MEXICO: Residents of Ciudad Juarez border city protest against violence

Record ID: 303825

  • Title: MEXICO: Residents of Ciudad Juarez border city protest against violence
  • Date: 15th February 2010
  • Summary: NEWSPAPERS
  • Embargoed: 2nd March 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Mexico
  • Country: Mexico
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA6MU0SASWQW7YJ26E452PC0J6O
  • Story Text: Residents of this border city caught in Mexico's bloody drug war staged a protest march on Saturday (February 13) against President Felipe Calderon and an army crackdown that has failed to curb rampant killings.
    Several hundred people chanted for the military to leave Ciudad Juarez, which has suffered more than 4,300 drug gang murders since troops were deployed in the city two years ago in a clampdown that has fanned turf wars between rival cartels.
    Tempers flared in this manufacturing city on the U.S. border after gunmen burst into a teenage birthday party last month and killed 13 high school students and two adults.
    "All we're asking for is justice and for authorities here, in the United States, international, support us because what's happening in Juarez has gone beyond us," said Luz Davila, who lost both her sons in the shooting. Davila broke through security during a visit by the president this week to attack him verbally over the incident and has called for him to resign.
    Calderon was in Ciudad Juarez on Thursday to pledge money for social programs as a way to stem a culture of violence that goes back years in the city. Critics see him looking increasingly weak against the ruthless trafficking cartels.
    Among the black-clad protesters were students dressed in army-style garb holding mock cardboard rifles.
    Midway into his six-year term, Calderon is still popular in Mexico but opinion polls show that a drug war death toll of more than 18,000 since he took power in late 2006 is undermining confidence in his vow to beat the cartels.
    At a tense meeting with activists and church leaders on Thursday, Calderon promised more schools, parks, clinics and welfare in the city, surrounded by shantytowns and garbage dumps, where residents often witness open-air shootouts and murder victims hung from bridges.
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