Death of indigenous leader in Chihuahua sparks demands for investigation

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

The death of an apparent indigenous Indian leader has moved the heads of several indigenous communities to demand investigation of that crime and several others involving indigenous Indians victims in the region of Sierra Tarahumara, according to Mexican news accounts.

According to a news report which appeared on the website of El Diario de Chihuahua and La Polaka news dailies and data which appeared in a Facebook page operated by the forum, a forum was held in Ciudad Juarez city late last week named the IV Pueblos originarios de la Sierra Tarahumara en Defensa de Nuestros Territoriosm or Indigenous People of the Sierra Tarahumara in Defense of Our territory held in Ciudad Juarez which demanded government action against drug and local criminal gangs they say are responsible for several murders and other violence in the region against indigenous peoples.

Last week's victim, Jaime Ayala Subia Socorro Ramos Ceballos was killed in armed confrontations with local drug gangs near the village of Choreachi in Guadalupe y Calvo municipality in southern Chihuahua. 

According to data supplied by Indian chief Lorenzo Moreno Pajarito and two others identified as Emilio Enriquez Cruz and Alfonso Molina, local drug gangs are killing indigenous people and intimidating their families with violence, whenever they resist against illegal logging taking place on Indian land, specifically in Guadalupe y Calvo municipality, and in Mogotavo as well as in Barrancas del Cobre, also known as Copper Canyon.  The forum was held to present their demands to the Chihuahua state government that the government do something about the violence and encroachment, by both the government and private companies on ancestral Indian lands. Among the pueblos signing or supporting the petition were the  Tarahumaras, Warojios, Odame and Yaquis, from Sonora and Chihuahua states.

The petition expressed fears that ongoing violence at the hands of local criminal gangs will force indigenous peoples away from their tribal lands and customs, and "send them to the cliffs".

That last statement was a stark reminder of an event in the Sierra Tarahumara region in which it was reported that several Tarahumara Indians had committed suicide by jumping off cliffs, because of the lack of food available to care for their families.  That charge was made in a television interview in January of 2012 by local peasant leader, Ramon Gardea, who claimed that as many as 50 Tarahumara Indians had committed suicide by throwing themselves off cliffs to their deaths.  The report was dismissed by Chihuahua state government officials, and indeed, no bodies were ever found that would support the account.

The El Diario de Chihuahua account said that teachers had left the Sierra Tarahumara region because of the murder of a boy named Jaime Zubias Cevallos  September 6th, and the murder of Ayala Socorro Ramos the next month, November 6th, and the fear is more will do so if violence and the threat of violence continues.

Indigenous peoples were being warned away from the region so that forests can be exploited, according to the account.

Two other leaders in Choreachi, Angel Manchado Ramos and Prudencio Ramos Ramos, said that they and their extended families have been threatened and intimidated them, including the use of written threats and by putting them under pursuit.

Individuals from Chihuahua municipalities of  Bocoyna, Temoris, Batopilas, as well as other states, have been sent to the area to harvest forests but have been prevented so far.

The concerns expressed by Mexican Indian tribes highlights the extent of the Mexican national government clampdown on reported acts of violence in Mexico.  No account of the murder of either of the two victims who had died since September 6th has been reported by the Chihuahua state Fiscalia General del Estado or attorney general, asd would be de riguer in such instances.  Mexican press relies heavily on local attorneys general for crime information.

Only last week it was revealed that drug related murders would not be included in subsequent statistical reports by the federal government in order to give a much better account of what is happening than the actual reality.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com

Read More

Chihuahua attorney general admits "grave" security problem in southern Chihuahua

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

In what amounts to be the most frank discussion of a state official in Mexico's six year war on the cartels, last week Chihuahua state attorney general told Mexican press that the area in southern Chihuahua has a "grave problem" in security, according to Mexican news accounts.

The report which appeared in an online edition of El Norte Digital, Carlos Manuel Salas, Fiscalia General del Estado (FGE) said that the problem with crime in southern Chihuahua state particularly around Guadalupe y Calvo municipality is compounded by the lack of state and municipal police personnel.

According to the report, Salas said the the dramatic reduction in murders in Chihuahua state has been realized in Ciudad Juarez and in Chihuahua, the state capital, which he said was because of state efforts in those areas to reduce violent crime.

"It is not a pretext," Salas was quoted as saying.  "The territory (in Guadalupe y Calvo) is vast, we continue to work and the help of the army is more intense."  He also said that more police are being appointed and that cooperation with the military is increasing.

But Guadalupe y Calvo municipality is not the only southern and western municipality affected by violent drug related crime.

A column which appeared Saturday in the online edition of El Diario de Juarez news daily by Javier Flores Luis Valero, quoted a count provided by Reforma news daily that 40 people have been executed in the last 60 days in several remote mountain communities in the sierras of Chihuahua, including Guadalupe y Calvo, Madera, Balleza, Bocoyna and Moris in just the past two months.  Those  municipalities compose the Chihuahua state part of La Triangulo Dorada or Golden Triagle.  The communities are also part of the area called La Tarahumara, after an Indian tribe which resides in the area, colloquially known as the Raramuris.

According to the same report, data compiled by staff of El Diario de Juarez indicated that the murder rate statewide is about two per day, which is well above the average in 2007, when then Mexican president Feilipe Calderon Hinojosa began to use his military against the drug cartels.  According to the report murder statistics are on track to rival the 755 murders in 2012, the high water mark for violence in Chihuahua state.

The report dismisses the government's claim that federal and state efforts have been instrumental in the documented reduction of violent, but the report claims the reduction is more likely fighting between criminal gangs have shifted from the cities where the most noticed reductions have taken place to ares such as La Tarahumara.

Another disturbing long term trend has been noted as well.  According to Jose Antonio Ortega, president of the Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Pena or Citizen's Council for Public Security and Penal Justice, compounding the problem of violence has been impunity, or the lack of criminal convictions for the crime of murder.

A separate news item which appeared in El Diario de Chihuahua news daily last December said that the conviction rates for murder in Mexico nationwide in 2012 are the second lowest since 1997, and has been declining since 2007.  Specifically in Chihuahua state, in 2005, 326 were convicted for murder, while in 2012 145 were convicted and in 2011, 199.

The state government of Chihuahua is under increased pressure from residents in La Tarahumara. According to a news account which appeared in the online edition of Yancuic.com, a letter sent to governor Cesar Duarte Jaquez last July 6th has criticized the state government for "shouting from the rooftops" about the reduction in violent crime, while violence has been increasing in the area.

The letter was signed by 100 residents of the region including a sectional president of Creel in Bocoyna municipality, Salvador Bustillos, and Javier Avila, a Jesuit priest who is part of a human rights group in the area, Comision de Solidaridad y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, AC.

The letter says that residents of the region have complained repeatedly to authorities about murder, kidnapping and assaults only to be greeted with more murders, kidnappings and assaults.  Another problem in the region, as with Guadalupe y Calvo municipality, is the constant existence of checkpoints operated by criminal groups which rob residents in the area on pain of having their children assault or raped.

What is most astonishing about the charges against the government is that the Mexican Army maintains at least one permanent infantry company base in Creel municipality.

The authors complained in the letter that government officials have little problem in coming to the area to boast projects, but have failed to have a dialogue with constituents about security issues.

Governor Duarte for his part, has dismissed charges of increased violence in La Tarahumara, and has apparently failed to address concerns in the letter.  He said the letter was a " political manipulation of reality".  He said the violence in the region not as bad as in Michocacan state. 

In Michoacan state, by all press reports, the Mexican government has claimed to have 6,000 federal security effectives in the region. However, that number is dwarfed considerably by the number report only a little over a year ago where then Mexican president Felipe Calderon had maintained some 8,000 federal security effectives in the region.

Since the Mexican federal government maintains an effective clamp on drug war news, it is impossible to say if the 6,000 troops are the total in the state after a February, 2013 promise to sent about 1,000 troops to the area or in augmentation to that number.

In his inauguration speech three years ago Governor Duarte pledged a crackdown on crime to include life sentences for kidnapping.

Despite the current claims of additional federal security, violence in the Michoacan has skyrocketed.  Violence in Chihuahua state has also become grave enough that Duarte's Fiscalia had to respond.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com  He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com 

Read More