Thousands in Juarez Protest City’s Killings

More than 20,000 people marched through the border city of Ciudad Juarez on Friday to demand that authorities stop a years-long wave of violence that has left hundreds dead, many of them young women.

The protesters, most of them students who were given the day off to participate in the march, walked through downtown Juarez, a city of 1.3 million across from El Paso, shouting: “Enough! We don’t want any more violence! We want peace!”

Organized by state legislators, the march ended at a monument to the Mexican flag near the Americas International Bridge, where some lawmakers promised to stiffen prison sentences.

“The response by the Juarez community obliges us to look for a complete reform of our justice system ... so that we’re able to toughen the punishment of criminals,” said Cesar Duarte, a state congressman.

Ciudad Juarez Mayor Hector Murguia said this week that he would propose that the death penalty be instituted in Mexico and applied to those who kill children.

Federal investigators say more than 350 women have been killed in this industrial border city since 1993. About 100 of the killings followed a pattern in which young women were sexually assaulted, strangled and dumped in the desert.

Juarez residents have grown nearly numb to the killings. But the recent brutal slayings of two girls, 7 and 10, drew new outrage.