THE BORDER REPORT

The Mexican Senate has put forward a measure that will eliminate the Army's roving of Juárez's streets in light of a nasty spat of rights abuses in that poor city at the hands of soldiers.

Plenty of good and bad here to consider. First of all, what choice did Mexico have? Juárez is the country's largest border city, rendered utterly feral by the exhaustive war between Vicente Carrillo and Joaquín Guzmán Loéra. That conflict has gone on since 2007 and homicide stats from this summer show that there's been no relinquishing of territory by either side. Juárez had an average of seven murders a day in June alone. Clearly an intervention was needed.

But as early as last fall, human rights organizations complained of at least ten innocent civilians shot and killed by Army units. One hundred more reported being tortured, blindfolded, suffocated with bags of ice, electrocuted, soaked with water and frozen in meatlockers; all in an insatiable quest for information.

The military's presence has always been unconstitutional; under Mexican law, the Army can only be called up in times of natural disaster or war. Technically, very technically, Carrillo's and Guzmán's desmadre doesn't count as war because A) They're both Mexican and B) it wasn't declared on the sovereign state, only between the capos.

Myself, I've never been impressed with the Army's operations within the cities. Lots of menacing stoics sitting on Humvees, thirty-cals on rotating turrets, body armor and flak helmets. I've kept a wary eye on the military from Tijuana to Culiacán to Juárez and Nuevo Laredo and other than surprise search warrants and the occasional gunbattle, I've never seen them do much more than drive round and round and round, ad nauseum.

But if the military's pulling back in Juárez, restructuring itself to work intel instead of patrol, it's leading to a few interesting points to ponder. Will the city be any safer without the quasi-martial law implemented by their presence? And whose interests are at stake here? El Diario de Juárez says the Mexican Senate is putting forward the motion. El Norte is reporting that it's city government officials. La Polaka claims the idea came from the task force of Operativo Conjunto Chihuahua. In fact, about the only ones not taking credit for pulling the Army out of Juárez are Vicente and Shorty themselves ...