Bodies hanged from highway overpass in Juarez

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Authorities in Juarez, Mexico, are trying to make sense of an overnight spate of violence that left seven people dead and exposed motorists to bodies hanging from an overpass.

Early Friday morning, police pulled down from a highway overpass at the southern entrance to Juarez the bodies of two men, one of them naked, hanging from ropes. A cardboard sign on the windshield of a nearby abandoned black SUV said, “Por huachicoleros, ahi estan tus cristaleros, Archi” (There are your crystal dealers, Archi, for stealing fuel.)

Crystal, referring to crystal methamphetamine, has become the cash crop of street drug sales for the local gangs. It is a also an export drug for the cartels. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in the El Paso Sector alone have seized a combined 7,545 pounds of methamphetamine at border crossings in the last two fiscal years.

Trucks and passenger vehicles coming from Chihuahua City on the Pan American Highway (Mexico Highway 45) can be seen in the background of a Border Report video as police place the deceased inside body bags and pull down the ropes.

Juarez Public Safety Director Cesar Omar Muñoz said police overnight responded to six crime scenes involving seven homicide victims.

“They happened within a short time of each other. It was not organized, but was different acts, as the investigation will reveal,” Muñoz said during an impromptu news conference Friday morning. “What happened this morning (the hanged victims) left a bad impression on Ciudad Juarez. It is related to fuel theft. The road leads to the (Juarez) Valley, so we think it is something going on over there.”

No arrests have been announced in any of the murders.

This is the second high-profile cartel atrocity in two weeks. A few days ago, a vehicle was set on fire with three homicide victims inside. This happened in one of the several communities that make up the Juarez Valley on the southeastern outskirts of the city.

Chihuahua Attorney General Cesar Jauregui earlier attributed the violence to a renewed street war between the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels.

“There are several things going on in Juarez. We have a scenario in the Valley where a group called Los Cabrera settled years ago and there could be tensions with La Linea,” Jauregui said. “There also are tensions between groups of La Linea. When (migrant) trafficking dried up, they are trying to retake retail drug sales. That has led to conflicts among them tied to control of drug sales in neighborhoods.”

Los Cabrera is a cell of the Sinaloa cartel. La Linea are the remnants of the once dominating Juarez cartel.

ProVideo in Juarez, Mexico, contributed to this report.