Excerpt from a story published by Inter Press Service News Agency on May 10, 2010.
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico, May 10, 2010 (IPS)
In Ciudad Juárez, the most violent city in Latin America, Mexico's war on drugs has left at least 110 children dead in the past three years, and over 10,000 have lost parents.
Civil society organisations are urging the authorities elected in an upcoming ballot to meet the needs of this vulnerable population.
An air of despair hangs over this border city. Deserted streets and empty houses -- about 100,000 of them -- testify to the defeat of a society that has gone through horror, indignation, rage and exhaustion in the past two decades.
When night falls there is a kind of voluntary curfew, in contrast to the lively night life that used to animate the city centre. Few people walk the streets, even in daylight, and most people think twice before answering phone calls from numbers they do not recognise. One-third of the shops are closed in this northern Mexican city across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Verito is seven years old. In December, her school teachers were forced to hand over their extra month's salary, paid before Christmas, in "protection money" to an organised crime group so that the pupils would not be harmed...