Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

A potential rise in vigilante justice in Juárez would escalate an already dangerous situation, elected officials and researchers said Friday, the day after the so-called Juárez Citizens Command issued a threat to kill one criminal every 24 hours.

As of Friday evening, no deaths had been linked to the previously unheard of organization, which stated in an e-mail news release on Thursday that it would issue a manifesto in a few days with its goals for restoring order in Juárez.

"There is a call for the public to remain calm," said Andres Andreu, a Juárez representative in the Chihuahua state congress.

"In anger, this could start an uncontrollable wave of unjust deaths," Andreu said in a statement condemning vigilantism and urging authorities to do more to stop the violence. "Movements of this nature are directed more by a sense of vengeance than of justice."

Frustration in Juárez has been growing over a year long crime wave spurred by a drug cartel war that left more than 1,600 dead last year, and over kidnappings for ransom, extortion and robberies that continue despite efforts by the police and military.

It was still unknown whether the group, named Comando Ciudadano por Juárez, is legitimate but it would be a logical evolution in a community bludgeoned by crime, said Howard Campbell, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

"What (vigilantism) says is people do not think the government can fix the violence," Campbell said. "You have to remember, there is the whole history -- the killing of the women and the drug killings. The common person feels there is no one to protect them."

The CCJ claimed it is not linked to any political party and that it is financed by business people tired of being victimized.

The environment exists for the creation for a group such as the CCJ, Campbell said. However, he added, "this could be three college kids playing around on a computer."

If the CCJ is real, Howard said, it could be reminiscent of Los Pepes, assassins who in the early 1990s targeted relatives and associates of drug lord Pablo Escobar in Colombia.

It was rumored that Los Pepes might have had links to rival drug traffickers or government special forces, including those in the United States.

Lynchings, mob beatings and other forms of vigilante justice are not unheard of in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, often because of lack of trust in government and law enforcement authorities.

University of Washington sociologist Angelina S. Godoy, who has researched lynchings in Latin America, said that she wasn't familiar with the situation in Juárez but that vigilantes can be moved by a variety of factors.

"There are cases were people are motivated by sheer desperation by high crime rates. There are other cases of death squads doing the bidding of political and financial interests," Godoy said.

Vigilantism is "extremely dangerous," Godoy said. "It represents a total breakdown of order and due process."