Identify Yourself and Obey!

[Joanne98]

Life in Ciudad Juarez

by Marcela Turati, Proceso
translation from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker

Ciudad Juarez is the Calderon-style laboratory for combatting criminal organizations. Not only drug traffickers, drug dealers, and even drug addicts, but also common citizens, above all youngsters, are involuntarily subjected to an experiment: how it would be, in Mexico, to live under military control. It has produced contradictory results: the executions, common crime, and street violence are increasing.

Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua - The manuel that was edited by the city council for good coexistence with soldiers states that you should identify yourself when they ask you to and follow their instructions. If they don't object, they will let you continue on your way.

In every street you will bump into men in olive-green uniforms, 7,500 to be exact, and 2,500 federal police dressed in blue with their faces covered. They will point their weapons at you while they patrol the streets, they will direct traffic where traffic lights are lacking, or they will question you for not wearing your seat belt. Don't be frightened; they're doing the transit cops' jobs.

Sometimes you will see them helping to push cars that broke down in the middle of the street, breaking up fights between drunks outside bars, subduing armed people, or slowing down the line of cars that are trying to cross the international bridge to El Paso, Texas. You will find them outside your children's schools, or even inside your own home.

Yes, inside. This will occur if the ion scanners that they use detect something near your home. Don't be offended, they have to make sure that you're not a criminal. So let them inside unimpeded so that they can rummage through your closet, your refrigerator, and your jewelry box; move your furniture; and thoroughly search every corner of your house.

You should feel proud to be part of the experiment in a city that is considered to be the spearhead of the anti-drug strategy that Calderon is showing off to Obama due to its "good results."

Right. Here the 10,000 soldiers and federal police contained the wave of murders that was killing 10 people per day and they abated it during the month of March. Although since April Juarez has regained its title as the most violent city in the country (with an average of four homicides per day, although sometimes six will occur in six hours or 19 in a weekend).

The heaps of soldiers, anonymous tips, and house-to-house searches, however, have produced results: now murders aren't committed with automatic rifles that leave dead bodies lying around with 80 holes in them. Now 9mm pistols are the weapons of choice, along with penknives and ice picks. And those that are killed aren't experienced adults--they're adolescents.

This change in the demographics and the criminals' modus operandi, according to Mayor Reyes Ferriz, shows that the drug kingpins have fled from the soldiers (perhaps that's why the murders went up 50% in the rest of the state) and now it's the street dealers who fight over the "turf." These dealers are younger and have less-powerful weapons.

The switch from rifles to smaller weapons, and from adults to kids, as Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont puts it, means that the strategy "is on the right path" and that now the second phase can begin, which includes the "stunning" capture of important criminals.

The downside is that with so many unemployed hitmen, the number of kidnaps and extortions has risen, and 50% of the people detained by soldiers in the Chihuahua Joint Operation are set free because the dossiers are put badly put together or for lack of evidence.

Those little details are being worked out so that the experiment can be successfully replicated in the rest of the country. The model includes soldiers in the headquarters of police forces, transit police, prisons, and even in the headquarters of business inspectors; squads of soldiers patrolling the streets; purges of police and training of their replacements in military barracks; and heavy spending to install street cameras, GPS systems, automatic weapons for soldiers and police, and armor.

Don't miss this opportunity. Enjoy your stay in this border town and feel the "Love for Juarez" that the radio and commercials extol.


http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/07/identify-yourself-and-obey

[subcomhd]

1. K&R