Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Despite the media attention calling for action and anti-drug campaigns launched by Mexico’s government, the border town of Ciudad Juárez continues to be killing field for men and women, Mexicans and Americans.
Since 1993, nearly 500 young women have been murdered in the city that is just across the border from El Paso, Texas, and many more have disappeared. Five hundred is also the number of total murders that were recorded in Juárez before the first three months of 2010 had come to an end. In 2009, there were more than 2,600 murders in Juárez, a city with a population smaller than Philadelphia, which saw just over 300 murders in 2009.
Juárez has also increasingly become a dangerous place for Americans to visit. During the final six months of 2009, 16 U.S. citizens were murdered in the town, compared to seven in the first half of the year.
The Houston Chronicle reports that justice has not prevailed in many murder cases either, because evidence was tampered with or innocent men have been framed or tortured into confessing to crimes they did not commit.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
The Tortured Women of Mexico (by Dudley Althaus, Houston Chronicle)
U.S. Citizen Murders in Juarez Spiked in Last Half of 2009 (The Nacrosphere)
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