The COVID-19 pandemic did little to prevent bloodshed in Juarez, where the killings this month exceeded 1000 in the year.
Despite blockades aimed at combating the virus, homicides in Juarez increased by approximately 15% and in Mexico overall, they increased by 1.9% in the first part of 2020.
There have been 1,024 homicides in Juarez this year, adding up to 140 murders this month, according to a recount published Wednesday through the Norte Digital online news page.
Juarez had nearly 1,500 homicides in 2019, according to police and a civic public safety organization.
Violence is linked to ongoing fighting between drug trafficking teams and gangs in local drug markets, crystalline methamphetamine, law enforcement officials said.
Criminal organizations have fractured and replaced alliances as new teams have emerged in recent years.
From July 17 to 20, 27 members of both teams were killed on one of the bloodiest weekends of the year in Juarez, Peniche told Net News and other Mexican media.
The Company, known as The New Company, is a separatist organization of the Juarez drug cartel.
Law enforcement officials said the Company was created through former members of the criminal organization La Línea and the Aztec and Mexicles gangs in 2018.
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The Aztecs and Mexicans are traditionally rivals and the new organization is an example of the conversion alliances in the underworld of Juárez.
“Because they have the same origins, those scoundrel organizations, let’s say that at one point they worked together, they worked together, they know each other perfectly,” Peniche told Net News. “They know where they are (the rivals) and this makes it less difficult for them to act against each of them.”
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Gangs are fighting for drug trafficking sites, which would possibly have been reviewed due to adjustments caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Peniche said.
The Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office estimates that about 90% of homicides in Juarez are drug-related.
The increase in violence occurred as Juarez hit the coronavirus hard.
More than 650 others died from COVID-19 in the border town, which had more than 4,400 infected, according to Chihuahua’s public fitness authorities.
This year’s more than 1,000 homicides make up 15% more than last year right now.
In 2019, there had been 889 homicides in Juarez at the end of July, according to the knowledge of the Security Bureau, the city’s security council.
Juarez had 1,499 murders in 2019, according to the knowledge of the Security Bureau. The Juarez Police Department reported 1,497 murders. The figures would possibly vary according to the reporting agency.
More: Activist murdered in Juarez fights violence and injustice, his friends demand his cause
The killings culminated in the depths of the drug cartel war, with more than 3,000 murders in 2010. A security bureau report shows that 97.5% of homicides that year were solved without a criminal conviction.
Car theft, car theft and extortion have also been drastically reduced to a decade ago.
Across the border in El Paso, the killings remained stable, with nine cases the same amount as of June last year, according to figures from the El Paso Police Department.
Despite the crackdown on the virus, homicides in Mexico increased to 1.9% in the first part of 2020, with 1,7982 deaths to 17653 in the first part of 2019, Associated Press reported.
Before the pandemic occurred, a series of marches and demonstrations through women’s teams demanded justice for Isabel Cabanillos Angeles Angeles Torre, a 26-year-old Juarez artist and activist who died in a shooting.
On January 18, Cabanillas was discovered shot dead on a sidewalk in downtown Juarez next to the bicycle he was riding on. Six months later, the case remains unresolved.
Juarez police arrested two suspected members of the Mexicles and The Company on suspicion of committing a week of triple murder this week.
Men reportedly told police that they were running through the “sicariate,” the paintings of a hitman or hitman, and that they had been arrested on their way to kill a meth dealer.
Angel Arturo CC, 22, aka “El Sonick”, and José “El Panchito” HC, 40, had an Array40 caliber pistol when they were arrested in a car in the community of Felipe Angeles west of Juarez, police reported. .
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One of the men allegedly confessed to the death by strangling two men and one who were tortured and killed on 23 July in a space and then buried in a nearby wasteland in the Juanita Lara Colony, west of Juarez, police said.
The bodies were on Tuesday morning. An investigation is ongoing.
You can contact Daniel Borunda at 915-546-6102; [email protected]; @BorundaDaniel on Twitter.
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