An unwanted side-effect has been an intensification of the turf war between rival cartels to `fill the vacuums'. This has led to more than 20 killings, most of them in Nuevo Laredo. The Valencia cartel had been involved in violent territorial disputes in Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo with both the Arellano Félix and the Gulf cartels.
CRIME PREVENTION | Women's murders become a federal issue. President Vicente Fox announced on 1 September that he would appoint a special commissioner to `coordinate federal government participation' in the effort to clear up the case of the 259 murders of women in and around Ciudad Juárez in the past decade.
The federal congress had already set up a monitoring committee to keep tabs on what has become a national fixation. In August, interior minister Santiago Creel had attended the launch in Ciudad Juárez of an `integral security programme' involving 1,200 municipal police, 300 officers of the federal `preventive police' (PFP), 200 of Chihuahua state's judicial police, and a contingent of agents of the federal chief prosecutor's office (PGR).
Of the 259 cases, 99 are considered closed, 51 are in the hands of the judiciary and 108 are still being investigated. Investigators have dismissed the theory that all or most of the killings were the work of a single mass murderer, though some of the cases are deemed `multiple' killings. The PGR has set up a multidisciplinary team that has been charged with examining `all possibilities', including gangs of policemen or former policemen, satanic sects, organ `harvesting' and people-traffickers. Fox openly admits that `the objective complexity of the case may slow down our task.'
SECURITY COOPERATION | Region's cities agree to link up to beat crime. The security chiefs of cities from 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, who met in Mexico on 5-6 September, agreed to set up a data exchange network with a permanent technical secretariat to be based in Mexico city. At the gathering each delegation reported on anticrime initiatives that had enjoyed success in their cities; the rather ambitious hope was that this would help outline broadly applicable strategies. They haven't given up, though: they have agreed to meet annually and rotate the secretariat. The next meeting will be in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in February 2004.
In mid-August, Mexico had also hosted a more specific gathering, organised by the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts (IALEA), a body set up in 1980, which boasts 11 members in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Their private-sector counterparts will be meeting in Bogotá on 24-26 September for the first Latin American private security conference; on the agenda is the possibility of forming a regionwide network to deal with terrorism as well as other forms of crime.
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