The database released today by the Mexican Attorney General’s office shows 12,903 people were murdered in Mexico in drug-war related violence in the first nine months of 2011.  That brings the official total up to 47,515 – without counting the final three months of last year.

The border metropolis of Ciudad Juárez continued to rank as Mexico’s deadliest city, with more than 1,206 murders. The coastal resort and port city of Acapulco registered nearly 795 murders in the nine-month period.

Data also showed an increase in violence in some rural areas – most notably in the states of Guerrero and Tamaulipas. April 2011 ranks as the deadliest month on record, with 1,630 confirmed murder victims; hundreds of whom were found in mass graves.

Some observations and analysis tweeted as I read the database for the first time (will re-format this section later)

A single massacre on Monday in Zitácuaro, Michoacán exceeds the total number of dead registered in a 9 month period in the same town.

Others have noted the spike in homicides in Acapulco, #Guerrero. The increase in murders in rural parts of the state is also significant.

Data shows Torreón had an especially violent year as well. Triple digit death tolls in Durango in April-May seem to be from the mass graves.

Newspaper estimates generally put the death toll for Monterrey at far higher than the 399 noted in the new database. Why? Counting suburbs?

As was to be expected, the highest death tolls attributed to the #DrugWar in Oaxaca occurred in Tuxtepec & Loma Bonita (near Veracruz line).

Aside about Oaxaca: the homicide data in the new PGR database doesn’t include murders in the Triqui region or the massacre in Choapam (Mixe)

Officially in #Tamaulipas: San Fernando 292 (many in mass graves), Nuevo Laredo 144, Valle Hermoso 95, Matamoros 72, Tampico 63, Reynosa 51.

Aside on Tamaulipas: Tiny Ciudad Mier registered 50 murders from Jan-Sept30th 2011; just 1 less than those documented in the city of Reynosa

As with Zitácuaro, Michoacán…a single massacre of 31 people this month in Altamira, Tamaulipas exceeded the 9 month total in the database.

There’s also been an increase in murders in #Veracruz state, esp in Veracruz (port city), Boca del Rio, & Panuco. Where’s Acayucan’s data?

Database total of 12,903 murders in 9months= monthly average of 1434 murders. A total of 17K+ for all 2011 seems like a probable projection.

While *official* documentation shows 47K+ #DrugWar deaths in Mexico Dec06-Sept11, using monthly averages to fill in Oct-Dec = more than 50K.

More #DrugWar database math: 12,903 murders in the first 9 months (273 days) of 2011 comes to an average of 47 homicides a day.

Seventeen people, including children, were taken from their homes by a group of armed men in the community of Cerro Verde in the southern state of Guerrero. The mass abduction occurred in the early hours of December 11th but has only recently become public after a relative decided to file a police report in a district outside of the one in which the crime occurred.

Those kidnapped belong to three families linked to a regional environmental movement known as the Organization of Ecologist Farmers. Two leaders of this organization, Eva Alarcon and Marcial Bautista, were abducted earlier this month as they traveled aboard a passenger bus on their way to a meeting in Mexico City.

The daughters of the two kidnapped organizers held a press conference in Mexico City Tuesday begging the kidnappers to negotiate and to return their parents alive.

Twenty four local police and four state level detectives have been arrested in connection to the federal investigation into the case.

The whereabouts of the abducted environmental activists and their relatives remains unknown.

Two students from the “Isidro Burgos” rural teaching academy in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero were shot dead during a protest in southern Mexico yesterday. Around 500 students from the school blocked part of the Autopista del Sol highway to demand a meeting with the Governor Angel Aguirre Rivero. By the time police took control of the highway, two students were lying dead on the asphalt.

The victims were identified as 20 year-old Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús and 21 year-old Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino. The student organization behind the protests stated a third student, Edgar David Espíritu, died Monday night. However, at the time of this writing, Espíritu is reportedly alive but in a coma.

State authorities initially denied police shot at protesters, but a video released by Milenio TV shows a man in plainclothes firing a high caliber rifle from a police line in the direction of the protests. The police in video made no attempt to stop or apprehend the gunman.

La Jornada published a photo today showing plainclothes police with high caliber rifles at the scene of protest in Chilpancingo. El Universal also published video of plain clothes police armed with rifles.

Students mobilized on Monday to pressure the governor to appear at a budget negotiation meeting that had been cancelled and postponed for months.

In addition to the killings, at least 20 people were arrested. At least one has been released with serious facial bruising. The Tlachinollan Human Rights Center, which is providing legal counsel to some of the detained, stated a 19 year-old claimed he was tortured into making a false confession about firing a rifle during the protest.

Tuesday afternoon, Guerrero’s governor announced the dismissals of the state attorney general and the state police chief and his deputy.

Mexico’s system of rural academies (the Normales Rurales) was set up to train children of marginalized small farmers to become teachers in rural communities. The schools have been hard hit by budget cuts and reduced enrolment opportunities over the past 10 years.

Mexico has witnessed a recent spike in attacks targeting known human rights activists, many of them associated with the anti drug war movement.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This most recent spate of violence targeting activists started on November 28th when Nepomuceno Moreno was gunned down in his truck at an intersection in Hermosillo, not far from the state government palace. Moreno had spent more than a year searching for a son who was kidnapped – allegedly by state police.

The spokesperson for the Sonora state attorney general’s office suggested the murder may have been linked more to organized than to Moreno’s activism.

Then, on November 30th, Norma Andrade, the co-founder of a recognized anti-femicide organization in Ciudad Juarez was shot five times as she left her home. Investigators described the crime as a car-jacking gone wrong. Andrade, who narrowly survived the attack, said it was attempted murder – noting that her vehicle is 20 years old and that the gunman made no demands before discharging his weapon.

On December 6th, a dozen members of the Movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity traveled to the Ostula, Michoacan in western Mexico to observe a community consultation to petition the government for security forces. The delegation was traveling with Trinidad de la Cruz Crisóstomo; a community elder. “Don Trino” as he was known, was the town’s representative in talks with the government.

(Hernandez speaks, reporter interprets)

Citlali Hernandez, who participated in the observation trip, says once within the territory of Ostula, four armed men in ski masks blocked road. They boarded the delegation’s bus and took it to a foot path. She says Don Trino was identified and everyone was forced off the bus and told to lie face down on the ground.

HERNANDEZ (voiceover): “They took away our cell phones. They spoke repeatedly of massacring all of us. During this, they were beating Don Trino. We could hear his cries. From what we could hear, it sounded like they were stabbing him because of his screams and what they were saying.”

Hernandez says the armed men ordered the group to get back on the bus and go directly to the city of Lazaro Cardenas. Don Trino remained in the custody of the attackers.

The next day, the 73 year-old community leader was found dead – his body bearing signs of torture. Don Trino became the 28th community member killed since indigenous residents of Ostula took several hundred acres of farmland back from powerful local landbosses in mid-2009. Pedro Leyva, also a community leader from Ostula and a member of the Movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity was killed in October.

Attorney David Peña, who acts as legal counsel for the community, says the government is at least partially responsible for the crime for allowing armed groups to operate in the area unchecked, despite local requests for security patrols – specifically from a nearby Marine base.

PEÑA (voiceover): “This serious occurence cannot be viewed as an isolated incident committed by organized criminals operating in the area. It’s not an isolated incident and the state shares responsibility because it knows that these groups are operating and how they’re operating. We’ve told them about it as well as what specific measures to take and they’ve done nothing.”

About 5000 people live in the community of Ostula, WHICH is made up of small enclaves and a core population center. It lies along a highway near the port city of Lazaro Cardenas.

(Judisman speaks, reporter interprets)

Clara Judisman of the Movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity says the area around Lazaro Cardenas is a key route for the drug trade. It’s home to one of Latin America’s major sea ports and control of territory in and around the port is fundamental to organized crime operations.

Judisman says indigenous groups who are defending their territories and rights are being attacked and divided as criminals co-opt some residents to create internal strife. She says the case of Ostula demonstrates the concrete local effects of the global drug market on a community which wants to control its traditional territory.

Hours after Don Trino’s kidnapping, two other members of the Movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity were taken off of a bus in the neighboring state of Guerrero. Marcial Bautista are Eva Alarcón are long time leaders of an environmental movement of small farmers in the state. They were on their way to a meeting in Mexico City when the passenger bus in which they were traveling was boarded by armed men who witnesses say asked for the activists by name.

At the time of this report, their whereabouts remains unknown.

At a press conference held in aftermath of the attack in Ostula and the abductions in Guerrero – and with last week’s murder of Nepomuceno Moreno and the shooting of Norma Andrade still fresh in the collective memory, Araceli Rodiriguez – mother of a kidnapped federal policeman – voice a question that seems to be on the minds of many…

(Rodriguez speaks, reporter interprets)

Who’s next? – she asked. Who of those who have come forward to tell the stories of and experiences of Mexico’s drug war victims will be murdered before the eyes of an authority which – she says – has ignored petitions for protection.

Rodriguez confessed that she is scared and plans to examine security measures, but she does not plan to allow the environment of fear and intimidation silence the movement’s demands for justice.

(Originally aired December 9, 2011 on FSRN )

Since I filed a mid-day story for FSRN on November 29, 2011 some developments of note have occurred in the case.

José Larrinaga, spokesman for State Attorney General of Sonora, held a press conference in which he said the main line of investigation into the case of Nepomuceno Moreno’s murder was a possible link to organized crime. He proceeded to list off criminal cases to which Mr. Moreno has been linked; one of which involved a 32 year old drug conviction.

The wording of the statements led to contradictory press accounts which reported Nepomuceno Moreno as having a lengthy criminal record. For example, the AP article on the press conference stated “In 1997, Moreno was jailed again on drug-related charges, Larrinaga said” which is factually incorrect (yet widely distributed).

The audio of the spokesman’s press conference statements:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

and (thanks to animalpolitico.com and MVS Noticias) is available here: http://www.divshare.com/download/launch/16281687-a52

According to the statements made by the Sonora AG spokesman in the Novemeber 29th press conference, the cases to which Nepomuceno Moreno have been linked are;

• A 1979 drug charge in Arizona which resulted in a conviction
• A 1997 kidnapping case in which Moreno was both a victim and a key witness for the prosecution. His testimony implicated two brothers, Ramón and Ambrosio Vázquez Villagrana, as responsible for the crime. Spokesman Larrinaga told reporters the investigation led to evidence linking the kidnappers to organized crime. Moreno’s testimony led to the conviction of a third man in this case. Larrinaga said a possible revenge motive in this case was a line of investigation.
• A 2005 firearm possession charge. Moreno was arrested along with two other men in 2005 as part of an investigation into a drive-by murder of a security guard. After four years of pre-trial detention, a judge ruled Moreno to be not guilty and absolved of all charges.

The statements made by State Attorney General’s spokesman were later reproached by federal officials for “criminalizing” a crime victim. The SEGOB source document is available here.

Larrinaga added that one of Nepomuceno’s sons, Gilberto Moreno, is currently being held on robbery charges. It’s unclear from the press conference audio if the son has been convicted or is being held in pre-trial detention.

According to Human Rights Watch, more than 40 percent of prisoners in Mexico are pre-trial detainees who often have to wait years before obtaining access to the court system.

Rampant impunity in Mexico is something that has been documented extensively in this blog and elsewhere. However, acquittals are not to be confused with impunity, as acquittals involve both an investigation and legal due process. That’s not to say that some suspects widely believed to be guilty have avoided jail time, but acquittals are not common in cases involving lengthy pre-trial detentions since those held for years without access to the courts are often unable to afford independent legal representation.

It is also contextually important to note that some governmental institutions in Mexico have demonstrated a pattern of stigmatizing or criminalizing victims of violent crime. Award-winning Mexican journalist Marcela Turati documented multiple cases in her book “Fuego Cruzado”.

Now for a backstory:

A person who follows me on Twitter asked me to include information about Moreno’s criminal past in my original post on his murder.

This post was written in the spirit of transparency and full disclosure and is based on the first-hand source audio of the statements made by the Sonora State Attorney General’s office.

I have included contextual information about Mexico’s pre-trial detention system since it contrasts so sharply with the legal system in the US, where most of this website’s web traffic originates.

I have neither met nor interviewed Nepomuceno Moreno and cannot make a character judgement from personal interactions. The aim of this post is to both update an earlier news item and to present direct links to the source statements and context so that readers can come to their own conclusions based on the documented evidence available.