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The violence on the border between Mexico and the United States is increasingly worrying. So far this year, 20 bodies have been found in a channel of the Tijuana River, on the Mexican side, while in the city that bears the same name, more than 1,500 deaths have been registered, as a result of the confrontation between gangs and the growing drug trafficking and consumption in the area.
The inhabitants of the surroundings of the Tijuana River have expressed their concern about the increase in violence, due to settling scores and the dispute over territory between organized crime cartels, which has also generated strong waves of violence in the border city of Tijuana. .
The alarming situation has produced displacements of people who inhabit the canalization of the Tijuana River, which divides the states of California, in the United States, and Baja California, in Mexico.
The river channel, which is currently desolate, was usually inhabited by homeless people seeking refuge, in addition to being used as a meeting place for the consumption of psychoactive substances.
Currently, torture and murder are being committed in this area, and little by little it has become a mass grave, according to José, a displaced person from the canalization who had been living on the riverbank for more than seven years and affirms that “in the canal right now there is a slaughterhouse (massacre)”.
“Many have already left there because the authorities got angry with us and the police are tougher (stricter) than before,” says ‘Chuy’, a man who had found refuge in the channel for 9 years, after being deported from the United States.
For his part, the specialist on the subject Alfonso Ch said that “it is common that the authorities whenever the problem thunders in their hands, they go to the easy to criminalize this population, only for being a potential community in the consumption of drugs “.
Recently, the Mexican municipal and state authorities announced the agreement for the beginning of a work table that allows attending to the area, in which more than 20 lifeless bodies have been found so far this year.
Violence that has left its mark on the community
One of the cases that has aroused the most social outrage has been that of Kevin Yael González, a 14-year-old teenager who was found dead and with signs of violence in the river channeling on September 14.
The minor’s parents had reported his disappearance at the beginning of September, after one of Kevin’s friends declared that he was making a video call with him while he was walking on one of the pedestrian bridges that cross the river, when two subjects intercepted him.
Three days later, the parents began the search and found it in one of the sluice gates, along with the body of an American woman who, according to investigations, had been kidnapped for more than a year in the area.
Given the facts, different sectors have requested greater coordination on the part of the Government to maintain security in the city of Tijuana, which has also been affected by the reduction in the arrival of tourists due to the increase in insecurity.
“We need coordination and here I am talking about the three levels of government, not just the local authority,” said Arturo Gutiérrez Sánchez, president of the Tijuana Tourism and Convention Committee.
The entire country suffers the consequences of clashes between cartels
According to statistics from the authorities, in the city of Tijuana there are an average of five homicides per day. There are 1,507 registered so far this year.
During the first week of August, Mexico experienced an intense day of violence, different cartels in the country carried out a chain of attacks in the north of the country, which showed the difficulty of the authorities to intervene and further exacerbated the escalation of violence.
At least 40 vehicles were stolen and burned in the main cities of the state of Baja California and its citizens were intimidated by a curfew ordered by the Jalisco New Generation cartel.
Throughout the country there were 11 fatalities, including a child and four journalists from a station in Ciudad Juárez.
With EFE and local media
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