Disappearances, the ‘Silent Side’ of Mexico's Narco War

México
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March 24, 2008

Frontera NorteSur

The unearthing of at least 48 murder victims from three properties in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City during recent weeks grimly refocused attention on the persistence of torture and forced disappearance in Mexico. Since many - if not most - of the victims were presumably associated with illegal drug trafficking and other criminal activities, the popular wisdom is that common citizens who keep their noses out of trouble shouldn't be overly concerned by the discovery of mass horrors like the latest narco graves.

But victims' relatives have another message for society: human rights are universal. Contending that authorities are ignoring their pleas for justice, relatives and friends of victims of forced disappearance are increasingly taking their plight to the media and the public. In the Baja California state capital of Mexicali, members of the Esperanza Association Against the Forced Disappearance of Persons set up a protest encampment earlier this month outside state government offices. Members of the organization charged that 300 cases of disappeared people in the five municipalities of Baja California remain unsolved.


Meanwhile, in the Guerrero state capital of Chilpancingo the Committee of Friends and Relatives of Murdered, Disappeared and Kidnapped Persons contended that Guerrero Governor Zeferino Torreblanca, and State Attorney General Eduardo Murueta, have closed their doors to family members of missing persons presumably kidnapped by organized crime elements.

"Not a single state official has faced down the violence that this place is going through," charged Filiberto Ceron Radilla, father of disappeared architect Jorge Gabriel Ceron Silva. "It is as if they want to oblige the citizenry to accept a reality that we are not ready to tolerate." There was no immediate comment from either Governor Torreblanca or Attorney General Murueta.

The Guerrero relatives' committee has documented the cases of 107 people who disappeared in the state from December 2006 to January 2008. Additionally, the group reported at least 20 similar disappearances in the first two months of this year. Although violence has diminished somewhat from last year and 2006, high-profile disappearances and murders, suspected of being carried out by organized criminal gangs, continue on a fairly regular basis. In one of the latest cases to hit the press, Edgar Calvillo Roux, the director of the Acapulco police department's intelligence center, was reportedly kidnapped by armed men on March 5. As of yet no information about Calvillo's fate has come to light.

Condemned by all human rights organizations, forced disappearance constitutes the silent side of Mexico's narco war. Much more visible, of course, are the inner city shootouts, street side body dumping and public executions that have jarred entire regions of the country.  In Ciudad Juarez, for example, nine people were reported slain gangland style on Monday, March 17, including one man who was shot to death inside the popular Willy's dance club in the city's Pronaf district.

Since the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office on December 1, 2006 more than 3,000 people have been murdered in gangland style killings. As of March 14 of this year, the victims included 2,811 men and 197 women. Added together with similar statistics from 2006, more than 5,000 people have been killed in narco-tainted violence in the last two years. The body count is significantly higher than the total number of US soldiers killed during the first five years of the Iraq war.

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Sources: El Diario de Juarez, March 18, 2008. Article by Martin Orquiz. Norte, March 18, 2008. Article by Arturo Chacon. Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2008 Article by Marla Dickerson and Richard Marosi. La Jornada de Guerrero, March 15, 2008. Article by Marlen Castro.  La Jornada, March 10, 2008. Article by Antonio Heras. El Sur, March 1, 8, 15, 16, 2008. Articles by Ezequiel Flores Contreras, Aurora Harrison, editorial staff and the Agencia Reforma news service.

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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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This page contains a single entry by Marga Lacabe published on 27 de Marzo 2008 6:29 PM.

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