JUAREZ VIOLENCE PERSISTS: AUGUST DEADLIEST MONTH WITH 322
KILLED

In murderous Juarez, August was especially deadly.

The summer month had more homicides than any other month since drug
cartels began fighting a turf war in 2008.

As of Tuesday night, 322 people had been murdered in August. Before
this month, the deadliest had been June, when 313 people were slain,
and August 2009, with 315.

"It has been a violent month," said Carlos Gonzalez, spokesman for the
Chihuahua state attorney general's office. "The statistics
unfortunately reflect it."

On Tuesday, gunmen attacked a family party about 3 p.m. and killed
four people, three of whom were siblings.

Chihuahua state police reported that the four killed were Jesus Juarez
Lopez, 36; Leticia Corral Nevares, 17; Julio Corral Nevares, between
25 and 30; and Arturo Corral Nevares, between 27 and 30.

Gonzalez said more than 90 percent of the city's homicides are related
to drugs.

The statistics, however, never show whether victims were bystanders.
Details surrounding murders are almost always unclear because almost
all cases go unresolved.

Juarez has been the epicenter of the war on drugs that Mexican
President Felipe Calderon declared in December 2006.

The murder rate began to rise in 2008, when the Sinaloa drug-cartel
kingpin Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman arrived in the border city to fight
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, who heads the Juarez cartel.

Brutal attacks and beheadings are now common occurrences in
Juarez.

The government has used different strategies to curtail drug-cartel
violence and crack down on gangs.

Thousands of soldiers were deployed to Juarez beginning in March
2008.

The military force grew to 7,000 soldiers afterward. They patrolled
the city and responded to murder scenes, but the federal government
said it was a temporary measure.

Calderon visited Juarez three times this year to launch a social plan
with 160 promises, including public safety, education and the economy.

Because of the presidential visits, Juarez residents formed committees
to help solve the crisis of violence.

Members of the public-safety committee have said that local, state and
federal law enforcement have abused human rights. Chihuahua state
representative Victor Quintana Silveyra accused the military of many
of the human-rights violations earlier this year.

The government then turned to its federal police force to patrol the
city.

In April, thousands of federal agents arrived in the border city,
increasing the corps to 4,500 officers.

Since then, they have become the targets of many ambushes.

Nationwide, federal police have fired 3,200 agents, almost 10 percent
of its force, this year in a housecleaning effort to root out corruption.

About 1,000 agents faced disciplinary sanctions.

Facing corruption charges are 465 officers, including four commanders
in Juarez whose firings were prompted earlier in August by a federal
police protest.

Jose Ramon Salinas, spokes man for the Mexican federal police, said
the agency rotates agents every two months to other cities to prevent
corruption within the force.