ADVOCATES DECRY SLAYING OF WOMAN WHO SPOKE OUT AGAINST CARTEL VIOLENCE

Advocacy organizations in Chihuahua state condemned the Jan. 3 killing
of activist Josefina Reyes Salazar in the Juarez vicinity.

Mexican authorities said Reyes, 46, died Sunday after apparently being
shot. Police found her body at 1:30 p.m. Sunday in the driveway of her
modest food business known as Barbacoa Mario's.

No bullet casings were found near her body, according to the Joint
Chihuahua Operation report.

At a news conference Wednesday in Juarez, Judith Galarza, secretary of
the Latin American Federation of Relatives of the Disappeared and
Detained based in Venezuela, and Cipriana Jurado, a longtime labor
advocate, called on authorities to investigate Reyes' death. No one
has been arrested in connection with the homicide.

The Women's Human Rights Center in Chihuahua City also urged a
thorough investigation.

Reyes had received death threats after she took part in protests and
in a hunger strike related to her two sons in front of the Mexican
federal Attorney General's Office in Juarez.

Her son Julio Cesar Reyes was killed in the family's El Sauzal
community. Another son, Miguel Angel Reyes, has not been seen since
soldiers took him away in 2008.

Reyes also spoke out against drug cartel violence and protested the
unsolved deaths and disappearances of others in Juarez.

She was a featured participant in the 2008 National Front Against
Repression forum in Juarez, which focused on alleged abuses by the
military and other security forces.

Before her death, anonymous fliers warning Reyes that she had 24 hours
to leave or die were placed in her Valle de Juarez neighborhood,
prompting her to move from El Sauzal to the Juarez city limits.
However, she returned to run her food business, where authorities
think she was killed.