----- Original Message -----
From: KOLA-IPF
To: Newslist KOLA
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 6:28 PM
Subject: [KOLANews] Mexico Week In Review: 12.15-12.21



[from Committee of Indigenous Solidarity (CIS). Thanks!]

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JUAREZ FEMICIDES UPDATE: 81 FEMICIDES THIS YEAR

Ciudad Juarez registered 81 femicides so far in 2008, more than doubling the
worst years of 1996 and 2001 in which the city recorded 37 women murdered. El
Diario de Juarez provided the following accounting of femicides since 1993, when
Esther Chavez Cano, a local human rights activist, first called attention to
problem:

Year Femicides
1993 19
1994 19
1995 36
1996 37
1997 32
1998 36
1999 18
2000 32
2001 37
2002 36
2003 28
2004 19
2005 33
2006 20
2007 25
2008 81

Of the 81 cases so far this year, 55 deaths resulted from organized crime, while
the Special Investigator for Deaths of Women (FEIHM) is handling the other 26
cases. Sixteen of these 26 cases remain under investigation while the other ten
cases have been declared resolved. Two twelve-year-old girls are among the
victims.

Source: Mexico Solidarity Network Weekly News Summary: 12/08-14

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DRUG WAR KILLINGS DOUBLE IN '08

Killings linked to Mexico's drug war have more than doubled this year compared
with 2007 and are likely to grow even further before they begin to fall,
Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora said. The prosecutor tied the sharp
increase in deaths to a battle for control among cartels and a power vacuum
created by a series of high-profile arrests and seizures. The number of gangland
killings reached 5,376 from the beginning of the year until Dec. 2, a 117
percent increase over the 2,477 killings in the same period in 2007, Medina-Mora
said in a luncheon meeting with foreign correspondents.

The bulk of the killings have occurred in the border states of Chihuahua and
Baja California, where traffickers have sought to wipe out rivals on the streets
of Juárez and Tijuana, and in Sinaloa, where one of the country's most powerful
cartels has its base. "These criminal organizations don't have limits," said
Medina-Mora, who previously served as Mexico's public safety director and spy
chief. "They certainly have an enormous power of intimidation." Even while
acknowledging that there was a "significant increase" in drug-related homicides,
Medina-Mora said the overall level of violence in Mexico remained moderate
compared with that in other Latin American countries.

Mexico's overall homicide rate last year, 11 deaths per 100,000 people, was a
small fraction of the rates in Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Brazil, he
said. Even as he released the new statistics though, the number of killings in
Mexico was climbing. At least 18 people were killed in two southern states on
Sunday, The Associated Press reported. They include two people whose heads were
left in plastic buckets near the office of the governor of Guerrero State, and
10 suspected drug traffickers and one soldier killed in a gun battle in Arcelia,
Guerrero. Taking on the cartels that supply most of the illegal drugs consumed
in the United States has been a frustrating exercise for Mexico. Officials
complain that the guns the criminals use are coming from the United States and
that the billions of dollars in drug profits have corrupted many institutions in
Mexico.

The attorney general's office itself recently found that numerous officials in
its organized crime unit were working for traffickers, receiving cash payments
to tip off the cartels about impending raids. But Medina-Mora said that the
arrests of those officials showed that Mexico was taking seriously its fight to
root out criminals wherever they are found.

Source: International Herald Tribune: 12/09

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