sister-in-law? I don't think so," Maria de Los
Angeles Magdaleno, an investigator for the special prosecutor
researching the case, said in an interview with the AP. Magdaleno
leads a team of five government researchers combing through millions
of uncatalogued documents. Among the team's recent discoveries is a
list of the intelligence monitors for dozens of military units and
police squads who showed up at the plaza, another indication the
events were no secret to high-ranking officials.

Researchers have uncovered mounting evidence that among those at the
plaza was Manuel Diaz Escobar, who led a secret battalion of police
known as the Falcons. The Falcons went on to lead another bloody
attack on student protesters in 1971. Magdaleno says there were
diverse groups of police at the plaza, including federal police, city
police and secret service agents. Investigators do not have evidence
the government had previously ordered police to carry out the
killings, but documents suggest things got out of control.  "The
decision was not to go out killing students and certainly not with
the eyes of the world on Mexico" before the Olympics, Magdaleno said.
"There were so many groups in the operation that the authorities
couldn't control them."

Until recently, prosecutors had brushed aside demands to prosecute
those responsible for the massacre, claiming the statute of
limitations had expired years ago.  But on the anniversary of the
massacre two years ago, President Vicente Fox promised to open secret
government archives about the event.  Carrillo, the special
prosecutor appointed by Fox to investigate crimes by past
governments, said there is evidence 38 people were killed at
Tlatelolco Plaza. Human rights groups have contended several hundred
died, but government officials hid the bodies so an exact count was
impossible. Government officials also seized photos of the carnage
and ordered newspapers not to print photos of corpses.

International observers worry the investigation will stall,
especially as government officials remain silent. "If you don't put a
limit on time, the process will go on for 10 years," said Sofia
Macher, a member of Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which
investigated deaths and disappearances in Peru during a brutal
insurgency by Shining Path guerrillas. Human Rights Watch has urged
Fox to make the investigation a higher priority and to provide
investigators with more resources. The group also wants Congress to
pass new legislation that would pressure witnesses to testify, saying
prosecutors need the power to negotiate plea bargains.  "As this
thing drags out, I think the frustration has grown considerably,"
said Daniel Wilkinson, an attorney for Human Rights Watch. "It will
take showing concrete results for that to abate."

Source: Associated Press: 10/02
====

SPECIAL REPORT:
FROM NORTH TO SOUTH: A TRAIL BLAZED IN FEMICIDE AND IMPUNITY

Found raped and murdered on a Nuevo Laredo street in early January
2003, Olga Lidia Osorio died before she could realize her dreams of
moving up in the world. The brutal killing of the 16-year-old
computer school student jolted the Tamaulipas border city and moved
its citizens to demand justice in the case. Members of Nuevo Laredo’s
city council and the state ministerial police, the law enforcement
agency charged with investigating homicides, soon announced that
leads would result in the arrests of suspects. A bereaved  Pedro
Osorio, Olga Lidia's father, expressed confidence that authorities
would apprehend whomever was responsible for his daughter’s killing.
Months later, and following several changes of lead investigative
personnel in the case, Olga Lidia’s killer or killers remain free and
questions remain unanswered about a crime that bore chilling
similarities to the rape serial murders that have terrorized Ciudad
Juarez and Chihuahua City. Like many victims from Chihuahua state,
Olga Lidia was enrolled at a private computer school and would visit
one of the many cyber-cafes that dot Mexico. The teenager attended
the Nuevo Laredo branch of Grupo Premier, a San Luis Potosi-based
institution with branches in several Mexican states, which bears an
uncanny resemblance to the national ECCO computer school chain
operated by Grupo Pionero.

Since 1995, at least 15 young women linked to computer schools in the
state of Chihuahua and Nuevo Laredo have disappeared or been
discovered raped and murdered, with 14 of those cases occurring since
late 2000. Reportedly, 11 of the Cd. Juarez and Chihuahua City
victims had some sort of contact with ECCO branches. Some were ECCO
students, at least one was an employee of the computer chain and
others were contacted by recruiters just days before they
disappeared.  In Nuevo Laredo, Grupo Premier's name surfaced again
several weeks after Olga Lidia's murder. In this case, a teacher from
the school, Natanael Parra Trujillo, was accused by the parents of
one of his students of luring their daughter to the instructor's
house and raping her. She survived the alleged attack. Later,
authorities released Parra after reportedly running DNA tests that
showed no link between the man and the alleged victim.

In the summer of 2001, two men claiming to work for Grupo Premier,
Ruben Ponce and Hector Manuel Gonzalez, were involved in a strange
affair that scandalized the tourist port of Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo,
Guerrero, in southern Mexico. In this instance, a group of three
young women and a young man from a town in Jalisco state hit hard by
maquiladora lay-offs accused Ponce and Gonzalez of deceiving them to
travel to Zihuatanejo to work as recruiters at a computer school.
After turning over original identity documents to Gonzalez and Ponce,
the youths claimed they were put through a three-day training course
in Zihuatanejo that emphasized self-esteem and salesmanship.  Within
days, the youths, including one 15-year-old girl, claimed that lofty
promises of salaries and housing were grossly violated. Instead of
finding decent lodging, the Jalisco group charged that they were
crammed into an unsanitary house with no food and forced to sleep on
the floor along with approximately twelve other young people.
According to their testimonies, none of the previously-arrived girls
appeared to be actively working for the computer school and
situations of drugs and prostitution appeared to be present. Shortly
after their arrival, some of the Jalisco girls were invited aboard a
yacht in Zihuatanejo Bay by another supposed employee of the computer
school. Onboard they were sexually propositioned aboard the vessel by
a man that they thought to be from "North America," meaning a US
citizen or Canadian.  Fleeing the house, the penniless youths
contacted local authorities. A complaint was filed with the state's
attorney general's office in  Zihuatanejo against Ponce and Gonzalez.
However, a brief investigation by the Guerrero State Judicial Police
determined that no laws had been broken and the case was closed on
September 3, 2001. Both Ponce and Gonzalez denied any wrongdoing, and
Ponce put his name on a document agreeing to pay transportation costs
home for the four young people.

At the time the incident erupted in the press, Ponce and Gonzalez
were in the process of recruiting local young women from Zihuatanejo
to dispatch them as computer school recruiters to other cities. The
practice is also common in the ECCO chain, where recruiters and even
managers are shuffled from city to city. Although no direct link has
been revealed with Zihuatanejo's computer schools, a spate of women's
murders  in 2002 and early 2003 in the tourist port recalled episodes
in  northern Mexico. In different instances, police recovered the
bodies of 6 women who had been stabbed, raped and left for dead in
isolated spots along beach and scenic routes or near the downtown
club district.  Three of the victims were not initially identified,
and local authorities suspect the women were from out of town. The
former state prosecutor in Zihuatanejo, Alberto Ortiz, dismissed the
possibility that serial killings had moved south from the border, but
only one arrest has been reported in the murder cases. Mayor Amador
Campos, Zihuatanejo's first elected opposition mayor, does not
discount that the bodies might have been planted in an attempt to
destabilize his new administration. Long basking in its reputation as
a tranquil getaway Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo has suffered mounting violence
in recent years. Straddling strategic coastal and land routes, the
tourist resort has become a major smuggling pathway for both South
American cocaine and locally-produced opium and marijuana.

In Tamaulipas, Olga Lidia Osorio's killing openly sparked speculation
that Cd. Juarez-style sex killings had come to haunt that side of the
border. The fears were reinforced two months later when the raped and
strangled body of 19-year-old gym employee Wendy Rodriguez was found
outside her place of work in Reynosa, a city immediately across the
border from McAllen, Texas. Like many victims from Chihuahua state,
Osorio and Rodriguez either disappeared or were found on a Tuesday, a
day that has a strange connection to numerous Juarez killings,
according to journalist Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez, the author of
Huesos en El Desierto (Bones in the Desert) a book about the
killings. Serial-like women's murders actually might have commenced
in Tamaulipas in 1999 with the rape and murder of prostitutes working
Nuevo Laredo's zone of tolerance (a red light district). The
following year, in Reynosa, three men, including Jose Antonio
Gonzalez Torres, a reputed former maquiladora security guard, were
arrested for drugging, raping and killing four women all of whom were
between 19 and 21 years old. The victim's bodies were burned, a trait
present in some of the Juarez cases. According to the Tamaulipas
attorney general's office, two of the suspects in the Reynosa case
were known to have visited Bagdad Beach (Playa Bagdad) near
Matamoros, the place where children's television hostess and
sex-murder victim Erika Daysi Martinez's body was found in October
2002 shortly after she disappeared.  A recent compilation of press
reports by the Reynosa-based non-governmental Center for Border
Studies and the Promotion of Human Rights (CEFRODHAC) reported at
least 126 murders of women in 10 Tamaulipas municipalities during the
last 5 years. Many of the killings were "characteristic of what has
happened in Ciudad Juarez," says CEFRODHAC President Arturo Solis.
According to the report, detentions were made in only 60 murder
cases, leaving more than 50 percent of them unsolved. Since
influential people could be involved in the murders, Solis calls for
genuine police investigations to "get to the bottom" of the cases.

At the same time, rapes and attempted street abductions of women are
frequently reported in Tamaulipas, especially in Nuevo Laredo. In
2003 police arrested Felix Diaz Marquez of Jalisco state, a former
security guard for the Herredera nightclub, on charges that he raped
a woman from Laredo, Texas, in a Nuevo Laredo hotel room. Diaz denied
the charges. A 2001 sex-murder victim, Susanna Diaz, was employed at
the same club.  In another incident reported in July 2002, a young
restaurant waitress charged that she was forced to go to a ranch
outside Nuevo Laredo by her boss and members of a law-enforcement
group and then was raped by the men. Later in the same month, a badly
beaten and raped woman was found dumped in a lot not far from the
street where Olga Lidia Osorio lived.

Murdered at the beginning of 2003, Olga Lidia Osorio could have been
the proverbial canary in the coalmine. While no direct link has yet
been established with other killings, the young woman's murder set
the tone for one of bloodiest years in Nuevo Laredo's history as
rival mafias turned the city's streets into an open battlefield in
their war for control of the rights to the lucrative drug-smuggling
routes or "plaza." Alma Gloria Perez of the Nuevo Laredo group Women
in Action says requests for names and addresses of emergency line
callers discourage citizens from speaking up about crimes. "This
keeps many people from filing charges. People don't want their
personal information listed," contends Perez. According to the
activist, Women in Action and other citizens are proposing that
emergency lines accept anonymous calls.

In another development, the presence of Central American gangs tied
to drug and human trafficking has been recently reported in Nuevo
Laredo.  Known as "maras," the gangs were spawned in the barrios of
Los Angeles from the massive refugee flight which accompanied the
Central American wars of the 1970s and 80s. Later, gang members
returned to their devastated homelands. Today maras are blamed for
scores of gruesome women's killings in Guatemala and El Salvador over
the past few years that rival those of Cd. Juarez and Chihuahua City,
replete with raped and dismembered victims.  Now, the gangs are
establishing a foothold in Mexico. One mara was blamed for the murder
of Brenda Jimenez in Chiapas state in July 2002 and the rapes of
three girls in Veracruz state during September of the same year.  A
recent radio report suggested that maras are being employed by more
sophisticated elements of organized crime to do their dirty work.
Recalling the savagery of state-sanctioned, death-squad murders
against political opponents two decades ago, including many women,
the gender violence in Guatemala has prompted a network of women's
organizations to announce that it will file a complaint with the
Washington, D.C. based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Meanwhile, a bloody transnational highway strewn with the snuffed-out
lives of raped young women now runs parallel to the major drug and
immigrant smuggling routes that pass through Central America, cross
into southern Mexico and then touch the U.S.-Mexico border. In
virtually all the cases, the victims have been the dispossessed of
the region, young women crowded into poor barrios or forced to travel
north in order to eke out a living.  Perhaps it is a grim symbolism
of sorts that one of the most recent victims of a sex-related murder
in Chihuahua state was 27-year-old Jennifer Carolina Albino, a
Honduran immigrant who was raped and slain south of Ciudad Juarez in
late August, 2003.  She was allegedly murdered by a train guard as
the car she was on moved north from Chihuahua City.

In Mexico, women's murders and sex-related crimes are typically
defined as "common" crimes under state jurisdiction and left in the
hands of often poorly equipped and/or corrupt state police.
Nonetheless, federal authorities can investigate if they get wind of
a crime in progress or a continuing pattern of criminal conduct is
discerned, which appears glaring in Cd. Juarez and other places.  A
debate rages in Mexico over whether the federal government should
assume complete control of the Cd. Juarez murder investigations.
Women's and human rights groups cite Mexico's adherence to
international agreements that protect the rights of women and
children, including the Convention for the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women and the Convention of Belem Do Para. Dr.
Miguel Concha, president of the Fray Francisco de Vitoria Human
Rights Center in Mexico City, argues that "obligations for the
respect of human rights are obligations of the Mexican state, not
just local authorities." But the Fox Administration has fallen back
on domestic Mexican law in its response to the crimes against women.
On a recent visit to El Paso-Cd. Juarez, Mexico's Public Security
Minister Alejandro Gertz was asked why the federal government had not
taken over control of the women's murder investigations in Juarez and
elsewhere, especially in view of the of the arrests made earlier in
the year in Acapulco, Guerrero, by members of Gertz's Federal
Preventive Police (PFP), who detained foreign and Mexican pedophiles
reportedly operating from a cyber-cafe. Dr. Gertz responded that the
PFP received a complaint of a crime in progress, enabling it to open
an investigation. Mexico's security czar also contended that state
authorities should not shirk their responsibility to enforce the law.
"I don't think that the system of local and federal crimes that
exists in this country, which is a legal reality, is really
functional at this moment," said Gertz. "But neither do I believe
that local authorities can pass off their responsibilities every time
there is a problem." In Cd. Juarez, Dr. Gertz added that the federal
government is actively participating in a joint federal-state effort
to find and punish the killers of women. But with a mounting number
of women's homicides possessing similar characteristics throughout
the border region and beyond, it\'s open to serious question whether
the current Cd. Juarez probe is not only too late but far too limited
in scope.

Finally, the March 2003 discovery of a murdered young woman in
Laredo, Texas--just across the border from Nuevo Laredo--raised
questions of possible links to international organized crime. Found
completely nude and in a state of decomposition, 21-year-old
Esmeralda Gutierrez's body was recovered from an empty lot not far
from the Laredo County Club and Golf Course. The young woman had
received a blow to the head and had been strangled. Martin Guerra, a
homicide investigator with the Laredo Police Department, says
Gutierrez had been killed elsewhere and then dumped in the lot, the
modus operandi of women's killings in Northern Mexico.  According to
the detective, the victim had a history of drug abuse and had been
arrested in January 2003 by the United States Border Patrol for
smuggling undocumented immigrants, an activity that is increasingly
controlled by organized crime in Mexico and other countries. Due to
the condition of Gutierrez's body, Guerra states that investigators
were unable to determine whether she had been sexually assaulted, "We
can't say no, but we can't say yes." Guerra adds that no suspects are
in custody. This leaves Esmeralda Gutierrez's death--like Olga Lidia
Osorio's--as another one of many unpunished crimes on a long, bloody
trail of femicide and impunity that extends back over a decade.

Sources: Frontera NorteSur: 10/02; Proceso; El Manana (Nuevo Laredo);
El Diario de Nuevo Laredo: Laredo Morning Times: Stereo 91 XHNOE-FM
(Nuevo Laredo); La Cronica de Hoy; La Jornada; Univision; National
Public Radio

end: Mexico Week In Review: 09.29-10.05
--