Sex crimes investigator assassinated in Juarez

Berenice Garcia Corral was commander of the sex crimes unit of Chihuahua state's State Investigation Agency before masked men shot her in her driveway in Ciuadad Juarez on Monday night. La Jornada reports that she was shot at least 10 times with AK-47 rifles. On Tuesday in the municipality of Hidalgo del Parral a local police officer was shot and killed, and two more in Juarez were injured in shoot-outs. Authorities in Juarez said the Garcia Corral killing was related to a "case that she was investigating," suggesting a link to the shameful mystery of the Juarez women murders.

This was news on page 18 of the paper, by the way. It's easy to imagine what sort of coverage a killling of a police officer and one high-level female investigator in the span of two days in the same region would get in the U.S. But this is Mexico's internal narco war we're talking about. Killings happen daily in the states where the drug trade is centered. You've heard about the spectacular events, surely. In Tijuana, 15 were killed in a single day last month during a chaotic blast of street combat. In January Tijuana kindergarteners were caught in the ongoing cross-fire. Every day, as they battle the cartels who are battling themselves, civil and federal police casualities are mounting.

The deaths are news but not news. Reports are buried or overlooked. Some papers even keep daily narco-related death counts. Another day, another serving of bloodshed in organized crime in Mexico. On Wednesday, for instance, La Jornada's piece from Juarez noted as a tag-on that six more narco war victims were added in the cities of Nogales and Hermosillo. Their names were Oscar Jaime Valenzuela Valenzuela, his wife Yolanda Lopez Herrera, and police officer Juan Alvaro Gomez Higuera. A fourth victim remained unidentified and, seperately, two unidentified bodies were found near an airstrip.