MAN VANISHED AFTER ARREST, MEXICAN ARMY LATER DENIED OCCURRED

Maria Vizcaino still looks for her brother, three years after he
disappeared in a country fraught with corruption, drugs and death.

She said Cesar Vizcaino Amaro vanished on Feb. 20, 2008, after the
Mexican army arrested him on suspicion of trafficking drugs and
possessing weapons in Juarez.

Vizcaino Amaro, then 35, was one of eight men arrested that day, army
records show. The others were booked into a Juarez jail, but nobody
saw or heard from Vizcaino Amaro again, his sister said.

The army, though, later issued a report contradicting its own records
and denying that Vizcaino Amaro had been in its custody.

Maria Vizcaino, 41, said her family learned of her brother's arrest
while watching a Spanish news station. The next day, they went to
Juarez but found no trace of him.

They checked jails, hospitals and morgues. At each stop they heard the
same response: Vizcaino Amaro was not there and never had been.

"There were so many things happening in 2008," Maria Vizcaino said.
"You'd hear about the military torturing people and killing people. I
didn't want to think about that then, but maybe he said something or
did something wrong."

Human-rights investigations are an option for families of people who
vanish. Vizcaino opened one in April 2008. She alleged that the army
played a role in the disappearance of her brother.

The army responded in writing in May 2008. Its letter stated that it
did not detain Vizcaino Amaro or participate in any searches of the
area where he was last seen. This contradicted the original army
account that soldiers had arrested Vizcaino Amaro and alleged that he
was a member of La Linea, a Mexican drug gang that serves as muscle
for the Juarez cartel.

But this is not the first time the army has contradicted
itself.

While engaging in law enforcement activities, Mexico's army has
committed serious human rights violations, including enforced
disappearances, killings, torture, rapes, and arbitrary detentions
while conducting counter narcotics and counterinsurgency operations,
according to a 2009 Human Rights Watch report on the misuse of
military justice.

The military justice system limits civilian review of military court
decisions making it impossible for the public to keep track of basic
information on the status of army abuse cases, the report said.
Military prosecutors have, in several cases, closed investigations for
lack of evidence, relied heavily on soldiers' testimony, and ignored
credible evidence that abuses occurred, according to the report.

No matter what Vizcaino Amaro may have done that February day in
Mexico, Maria Vizcaino said, it does not affect how much her family
loved him and continues to love him.

She and her brother grew up in Anthony, N.M. They were two of a family
of nine that immigrated to the United States in the early 1970s, she
said.

She looked after her brother while their parents worked. He feared the
dark as a boy, she said, but he would grow bolder in all the wrong
ways.

He became involved with the drug trade. Federal prosecutors convicted
him of possessing and intending to distribute 125 pounds of marijuana
in 1995 and for intending to distribute more than 110 pounds of
marijuana in 1996, according to court records.

He eventually spent three years in prison.

Not long after he was released, he moved to Juarez, Vizcaino said. He
disappeared a few months after that.

Vizcaino said the army's claim that he was never jailed has not
deterred her from searching for him. She returned to Juarez morgues at
Christmastime last year, searching for any record of him.

"I know he was not a perfect person. I know that," she said. "But
still, we deserve some type of answers. I don't understand why we
haven't found our answers yet. It's been three years."