3 found executed as southern Chihuahua suffers the 'cockroach effect'
2013-07-31
Posted by: badanov
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By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
A total of three men were found executed in a southern Chihuahua municipality Monday, according to Mexican news accounts.
A report which appeared in the online edition of El Diario de Juarez said that the three victims were found on a road between Creel and Guachochi in Guachochi municipality.
They victims were identified as Marco Antonio Bustillos Grijalva, 33, Saul Aldo Garcia Villalobos, 31, and his brother Victor Paul 25, all of Guachochi. They were shot multiple times in the head and chest. The grim find was phoned in anonymously to Chihuahua state police, which located the murder scene Monday.
The rise in violent crime in southern Chihuahua is what is termed the 'cockroach effect', according to José Antonio Enriquez, president of the Observatorio Ciudadano de Prevención, Seguridad y Justicia de Chihuahua.
According to a news account which appeared on the website of El Siglo de Durango news daily, improvement in security in the larger cities of central and northern Chihuahua state has forced criminal gangs into the more vulnerable mountainous regions of southern and western Chihuahua.
According to an unnamed source with the Chihuahua state Fiscalia General del Estado (FGE) or attorney general, the warring parties include the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels, which are squaring off in the region for territory and trade routes.
According to Senor Antonio Enriquez, murder rates have increased dramatically in the La Tarahuara region, which includes Guadalupe y Calvo and Guachochi municipalities.
Murder rates in Chihuahua city and Ciudad Juarez are currently around 30 per 100,000, while the rate in Guadalupe y Calvo is 118 per 100,000 and in Guachochi is 122 per 100,000.
By comparison at the peak of drug war violence in 2010, in Ciudad Juarez the murder rate was 229 per 100,000 and in Chihuahua city 118 per 100,000.
Senor Antonio Enriquez also said that the mountainous communities in southern Chihuahua are remote, a problem also cited in a statement made last week by Chihuahua FGE Carlos Manuel Salas. Those municipalities are traditionally areas which have been neglected due to the extreme remoteness of some areas.
According to Senor Antonio Enriquez, poverty also plays a role in criminal activity in the region. Ten of the 23 municipalities have very high levels of poverty, with 25 percent of the population in extreme poverty. The population is composed mainly of peasant and indigenous peoples.
In a related story, two men were sent to prison Saturday for their alleged role in the shooting at Reforma de Mesa in Guadalupe y Calvo July 21st.
According to a news report in El Norte Digital, Silverio EsmÃÂn Chaparro Olivas and Uriel Gutiérrez MartÃÂnez were sent to the Centro de Readaptacion Social (CERESO) in Parral after the southern delegate of the FGE discovered the two had been admitted to a hospital for gunshot wounds.
The shootout at Reforma de Mesa took the lives of six individuals, two of whom were decapitated. The shooting was so intense that at least 389 rounds of AK-47 ammunition were expended.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com
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