Juárez:  Sicarioville is Back

Was There a Truce?  Has it Been Broken?

 

 

Diario Reports (click here):  Once again Parajes del Sur was the scene of a homicide last night.  Witnesses heard gunfire, alerted police, and a man was dead and another wounded in an attack by two persons dressed in black and driving a white Taurus.

The monthly homicide counts clearly indicate a drop in homicides in the first two weeks in September.  Here is the monthly breakdown this year:  January:  72; February:  44; March:  56:  April:  65;  May:  124; June:  177,  July:  177; August 182.  First two weeks in September, only one reported in the newspapers.

According the the Diario report this morning, recently captured gang members report there was a truce called at the end of August among gangs in Juarez, which accounts for the major slowdown in sicario activity.  The gangs had been worn down by feuding, which led to more police captures of arms and drugs and gang members.

According to the conventional wisdom within official law enforcement circles, the spike in homicides was due to the fallout of a split within the Azteca gang las year between members of the "vieja guardia," (old guard) and the "Empresa."  The old guard, according to this version, left its old bosses in the La Linea cartel to join in with the Sinaloa cartel; both have been competing against each other in the transhipment of drugs to the US.  The rivarly heated up in May of this year, accounting for the spike in homicides this summer.  Readers interested in this can go back to my blogs in early August (see, for example, my entry on August 4, covering the massacre of 13 persons in a picadero near the Juarez airport. 

Only time and the body count will tell us whether this truce, if it is indeed in effect, will last.  In the past two or three days, however, dead bodies have begun to reappear.