El Diario de Juarez

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 10:25pm on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

On October 17, 2008, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that the violence in Ciudad Juarez is keeping Americans away:

Mexican officials are trying to persuade Americans to visit Ciudad Juarez, touting the city in a new billboard campaign as a “land of encounters.” But on this side of the border, that sounds like a cruel joke.

More than 1,100 people have been killed this year in Juarez, population 1.5 million, in a drug-related bloodbath so staggering that the city has been declared off-limits to U.S. soldiers looking to go bar-hopping; El Paso’s public hospital is seeing a spillover of the wounded; and residents on the American side are afraid to cross over to visit family, shop or conduct business.

“We all like to make money, but the money I was making isn’t worth it,” said Fernando Apodaca, who spent at least one day a week for the past 18 years working in Juarez as an auto industry consultant. After his Cadillac Escalade SUV was seized in a carjacking last month, Apodaca vowed he wouldn’t go over the border again.

“I had a gun to my face. There’s no law over there,” he said.

Juarez, situated just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, has had more murders this year than New York and Chicago together had in all of 2007 —- and those two cities have seven times the population of Juarez. Last weekend alone, Juarez had 37 killings.

Juarez has always been a rough town, but one where many Americans felt safe enough to play, shop and work. Violence began to mount early this year after Mexico’s president launched a national offensive against drug lords.

Initially, the bloodshed involved drug cartels fighting each other. Then, military troops, law enforcement officers and government officials became major targets.

Assassinations have become more brazen and more and more innocents have been killed. Masked gunmen stormed a drug rehab center in August and killed eight people. Six men were gunned down last weekend at a family party. A 12-year-old girl was shot and killed in June while riding with two men targeted by hitmen.

Armed robberies, carjackings and kidnappings for ransom are also rampant.

While the bloodshed hasn’t yet spilled over to the American side, the violence is costing El Paso, a city of about 600,000 where only 17 homicides were reported in 2007.

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 12:28pm on Monday, December 8th, 2008

On December 6, 2008, Julie Watson of the Associated Press reported on the deaths of journalists at the hands of drug smugglers and corrupt police in Juarez and across Mexico:

"Mexico is the deadliest place in the Americas to be a journalist, and among the deadliest in the world. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 24 have been killed since 2000, and seven have vanished in the past three years.

Many of the victims had recently reported on police ties to cartels. Some are suspected of accepting drug money, but it's hard to be sure because the killings are barely investigated. Of the 24 cases, the committee says, only one has been solved.

Some attacks target specific journalists, others entire newsrooms. In at least two cases, grenades have been thrown at newspaper offices.

The attacks are silencing journalists and undermining Mexico's young democracy. Across the nation, news media have stopped reporting on the drug war, with most limiting their reports to facts put out by authorities, with no context, analysis or investigation. In most places, journalists don't even report on killings they witness.

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's bloodiest city with about 1,400 deaths this year, is an exception. Here journalists continue to cover the daily deaths, without using bylines or photo credits."