Frontera NorteSur April 2000

Officials from the federal, state, and municipal levels responded to the recent wave of drug trafficking violence in Ciudad Juárez with a highly publicized and unprecedented Security Summit February 28. Summit leaders, including Juárez Mayor Gustavo Elizondo, Chihuahua State Governor Patricio Martínez, and Attorney General for México Jorge Madrazo Cuellar, drew up a 14-point plan to fight crime in the border city and the state of Chihuahua. "We have created in Juárez a special, coordinated group exclusively to solve the problem of crime," said Madrazo.

Some of the 14 actions proposed by the Summit included:

• Using the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) to patrol the Abraham González International Airport and major highways that lead to Juárez;
• Appropriating $245,000 (U.S.) for public security;
• Improving the city's telecommunications infrastructure;
• Enforcing the existing Justice Administration programs;
• Increasing the presence of federal police, especially the Public Ministry (MP), in the Sierra, the mountainous regions of western Chihuahua;
• Installing the military's Mixed Base Operations (BOM) units in Juárez;
• Bringing in the highest federal police (PGR) to investigate executions;
• Integrating the PFP, PGR, and the state attorney general's office (PGJE) in a mixed cell against organized crime;
• Creating a Coordinated Municipal, State, and Federal Anti-Crime Group to be headquartered in Juárez;
• Developing a "Confidence Control Unit" to oversee the selection of officers and to periodically evaluate security forces;
• Instituting a state-level secretarial office to oversee and follow through on the commitments made by the Summit.

The Summit coincided with the Second Session of the State Council for Public Security, and was headed by Diódoro Carrasco Altamirano, Interior Secretary. Other summit leaders included federal drug policy chief Mariano Herrán Salvati; Brigadier General Roberto Badillo, commander of the Fifth Military Zone; Brigadier General Julián David Rivera Bretón, commander of the 42nd Miltary Zone; Chihuahua state attorney general Arturo González Rascon; and political leaders from all levels of government.

Carrasco said the new coordinated effort would be part of a national security system. "We have agreed to strengthen the our ties with actions in the areas of professionalization, infrastructure, and equipment," he said.

The summit also had an additional effect of temporarily uniting the National Action Party (PAN) mayor of Juárez and the Instutitional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governor of Chihuahua. "In Ciudad Juárez we have established a common denominator for all the municipalities in the entire state: public security," said Governor Martínez.

The mayor agreed. "This summit is an important step which we must strengthen by following through to see that we translate [our commitments] into effective results," said Elizondo.

The groundwork for the Summit was prepared by President Ernesto Zedillo during his visit to Juárez February 24. At that time, the president met with both the governor and the mayor to discuss their concerns about the wave of drug trafficking-related crime in the city and state. Zedillo's first response was to order Attorney General Madrazo to send an "elite group" of federal investigators to Ciudad Juárez to review unsolved cases involving missing and murdered women, missing people, and execution-style homicides. He also asked Madrazo and Carrasco to begin the process of creating a special tri-level group to combat crime.

While in Juárez, the president promised that "we are going to use additional force, not only for investigating, but against all criminal activities." He also suggested a meeting for the purpose of "making very clear, very precise commitments" regarding security and justice issues on the border.

Those commitments were made clear with the arrival of military patrols in Ciudad Juárez in early March. Newspaper headlines sensationalized the military presence, claiming that the army would be combatting drug addicts (called "picaderos") and houses that sell drugs ("tienditas").

Three federal deputies from Juárez denounced the action as "unconstitutional," according to a report in El Norte March 6. PAN deputies Carlos Camacho, Adalberto Balderrama, and Eliher Flores charged that the military was performing duties that belonged to state and municipal police agencies. Camacho said he would denounce the military's actions before a congressional council. In addition, he also said that "in my opinion, the intervention of the military has its origin in electoral politics . . . The participation of these forces is a danger to the citizens."

Elizondo, however, defended the military patrols as "traditional," and said the military was not usurping the functions of the police, but rather "collaborating" in the effort to increase public security. Also, the mayor went on to say, the military is not participating at all in operations against houses that sell drugs within the city, a function which does properly belong to police authorities. Two days later, city newspapers announced that Elizondo "would be the spokesman" of the tri-level operations.

The military presence received even more attention with the March 9 arrival of the military's Mixed-Base Operations (BOM) units, trained especially to fight drug trafficking and associated crimes. The BOM units, however, were primarily assigned to cover the periphery of the city, rather than its center. Elizondo said the units were called in after another series of execution-style slayings (see "Army Patrols Juarez as Violence Continues.")

Two hundred more PGR agents were sent to Juárez by March 11, most of whom were integrated in the Special Anti-Crime Unit (UEDO) and the Special Forces for the Attention of Crimes Against Public Health (FEADS). According to a report in El Diario, the new 200 agents are specialists in drug trafficking and will be in Juárez for an indefinite period of time.

The same week, Mayor Elizondo announced he would be initiating a new national and international campaign to show "the other side of Juárez." Part of his campaign, he said, would be to ask the Secretary of Health to help him establish an addiction clinic in Juárez. His first move was to land an interview with nationally known journalist Lolita de la Vega.

Sources: El Diario, El Paso Times, El Norte