Saulo Reyes Gamboa was apparently a very busy man. The border entrepreneur owned Ciudad Juarez's Silver Streak hamburger franchise, Japanese eateries, Subway sandwich outlets, a shoe business and the Epicentro radio station, among other enterprises. According to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), the 36-year-old Reyes was also an exporter of intoxicating products. In a Jan. 16 sting, U.S. federal agents arrested Reyes in El Paso on charges of bribing an ICE undercover agent masquerading as a border inspector to allow pot into the United States.

In a region where some locals say that every family has at least one member in "the business," Reyes' arrest might have gone down as just another entry into the police blotter. But Reyes has another feather in his cap that's making his bust a top news story: he is a former Ciudad Juarez police chief.

First serving as an administrative commander in the Ciudad Juarez municipal police department during 1998-2001, Reyes, who is a public accountant, reemerged on the city police force when he was appointed operational commander early last year by the administration of former Mayor Hector "Teto" Murguia. Besides working as a police official, Reyes had racked up public sector experience as a financial administrator for alternating state and municipal governments that were dominated by either the PAN or PRI political parties.

Reyes’ Kinsui restaurant branch on the busy Paseo del Triunfo de la Republica thoroughfare was the scene of the notorious 1997 murder of Jose Loya Lopez, a man with police and political connections, during business hours.

Alerted to Reyes' arrest, Ciudad Juarez reporters pressed former Mayor Murguia about his appointment of the suspected drug dealer to a high law enforcement position. Expressing surprise, Murguia insisted that his administration was always committed to the “firm combat of drug trafficking.”

Murguia ignited a controversy when he declared that Reyes had been named to the police post because of a recommendation by Ciudad Juarez's influential Coparmex employers'organization.

"(Reyes) was a successful businessman,he was a businessman with many enterprises," Murguia said, "a man with a master's degree who was participating in various business organizations."

Murguia denied receiving even a "nickel" from Reyes for the former mayor's successful 2004 election campaign, and he professed no knowledge about reports that Reyes’ myriad businesses benefited from city contracts during his administration which ended last October.

Local Coparmex head Ernesto Anaya quickly refuted Murguia’s statements about the business organization’s role in the return of Reyes to law enforcement. Last weekend, Coparmex published a large, attention-grabbing statement in Ciudad Juarez newspapers that disassociated the organization from Reyes’ appointment.

"We categorically reject that we would have influenced such a decision," Coparmex declared, "since it is public knowledge that the appointment of top and middle level public officials is made directly by the municipal president."

Coparmex acknowledged that Reyes had been a member of the group until August 2007

Reyes'arrest inspired fiery comments by Ciudad Juarez business leaders, elected officials and citizen activists, and it rekindled debate about the nature of the relationships between organized crime, politicians, policemen, business and the media in the borderlands.

Andres de Anda Martinez, a state legislator for the PAN, said he would prod the Chihuahua state legislature to demand a state and federal investigation of the links between Reyes and Murguia.

"(Reyes) participation says that he left an agency in the hands of organized crime," De Anda contended. On January 23, several PAN legislators held a demonstration in the Chihuahua State Congress in support of an investigation. But Jorge Gutierrez, a PRI legislator, defended Reyes’ record as ”impeccable” during the suspected drug dealer's stint as a police official.

Questions arose about the relationship between Reyes and his former boss, Marco Antonio Torres, who worked as communications director for Mayor Murguia before being appointed as public safety secretary last year.
Both Torres and Reyes have an interest in the Epicentro radio station.

According to one report, Reyes attended a ceremony last year where the U.S.-based National Crime Insurance Bureau honored the crime-fighting efforts of the Murguia/Torres administration. Reportedly, last April's event was attended by numerous U.S. police officials including representatives from the El Paso Police Department, UTEP police, Albuquerque Police Department, Bernalillo (New Mexico) County Sheriff's Department and, ironically, the Department of Homeland Security.

Reyes, of course, is innocent until proven guilty. Jailed without bond, he is next scheduled to attend court on Monday, Jan. 28. A young woman linked to Reyes, 27-year-old Karina Tarango, is also in hot water with the law. Tarango was arrested last week at a home in Horizon City, Texas, outside El Paso allegedly with almost a half-ton of marijuana in her possession. An El Paso judge ordered Tarango confined to house arrest.
Both Reyes and Tarango are staring at up to 40 years in prison if convicted of marijuana possession and conspiracy. In Mexico, the Office of the Federal Attorney General has initiated a preliminary investigation of Reyes for illicit enrichment and criminal association.

A Turbulent Year with the Boys in Blue

In January 2007, Reyes assumed his new policing responsibilities as internal strife and scandal simmered and boiled in the department. Worse yet, more than a few officers were implicated in extortion, rape, murder and other crimes. Members of his Reyes’ department, for instance, were accused of the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Raul Lara in the back, and of allowing the "escape" of a suspect from a police station who was later found handcuffed and dead in an irrigation ditch.

Prostitutes and transvestites who work downtown Ciudad Juarez’s streets repeatedly accused policemen of shaking them down in return for allowing the sex workers to continue luring clients. In 2007, the official Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission accepted 46 complaints against members of the Ciudad Juarez Municipal Police Department for various, alleged abuses.

In separate cases, six officers were charged with domestic violence and sex crimes, including the sexual abuse of two 12-year-old girls. In yet another case, an 18-year-old woman complained that two men wearing Ciudad Juarez municipal police garb and driving a truck resembling a police vehicle raped and severely beat her on an isolated property, leaving the victim for dead. Then there were the five officers accused of fabricating a scapegoat in last April's murder of Monserrat Morales Arellenes in order to protect an alleged drug dealer. Blamed on a dispute over a dead dog, the Morales murder led to a confrontation between the Chihuahua Office of the State Attorney General (PGJE) and city policemen who tried to prevent the arrests of their brethren.

What’s more, local policemen were suspected in the murders of two young women, Samantha Elizabeth Martinez Gutierrez and Blanca Guadalupe Sanchez Villalobos, whose naked bodies were dumped on public streets in the Insurgentes neighborhood during May and June of last year. Assigned to investigate the case, a PGJE investigator charged that municipal policemen attempted to kidnap her. Long-time women's activist Vicky Caraveo, a former director of the Chihuahua State Women's Institute, said the Insurgentes murders weren’t surprising.

"The accusation by the state attorney general against municipal police isn't anything new," Caraveo said, “because the mothers of (femicide) victims have always said so, and they have been ignored."

Prior to leaving office last October, public safety head Torres acknowledged that organized crime had infiltrated the police department.

Individual officers were widely suspected of protecting as many as 1,000 "picaderos," or illegal drug outlets, in the city. Last summer, Torres claimed that hooded and heavily-armed persons disarmed his bodyguards and threatened him in a restaurant while he was dining.

Efecto Saulo?

In Ciudad Juarez, meanwhile, the local press is speculating on a possible "Saulo Effect" related to Reyes' arrest. On Jan. 20 and 21, roving gunmen shot to death two municipal police commanders. Additionally, three men were reported kidnapped by armed commandoes on Jan. 21. On the evening of the same day, an important commander for the Chihuahua State Investigations Agency, Fernando Lozano, was critically wounded by gunfire.

Lozano is a brother-in-law of Sergio Belmonte, the press spokesman for the current Juarez city government.

In a development that revealed the gravity of the situation unfolding in Ciudad Juarez, Lozano was moved across the border Jan. 22 to El Paso’s Thomason Hospital, where he was guarded by heavily-armed U.S. local and federal police. On more than one occasion in the past, assassins have stormed Mexican hospitals to complete an unfinished job.

Fifteen police officers from different agencies have been slain in Ciudad Juarez since January 2007. After the most recent shootings, Mexican soldiers in Hummers were reported patrolling and searching a central Ciudad Juarez neighborhood.

Reyes's arrest was the second major law enforcement action this month against alleged organized crime elements in the borderlands. In El Paso, the FBI and other police agencies arrested several reputed leaders of the Barrio Azteca gang, an organization with members in both the U.S. and Mexico. Previous press accounts have linked Chihuahua state cops and Ciudad Juarez policemen to the gang.

It is not yet clear whether this week's attacks against police in Ciudad Juarez have anything to do with either the Reyes or Barrio Azteca cases.

An unconfirmed version attributes the upsurge in violence to an attempt by followers of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to conquer the Ciudad Juarez drug “plaza.” According to one account, narco-corridos in honor of the Sinaloa drug kingpin have been transmitted on local police radio frequencies in recent days. In other Mexican cities like Nuevo Laredo, similar clandestine broadcasts have signaled war.

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Sources:

-- El Paso Times, January 11, 18, 22, 23, 2008. Articles by Daniel Borunda, Louie Gilot and editorial staff.
--El Diario de El Paso, January 18 and 19, 2008. Articles by Lorena Figueroa, Horacio Carrasco and Luz del Carmen Sosa.
-- Lapolaka.com, March 9 and 11, 2007; April 13, 2007; July 20, 2007; January 20, 21, 22, 23 2008.
-- Frontenet.com, April 12 and 17, 2008. October 9, 2007; January 22, 2008. Norte, July 13, 2007; January 18, 19 and 22, 2008. Articles by Jorge Chairez Daniel, Luis Carlos Ortega, Carlos Huerta, Antonio Rebolledo, Francisco Lujan, A. Chacon, and Felix A. Gonzalez.
-- El Universal, April 11 and August 22, 2007. Articles by Luis Carlos Cano and the Notimex news agency.
-- La Jornada, July 12, 2007; September 4 and 6, 2007; January 20, 2008. Articles by Ruben Villalpando and the AFP news agency.
-- El Diario de Juarez, April 17, 19 and 21, 2007; July 12 and 27, 2007; September 5 and 18, 2007; October 16, 2007; January 17, 20, 21, 23, 2008.

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Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

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