Updates:  Homicides in Juarez Up So Far This Year
18 New Cases of Coronavirus in El Paso, for a total of 68.

Coronavirus:  Norte Digital carried a story 3 hours ago (click here) that El Paso health authorities have detected a total of 68 cases of coronavirus so far, 18 more cases than they reported yesterday, a sudden increase.

  
Note:  Texas responded to the pandemic slowly, in a slow two-step honky-tonk dance with Florida and other Southern states, and is likely now to face a major surge, if I read the spiraling numbers from Texas correctly.  Whether a huge surge will occur in El Paso as appears to be happening in East Texas is yet to be determined, but as a minimum El Paso has tested far fewer persons per capita than New Mexico, and social isolation measures were imposed only recently.

Homicides in Juarez:  Five persons so far were murdered in Juarez today, April first. Through March:  NorteDigital counts 374 so far this year, on track for reaching about 1500 by the end of December.  There were around 1402 murders in 2019, which was the worst year since 2012.

Note:   Recent reports in local news sources suggest that the pandemic has emboldened drug traffickers.  I am still following violent death in Juarez, but at this point the subject has changed from simply recording deaths and understanding some of the patterns and signatures of death, to analyzing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on drug trafficking operations in the region.