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 Editorials | Issues | June 2008 
Drug Massacre Leaves a Mexican Town Terrorized
 James C. Mckinley Jr. - New York Times
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| | In Villa Ahumada, Mexico, on May 18. The night before, dozens of gunmen killed six people in the town, including two civilians who were together in a pickup truck, and abducted others. (El Heraldo de Chihuahua) | | |
The recent slayings of several officers and civilians are emblematic of the nation's raging drug violence.
Villa Ahumada, Mexico — A massacre here two weeks ago has turned this once sleepy town into a ghostly emblem of the drug violence that has swept Mexico over the past year and a half, gutting local police forces, terrifying residents and making it almost impossible for the authorities to assert themselves.
On the night of May 17, dozens of men with assault rifles rolled into town in several trucks and shot up the place. They killed the police chief, two officers and three civilians. Then they carried off about 10 people, witnesses said. Only one has been located, found dead and wrapped in a carpet in Ciudad Juarez.
The entire municipal police force quit after the attack, and officials fled the town for several days, leaving so hastily that they did not release the petty criminals in the town lockup.
The state and federal governments sent in 300 troops and 16 state police officers, restoring an uneasy semblance of order. But townspeople are terrified.
"Yeah, we're afraid, everyone's afraid," said Jose Antonio Contreras, a 17-year-old who was threatened by the gunmen. "Nobody goes out at night."
Tourists driving south from Texas to the Pacific Coast beaches pass through Villa Ahumada on Highway 45. There was a time in the not-so-distant past when this dusty town on the railroad tracks was best known for its roadside burrito stands, its good cheese and its having recorded one of the coldest temperatures in Mexico — 23 below zero in January 1962.
In recent years, however, it also became a way station along one of Mexico's major drug smuggling routes. Villa Ahumada lies about 85 miles south of El Paso on the main highway from the city of Chihuahua to the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
Around the country in the past 18 months, more than 4,000 people have been killed in similar attacks and gun battles, even as President Felipe Calderon has tried to take back towns where the local police and officials were on the payroll of drug kingpins.
Asked who the gunmen were and why they came, most of the residents who were interviewed shook their heads and whispered that spies were everywhere. In private, however, some acknowledged that the town had long been home to narcotics traffickers in league with a reputed drug dealer, Pedro Sanchez Arras.
Frightened residents, who did not want to be identified, said Sanchez Arras' agent in the town was Gerardo Gallegos Rodelo, a 19-year-old tough guy who went around with an armed posse.
The trouble started, people here say, when Gallegos Rodelo was killed in a shootout with a group of reputed gangsters in Hidalgo del Parral, in the southern part of Chihuahua State, on April 6.
Two days later, the army swooped in on his funeral in Villa Ahumada and arrested dozens of people. On May 13, soldiers arrested Sanchez Arras on drug trafficking charges in Hidalgo del Parral.
The arrest seemed to set in motion the trouble in Villa Ahumada. Late on the Saturday night, four days after Sanchez Arras' arrest, vehicles full of heavily armed men roared into town. For three hours, the gunmen roamed the town in six pickups and sport utility cars.
Some residents said they were stunned that the entire police force of more than 20 officers had stepped down.
"One feels very disillusioned with the government," said the owner of a popular restaurant, who has spent her life in the town. "There is no one who seems to be able to do anything." |
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