National security spokesman of Mexico, Alejandro Poiré.
Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico

Lone Police Officer In Northern Mexican Town Still Missing After Four Days

December 29, 2010 By Staff

National security spokesman of Mexico, Alejandro Poiré.

Today in Latin America

Top Story — The Mexican border town of Guadalupe remains without any police supervision, as its lone of officer was kidnapped five days ago.

Erika Gándara, 28, was the village’s entire police force in an area that has been plagued by violence related to Mexico’s drug cartels. She was abducted by gunmen who stormed into her home five days ago, but the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office said Monday that there was still no official report of the kidnapping.

The attorney general’s office said the case started as a missing person’s report.

Gándara has held out from leaving the police force despite the resignations and killings of her colleagues. She had patrolled the town of 9,000 inhabitants on her own since June.

Assailants also set fire to the home of a Guadalupe town councilwoman on the same day that Gándara disappeared.

The rural valley where Guadalupe is located is across the border from the Fabens area east of El Paso, TX and is a busy smuggling corridor for the cartels. The Sinaloa and Juárez drug cartels have been battling for control of the valley, which has lead many residents to flee across the border to Texas or to other Mexican cities.

The town itself has become a direct target for the cartels, with several town council members murdered and three heads, one of a former police commander, being left in an ice chest in the town’s central plaza.

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