Massacre in Mexico's Murder Capital

(Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico) Last Wednesday evening, a group of 12 commando-uniformed men carrying AK-47s stormed into a meeting of recovering addicts at the Aliviane Rehab Center and called out the names of several individuals from a list they carried. The individuals named were lined up against the wall and sprayed with bullets. The massacre claimed 18 lives (17 according to video).


The victims are all believed to be members of the Juarez Azteca drug cartel while the shooters were all part of the rival Sinaloa drug cartel. Notably, 12 drug-related deaths not associated with the rehab center occurred in Juarez on the same day.

"We're witnessing the extermination of the Juárez cartel," said Alfredo Quijano, editor of the Norte de Ciudad Juárez newspaper and an authority on the war between the entrenched Juárez cartel and the rival Sinaloa cartel. "The Linea, or Juárez cartel, is down to its last line of defense."

Sinaloa hit men, he said, are "killing people at will, hitting them like sitting ducks."

An informed source indicated that the Sinaloa cartel seems to be winning in the turf war. The Juarez cartel is slowly being pushed out of town, partially explaining why Juarez is known as "Mexico's murder capital." Drug violence has claimed about 1,500 lives so far this year in Juarez.

In the previous week, at least 75 people were killed in the city, including a man who was beheaded, another suspended by handcuffs from a chain-link fence and four whose bodies were piled on a sidewalk.

Those killings went largely unnoticed outside Ciudad Juarez. And there was little fanfare last week when the Mexican army announced the arrests in the city of three men it said had confessed to killing 211 people.

Interestingly, the massacre at the rehab center occurred only hours after Mexican President Felipe Calderon gave his State of the Nation address and specifically claimed the government's campaign against drug traffickers is working.

Frankly, I'd suggest that the government appears to have very little control.