Man vanished after arrest, Mexican army later denied occurred
by Maggie Ybarra \ El Paso Times
Posted: 11/22/2010 12:00:00 AM MST

Maria VizcaÃ*no still looks for her brother, three years after he disappeared in a country fraught with corruption, drugs and death.

She said Cesar VizcaÃ*no Amaro vanished on Feb. 20, 2008, after the Mexican army arrested him on suspicion of trafficking drugs and possessing weapons in Juárez.

VizcaÃ*no Amaro, then 35, was one of eight men arrested that day, army records show. The others were booked into a Juárez jail, but nobody saw or heard from VizcaÃ*no Amaro again, his sister said.

The army, though, later issued a report contradicting its own records and denying that VizcaÃ*no Amaro had been in its custody.

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

They checked jails, hospitals and morgues. At each stop they heard the same response: VizcaÃ*no Amaro was not there and never had been.

"There were so many things happening in 2008," Maria VizcaÃ*no 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. VizcaÃ*no 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 VizcaÃ*no Amaro or participate in any searches of
the area where he was last seen. This contradicted the original army account that soldiers had arrested VizcaÃ*no Amaro and alleged that he was a member of La Linea, a Mexican drug gang that serves as muscle for the Juárez 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 counternarcotics 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 VizcaÃ*no Amaro may have done that February day in Mexico, Maria VizcaÃ*no 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 Juárez, VizcaÃ*no said. He disappeared a few months after that.

VizcaÃ*no said the army's claim that he was never jailed has not deterred her from searching for him. She returned to Juárez 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."

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