Violence in Cd. Juárez:  Do the Killers Mask Up?  

Labor Market for Assassins Not Apparently Affected by Covid-19 in 2020

The biggest killer in Juárez in 2020 was not the leader of the Azteca gang, or CJNG, or La Linea. It was Covid-19.  While statistics about Covid-19 in Juárez are a genre of pulp fiction, given the deliberate failure of local, state, and federal authorities to record what was happening--in a city of 1.5 million with only 4 ventilators in 16 total ICU units in all the hospitals in March of 2020--even the official team of fiction writers in Juarez show 2510 deaths from coronavirus during 2020, about what you would expect, adjusted for population, in New Mexico, which was not, overall, hard-hit by coronavirus in 2020.  Deaths from sicarios amounted to 1637 in 2020, compared with 1509 in 2019.  Overall in Mexico, however, the sicario death toll is down, about half a percent, to 34,515.

Do they mask up, or do they mask you up?  In the state of Guerrero, Mexico, two weeks ago the local sicario gang announced they would give ten "belts" (reatazos) to anyone found not wearing a coronavirus mask, and published a U Tube video of a gunman, masked of course, stopping a bus and telling passengers he would whip (with a rope) anyone not wearing a mask.

Mayor Miyagishima:  could we test-run that one here in Las Cruces for a couple of weeks? Random stops, say, at Telshor and Lohman?