The anti-narcotics police arrived here in the heart of Colombia's cocaine industry last month to destroy the coca crop. The community was determined to save it. Roughly 1,000 farmers, some armed with clubs, surrounded the hilltop camp that police had set up in a jungle clearing and began closing in on the officers. The police started shooting. When they were done, seven farmers were dead and 21 were wounded. "Several friends and neighbors died on the ground waiting for medical assistance," said Luis Gaitan, 32, who protected himself by hiding behind a tree stump. [continues 1571 words]
An unclassified document from the Drug Enforcement Agency shows the areas of influence generated by Mexico's major criminal organizations. The "intelligence report," dated July 2015, includes three maps that show the various DEA offices around the country and the cartel-related cases they deal with; potential markets that drug cartels will exploit due to population density; and heroin deaths by state. In Texas, the many offices appear to have their time spent dealing with cases involving the Sinaloa, Gulf, Juarez, the Knights Templar, Beltran-Levya, Jalisco and the Zetas. [continues 119 words]
Families of People WHO 'Disappeared' Amid Mexico's Violent Drug Wars Are Forced to Continue the Search for Truth and Justice on Their Own, As Authorities Often Refuse to Help QUERETARO, MEXICO - Socorro Arias unlocks the door to her son's bedroom. A faintly musty smell wafts out. Other than a layer of dust, everything is just as Raymundo Isaac Rico Arias left it on Feb. 12, 2012, the day the 27-year-old teacher disappeared. A stack of Valentine's Day hearts - cut from red construction paper - lies on Rico's bed, intended as gifts for his students. Clothes are piled in the corner, along with shoes and leather belts. Marilyn Monroe smiles seductively from one wall, while a Virgin Mary statue sits on the bureau, gazing pensively in front of the mirror. [continues 3266 words]
MEXICO CITY - Two days after Jorge Antonio Parral Rabadan was kidnapped by a criminal gang, the Mexican Army raided the remote ranch where he was a prisoner and killed him. As he instinctively raised his hands in defense, the soldiers fired over and over at point-blank range. A brief army communique about the event asserted that soldiers had returned fire and killed three hit men at the El Puerto ranch on April 26, 2010. But Mr. Parral had fired no weapon. [continues 1106 words]
Kingpin's Plea With U.S. Triggered Years of Bloodshed Reaching All the Way to Southlake Zetas Saw Gulf Cartel Leader As Traitor, Declared a War That Has Killed Thousands of People A plea agreement between a Mexican drug kingpin and the U.S. government helped generate a violent split between two drug cartels that led to the deaths of thousands of people in Mexico and along the Texas border, a Dallas Morning News investigation has found. A masked gunman fired multiple times at Juan Jesus Guerrero Chapa with a 9 mm handgun through the passenger window of his Range Rover at Southlake Town Square in May 2013. Three Mexican citizens were arrested more than a year later and charged with stalking, and aiding and abetting in the hit. [continues 4074 words]
The Monstrous Cartels That Run the Narcotics Business Face the Same Dilemmas As Ordinary Firms - and Have the Same Weaknesses In April, the world's governments will meet in New York for a special assembly at the United Nations to discuss how to solve the drug problem. Don't hold your breath: Since the previous such gathering nearly two decades ago, the narcotics industry has done better than ever. The number of people using cannabis and cocaine has risen by half since 1998, while the number taking heroin and other opiates has tripled. Illegal drugs are now a $300 billion world-wide business, and the diplomats of the U.N. aren't any closer to finding a way to stamp them out. This failure has a simple reason: Governments continue to treat the drug problem as a battle to be fought, not a market to be tamed. The cartels that run the narcotics business are monstrous, but they face the same dilemmas as ordinary firms - and have the same weaknesses.In El Salvador, the leader of one of the country's two big gangs complained to me about the human-resources problems he faced given the high turnover of his employees. (Ironically, his main sources of recruitment were the very prisons that were supposed to reform young offenders.) In Mexican villages, drug cartels provide basic public services and even build churches - a cynical version of the "corporate social responsibility" that ordinary companies use to clean up their images. Mexico's Zetas cartel expanded rapidly by co-opting local gangsters and taking a cut of their earnings; it now franchises its brand rather like McDonald's and faces similar squabbles from franchisees over territorial encroachment. Meanwhile, in richer countries, street-corner dealers are being beaten on price and quality by "dark web" sites, much as ordinary shops are being undercut by Amazon. [continues 815 words]
A federal appeals court has agreed to hear oral arguments in the case of a Texan suing the Drug Enforcement Administration for using his 18-wheeler without permission for a drug cartel sting that ended in Houston with an informant fatally shot while driving the truck. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, is scheduled to take the case in February. Lawyers for Craig Patty are hoping the court will reverse a decision by U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal that Patty should get nothing from the DEA for secretly using his truck, which was shot with bullets, including those that killed Lawrence Chapa, who was behind the wheel. [continues 526 words]
Marijuana Legalisation Will Help Poor 'Supply' Nations An absurd status quo has held sway in Mexico, ever since the United States began to legalise marijuana, for medical, and, more recently, recreational use. The nation - encouraged by Washington - has some of the strictest drug laws in Latin America. But the vast majority of the marijuana it produces ends up in the US. So Mexican law enforcement officials - complying with the demands of their American counterparts - have been expending massive resources on preventing the growth and trafficking of a drug that is often, by the time it ends up being smoked within US borders, entirely legal. [continues 208 words]
An 8-Year-Old's Debilitating Illness Tests Mexico's Ban on Marijuana Use Monterrey, Mexico - They can tell the next one's coming when she begins rubbing her hands together, as if washing them. Her head slumps, and she looks left. She starts to flick her fingers and knead her skinny thigh. About once an hour, Grace Elizalde's brain electrifies in epileptic seizures intense enough that her brown eyes dance wildly back and forth and she spreads her arms out like a cartoon ghost. These are the big brain quakes, but there are hundreds of flash tremors each day that leave the 8-year-old Mexican girl exhausted and limp. [continues 1629 words]
A Drug Kingpin's Escape Builds to an Epic Showdown Talk about timing. Don Winslow's new novel, The Cartel, which fictionally chronicles the past decade of Mexico's brutal drug-lord wars, echoes the stunning, headline grabbing jail break from a maximum-security prison by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the legendary billionaire drug kingpin. Want to know why El Chapo probably won't be captured anytime soon? Never mind the evening news: Truth is in fiction. Read this disturbing and, yes, addictive epic tale instead. Within the first 70 of its 600-plus vivid pages, Adan Barrera, the fascinating, suave, drug-cartel patron - loosely based on El Chapo - escapes from his country's most secure prison to rebuild his Sinaloan drug-trafficking empire. [continues 471 words]
A Drug Kingpin's Escape Builds to an Epic Showdown Talk about timing. Don Winslow's new novel, The Cartel, which fictionally chronicles the past decade of Mexico's brutal drug-lord wars, echoes the stunning, headline-grabbing jail break from a maximum-security prison by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the legendary billionaire drug kingpin. Want to know why El Chapo probably won't be captured anytime soon? Never mind the evening news: Truth is in fiction. Read this disturbing and, yes, addictive epic tale instead. Within the first 70 of its 600-plus vivid pages, Adan Barrera, the fascinating, suave, drug-cartel patron - loosely based on El Chapo - escapes from his country's most secure prison to rebuild his Sinaloan drug-trafficking empire. [continues 468 words]
CULIACAN, Mexico - When Jose Antonio Sevilla and his three brothers learned that the notorious drug trafficker known as El Chapo had escaped from prison, they jumped out of their chairs and shouted with glee. "El Chapo got out! He's the greatest of them all," said Mr. Sevilla, 19, a self-professed fan of the drug kingpin, whose full name is Joaquin Guzman Loera. "He was famous before, but now he's even more famous." Mr. Sevilla, an auto mechanic, was so excited that he attended a march through the streets of Culiacan, the capital of Mr. Guzman's home state, this week to celebrate. He carried a sign that a woman gave him, which read, "El Chapo is more of a president than Pena Nieto," a reference to Mexico's president, Enrique Pena Nieto. [continues 1359 words]
Hells Angels bikers, other gangsters and convicted international smugglers work as longshoremen handling the 1.5 million containers that flow annually through Port Metro Vancouver More than two dozen of the longshoremen unloading container ships on the docks of Metro Vancouver are Hells Angels, their associates, other gangsters or people with serious criminal records, a Vancouver Sun investigation has found. The infiltration of gangsters and criminals into the port workforce is perpetuated by a longtime employment practice that allows existing union members to nominate friends, relatives and associates when new jobs become available. [continues 2762 words]
Hells Angels and others with criminal connections have a long history working at Canada's major ports, a Vancouver Sun investigation has found More than two dozen of the longshoremen unloading container ships on the docks of Metro Vancouver are Hells Angels, their associates, other gangsters or people with serious criminal records, a Vancouver Sun investigation has found. The infiltration of gangsters and criminals into the port workforce is perpetuated by a longtime employment practice that allows existing union members to nominate friends, relatives and associates when new jobs become available. [continues 2094 words]
Throughout its history, the United States' approach to controlling recreational intoxicants has varied. Up until the early part of the 20th century, drug use in the U. S. was completely unfettered - heroin, morphine and other substances were sold openly and without restriction. In fact, cocaine, various opiates and syringe kits were once available for order from the Sears & Roebuck catalog. Beginning with 1914' s Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, a slew of laws burst forth to regulate cocaine, alcohol, marijuana and other drugs of abuse. These laws were often the product of blatant racism, sensationalism and political theater, and they set the stage for current regulations that function as ham-fisted political instruments rather than data-backed guardians of public health. [continues 710 words]
President Nixon declared a "war on drugs" in 1971, but the war has in fact been raging in the United States for a century, since the 1914 passage of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act. Johann Hari's "Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs" opens with portraits of three of its early combatants. Harry Anslinger was the zealous head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962; he kept his department well funded by inventing nightmarish visions of African Americans and Mexicans on drug-fueled rampages and, later, of Communists flooding the nation with opiates in a plot to weaken the United States. Singer Billie Holiday, a longtime heroin addict, was hounded for years by Anslinger's agents, who, in a final indignity, made sure she was handcuffed to the hospital bed in which she died of liver and heart disease at age 44. Arnold Rothstein was a fearsome mob kingpin who, during the 1920s, established a brutal reputation in order to secure control of the New York trade in prohibited alcohol and drugs. [continues 728 words]
Mexican cartels are bypassing the middleman and sending their own agents into Vancouver to arrange drug shipments and launder money. The Sun's Kim Bolan investigates. Infamous Mexican cartels like Sinaloa and La Familia have sent representatives to the Lower Mainland to broker drug deals with local gangs, The Vancouver Sun has learned. A Sun investigation has uncovered increasing links between B.C. drug gangs and the notoriously violent cartels that have wreaked havoc along Mexico's northern border. For years, local crime groups travelled south to the U.S. and Mexico to work with the cartels. Police now confirm that the Mexican crime groups have moved members north so they can be on the ground in B.C. and other parts of Canada. Calgary Police recently revealed that cartel members are also operating in that Alberta city. [continues 1761 words]
In the late 1970s and early '80s, just as this country's war on drugs was ramping up, I joined the Providence Police Department, serving five years as a uniformed police officer in the patrol division. Even then, with the lion's share of our federal drug enforcement budget devoted to treatment, I had doubts about the efficacy of a "war on drugs." The criminal justice system seemed ill-suited for addressing public health problems, and it appeared that the issue was being manipulated and exploited for political reasons. But I could never have imagined the damage this new prohibition would inflict on the fabric of our cities and on our national identity. [continues 701 words]
This month's capture of the world's most-wanted narcotics kingpin, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, will have little to no impact on the amount of drugs flowing into the U.S. across the Mexican border, experts say. Guzman's Sinaloa drug cartel - the largest in Mexico and the world - has a leadership succession plan that most likely has placed Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada at its helm. "If El Chapo was the CEO, then El Mayo was the CFO. He's certainly smart, knows the network, and will keep the supplies going," said George Grayson, a drug war expert at the College of William and Mary who has written several books on Mexican cartels. "This [arrest] may be a sharp thorn in the side of the cartel, but it's certainly not a dagger in the heart." [continues 556 words]
The arrest of the powerful and elusive Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman will, for at least a short time, be a major notch in the belt for the government of Enrique Pena Nieto, who promised to reduce Mexico's drug violence after the carnage that took place under his predecessor, Felipe Calderon. During Calderon's tenure, nearly 60,000 Mexicans lost their lives in drug-related violence. Pena Nieto has promised to focus more attention on the economic causes of drug violence rather than just breaking the cartels, but he still likely relishes the sight of men like Guzman - or Zetas boss Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, who was arrested last summer - in handcuffs. [continues 481 words]
The arrest of the powerful and elusive Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman will, for at least a short time, be a major notch in the belt for the government of Enrique Pena Nieto, who promised to reduce Mexico's drug violence after the carnage that took place under his predecessor, Felipe Calderon. During Calderon's tenure, nearly 60,000 Mexicans lost their lives in drug-related violence. Pena Nieto has promised to focus more attention on the economic causes of drug violence rather than just breaking the cartels, but he still likely relishes the sight of men like Guzman - or Zetas boss Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, who was arrested last summer - in handcuffs. [continues 509 words]
The U.S. government and a ranking Drug Enforcement Administration official are being sued for up to $6.4 million over a bungled sting targeting a Mexican drug cartel that led to the death of a truck driver doubling as an informant. The dead driver's former boss contends the DEA used his 18-wheel rig in the 2011 operation in Harris County without permission; refused to repair the bullet-riddled truck afterward; and subjected him and his family to unwarranted retaliation by the Zetas cartel, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Houston. [continues 720 words]
Experts: Oft-Cited Report Exaggerates Mexican Drug Traffickers' Reach When Sen. John McCain spoke during an Armed Services Committee hearing last year on security issues in the Western Hemisphere, he relayed a stark warning about the spread of Mexican drug cartels in the United States. "The cartels," the Arizona Republican said, "now maintain a presence in over 1,000 cities." McCain based his remarks on a report by a now-defunct division of the Justice Department, the National Drug Intelligence Center [continues 2061 words]
IF only it was so easy - legalize pot and Mexico's bloody nightmare would end. It won't. As a correspondent for The Dallas Morning News I've had a front-row seat to the massacre in my homeland, Mexico. Like many other colleagues, I've witnessed Mexico's descent into darkness as brutal cartels continue to fight each other for plazas - parlance for illicit corridors that lead north with, among other products, tons of marijuana for the insatiable, biggest market in the world: my adopted homeland, the United States. [continues 574 words]
President Pena Nieto's Strategy Is a Lot Like His Predecessor's. for Obvious Reasons. Last week, Mexican authorities arrested Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, the leader of the Zetas, Mexico's deadliest and most feared drug cartel. In Mexico, the news was met with relief, although there is also apprehension that his arrest will lead to a convulsion of violence; historically, taking out cartel kingpins has meant power struggles within organized crime groups, schisms that leave many dead in their wake. [continues 693 words]
Law enforcement authorities believe Mexican cartels have had a hand in many Northwest homicides. Here are three additional cases in which cartel involvement is strongly suspected. Grisly roadside discovery: an execution by gunfire Blood spatters inside the Ford Expedition made clear the man slumped over the center console was no drunken driver passed out along the road. A motorist heading home early Jan. 27, 2012, spotted the SUV on the shoulder of unlit Cordon Road outside Salem. He pulled over and found the engine idling and the front doors open. He could see the man was dead. [continues 1238 words]
McALLEN -- The ongoing debate regarding immigration reform has once again brought the topic of border security to the forefront. In South Texas, the area that has seen a sharp increase in drug trafficking runs from treacherous waters of the Rio Grande to the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints in Falfurrias and Sarita, the last law enforcement waypoint along the roads leading from the Texas-Mexico border to inland metropolitan areas. In those areas, drug smugglers tied to Mexican drug cartels work ingenious ways of moving their drugs to their destinations without detection by law enforcement. [continues 1140 words]
For more than a day, the plastic orange toolbox sat on the lawn under a cherry tree, a few paces from the sidewalk. No one passing the Canby home took notice. Not the runners. Not the dog walkers. Not the kids riding by on bicycles. Then curiosity drew a 31-year-old landscaper who had come to the home just after sunset to help a friend move. Ivan Velasco Rodriguez poked the toolbox with a wooden rake handle. The pipe bomb lurking inside exploded. Metal shards flying at bullet speed fatally injured Velasco Rodriguez and slammed into surrounding homes. Pieces fell on roofs two blocks away. [continues 2202 words]
Lou Nalepa, an agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, reached for his ringing cellphone as he guided his car through Portland freeway traffic. On that Friday afternoon in February 2010, he expected to hear from a witness in an upcoming drug trial. Instead, he found on the line a fugitive he'd been chasing for six years. "This is Pocho," said the voice on the other end -- Porfirio Arevalo-Cuevas. The name means little to most Oregonians. But law enforcement officials know Arevalo-Cuevas as one of the most prolific drug traffickers in Oregon history, a violent thug with ties to Mexico's most notorious cartels. [continues 2200 words]
Shipments: Big operators buy directly from cartels, others through wholesalers in border states such as Arizona and California. Drugs are smuggled into the U.S. in cars, trucks, planes and on individuals. Drugs are then taken to "stash houses" and divided into smaller loads. Sophisticated traffickers rarely keep drugs in their homes. Instead, they distribute from other houses and businesses to insulate themselves from prosecution. Drugs are driven north hidden in cars, freight trucks and in luggage on Mexican bus lines. Mexicans in the country illegally and desperate for cash often work as drivers. [continues 851 words]
The slaying in Southlake Town Square of a Mexican attorney with reputed ties to drug cartels was a brazen and well-coordinated assassination that illustrates the increasingly long and lethal reach of the brutal criminal organizations, security experts say. The flamboyant public hit was unusual because Mexican cartels try to stay off the radar on this side of the border. But it underlines an ominous trend: Dallas-Fort Worth has become a key "command and control" center for moving drugs and people across the country, top state and federal law enforcement officials confirm. [continues 1640 words]
Los Zetas is considered the most violent drug cartel in Mexico, using terror and brute force to impose its will. In a country renowned for drug-related brutality, the cartel distinguished itself last year in San Juan by leaving 49 headless, handless and footless bodies near a spray-painted message at the entrance gates: "100% Los Zetas," a sign from the cartel that it owned the city. Ronald and Esther Winter, a retired Clearwater couple in their 70s who used to own construction businesses, have never been in trouble with the law. Ronald Winter says they raised their three children with strong morals, were part of the PTA and have worked hard to make contributions to the community. [continues 1817 words]
This past November marked the 10th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. That same month, residents in Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana within their states' sovereign boundaries. Since marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, millions of drug reform advocates await word from Attorney General Eric Holder on the Justice Department's response to those referendums. In the meantime, getting a response from Homeland Security on the issue is just as critical - especially from the two DHS agencies tasked with securing the more than 1,200-mile Texas-Mexico border: Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. [continues 536 words]
Early on a December morning, Robert Coogan pulled his red Chevy hatchback into the parking lot of the state prison in Saltillo, Mexico. It was frigid outside, the sun had not yet cleared the reddish mountains, and Coogan lingered, staring at the tall black letters on the prison's high walls: "CERESO" - Centro de Reinsercion Social, the place where criminals are supposed to be reformed. Coogan, who has served as chaplain at the prison for a decade, slowly pulled himself from the warm car. In dark jeans, brown boots and a thick gray sweater, he looked more like a factory foreman than a Brooklyn-born priest. [continues 5076 words]
'Cartel Grows' Might Not Involve Drug Gangs After All WELDON, Kern County - A few minutes after 4 a.m., agents in camouflage cluster in a dusty field in Kern County. "Movement needs to be slow, deliberate and quiet," the team leader whispers. "Lock and load now." They check their ammunition and assault rifles, not exactly sure whom they might meet in the dark: heavily armed Mexican drug traffickers or just poorly paid fieldworkers camping miserably in the brush. Twenty minutes later, after a lights-off drive for a mile, the agents climb out of two pickup trucks and sift into the high desert brush. [continues 427 words]
Few Cartel Ties Found in Forest Operations WELDON, Calif. - A few minutes after 4 a.m., agents in camouflage cluster in a dusty field in central California. "Movement needs to be slow, deliberate and quiet," the team leader whispers. "Lock and load now." They check their ammunition and assault rifles, not exactly sure whom they might meet in the dark: heavily armed Mexican drug traffickers or just poorly paid fieldworkers camping miserably in the brush. Twenty minutes later, after a lights-off drive for a mile, the agents climb out of two pickup trucks and sift into the high desert brush. [continues 1272 words]
U.S. Crackdown On Growers Fails To Lead To Big Players Weldon, calif. - A few minutes after 4 a.m., agents in camouflage cluster in a dusty field in Kern County, Calif. "Movement needs to be slow, deliberate and quiet," the team leader whispers. "Lock and load now." They check their rifles and ammunition, not exactly sure who they might meet in the dark: heavily armed Mexican drug traffickers, or just poorly paid fieldworkers camping miserably in the brush. Twenty minutes later, after a lights-off drive for a mile, the agents climb out of two pickup trucks and sift into the high-desert brush. [continues 1063 words]
'POT' GROWERS FIND NATIONAL FORESTS ROOMY WELDON, Calif. - A few minutes after 4 a.m., agents in camouflage cluster in a dusty California field in Kern County. "Movement needs to be slow, deliberate and quiet," the team leader whispers. "Lock and load now." They check their ammunition and assault rifles, not exactly sure who they might meet in the dark: heavily armed Mexican drug traffickers, or just poorly paid field workers camping miserably in the brush. Twenty minutes later, after a lights-off drive for a mile, the agents climb out of two pickups and sift into the high desert brush. [continues 1584 words]
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexican marines have slain four gunmen who apparently were trying to steal the body of a Zetas cartel chieftain killed by the military a day before in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. The state government said the gunmen evidently wanted to take the body of Angel Enrique Uscanga, nicknamed "The Pokemon," identified as the leader of the brutal gang in that region. The gunmen shot at marines from a vehicle after they arrived late Friday in the city of Cordoba at the building, where authorities were keeping the bodies of Uscanga and four others who had died in a firefight with the military. The marines shot back and killed the four armed men, said a government statement. Authorities confiscated a grenade and other weapons. [continues 155 words]
Investigators Find It Difficult to Trace Marijuana Growth on National Forest Land to Mexican Cartels. WELDON, Calif. - A few minutes after 4 a.m., agents in camouflage cluster in a dusty field in Kern County. "Movement needs to be slow, deliberate and quiet," the team leader whispers. "Lock and load now." They check their ammunition and assault rifles, not exactly sure whom they might meet in the dark: heavily armed Mexican drug traffickers, or just poorly paid field workers camping miserably in the brush. [continues 1615 words]
To the editor: With the Gloucester Daily Times' stated opposition of Question 3, I would expect it will push hard for laws to criminalize tobacco and alcohol and give a rousing endorsement of Jack Fellure, the Prohibition Party's candidate for president. Despite the false statements and baseless rhetoric of District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett and others in the establishment, the detrimental effects of marijuana are almost negligible, and far less harmful or addictive than either nicotine or alcohol. Any prohibition against marijuana that is based on the grounds of the minimal harm it does must logically be extended to cigarettes and alcohol for the comparatively massive harm they do. Of course, the harm to society is not the motive for the drug's legal status by of those with a real interest in the criminalization of marijuana. [continues 276 words]
The Denver Post ran an odd editorial on Oct. 15 in which it averred its support for marijuana legalization, but opposed the passage of Amendment 64, which would legalize marijuana in Colorado. Legalization should be done by the feds, not the states, the paper argues. In a perfect world, the proper way to end the war on marijuana would be for Congress to end it. But this isn't a perfect world, and it is especially imperfect insofar as the war on marijuana is concerned. [continues 880 words]
Chris Martin had an idea for a business in Arizona, where voters passed a law that legalizes medical-marijuana "edibles" under certain conditions. Last year, the Zonka Bar was born, available in flavors including chocolate and sugar-free peanut butter and infused with marijuana extract. Like other edibles, it was perfect for a medical-marijuana patient who didn't want to smoke, and it's less harmful than a four-pack of wine coolers. But Martin and his associates didn't follow the rules under the 2010 law, authorities say. [continues 1141 words]
LAREDO -- The official welcome for the Logistics and Manufacturing Symposium here last week was delivered by Mayor Raul Salinas, who gave a rousing endorsement of his booming border city. "Laredo is open for business. Make sure you enjoy this safe and wonderful city," he told the assembled customs brokers, manufacturers and transporters, American and Mexican, and all involved in the auto industry. Salinas spoke with passion about the importance of cross-border cooperation and friendship, and Nuevo Laredo Mayor Benjamin Galvan offered similar sentiments. The two mayors then shared a hearty "abrazo." [continues 1474 words]
While drug trafficking, gruesome killings and big drug seizures tend to grab the public's attention, experts say, the real action is in the money -- billions of dollars worth of it. A recent U.S. Senate report on money laundering provides some insight into just how much money the drug cartels are generating. The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on July 17 released its report titled "U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs, and Terrorist Financing: HSBC Case History." [continues 1114 words]
Karina Gidi stars in "Estado de Gracia," the series about drug legalization, seen in the U.S. exclusively on Cinelatino. (Adrian Ibanez, (c)Once TV Mexico 2012 / August 5, 2012) Related photos) By Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times August 5, 2012, 8:00 a.m. Mexican federal legislator Julieta Toscano isn't afraid to say what some Mexicans have long been thinking: After six years of turmoil and 55,000 people killed in narcotics-related violence, it's time to stem the bloodshed by legalizing drugs. [continues 1253 words]
FBI Says Mexican Cartel Funneled Money Through Bank to Horse-Racing Firm A Mexican cocaine-trafficking cartel used accounts at Bank of America Corp. o hide money and invest illegal drug-trade proceeds in U.S. racehorses, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said. The alleged ties between the violent drug gang known as Los Zetas and the second-largest U.S. bank by assets were described in a 35-page affidavit filed in federal court in Texas last month. According to an FBI agent, a horse-buying and training business created to launder drug money had accounts at the Charlotte, N.C., bank. [continues 955 words]
The Country Chooses a President Next Week, but Candidates Aim Only to Limit Violence. MEXICO CITY - Six years into a ghastly drug war, none of the top candidates in next Sunday's presidential election has offered a significant new strategy to win a conflict that has claimed more than 50,000 lives and terrorized Mexican society. Instead, the politicians emphasize reducing the increasingly brutal violence, as they seek to address the concern that weighs heavily on the minds of outraged Mexican voters. [continues 1303 words]
One afternoon last August, at a hospital on the outskirts of Los Angeles, a former beauty queen named Emma Coronel gave birth to a pair of heiresses. The twins, who were delivered at 3:50 and 3:51, respectively, stand to inherit some share of a fortune that Forbes estimates is worth a billion dollars. Coronel's husband, who was not present for the birth, is a legendary tycoon who overcame a penurious rural childhood to establish a wildly successful multinational business. If Coronel elected to leave the entry for "Father" on the birth certificates blank, it was not because of any dispute over patrimony. More likely, she was just skittish about the fact that her husband, Joaquin Guzman, is the C.E.O. of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, a man the Treasury Department recently described as the world's most powerful drug trafficker. Guzman's organization is responsible for as much as half of the illegal narcotics imported into the United States from Mexico each year; he may well be the most-wanted criminal in this post-Bin Laden world. [continues 7668 words]
Feds' Sweep Includes N.M. Track, Balch Springs Property Federal agents raided a property in Balch Springs on Tuesday as part of a multistate investigation into money laundering operations carried out by Mexico's notorious Zeta drug cartel, including funneling millions of dollars into breeding and racing horses, according to a U.S. law enforcement official and a federal indictment unsealed in Austin. The investigation underscores the reach of the Zetas in North Texas, including some connections previously reported in The Dallas Morning News. The Zeta gang, once the paramilitary wing of the Gulf cartel, is now among one of the most violent groups in Mexico, with a growing presence in Central America and several U.S. communities, particularly in Texas. [continues 876 words]
