MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) — Lorena Villareal Elizondo went to meet a friend at the Casino Royale, a popular low-cost lunch spot, when armed men burst through the door shouting: “Get out! Get out! We’re going to burn everything!”
It was only 19-year-old Carla Maria Espinoza Vega‘s second day at work at the casino when the intruders sprinkled accelerant around the front door and set the building on fire.
Friends and family mourned Villareal, a 39-year-old mother of three, at a visitation Friday, while Espinoza’s mother filled out paperwork to retrieve her body.
Mexicans have endured plenty of horrific crimes during their country‘s bloody five-year war against drug gangs. But the arson in the northern Mexican city that killed 52, mostly women, was a macabre milestone in a conflict that’s claimed more than 35,000 people since 2006, according to government figures. Others put the toll near 40,000.
The victims this time weren‘t cartel foot soldiers or migrants resisting forced recruitment by gangs, as were the cases in other attacks. They were workers or customers who liked to lunch or play bingo and slots in the afternoons in an affluent part of town.
“She was my baby,” said Espinoza’s tearful mother, Guadalupe Vega, as she waited at the morgue.
“She was like my sister,” said Villareal‘s cousin, Guadalupe Elizondo Gracia, outside a giant funeral home that drew hundreds of mourners to a half-dozen visitations Friday night.
In a nationally televised speech, an angry President Felipe Calderon declared three days of mourning and labeled the attack the worst against civilians in the nation’s recent history.
“We are facing true terrorists who have gone beyond all limits,” said Calderon, who also announced he is sending more federal forces to the city of 1 million people. “Today, Mexico is upset and saddened and we have to transform this sadness and this grief into courage and valor to face ... these criminals.”
Hours later, he appeared in front of the burned-out casino and place a large wreath and observe of moment of silence.
A surveillance tape released Friday showed eight or nine men arriving in four cars and carrying canisters into the building, which was engulfed in flames in little more than two minutes as people tried to flee in panic.
Calderon offered a $2.4 million reward for information leading to their capture, the same amount offered for the arrest of top drug lords. Authorities had sketches of three of the men based on interviews with 16 survivors of the fire, said Jorge Domene, Nuevo Leon state security spokesman.
He also said officials had located three of the four vehicles in the video, dumped around various parts of the city. All had been reported stolen.
Authorities said they are still investigating whether the exits were blocked. But many bodies were found in offices and the bathrooms, indicating they were expecting a shootout.
“They sought places to protect themselves from firearms,” said Jorge Camacho Rincon, civil protection director for the state of Nuevo Leon. “They went running to closed areas.”
Most died of smoke inhalation and were found clutching cell phones in their hands, a law-enforcement official who wasn‘t authorized to be quoted by name told The Associated Press.
In the streets around the casino on Friday, people said the latest violence deepened their sense of vulnerability. In recent years, the city has been ensnared in a turf battle between the Gulf cartel and its offshoot, the Zetas, and is on track for record levels of killings this year.
The casino was attacked twice before. In May, gunmen strafed it from the outside. Last month, gunmen killed 20 people at a bar.
“What happened last night was the limit,” said a man nursing a Coke at a hamburger stand across from the city’s morgue, where families streamed in all night to identify bodies. Like many people, he refused to give his name out of fear.
“We don‘t know how to protect ourselves or whom we’re talking to,” he said. “We don‘t have security right now.”
The attack resonated across the country because many of the victims were from the middle class, so far mostly untouched by violence, said Jorge Chabat, an expert in safety and drug trafficking at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics.
“We’re talking about an attack on a civilian population of a certain income,” he said. “Because who was there was from the middle class, the upper middle class of an important city in Mexico.”
Villareal, who had a travel agency near the casino, intended to meet a friend for lunch, but the person had just left by the time she arrived, said Francisco Medina, 41, a close friend and neighbor who also came to the visitation packed with people and giant flower wreaths.
“She decided to stay and eat alone when the bad luck came,” he said.
<한글기사>
카지노 방화참사로 비탄에 잠긴 멕시코
25일 50명이 넘는 사망자를 낸 멕시코 북부 몬테레이에서 벌어진 카지노 방화참사로 멕시코 전체가 비탄에 잠긴 분위기다.
범행을 저지른 괴한들이 마약갱단일 가능성이 점쳐지면서 대부분 뉴스로만 접했던 갱단 범죄가 코앞에서 일어났다는 불안감에 치를 떠는 모습이다.
특히 사건이 멕시코에서 살기 좋은 도시로 꼽혔던 몬테레이 부촌지역에서 발생한 데다 희생자 대부분이 갱단과는 관련이 없는 중산층 이상의 평범한 시민들로 확인되면서 멕시코 사회에 던지는 충격은 이만저만이 아니다.
그간 멕시코 전역에서 유기된 시신들이 무더기로 발견되기도 하고, 토막살인이나 시신 전시 등 엽기적인 사건이 난무했지만, 실제 멕시코에서 좀 산다는 사람들은마약범죄가 자신의 일과는 거리가 먼 것으로 치부해버리는 경향이 지배적이었다.
경쟁 갱단에 보복을 위해 특정 장소에 총기를 난사하는 표적 범죄도 종종 있었으나 갱단과는 아무런 관련이 없는 사람들이 공공장소에서 괴한에 대거 희생되기는 지난 5년간 마약과의 전쟁 과정에서도 유례를 찾아보기 어려울 정도다.
마약밀매와 안전문제 전문가인 호르헤 챠바트는 AP통신에 방화참사 희생자 대부분이 그간 마약과의 전쟁 희생과 관련이 없었던 중산층 사람들이라 국가적인 충격이매우 크다며 기존의 마약전쟁 범죄는 저소득층과 대부분 연관이 있었다고 지적했다.
이를 반영하듯 몬테레이의 한 타블로이드 신문은 이날 도시가 속한 누에바 레온주가 카지노 공격을 애도하고 있다면서 모두가 집단적인 고통에 빠졌다고 보도했다.
사건이 난 카지노의 맞은편에서 일하는 루시라는 이름의 28세 여성은 이번 사건은 더 큰 두려움과 공포, 도시의 안전이 부족하다는 것을 의미한다며 통제가 되지 않고 있다고 우려를 나타냈다.
멕시코 정부는 이번 사건을 시민에 대한 가장 심각한 공격으로 규정짓고 연방경찰과 군을 동원해 범죄 용의자 검거에 돌입했다.
또 사건 발생일인 25일부터 사흘간을 국가 추모기간으로 선포해 희생자들의 넋을 위로하고 있다. (연합뉴스)
