Posted on 09/26/2010 10:15:14 AM PDT by AuntB
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico Some 230,000 people have left Ciudad Juarez, a border city that has become Mexicos murder capital, in the past three years as the death toll from a gang war topped 7,000, a non-governmental organization said in a new report.
About 124,000 people, or 53.9 percent of the total, have sought safe haven in El Paso, Texas, which is just across the border, the Ciudad Juarez Citizens Security and Coexistence Observatory said.
The rest have returned to their hometowns, mainly in Durango, Coahuila and Veracruz states, to get away from the drug-related violence.
Action should be taken immediately to keep the crime and violence from leading to a loss of economic dynamism and, in turn, a continuing reproduction of violence and crime as a result of unemployment, the reports authors, Ramon Chavira and Wilebaldo Martinez, said.
The two Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez, or UACJ, professors used National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics, or INEGI, figures, as well as interviews with emigrants families, to come up with the population trend figures for the border city.
Ciudad Juarez is the scene of a war for control of smuggling routes between the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels.
The border city, where more than 2,000 people have been murdered this year, has been plagued by drug-related violence for years.
More than 20,000 houses have been abandoned in the border city by people who feared they might become murder, extortion or kidnapping victims, Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said.
Journalists have also been leaving the border city in recent years due to threats.
Jorge Luis Aguirre, publisher of the online daily La Polaka, was granted political asylum on Monday, U.S. officials said.
Aguirre fled to the United States with his family on Nov. 13, 2008, just hours after El Diario de Juarez reporter Armando Rodriguez was murdered.
Rodriguez was murdered in front of his 9-year-old daughter outside his house.
Luis Carlos Santiago, a 21-year-old El Diario news photographer, was killed last week and his colleague, Carlos Sanchez, was wounded in an attack by suspected cartel hit men.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Friday that it was appalled by the killing, adding that the level of violence and mayhem is staggering in many parts of Mexico including Cuidad Juarez.
El Pasos Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, meanwhile, warned of a likely new wave of media members seeking asylum in the United States in the wake of the attack on the photographers.
I think they want to silence the voices of the reporters, who are the ones on the front lines. As an organization, we are going to support these types of situations, Eduardo Beckett, an immigration attorney at the center, said.
We are receiving a huge number of calls. Were really busy, but we are going to do everything possible to help deal with this. Its an international crisis, Beckett said.
The flow of people from Juarez to El Paso started in 2007, press reports said.
The death toll from the drug war in Ciudad Juarez reached 8,300 between December 2006 and July 2010. EFE
What a wonderful world it would be if Texas had Switzerland as a neighbor instead of the mess of Mexico!
His old president or his new president?
But many of the "old Mexican" EP population is NOT happy about illegal immigrants--they had to jump through the hoops to become US citizens, and feel that's the only way citzenship should be obtained. Plus, they don't like having their tax dollars go to supporting these people--who the government of Mexico is happy to see go across the Rio and thus become our problem, not theirs!
“Its not just pandering politicians you need to purge, its the leaders of your so called Christian churches like the Catholics, Mormons and Lutherans who aid and abet the illegality of immigration that you need to deal with!”
This has been planned at the highest levels and they are on board to secure their positions. Religion has nothing to do with it, only money and power. As it always was.
FYI
Lugar: Mexican drug lords most immediate threat to U.S. security
By Mike Lillis - 09/26/10 02:44 PM ET
The Senates top Republican on foreign policy said this weekend that drug traffickers operating on the Mexican border pose a more immediate national security threat than domestic terrorists.
Sen. Richard Lugar (Ind.), senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is calling on the White House to intensify efforts to help Mexico fight drug lords at the border, where escalating violence has killed tens of thousands of people in the past few years.
Transnational drug trafficking organizations operating from Mexico represent the most immediate national security threat faced by the United States in the Western Hemisphere, Lugar said in remarks prepared for an Indiana-based training for Mexican prosecutors Sunday, Reuters reports.
The United States should undertake a broad review of further steps the U.S. military and the intelligence community could take to help combat the Mexican cartels in association with the Mexican government.
The Indiana Republican is suggesting the U.S. military and intelligence communities provide Mexico with more surveillance help, to combat the flow of drugs, money and weapons across the 1,969 mile border
I think they need their own army, not TEA Party. To do that, they need their own guns and paramilitary organizations as the government either can't or won't protect them.
Guns (for honest people) are outlawed in Mehico. Therefore, there is not much other option but to run. Unfortunately, they are running here for "safety". The cartels are following the well worn paths north. The "safety" is not going to last long - either for them or us.
I strongly suspect the cartels will soon start expanding to wholesale kidnapping and ransom of American citizens they take back to Mexico. There are millions of rich Americans (certainly richer than most Mexicans) living close to our border and lots of ways to get them back across the border. Neither our authorities nor law can't chase them back into Mexico and the Mexican government can't do much about it. They can't even protect their own.
This is going to get really ugly, really fast when people start disappearing and then ransom notes and body parts start showing up in this country.
It has already worked its way into Arizona. That is what Gov. Brewer has been shouting about but nobody in the District of Corruption wants to listen. Their biggest worry is “racial profiling”. I guess when a war breaks out here, they might send some troops. Political correctness is about to get a whole lot of Americans killed.
Interesting article.
Calderon, like all of Mexico’s leaders, is corrupt and on the take of the drug cartels. Ever since the US gave him and Mexico over 1 billion in the Merida Inititiative....the drug cartels have grown
The only way to fix the problem in Mexico is to seal the US border, deport all those illegaliy here, and end NAFTA (trading with drug cartels only empowers and enriches them)
El Paso has always had at least that many Mexicans commuting to work everyday. I guess most of them are sleeping in El Paso now as well as working there.
Passing NAFTA was a huge mistake.
I loved El Paso, when I visited it in 2000. Its destruction would truly be sad.
I have no problem with multiculturalism, as it existed then, but I suspect things have changed.
I fear that the Ciudad Juarez Citizens Security and Coexistence Observatory is not really that, but an illegal immigrant promotion front.
I notice that it is not reported that those 124,000 new residents of El Paso are 99.9% illegal. That's got to bring the infestation closer to home.
More
Killings of journalists lead to news blackouts in Mexico
http://www.thestate.com/2010/09/26/1483424/killings-of-journalists-lead-to.html
Prayers up.
Very broken. But you can get this great Budweiser specialty beer. Has Tomato Juice and Clams. Yum. Yum.
El Paso is Mexico with more Guns.
Los Angeles is Mexico with more Amusement Parks.
San Francisco is Mexico with more Gay Bars.
And the list goes on...
Good move!
Pretty much what always happens in a situation like this.
They will do whatever they can to keep themselves safe in their environment and in so doing they will create the same conditions that caused the drug cartels to rise up.
A corrupt society never stays safe for long.
Thanks for the ping/posts. Great thread.
Borders, Language, Culture (thanks Michael Savage) BUMP!
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