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Peace in Ciudad Juárez is about to end, says Jorge, a hitman cartel leader who is involved in the end of this era.
In the last year, this leader of La Línea (armed wing of the Juárez cartel) and I have always met in the same way: I drive and he talks. It's the only way he feels safe. To date, all good and bad omens he has given, have been right. Here's another one: "Just wait. The best is yet to come."
In 2013, the American journal The New York Times published an article called “Ciudad Juárez, a Border City Known for Killing, Gets Back to Living”, which describes how this violent city left behind its past of kidnappings and killings and had what many consider as a boom.
The truth is that of the hundreds of stores that closed in 2010, due to extortion, threats or kidnapping of their owners, 90% opened again in 2013. The homicides dropped from 3,000 in 2010 to 485 in 2013, a very encouraging figure. What is not true is that Ciudad Juárez returned to life.
Since late 2008 to 2012, the Juárez and Sinaloa Cartels fought gun battles in the streets, bars, restaurants, funerals, churches... but the end of this war was a fragile truce and an extinction of their members, as explained Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, who was the State Commission of Human Rights observer in Ciudad Juárez at the time.
“What happened was that they killed each other. So many people died, and part of the decline in violence was the killing of cartel members, and those who survived fled," he said.
Jorge says there was a truce: the order was to continue working, but discretely, that is to say, no killings in public places.
“That's a lie, Juárez has not changed. Nothing has changed at all, just the order of being more discreet, now we can't leave bodies on the street, that's why there's a shitload of clandestine graves. Now we have to burn them, bury them or throw them into the sewers," Jorge says.
Three years after that article, violence is on the rise again in the city. Since last July, homicides have increased, 1.6 per day, according to official reports. July ended with 13 homicides, while in September there were a total of 20.
Jorge receives extra money for killing crystal meth dealers. If he kills a boss, he is paid up to 3,000 pesos (about US$150), and if he kills a street dealer, he gets less money.
“Now, heroin is Juárez's top drug, you recover 100% of your investment, both here and in El Paso, Texas, because people want and want and sometimes we can't meet the demand even if we work 24/7” he said.
Jorge is the leader of a cell. It means that he has a mid-level position in La Línea. He is the connection between the Juárez Cartel and the Barrio Azteca, a gang born in Texas that does the dirty work for the cartel.
He is in charge of recruiting people to smuggle drugs into the United States, supply the heroin outlets, buy cars for transporting the drugs, monitor the workshops where they supply, coordinate people across the border to know if the drug made it safely to its destination, recruit Customs and Border Protection agents and kill opponents or insubordinate members.
“The war is about to start because the Sinaloa cartel wants to sell crystal meth and we are not going to allow that, there are orders to do whatever it takes to not let them in. They can't just come to my house and do whatever they want, right?" Jorge says. His concern has no moral roots; on the contrary, it's just about the utilitarian market.
"Crystal meth addicts live three years, then die, they are killing people, and that money is not going to our pockets, because that money spent on crystal could be used for heroin," he complains.
Jorge says that backup for the cartel and weapons have arrived in Ciudad Juárez, and we will once again see a wave of cars with bullet holes, bloody sidewalks, confusion and terror on people's face.
"This [the homicides] is nothing, the best is yet to come. We have to eliminate them from the root, we must kill them and let them know, send them messages.” he warned his opponents.
The criminal organization that Jorge belongs to has more than 2,000 members in Ciudad Juárez, about 1,000 in Chihuahua, and another 5,000 in Texas, according to the Organization of American States.
"Barrio Azteca members from Chihuahua and El Paso are already here. We have been smuggling arms shipments since several months ago, R-15, AK-47, pistols, shotguns, to knock down all of them," Jorge says.
