Mexico Protest - Marchers protest rampant drug cartel violence in border city
NAME: MEX PROTEST 20091206I
TAPE: EF09/1138
IN_TIME: 10:22:29:11
DURATION: 00:01:26:04
SOURCES: AP TELEVISION
DATELINE: Ciudad Juarez - 6 Dec 2009
RESTRICTIONS:
SHOTLIST
1. Tilt down from Mexican flag to first row of marchers
2. Medium of marchers shouting " For peace"
3. First row of marchers carrying a banner reading " A solution for Juarez"
4. Start of the march
5. Medium of marchers
6. SOUNDBITE ( Spanish) Marco Antonio Quevedo, organiser:
"In our city, we see how every week the crime index keeps growing, we keep having new types of crime that were unheard of in our city before, and we must do something for our city."
7. More of march
8. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Name not given
"Ciudad Juarez can no longer tolerate this sort of situation, that's the reason we join this totally peaceful march."
9. More of marchers shouting "Juarez for peace"
10. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Idalia Guerra
"Above all we have fear, they (the children) can't go anywhere anymore, not even the street, because we are afraid. We are asking for peace here, because we can't even go to the parks."
11. Marchers gathered in front of the town hall
STORYLINE
More than one thousand people marched through the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez on Sunday to protest of daily killings attributed to an ongoing drug cartel war.
The marchers protested the lack of security in the sprawling border city besieged by cartel violence for nearly two years.
"We see how every week the crime index keeps growing...and we must do something for our city," said one of the protest organisers.
The city is considered the most dangerous in Mexico, and perhaps the world.
It has had about 2,250 killings this year, a rate of 173 per 100,000 residents.
That compares with 37 in Baltimore, the deadliest U.S. city with a population of more than 500,000.
The violence began in earnest in early 2008, when Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and Juarez Cartel boss Vicente Carrillo Fuentes launched a fight over drug routes their organisations had long shared.
As many as four thousand people have been killed in Juarez since then.
Thousands of troops and federal police rolled into the city by May 2008 to stop the violence, and this year Mexican President Felipe Calderon sent in even more, with more than 7,000 soldiers in place by March.
But the city has only seen a brief 36-hour truce in October.
Before the drug war kicked off, violence in the city had been simmering for decades. Ciudad Juarez had already earned notoriety for the killings of hundreds of women whose bodies were dumped in the desert, in the 1990s. Many of the killings remain unresolved.
Violent death is a part of life in Ciudad Juarez, but local residents say now it's getting worse.
"We can't even go to the parks," Idalia Guerra said. "We are asking for peace, here."