Lorena Figueroa

El Paso Times

A surge in execution-style deaths and shootings in broad daylight have riddled Juárez the past month after a two-year respite that had made some in the city feel relatively safer.

Experts attribute the increase in slayings to a number of factors, including an upcoming change in government and the break up of major crime organizations after the arrest of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The drug lord is being held in a federal prison in Juárez.

Homicides spiked sharply in July with 51 slayings — a number not seen since May 2014 — after an average of 30 each month since the start of 2016.

The trend seems to be continuing in August with at least 36 slayings as of Thursday, according to unofficial numbers from the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office and news reports.

Most murders have been execution-style deaths and drive-by shootings.

The murder of a businessman in front of the Mexican federal court house, another one in the parking lot of the popular Los Arcos restaurant in Américas Avenue, and of a U.S. Citizen near the Paso Del Norte international bridge have been among the most notorious.

Anthropologist Howard Campbell, an expert on national security at the University of Texas at El Paso and author of the book, "Drug War Zone," said it's too early to consider the spike of murders as an emergence of another bloody drug war in Juárez.

The turf war between the Sinaloa and Juárez drug cartels left a toll of more than 10,000 deaths between 2008 and 2012.

“It is too early to say that," he said. "However, it is clear that with the change of government, there also comes a struggle for control among criminal rackets, especially in Juárez and Chihuahua City.”

The PRI, Mexico’s ruling party, was booted of power in the Juárez and Chihuahua state governments during elections in June. Juárez elected an independent mayor who will take office in October, while Chihuahua state elected PAN-party affiliated governor.

Campbell said organized crime is in many ways linked to political changes in Mexico because of the corruption problem that still plagues the country. Criminals bribe police and officials in exchange for protection. Others use their positions of authority to assist or overlook criminal activities, he said.

“When a new regimen comes, there usually is a ‘cleaning of the house’ in the criminal world,” he said.

And that cleaning is often translated into murders that, in Juárez, are becoming worrisome again.

From January to July, 241 homicides were reported, up from the 189 murders during the same period in 2015 according to statistics from Mesa de Seguridad y Justicia de Juárez, a civic organization that works with authorities on strategies to reduce violence.

May, June and July have been the most violent months in 2016, with 38, 38 and 51 homicides, respectively, the statistics show.

The number of homicides in July had not been as high since May 2014, when there were 52 homicides, data shows.

Juárez hit by wave of execution-style slayings

“This is a red flag that authorities, who up to last year did a good job to reduce the number of murders to 21 in December, need to address immediately,” Jorge Contreras Fornelli, the coordinator of Juárez's Mesa de Seguridad, told the Times in a recent interview.

Mexican authorities have attributed the increase in killings to disputes over small-scale drug dealing of crystal methamphetamine and seizures of the drug that also have increased.

This week alone, the Juárez police seized 9.5 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine, valued at $100,000, in the black market. The drug was hidden inside an empty steel cylinder of butane gas in an abandoned house in the Senderos de San Isidro neighborhood in southeast Juárez.

“We cannot pinpoint a specific cause of the rise of killings, but there is a strong link that a vast majority of them had to do with drug trafficking,” said Chihuahua state prosecutor in Juárez Enrique Villarreal in an interview late July.

The Juárez police agrees that the increasing murder rate is due to drug disputes.

“The outcome of the loss of a (drug) load is someone being arrested or killed,” Juárez police spokesman Adrián Sánchez said.

The fragmentation of major criminal organizations, including the Sinaloa Cartel after the arrest of its leader El Chapo, likely also prompted the drug-related violence, authorities said.

Mexico drug lord 'El Chapo' moved to Juárez prison

Guzmán is being held at the Ceferso No. 9 federal penitentiary located on the outskirts of Juárez. He was moved there in May from Altiplano prison in Mexico City.

Chihuahua attorney general Jorge González Nicolás said in July that Mexican drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero is trying to take control of the Juárez corridor to ship drugs into the United States.

Drug lord reportedly eyes Juárez corridor

The 63-year-old international fugitive in a videotaped July interview with the political magazine Proceso said that statement was false.

As a way to curb the violence, the Juárez police and the traffic department, in coordination with the Chihuahua state prosecutor’s office, began holding random security checkpoints last week.

“We are going to find the most efficient way of not being a burden to law-obeying citizens. We are more the ones that are worrying of not casing more harm to society and their patrimony,” Juárez mayor Javier González Mocken said. “The only purpose is protect the lives of the Juarenses, of the citizens.”

He said representatives of the Chihuahua state Commission for Human Rights will be stationed at the checkpoints.

Sánchez said that officers will check for guns and drugs, as well as drunk drivers and stolen vehicles, among other things.

Campbell doubts that will work.

Corruption at all levels of law enforcement has contributed to the city’s violence, he said.

“It is ominous, because people know what has happened before. It only creates a more dangerous environment,” he said.

González Mocken said that until Friday, the response to the security checkpoints from Juarenses had been a positive one.

He said the security checkpoints will be temporary and “will end the instant the rate of murders drop.”

Lorena Figueroa may be reached at 546-6129; lfigueroa@elpasotimes.com; @LFigueroaEPT on Twitter.