Copyright 1997 The Dallas Morning News

September 10, 1997, Wednesday

Multiple slayings in Juarez strike terror on border Authorities blame
power struggle in wake of drug kingpin's death

By Douglas Holt, Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico After crossing the border from El Paso to
Juarez, Tony Cole admits, he felt a twinge of anxiety walking past the
MaxFim restaurant.

Only four weeks earlier, two thugs armed with AK47s gunned down six
people at the nowpadlocked restaurant. But his friends, longtime El Paso
residents familiar with Juarez ways, didn't seem concerned and parked near
the restaurant on their way to a bullfight Aug. 31.

"I made the comment that maybe we should've parked somewhere else,"
recalled Mr. Cole, 36, a sales manager at an El Paso Ford dealership.
One of his friends scoffed: "Hey, what are the chances of it ever
happening twice?"

It happened twice. In the latest example of Juarez killings thought to
be part of a drug war terrorizing the city, Mr. Cole was wounded by
automatic gunfire as he exited Geronimo's Bar & Grill after the bullfight.
Three others were killed at the bar, just across a small side street from
the MaxFim.

Since the July death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, whose Juarezbased
cartel was Mexico's most powerful, 14 people have died in three multiple
killings in Juarez. Across Mexico, more than 30 people have been slain,
drug enforcement officials say.

"Some of these incidents are brutal and stupid and don't appear to
contribute to a businessoriented, cold approach," said Barry McCaffrey,
U.S. drug czar.

Drug Enforcement Administration analysts blame the violence on a
"struggle for power from various factions of the Amado Carrillo Fuentes
gang and others," he said.

Mexican police think the MaxFim and Geronimo's shootings are related
because of matches found among spent shells, indicating that the same
AK47 assault rifle and .45caliber pistol were used in both.

In addition to the restaurant and bar slayings, police on Aug. 23 made
a macabre discovery: the bodies of four Juarez doctors slumped in a pile
near a park dedicated to peace. They had been beaten and strangled with a
cord.

The doctors' slayings presented Juarez residents with two unappealing
theories. Some say the drug trade's tentacles have reached so far that
even innocent health professionals have been targeted. Others say the
doctors had ties to traffickers.

"I believe they were in some way involved with the Juarez cartel,"
Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cuellar said in a radio interview,
reported by the newspaper Diario de Juarez.

Doctors at the Guernika Hospital, a private facility where three of the
doctors worked, strongly rejected the charge.

Dr. Antonio Valdez Torres, president of the hospital's medical society,
said two men came to the hospital looking for doctors any doctors to
help a man who police later said had been wounded in a shootout.

That suggests that the killings were not hits, Dr. Valdez said.

The doctors' bodies were found the next day.

Dr. Valdez theorizes that the doctors were killed either in a rage
because the wounded man died or to prevent them from telling authorities
what they saw. The incident has left the staff shaken, he said.

"Really, we are afraid of our own shadows," he said. "At night when we
leave the hospital, we think somebody's following us."

The victims of the Aug. 31 shooting near the bullring included the
first American slain in Juarez this year: Carlos Valmana, 27, a friend of
Mr. Cole's and a University of Texas at El Paso business student.

In 1996, two U.S. citizens were killed in Juarez, according to the U.S.
Consulate in the city.

In the hail of gunfire Aug. 31, two Juarez residents were killed. Mr.
Valmana's brother Alejandro, a 30yearold finance manager at the Ford
dealership, was severely wounded. Doctors speculate that he may be left a
paraplegic.

Wounded and recuperating in an El Paso hospital, Mr. Cole said, "I'm
very, very, very lucky to be alive."

Juarez officials say that the city's homicide rate actually is roughly
the same as last year's. But the brazen style of the killings is a
shocking change. As if in defiance of authority, the latest shooting
occurred an hour after thousands of Juarez residents marched to protest
violence. Now fear and distrust run deep throughout the city.

"I'm afraid to be working here," said Maria Munoz, 27, a bartender at
J.R. Disco Bar, a windowless, dimly lit place next door to the MaxFim.

"They don't care who they kill, or if you're innocent."

Gustavo, a 40yearold lawyer who didn't want his last name used, put
down a drink. "The whole town's scared," he said. "It's natural."

Officially, police have made no positive connection between the
killings and the death of Mr. Carrillo Fuentes. But Juarez Mayor Ramon
Galindo said he had little doubt about what was happening.

"I think there's a drug war going on in this city, but we don't have a
way to prove it," he said, adding that some hotels and restaurants have
reported a 50 percent drop in customers since the wellpublicized
killings.

"The sad thing is, now everybody's talking about danger, everybody
fears the killings could happen any time, anywhere."

Some El Paso residents who used to visit Juarez, known in better days
known for its bustling maquiladoras, good restaurants and tourist markets,
now say they avoid the place.

"I used to go on a weekly basis to the market to buy fruits and
vegetables," said Connie Alva, a nursing student and neighbor of the
Valmana family. "I don't now."

Adding to fear, there is little faith that Mexican authorities will
solve the crimes, either out of incompetence or because they are corrupted
by drug money in the way of Mexico's former top drug fighter, Gen. Jesus
Gutierrez Rebollo.

Gen. Gutierrez was arrested this year after authorities said he lived
in a posh Mexico City apartment provided by the Juarez cartel and had
actively helped the criminal organization.

Mr. Galindo assured viewers of a KVIATV El Paso news program this week
that neither he nor Chihuahua Gov. Francisco Barrio are in league with
drug lords.

"You can be sure that Gov. Barrio and I are not involved with these
activities," he said. "This is something you cannot say about many mayors
and governors in Mexico."

In a "crazy way," said El Paso Mayor Carlos Ramirez, life was better
when Mr. Carrillo Fuentes was alive.

"People knew who the jefe the chief was," he said, "so there was no
struggle for power or these killings."