Yesterday afternoon in Durango, northern Mexico, Director of Public Security for the city of Lerdo Andrés Balderas and Chief subdirector Luis Manuel Torres went missing along with three escorts. Their disappearance has prompted a red alert in the state capital.

Balderas and Torres were attending the inauguration of the new director of the Durango Red Cross. The event took place at 10.30am at the Centro de Convenciones Bicentenario and was attended by the Director of Civil Protection and the Chief of Fire-fighters, both of whom returned from the event around 4pm.

Balderas, Torres, and their escorts left separately in a white Ford Lobo. Their whereabouts are unknown.

The three escorts have been identified as José Antonio Orozco de la Cerda, Juan Carlos Alvarado, and José Eduardo Ponce Vital.

The five men’s disappearance was announced in a press conference by Lerdo mayor Roberto Carmona. “We are waiting for news [of the disappeared], we are worried, we don’t know what’s happening or what may have happened, and we hope that it is all resolved,” he told journalists.

Balderas became director of public security in April of this year, after the then-director was detained by federal police, along with others, for alleged participation in the death of a federal agent.

The northern states of Durango, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua together form what is known as the “Golden Triangle”, an epicentre of marijuana plantations and United States-bound drug trafficking.

Enrique Alfonso Severo, the ex-railway worker and key witness in the Mariano Ferreyra murder trial who went missing on Wednesday night, was found alive yesterday in Gerli, a neighbourhood of the Avellaneda district. The discovery comes after a nationwide manhunt and dramatic protests in the capital.

Severo, a former manager for the railway company Ferrobaires, was due to testify yesterday at noon in the ongoing trial of José Pedraza, general secretary of the Railway Union (UF) and Juan Carlos Fernández, his assistant, who are accused of organizing the clash on 20th October 2010 that left Partido Obrero (PO) militant Mariano Ferreyra dead. Of the more than 300 witnesses in the trial, Severo is believed to hold the key evidence linking Pedraza and Fernández to those who carried out the murder.

Ferreyra and other PO activists were protesting on 20th October 2010 with outsourced railway workers, known as “tercerizados”, on the Roca line in the south of the city. The protesters, who were demanding equal pay and benefits as fulltime employees, were met by a gang of unionized railway workers, who followed them as the protest moved to Barracas. Violence broke out between the two groups near the Constitución train station, in a clash that left Ferreyra dead and another PO militant, Elsa Rodriguez, seriously injured.

The suspected shooters are Cristian Favale and Gabriel Fernando Sánchez, football hooligans with ties to political and union violence. Several police officers are also on trial for failing to stop the attack.

Severo left his home around 11.30pm on Wednesday night to visit his grandson but never made it to his intended destination. After failing to appear at his testimony on Thursday at noon, Minister of Security Nilda Garré called for a nationwide search. Various left-wing and social organizations, spearheaded by the PO, marched on the Plaza de Mayo last night demanding an end to the kidnapping of witnesses.

The situation echoed the disappearance of Jorge Julio López in 2006, key witness in the trial against ex-director general of police investigations for Buenos Aires province Miguel Etchecolatz. López disappeared before his scheduled appearance in court and remains missing to this day.

After an anonymous call to 911 on Thursday night, Severo was found outside of a taxi station in Gerli, his hands bound with plastic ties and showing signs of physical abuse. Earlier in the day, police had located his car, with the keys placed in a nearby street. Severo was taken to nearby Finochietto de Sarandí hospital and stated that he does not know who is responsible for the kidnapping.

His son, Gastón Severo, told Canal 9 that his father told him he was held captive in a location three blocks from a railway facility used by his former employer, Ferrobaires. He was taken from his car by two armed men on a motorcycle. After a blow to the head, he lost consciousness.

“He’s dehydrated, he’s vomiting and coughing”, Gastón said. “He couldn’t talk much.”

“The message was not for me”, Severo told the press before being taken to the hospital. “It was for the president.”

Severo would not give details of what had occurred during his kidnapping, but vowed that the experience had not deterred him from delivering his testimony. “Whatever happens, I’m going to testify in court”, he affirmed. “Somebody has to do something. I’m going to testify, I’m going to recount everything…I’m not scared.”

His family said they had begun receiving threatening phone calls in the days leading up to the court date. However, since they were never reported, according to the Ministry of Justice, Severo did not qualify for witness protection.

Today marks the six year anniversary of the disappearance of Jorge Julio López. On 18th September 2006, López was due to appear in court to act as a key witness in the case against Miguel Etchecolatz, the ex-director general of police investigations for Buenos Aires province during the last military dictatorship. He never arrived and remains missing to this day, with the case still unsolved.

López personally suffered torture at the hands of Etchecoltaz during the last military dictatorship, and witnessed him commit murder. However, despite the disappearance of the 76 year old bricklayer in 2006, there was still substantial evidence to sentence Etchecolatz, who received a life sentence for the murder of six people and a further eight convictions for kidnap.

López’s son, Ruben, today admitted that he is aware that his father is unlikely to be alive after six years, but that he is still awaiting answers. In a press conference, he stressed that “the only thing we want is for him to be found, in whatever state that may be.”

“Ever since that day, we have been in hell, searching, with no information,” he added. He went on to apportion blame to President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, claiming that “she never spoke about my father,” who’s disappearance occurred during the time that her husband, Nestor Kirchner, was in power.

Various social and political groups will gather later to express their remorse for López and anger towards the government who continue to make little headway in solving the case. One such group is the Provincial Commission for Memory (CPM) which has organised to offer discussions and debates at the Museum of Art and Memory in La Plata at 7.00pm.

In Buenos Aires, the human rights organisation Encuentro Memoria, Verdad y Justicia will march at 5.30pm from Congreso to the Plaza de Mayo in order to demand “justice and punishment for those responsible”. In La Plata a march will also take place at the same time.

This morning at 9am, a teleconference was held with Carlos Pedro Blaquier, president of the Argentine agrobusiness company Ledesma, for a case that is being overseen by federal judge Fernando Poviña.

Blaquier is being investigated in connection to the disappearance of persons in the Jujuy province the 1970s. The president of the sugar company has not yet been formally investigated due to illness and absence from the country. His personal doctor, Pablo Gutierrez, has signed two certified documents with the date 12^th April 2012, saying that Blaquier was “suffering a heart condition.”

The teleconference was held between the judge in Jujuy, the prosecutors, and Blaquier. The judge ordered Blaquier, who is currently in Buenos Aires, to take part in the teleconference due to his refusal to attend a face-to-face meeting. Two appointments had been set up previously, but Blaquier missed one of them citing health reasons, and the second one had to be cancelled due to disturbances outside the courthouse.

Several human rights organisations and unions gathered outside the Magistrate Council, where Blaquier declared.

A human rights organisation who works on behalf of people who disappeared or were detained during the last military dictatorship in Jujuy, expressed their frustration and claimed they have “waited patiently for the court’s decision” yet feel that there has been no response “to the demands of Jujuy’s society,” in accordance with “the magnitude” of Blaquier’s charge.

The former administrator of Ledesma, Alberto Lemos, has also been accused in the case of Jujuy’s disappeared persons. He was presented in court on Thursday with charges of “knowing and repeating lies” that helped the sugar company in the last dictatorship.

Both Blaquier and Lemos have been inferred for “La Noche de Apagón”, which occurred the 20^th July, 1976, when 400 workers of the company were kidnapped and over 30 of them were disappeared.

Estela de Carlotto has launched a new campaign to find missing children, disappeared during the last dictatorship who, she believes, may be living in Italy without knowing their true identity.

“The story is not closed,” she says. “Although we have found 105 grandchildren, 400 are still missing. And we do not know if some of these 400 - among which could be my grandson, Guido - could be in Italy.”

De Carlotto, the president of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, travelled to Italy for the launch, together with the Argentine ambassador and a number of NGOs, including Amnesty International.

“Once again we return to Italy to solicit their help and we have just been with Italian ministers who assure us that, as always, they will give us their support,” stated Carlotto in a press conference in the House of Deputies in Italy where former prime minister Massimo D’Alema acted as host.

Carlotto was received by the Human Rights Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, together with Buscarita Roa and her reunited grandson, Horacio Pietragalla.

“I owe everything to the Abuelas,” said Pietragalla. “Thanks to them I learnt the story of my real parents, Liliana Corti and Horacio Pietragalla, 26 and 27 respectively, two militants who were fighting for a more just and equal country.”

“Recovering your identity is not only to reclaim history; it is also to set ourselves free, to see the light, understand history and oneself,” he added.

It is believed that among the thousands of Argentines who emigrated to Italy in the wake of the 2001 default, and among the Argentines currently studying or working on the continent, there may be children of the disappeared.

“We have received reports and for now they are all possibilities, not only here in Italy, but also in France and Spain,” stated de Carlotto.

“We are looking for people around 30 years old, already adults, that have to make a decision: to be free”, said minister Carlos Chernia, responsible for Human Rights at the Argentine embassy in Italy.

A new campaign will be broadcast through radio and television networks. Each consulate will also be equipped with a kit to examine DNA that will be compared agains the Abuelas’ database, as well as a team of psychologists at hand.

For 36 years, the body of a man – that washed on shore in Uruguay along with six others – has lain in a grave, marked ‘NN’ for unknown name.

Yesterday, at a press conference, Hilda Victoria Montenegro – flanked by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team – announced that the remains were those of her father, Roque Orlando Montenegro.

“It’s miraculous,” she said, according to reports from Univision.

Victoria, along with her parents, disappeared in February 1976 during the final months of Isabel Perón’s government. Evidence shows that after the military coup on 24th March 1976, Roque Montenegro was thrown into the Río de la Plata during a ‘death flight,’ a method of disappearance used by the last dictatorship where victims were drugged and thrown from planes to drown. Her mother, Hilda Ramona Torres, has never been found.

Victoria was taken and raised by Colonel Hernán Antonio Tetzlaff and his wife. She did not know her true identity until 2000.

“The only truth is that the research provided by the forensic anthropology team confirmed that they were kidnapped for several months and my dad was a victim of the death flights,” Victoria said, according to Univision.

Página12 reported that the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo’s president Estela de Carlotto said this was a “step in the progress toward truth.”

“It’s one more step in the fight, because those who still disbelieve start believing that the disappearances, appropriations and deaths during the dictatorship happened, and that they themselves are part of this story, that they can write pages of what has not been said,” she said to the newspaper.

According to estimates from human rights organisations, about 30,000 people disappeared and 500 children were stolen during the last dictatorship.

Jorge Julio López, a 76-year-old bricklayer disappeared 18th September 2006 and was never heard from alive nor his body found. During the 1976-83 dictatorship, he was imprisoned and tortured. López was bravely on his way to give testimony in La Plata against Miguel Etchecolatz, the ex-director general of police investigations for Buenos Aires province, but he never made it to the court.

Five years on and the case has gone cold, but he is not forgotten. On a brisk Sunday afternoon in Buenos Aires, people gathered at Plaza de Congreso and marched down the political kilometre of Av. de Mayo to Plaza de Mayo to demand action from the government.

Photographer Beatrice Murch shares some of the photos from this march with readers.

'Nuevo Mas' banners flutter in the wind as participants gather at Plaza de Congreso in preparation for the march to Plaza de Mayo.

Women wait on a plaza bench to represent the party 'Proyecto Sur' in this demand for governmental action.

A woman masked with the canonical representation of Jorge Julio López marches along Av. de Mayo.

Graffiti at a bus stop asks where he is.

Young boys dance to the beat of the drummers in the march down Av. de Mayo.

Another person sprays graffiti at a bus stop.

The march blocks off traffic along 9 de Julio, the main artery through downtown Buenos Aires, angering the drivers who push through at dangerous speeds.

A Madre de Plaza de Mayo at the front of the march hopes for Jorge Julio López to be found and for action to be taken in the cold case of his disappearance.

The organisers of the march call out to the supporters at Plaza de Mayo.

Plaza de Mayo is full of people demanding action on an early spring Sunday afternoon.

People gathered in Plaza de Mayo to commemorate the five years that have passed since Jorge Julio López's disappearance and to demand governmental action.

Documentarian, Eduardo Nachman, whose father actor Gregorio Nachman was disappeared during the military dictatorship, speaks to the crowd gathered at Plaza de Mayo.

A woman holds up a sign ¿Y Julio López?

Y Lopez Graffiti (Photo: Diego Astarita)

Five years ago, on 18^th September 2006, a bricklayer named Jorge Julio López, aged 76, left his home on his way to the tribunal courts of La Plata, where Miguel Etchecolatz, ex-director general of police investigations for Buenos Aires province during the last military dictatorship (1976-83), was due to be tried. López greeted a neighbour and continued walking as friends were waiting for him at the courthouse. He never arrived.

His disappearance on any other day might have been chalked up to his age, to his health, to delinquency, or the quirks of fate. But López was not just any bricklayer; he was a key witness for the prosecution against Etchecolatz, having been tortured by him personally and seen him execute at least five people from 1976 to 1979, at which time he was released. Despite the unexpected absence of López during the trial, his filed declarations were heard and Etchecolatz was condemned to life in prison for the murders of six people (those which López could identify and for which there was evidence) as well as eight counts of kidnapping and torture, including that of López himself.

López, however, remains missing to this day. His disappearance can only be interpreted as a political move, an expression of power by the military-police state that terrorisedArgentinaduring most of the 1970s and 80s, and which, evidently, is still alive and kicking. How was such a disappearance possible more than 20 years after the restoration of democracy?

Police collaboration

According to an article in national daily Clarín at the time, during the week following López’ disappearance, the governor of Buenos Aires province, Felipe Solá, had not discarded the possibility that the ‘Bonaerenses’ (the provincial police force) were involved. Days later, the same newspaper reported that the provincial minister for security, León Arslanián, had either retired or suspended 36 officers linked to black-ops task forces in clandestine centres during the last dictatorship, including six that worked in Commissary 5, where López was illegally held in 1976.

Finally, in 2010, charges were levied against officers for López’ disappearance, including Oscar Raul Quijano for illegal arms possession and trafficking. Quijano had been identified in a photo standing close to López near Chicha Mariani’s home in 2006. Mariani is one of the founding members of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, and one of the main witnesses against certain members of the military and police force, including Etchecolatz, and hence, an important rallying figure for those who opposed the de facto government.

Jorge Julio López Protest (Photo: Berta Alarcón)

In addition, former police doctor, Carlos Osvaldo Falcone, was indicted upon testimony of an unidentified witness who claimed that Falcone’s automobile was the one used to kidnap López. Falcone had visited Etchecolatz twice in his cell prior to López’ disappearance, at Etchecolatz’ express wish, and his name figures prominently on Etchecolatz’ agenda for the days before, during, and after López vanished.

It comes as no surprise that the police force of Buenos Aires province, famous for its bloodthirsty cruelty and indifference under Etchecolatz’ leadership, should be incriminated for the disappearance of López. Possible motives for the crime include: loyalty to their captain, a lingering hope that the failing military de facto regime would return to power, a cultivated or natural taste for violence, and their status as accomplices to genocide.

As Néstor Kirchner’s fledgling government struggled to repeal the gag laws that were passed immediately following the collapse of the military junta, those elements of society that were being repudiated and condemned desperately tried to reassert their strength. Although subsequent witness protection programmes were installed after the López incident, witnesses were hesitant to accept police protection, and it is easy to see why: according to Amerigo Incalcaterra, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, South America: “When the State employs the same structures and agents that committed or allowed human rights violations, [witness protection programmes] don’t work.”

Until recently, it was common to see police vehicles in Buenos Aires province with an image of López stuck to one of the rear windows with a reward notice posted over the photo. Far from consoling the general public and instilling a sense of purpose and activity in the investigation, this particular image has been interpreted as a challenge from the police, a reminder to all of the power they wield and the impunity they enjoy.

Presidential Pardons

The trio of so called ‘impunity laws’ passed between 1986 and 1990 under ex-presidents Raul Alfonsín (Final Point and Due Obedience) and Carlos Menem (presidential reprieves), legally pardoned the military and police repressors, setting the criminals back on the streets and surprising international human rights groups by effectively repealing the antecedents established by the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

The impact these gag laws had on Argentine society cannot be underestimated; suddenly it was alright for renowned war criminals to go about their lives freely, unpunished for the horrific emotional and economic damage done to this society and nation.

Neither were the military repressors willing to repent. Alfredo Astiz, member of the Armed Forces who infiltrated the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and made declarations that led to the deaths of several harmless women searching for their missing children, boasted to the magazine Trespuntos in 1998: “I’m the best man in the country, technically speaking, for killing a politician or a journalist…because journalists now say that there weren’t any subversives.

“They have to watch out for themselves; it’s going to go ill for them. Don’t push us, because I don’t know how we’re going to react. They’re playing with fire…There are 500,000 men in the Armed Forces technically prepared to kill, and I’m the best out of all of them. They always come to me and I always tell them the same thing: Relax, we have to wait, this has happened in every country. But I don’t know how long I can keep them back.”

Astiz, nicknamed ‘the blonde angel of death’, was one of the first to be formally accused for crimes against humanity in 2005. He was put in prison to prevent him fleeing the country and in 2007 was finally convicted for murdering an unarmed adolescent girl and assisting in the disappearance of two French nuns.

Miguel Etchecolatz (Photo: Wikipedia)

The same Miguel Etchecolatz during the years of impunity published a book entitled, ‘La otra campaña de Nunca Mas’ (The Other Campaign of Never Again), appearing on national television and newspaper interviews to promote his ideas. He assured that the only thing he did was “combat the Marxist subversion, the diabolical enemy…when they ordered me to assume responsibility against the terrorist organisations, I confess that I felt honoured to have been chosen. The position allowed me to do something for my country, for the millions of Argentines that don’t want to live with those assassins.”

His misplaced sense of duty led him to believe that these attacks on civilians—men, women and children, many times breaking into homes at night and dragging the ‘suspects’ to clandestine areas to be tortured, raped, and often murdered —qualify as ‘combat’. In his book he boasts: “I never had what I could call a guilty conscience…for having killed? I executed a law written by men. I was a guardian of divine principles. For both reasons, I would do it all again, giving it all I’ve got.”

During a televised interview in a programme called ‘Hora clave’ (Crucial Hour), he summoned one of his previous victims, politician Alfredo Bravo, and suggested that Bravo’s account of having suffered torture at his hands was false. Then contradicting himself he eerily went on to say that what he did to Bravo would have been beneficial to him: “He had flat feet and warts from childhood; the treatment that we gave him would have cured him.”

Bravo sued Etchecolatz for libel, and won his case. In the judges’ summing up, they affirmed that Etchecolatz’ book “damaged the public peace [by] trying to provoke fear through public praise for genocide”. The judges claimed that on repudiating the movement Nunca Mas, Etchecolatz was declaring that the Armed Forces should not be criticised, judged, nor punished for their excesses. That is, “he proudly presumes that such behaviour is justified and this constitutes an apologetic, because it defends, approves, and exalts criminal deeds.”

For this incident, Etchecolatz was given a suspended sentence of three years in prison, and obligatory attendance at a class on human rights; he was also urged to stop drinking alcohol and to seek psychiatric treatment. He faced the courts another time, this time for brandishing a gun and threatening to kill four female students who had heckled him on the street.

On 14^th June 2005, a full 20 years after the junta’s fall, the Supreme Court declared the impunity laws to be unconstitutional due to the genocidal nature of the crimes committed by the State during the dictatorship. The trial against Etchecolatz was only the second to be brought against former repressors after the Court’s declaration, and after López’ disappearance, it became clear that the former power mongers were not going to go down without a struggle, especially after so many years running the show. Nonetheless since this time, a total of 1,763 individuals have been implicated or tried for crimes against humanity, of which 198 have been condemned, and 426 are being held in prison during proceedings, according to the Centre for Social and Legal Studies (CELS).

Although a great number of these criminals (282) have died before or since being accused, and many are too old, too ill, or unfit to stand trial (18), it would appear that the long arm of the law is finally catching up to them. The latest of these trials, presently being held in La Plata, where Lopez was due to testify five years ago, involves over 500 witnesses on behalf of 281 victims (among which can be numbered minors and pregnant women), against 26 defendants, among which is the same Etchecolatz. López, in spite of his long absence, will be present again as his filmed testimony will be viewed during the public trial.

30,000 Missing + 1

Cuántos más? (Photo courtesy of YO NO ME OLVIDO DE LA DESAPARICION DE JORGE JULIO LOPEZ)

Human rights organizations estimate that 30,000 people were ‘disappeared’ during the de facto military government from 1976-83. Nonetheless, CELS in its 2007 Report on Human Rights affirms that “there is an enormous difference between the forced disappearances of persons during the dictatorship” while “López’ disappearance is linked to the advances of justice.”

Leon Rozitchner, former professor of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), believed that López’ kidnapping is an incentive “to make justice more profound.” However, in an article published in Puentes in 2006, Rozitchner states that those who “erased López’ existence” have changed their way of committing genocide. During their time in power, their faces and names were known; now they are invisible and the effects of their unnamed presence has become something much more insidious.

Rozitchner goes on: “They want to tell us…that they are present even though no one knows who they are, nor how they survive…the threat they represent is placed with greater slyness in the underground and margins of the State…They want us to know that now, even though they have no face, they have not disappeared…they survive in a different form than we knew before, but the effects of their threats and their power are waiting in ambush again…this is their objective: renew in each citizen, as it was before during the dictatorship, the immobility of death.”

Nonetheless, as CELS points out: “López’ disappearance made evident the lack of governmental foresight with regards to the possible consequences of re-opening the trials. It also underlined the lack of precaution and absence of intelligence gathering in order to prevent criminal groups capable of putting the trials at risk… The circumstances would be very different if the Armed Forces, the police, and the intelligence community connected to human rights violations during the dictatorship or after had been separated.”

Cold Case

Barcelona commentary on Julio López

In effect, the search for López has been ‘paralysed’ for more than two years. The reward for information has increased from $200,000 to $1million over these past five years, and still there is no news. In 2008, it was reported that he had been allegedly sighted passing into Paraguay days after his initial disappearance. Later the information was attributed to a technological glitch. Earlier this year, a witness, loathe to declare before a judge, was able to go on television and declare that López’ body was buried somewhere in Pereyra Iraola train station. After a huge media follow-up, it was determined that the ‘witness’ was unreliable.

Barring the aforementioned ‘tip’, there has been no new information regarding the location of López or his (presumed) remains. The weekly lampoon, Barcelona, has published in every edition since 2006 a list of everything that has been done that week to find him. The list is comical because it underlines the lack of action and/or information regarding this coldest of cases. Sadly, it does not exaggerate, converting what could be comic fiction into truthful tragedy. Not only López is missing; those responsible for his disappearance are too.

CELS recommends that to guarantee continuity for the judicial processes of the nation, it is imperative that the authorities “investigate and punish those responsible for Jorge Julio López’ disappearance.” Or as Mariana Paz de Marco, daughter of Patricia dell’Orto and Ambrosio de Marco, a couple executed in front of López in 1976, expresses: “I can’t help but feel in debt to him. I wish I could run out and look under every stone until I found Jorge Julio López.”

To mark the International Day of the Disappeared, human rights organizations held a conference in Montevideo, Uruguay with cultural activities to commemorate the date.

Under the slogan, “we still miss them,” the organizations met in the central Plaza Libertad for the conference.

Among those who participated were “Hijos,” mothers and family members of the disappeared, Crysol, Children in Political Captivity, Serpaj, Iguales y Punto, the FEUU, the PIT-CNT and the Permanent Table against Impunity.

There were poetry readings, live music, and projections of faces of the disappeared on the front of the Supreme Judicial Court.

Valentín Enseñat, a member of the organization “Hijos,” noted that until today “there has not been a government with enough will to seriously address the issue.”

Story courtesy of Pulsar.

According to La Asociación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos y Víctimas de Violaciones de Derechos Humanos de México (AFADEM), an NGO in Mexico, more than 8,000 people have gone missing since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006.

The information was revealed by Mexican journalist San Juana Martínez in the newspaper La Jornada. He explained that the figure is preliminary as there is no record of missing persons.

In addition, he noted that in many cases of enforced disappearances, there is a link between them and prosecution authorities, members of the armed forces and organised crime gangs in Mexico.

In an interview with Radio Bemba in Mexico, Martínez said that members of the Mexican navy seized 15 men in Nuevo Laredo, a town on the border with the United States.

Elsewhere, the journalist added that ‘there is no national registry of unidentified bodies and this increases the number of mass graves.”

The so-called drug war of President Calerón has caused the deaths of some 40,000 people since he took office.

(Story courtesy of Agencia Púlsar, the news agency of AMARC-ALC)