Killings Jolt a Family in Mexico
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: February 25, 2011
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MEXICO CITY — When Josefina Reyes Salazar was murdered in the border state of Chihuahua last year, not long after she accused the military of playing a role in the killing of her son, protests brought attention to the family’s plight.
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But its torment did not end there. On Friday, the police in Chihuahua found the bodies of Ms. Reyes Salazar’s brother, sister and a sister-in-law along a road near Ciudad Juárez, the country’s most violent city.
They had been abducted by armed men on Feb. 7 outside a gas station near Ciudad Juárez, which sits along the border with Texas. A month earlier a house belonging to Ms. Reyes Salazar’s mother had been set ablaze, and last summer, a brother of Ms. Reyes Salazar was killed.
In all, six members of the family have been killed, one of the more glaring examples of the threat that human rights activists like Ms. Reyes Salazar face in Mexico.
In December, in a case that shocked a country long inured to sensational murders, another grieving mother, Marisela Escobedo, was shot to death in front of Chihuahua’s capitol as she demanded justice for the killing of her daughter. Other activists have been killed or received death threats in the past few years as Mexico has waged a battle against organized crime.
Reyes Salazar family members lashed out at the state and federal governments on Friday; Ms. Reyes Salazar’s two sisters promised to keep protesting with a hunger strike.
State officials had said the family members might have had links to organized crime, but a spokesman for the family said that assertion was an attempt to sully the family’s name. No arrests have been made in any of the killings.
Two weeks ago, Amnesty International warned that the family had received threats and urged state and federal officials to protect it, but it was unclear if any such aid was offered or rejected.
The family is “clearly being targeted in the most brutal way,” said Susan Lee, the Americas director for Amnesty International. “The Mexican authorities’ top priority must be to ensure the safety of other relatives.”
A version of this article appeared in print on February 26, 2011, on page A4 of the New York edition.