Security guard Fernando Rodriguez, who was killed in the attack at Lozano Garza jewelry store, took the $90-a-month job to save for the 15th birthday celebration of his daugher, Esmeralda, left. She and her sister Areli, right, live with their widowed mother and a younger sister in a barrio outside Monterrey. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Fernando Rodriguez’s widow, Oralia, and their daughter Esmeralda look at photos of the slain store security guard. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The Lozano Garza jewelry store moved two days after the March 14, 2007, attack that left four dead. The storefront that housed it is the only unrented space for blocks. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Victor Rodriguez, 19, with relative Nancy Lopez outside Monterrey, was the third son of Ignacia Nati Perez, who was killed in the jewelry store attack. She was a nice mother, though she would scold us at times, he said. Shed listen to music while she swept and mopped the floors. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
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Youngsters play along Avenida Esperanza -- Hope Avenue -- in a working-class neighborhood that grew out of a shantytown in northern Monterrey. “Nati” Perez lived down the street. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Martina Bartolo tidies the street in front of her home in the Monterrey neighborhood where “Nati” Perez lived. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Girls walk home from school past a typical home, made of concrete blocks and pallets, along Avenida Esperanza in northern Monterrey. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
A woman talks to a neighbor through a window grate as a bus makes its way through “Nati” Perez’s old neighborhood in Monterrey. That is the same bus Perez took the day she was killed when gunmen stormed the Lozano Garza jewelry store. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
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Garbage collector Santos Bartolo takes a break in the neighborhood where “Nati” Perez lived. Many families there grew up on garbage dumps and then squatted on the land to build homes out of pallets, plastic tarps and eventually concrete blocks. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
More than 3,000 people gather in Monterrey, Mexico, for a candlelight vigil during a countrywide protest against drug violence. In the last two years, more than 6,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico. More photos >>>(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)