Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico
Three Teenagers Killed In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; Two U.S. Citizens
February 8, 2011 By Staff
The Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, viewed from across the border in El Paso.
Today in Latin America
Top Story — Three teenage boys were shot to death in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, with at least two of them being U.S. high school students from Texas.
The boys were killed on Saturday afternoon while at a car dealership across the border from El Paso, Texas. At least 60 bullet casings were found at the scene, with one of the boys found inside a white Jeep Cherokee and the other two in the courtyard.
There have been no leads in the shooting and one of the dealership managers has refused to give a statement, while the statement from the other has not released due to a pending investigation.
The two boys who were U.S. citizens were Carlos Mario Gonzalez Bermudez, a 16-year old sophomore at Cathedral High School in El Paso and Juan Carlos Echeverri, a 15-year old who had been a freshman at a private Catholic school last year, but left to study in Ciudad Juárez. The U.S. Embassy said it could not provide any information on the case.
The third teenager was identified as 17-year old César Yalín Miramontes Jiménez.
“We believe (Echeverri) and the two others had been friends for a long time. He was here in the city to visit them,” said Chihuahua State prosecutor’s office spokesman Arturo Sandoval, according to CNN.
Cathedral High School held a prayer service for the deceased on Monday and officials planned a rosary service for the entire school later in the week. Gonzalez Bermudez lived in Ciudad Juárez and commuted to the school everday, something about 20 percent of the 485 students enrolled at Cathedral do, according to the school’s principal Nick Gonzalez.
“Our Juarez kids knew all three” of the teenagers killed over the weekend, he said, according to The Houston Chronicle. “It’s a very tight knit community. A lot of them car pool; that’s how they know each other.”
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- The producer of the Superman films of the 1970s and ’80s was released from a Mexican hospital where he was treated for head injuries.
- A preliminary count of the ballots released Monday shows Mexico’s National Action Party candidate Marcos Covarrubias winning the governorship of Baja California Sur state.
- An immigration enforcement bill in Utah that is modeled on Arizona’s law could cost state and local governments millions of dollars a year.
Caribbean
- The lecturer in a Cuban government video on the dangers of the Internet has been identified — on the Internet — as a 38-year-old counter-intelligence official who follows blogger Yoani Sánchez on Twitter.
- The Haitian government says it has issued former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide with a passport, opening the way for his possible return.
Central America
- The former director of the National Civil Police of Guatemala (PNC), Porfirio Pérez, was found not guilty of the two serious charges he faced.
- The International Court of Justice is expected to rule any day on a Costa Rica-Nicaragua border dispute. The case has caused Costa RIca to reexamine its commitment to disarmament.
- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday urged President Obama to act on pending trade deals with Panama and Colombia.
Andes
- Venezuela has terminated Crystallex’s permit to operate the biggest gold mine in the country, the Canadian mining company said Monday.
- Six Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrillas turned themselves in voluntarily to army troops in a rural area in the southern province of Caqueta, the army said Sunday.
- A prominent U.S. law firm accused Chevron of mounting a “smear campaign” aimed at keeping it out of a high stakes Ecuadorean environmental pollution case.
- A strike at Peru’s main port of Callao is complicating the country’s flow of mineral exports, said Eva Arias, the president of the National Oil, Mining and Energy Society’s committee on mining.
Southern Cone
- U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with Brazil’s leaders Monday as a way to bolster ties before next month’s visit by President Barack Obama.
- A Chilean woman who wanted to keep her boyfriend home called in a bomb threat as his Iberia airline flight to Spain prepared for takeoff.
- Seven people died and more than 50 were injured when a bus and a truck collided in the northern Argentine province of Corrientes.
Image: dherrera_96 @ Flickr.
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