Violent players have sprayed bullets and spilled blood in a real-life and ongoing struggle between Mexico's Gulf Cartel, its erstwhile allies, the Zetas, and the Mexican government. Against this backdrop of violence - which has claimed more than 35,000 lives since December 2006 - the trio has also waged a concerted war for the hearts and minds of the populace. Using public relations tools that include banners, leaflets and releases to the news media, each has sought to cast itself in a more positive light than its enemies. [continues 1450 words]
U.S. authorities in Texas arrested three members of an alleged weapons trafficking ring and accused one of them of buying a pistol used in a February attack that killed a U.S. government agent in Mexico. The three men are brothers [name1 redacted] and [name2 redacted], 27 and 22 years old, and [name3 redacted], 25. All were charged in criminal complaints filed in U.S. District Court in Dallas. The men were the subject of an undercover investigation by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Drug Enforcement Administration in November. Investigators were attempting to track weapons bought in the U.S. that were allegedly then smuggled into Mexico, according to an ATF affidavit filed in court. The affidavit alleges that the purchases were made on behalf of the drug gang known as Los Zetas, one of several groups fighting a bloody war for control of territory in Mexico. [continues 299 words]
Rounding Up The Killers Of U.S. Immigration And Customs Enforcement Officer Jaime Zapata Will Not Curtail Americans' Voracious Appetite For Mind-Altering Substances. Mexico City The murder of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jaime Zapata in the state of San Luis Potosi on Feb. 15 shocked and outraged the American law-enforcement community. For Mexican law enforcement it was just another day at the office. Early indications are that Zapata was killed by members of the Mexican drug cartel known as the Zetas. If so, his death adds to a shocking statistic. The latest data available from the Mexican government show that 87 members of the Mexican military and 867 law-enforcement officers were killed by drug gangs between December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon took office, and March 2009. Undoubtedly the number is higher now. [continues 752 words]
More than 100 people were arrested in the El Paso region in a crackdown on Mexican drug cartels in response to the killing of an ICE agent last week in Mexico, officials said Friday evening. In Chihuahua City, authorities announced that a high-ranking member of the Juarez drug cartel was killed in a shootout with federal police earlier this week. U.S. officials said 104 people were arrested as of Friday in the El Paso division of the DEA, which covers West Texas and New Mexico. The division has offices in El Paso, Las Cruces, Albuquerque, Midland and Alpine. [continues 474 words]
MEXICO CITY - The Mexican army detained nine people Wednesday in the killing of a U.S. agent last week, and said the shooting appears to have been a case of mistaken identity by drug hitmen. Mexican Defense Department spokesman Col. Ricardo Trevilla said Julian Zapata, the leader of a cell of gunmen working for the Zeta drug cartel, was responsible for the attack that killed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata and wounded Victor Avila, another ICE agent. Six of the alleged gunmen, some of whom appeared to have been roughed up, were paraded before reporters at a press conference at the Defense Ministry. Col. Trevilla said the attack by the Zeta gunmen was a case of mistaken identity. [continues 464 words]
A Mexican officer assigned to guard President Felipe Calderon was accused of leaking information to drug cartels in exchange for bribes, training hit men through a private security firm, and supplying military weapons to groups like the Zetas, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable. The document also said another official who worked for Calderon leaked a copy of the president's medical file to one of the cartels. Concerning the accused military officer, "the cartels were using the information to avoid heightened security around the president, not to target him personally," said the document disclosed by online whistleblower WikiLeaks. [continues 499 words]
If Phil Jordan were to travel to Mexico, he would do it under one condition: "If I could take a couple of U.S. Marines and Navy SEALs with me." He also likely would be armed. "Whether we want to admit it or not, there is a war going on in Mexico. It's a no man's land," Jordan said. A former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center, and formerly in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in Dallas with more than 30 years in law enforcement, Jordan made his comments in the wake of Tuesday's slaying of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Jaime Jorge Zapata. [continues 635 words]
An ICE agent from El Paso is being hailed as a hero after surviving an attack that killed another agent on a Mexican road earlier this week. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Victor Avila Jr. was released from a U.S. hospital Wednesday after being shot twice in the leg in the attack Tuesday that killed Special Agent Jaime Zapata in San Luis Potosi state. "As we mourn Special Agent Zapata's death, we also recognize Special Agent Avila's great heroism," said ICE Director John Morton. [continues 298 words]
The U.S. will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with Mexico in its fight against drug cartels in spite of the fatal attack Tuesday in Mexico in which one U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was killed and another from El Paso was wounded, officials and experts said Wednesday. Some, like University of Texas at El Paso professor Howard Campbell, also said it was no surprise the agents were attacked, and admitted he had been surprised it had not happened before. [continues 1026 words]
MEXICO CITY-Drug-cartel gunmen were responsible for the shooting of two U.S. government law-enforcement agents, the governor of the Mexican state where the men were attacked said Wednesday. What is still unclear, however, is why the men were attacked. Jaime Zapata, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent, was killed Tuesday while driving along a rural Mexican highway with another ICE agent, who was wounded. The second agent, who hasn't been identified, was shot twice in the leg and has been taken back to the U.S. where he is in stable condition, American officials said. [continues 740 words]
MEXICO CITY -- Gunmen on a highway in northern Mexico killed an agent with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday and wounded another, in an attack that signaled the escalating risk for American officials fighting Mexican crime gangs that move drugs and migrants into the United States. The United States homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, said in a statement that the agents were assigned to the customs agency's attache office at the American Embassy in Mexico City, and that they had been shot in the line of duty while driving between the city and Monterrey. [continues 363 words]
MEXICO CITY - A top police intelligence official was found dead in his burning armored car in Monterrey, dealing a serious setback to Mexico's attempt to regain control of the country's most prosperous city from warring drug cartels. The body of Homero Salcido, the coordinator of the so-called C-5 center, which houses federal police, naval, army, and state and municipal anticrime intelligence officials, was found Monday in his burning Grand Cherokee car in the center of Monterrey, the capital of embattled Nuevo Leon state, officials said. [continues 776 words]
Mexican authorities Thursday began an investigation into the killing of a retired Mexican general who was shot dead in Nuevo Laredo barely a month after taking a job as police chief of the violent border town. Gen. Manuel Farfan, 61 years old, was gunned down late Wednesday night by unknown attackers, according to officials from the Mexican attorney general's office. His killing is a blow to the new state governor of Tamaulipas, who vowed new offensives against violent crime in a state where drug cartels have been encroaching on government authority. [continues 376 words]
MEXICO CITY-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Mexico on Monday in her second stopover in less than a year, showing growing bilateral cooperation in the fight against organized crime, as drug violence cripples some Mexican cities. Mrs. Clinton's visit also came as a Spanish newspaper released another set of cables about Mexico obtained by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group. The leaked documents highlighted some of the concerns that American officials have harbored about Mexico's pursuit of organized-crime groups, including the nation's lack of honest local police forces. [continues 516 words]
Let Them Chew Coca Beware Talk of Victory in Latin America's Drug Wars LOOKED at in one way, Mexico's drug warriors have cause for satisfaction. Over the past year or so its security forces have captured or killed 20 of the three dozen leaders of the cartels which dominate the business of supplying cocaine to the many Americans who like to consume it. The latest to fall was a founder of the Zetas, a particularly vicious mob, arrested this week. Until recently the drug barons could rely on tip-offs from corrupt police commanders, which is why they were able to turn parts of northern Mexico into private fiefs. Nowadays when the United States passes on real-time intelligence on the mobsters, the Mexicans--frequently marines, but sometimes even the federal police--tend to nab their man. [continues 531 words]
The Rot Spreads Drug-Trafficking Gangs Find a Promising New Home in Some of the Poorest and Most Vulnerable Countries in the Americas BATTLEFIELDS aside, the countries known as "the northern triangle" of the Central American isthmus form what is now the most violent region on earth. El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, along with Jamaica and Venezuela, suffer the world's highest murder rates (see map). The first two are bloodier now than they were during their civil wars in the 1980s. [continues 804 words]
MEXICO CITY-The drug-related death toll in Mexico climbed to 15,273 in 2010, the highest casualty rate since the government launched an assault on powerful cartels in 2006, Mexican officials said. The staggering toll-higher than combat-related deaths in places like Iraq and Afghanistan-shows how Mexico is struggling to turn the tide on drug cartels that are fighting each other to control lucrative smuggling routes to the U.S. "We all know we're going through difficult times in matters of public safety," President Felipe Calderon said in a televised speech minutes after the figures were announced. He urged Mexicans to be patient with his government's assault on cartels. [continues 884 words]
Mexico City - In my country we've been learning under extreme duress to live in a different nation from the one we grew up in. Some 30,000 people have died in Mexico in the last four years in a grotesque carnival of shootouts, beheadings and mutilations; the city of Juarez has emerged as a worldwide symbol of lawlessness and horror; tens of thousands of children have been left orphaned and permanently embittered against the state. But what happened in August and unfolded throughout September and the fall was something else. [continues 398 words]
An elaborate security system has enabled Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman to evade capture thus far, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. The cable also reveals that the Mexican army has two officers stationed at the DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center, and that Mexico's army prefers to work closely with U.S. anti-drug agencies because it distrusts its country's civilian law enforcement. The cable summarizes a discussion last year between U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and Mexican Defense Secretary Gen. Guillermo Galvan Galvan. [continues 614 words]
TORREON, Mexico-His grandfather was the cross-eyed cousin of Mexico's legendary revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa. Like his famous ancestor, Carlos Villa is a hard-charging general who is charismatic, foulmouthed and not afraid to use his gun. And some say he is just what Mexico needs as it wrestles with the corruption and violence spawned by the country's powerful gangs of drug traffickers. Retired Gen. Villa is the 61-year-old police chief in Torreon, an industrial city in Mexico's violent northern badlands-a central drug-running route currently being fought over by two of Mexico's biggest cartels. [continues 2077 words]
Government Says Northern Province Has Become Overrun By Mexican Drug-Trafficking Organization The Guatemalan government declared a state of siege Sunday in a province it said has become overrun by a Mexican drug-trafficking group, the latest sign that Mexico's powerful cartels have extended their reach into foreign lands. The operation, which the government said would last at least a month, targets the northern province of Alta Verapaz, which officials described as a safe haven for Mexico's Los Zetas cartel. [continues 516 words]
A Woman Protesting the Release of Her Child's Suspected Killer Is Chased and Shot. Outraged when judges freed the main suspect in her daughter's killing, Marisela Escobedo Ortiz launched a one-woman protest across the street from government offices in northern Mexico. Now she is dead too. In a brazen killing caught on video, a gunman chased Escobedo and shot her at close range Thursday night in front of the governor's office building in the capital of Chihuahua state. [continues 462 words]
The Mexican government has no control of its 577-mile border with Guatemala, where arms, drugs and immigrant smugglers appear to have free rein, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable disclosed recently by WikiLeaks. The document says that Mexico does not have enough resources to patrol the border. "Limited resources also undermine the effort: while there are 30,000 U.S. CBP officers on the 1,926-mile Mexican/U.S. border, only 125 Mexican immigration officials monitor the 577-mile border with Guatemala," the document states. [continues 810 words]
Chihuahua state officials will collaborate with a United Nations specialized unit to develop new anti-crime strategies in Mexico's northern border state, officials announced Tuesday. Chihuahua's new governor, Cesar Duarte, and Antonio Luigi Mazzitelli, a representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, signed an agreement of cooperation in Chihuahua City. U.N. experts will provide advice only to local law enforcement officials. Former United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime officials Carlos Castresana and Antonio Buscaglia, both prominent anti-organized-crime experts, traveled to Juarez in 2003 to review the files on murdered women, and offered recommendations. [continues 151 words]
Ciudad Juarez - A rusting seesaw is sinking even further into the marsh on the edge of the world's most dangerous city. A year ago, only a few of the relentlessly identical brick houses in the area were abandoned, burned out or turned into crack dens. Now, whole swaths of them are empty-or converted into lairs for the drug-dealing street gangs that control the terrain and tag it: PFK, WEST SIDE. The MK 18 gang has apparently taken over a row of houses leading down to an open sewer. [continues 3797 words]
Apprehensions decline 18%; drug seizures dip The number of apprehensions by Border Patrol agents in the El Paso Sector declined during the past year, but undocumented immigrants are facing greater dangers before reaching the border. For the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, agents apprehended 12,251 undocumented immigrants, 18 percent less than in the previous year. Valeria Morales, a supervisory Border Patrol agent, attributed the decline to having more agents on patrol, technology to monitor border incursions and the border fence. [continues 738 words]
Over the border and through the cartels to Abuelita's casa we go. A scary new reality arrived with the long Christmas season in Mexico. For generations, families have driven across the border from the U.S. to spend much of December and into January visiting relatives. This year, the Mexican government put out stark warnings to such merry travelers. Travel in convoys, in daylight and if possible, contact federal authorities for a military escort through the portions of Mexico where the drug cartel violence has been particularly gruesome. [continues 617 words]
Residents Abandon a Border Town as Vicious Drug Cartels Go to War Ciudad Mier, a picturesque colonial village on the Texas border, was a sleepy tourist attraction until February, when two rival drug cartels turned it into a slaughterhouse. Caravans of armored SUVs crammed with gunmen firing automatic rifles prowled the streets. Parents pulled terrified children from schools. The town of 6,000 went dark every time the combatants shot out the transformers. In May, a man was hung alive from a tree in the central plaza and dismembered while town folk heard the screaming from behind shuttered doors. [continues 2575 words]
BARCELONA -- Mexico's powerful drug cartels have already established footholds in European countries such as Spain and Italy, respected Mexican journalist Luz Sosa said. Sosa was in Spain's second city to receive the 6th Vazquez Montalban Cultural and Political Journalism Prize for her work as a crime reporter for a newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's murder capital. Organized crime groups have capitalized on the government's "ineffectiveness" and the international support they have received to grow their operations and extend their reach beyond Mexico, she said in an interview with Efe. [continues 432 words]
Refugees From a Town Mired in Gang Warfare Can Only Flee - but Still Fear - for Their Lives CIUDAD MIGUEL ALEMAN, Mexico -- More than 300 men, women and children from the colonial ranching town of Ciudad Mier, a 10-minute drive from Texas, have taken refuge in the Lion's Club in this small city on the Rio Grande -- fleeing for their lives from the gangland killers called the Zetas. The refugees deserted Mier en masse during the past week after Zetas attacked in force to wrest it back from rival thugs of the so-called Gulf Cartel narcotics smuggling organization. Businesses and houses were burned, refugees say, and innocents murdered. Government forces have not yet reacted, they say. [continues 850 words]
'Storm Tony', High-Profile Leader of the Gulf Cartel, and Four of His Gunmen Die in Attacks by Navy Special Forces and Helicopters Mexican authorities have killed one of the country's most wanted drug lords following hours of ferocious gun battles close to the US border. Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen, otherwise known as Tony Tormenta or Storm Tony, was the highest-profile leader of the Gulf cartel, one of the country's most important trafficking organisations. As news of his demise spread across the northeastern state of Tamaulipas yesterday, so did fear of a backlash. A reporter in the border city of Reynosa said gunmen immediately took over the main road along the Mexican side of the Rio Bravo. "It is going to be a bloody weekend," she wrote. [continues 1344 words]
Residents of Reynosa, a Border City Under the Thumb of Cartels, Lives in Terror As Gangs Patrol the Streets. Those Who Can, Flee. Others Learn to Cope. It starts at the airport. A burly guy in a hoodie drapes himself over the barrier that leads out of the parking lot. Watching. Just watching. Most taxi drivers are on the drug cartels' payroll, ordered to spy on visitors and monitor the movements of the military and state investigators. Their license plates brazenly shed, they cruise streets dotted with paper-flower shrines marking the dead. Watching. [continues 2423 words]
MEXICO CITY -- The Mexican authorities said Friday that a leader of the Gulf drug gang had been killed in Matamoros during a day marked by street fighting between soldiers and gunmen that paralyzed the city, which is across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Tex. The gang leader, Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen, who American and Mexican officials say took control of the cartel after his brother Osiel Cardenas Guillen was arrested in 2003, was killed by Mexican marines, according to a statement by Alejandro Poire, the security spokesman for the government. [continues 263 words]
'Tony Tormenta,' a Top Figure in the Gulf Drug Gang Dies in a Border Gun Battle The Mexican drug kingpin known as "Tony Tormenta," a top leader of the powerful Gulf cartel, was killed Friday in a ferocious gun battle with military forces in the northern border state that had long been his tightly controlled home turf. Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen, alias Tony Tormenta or Tony the Storm, was killed along with three of his henchmen after hours of battle in the city of Matamoros, in Tamaulipas state just across the border from Brownsville, Texas, the Mexican government announced. [continues 673 words]
The US-Mexico border runs for nearly 2,000 miles. Last year Observer writer Ed Vulliamy travelled its entire length. In this extract from his new book, Amexica, he tells the incredible story of the town that doubles as the world's largest transport hub for narcotics laredo Freight trucks queue up to enter Laredo, Texas. Much of the USA's trade with Mexico passes through the town. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP For decades as a traveller, and 10 years as a reporter, I have been repelled and compelled by the charisma of the US-Mexican border - its seduction and its horrors, its firelight sun and occult shadows - to the point at which I had to write a book and give it the name that should, really, be that of the place: Amexica. That land of paradox and dichotomy astride a frontier that is a land unto itself, both porous and harsh, belonging to both the United States and Mexico, and neither: a place of opportunity and poverty, promise and despair, love and violence, wonder and fear, sex and church, family and hard grind. [continues 5549 words]
A Mexican journalist who was allegedly kidnapped by members of the Sinaloa drug cartel and then released is seeking political asylum in the United States. Alejandro Hernandez Pacheco, a cameraman for the Televisa network, and three other members of the Mexican media were kidnapped in July in Gomez Palacio, Durango. They were held captive for almost a week, allegedly tortured, starved and beaten. Their captors also threatened to kill them if their television stations didn't air videos that threatened Los Zetas, a rival drug cartel based in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. [continues 678 words]
A reporter returns to a border town riven by a drug war. August 9 I've been dreading coming to Reynosa for weeks. I tell myself that if I stick with the immigration story I'm working on and don't do any reporting on the drug war, I'll be safe. Two of Mexico's most ruthless drug cartels-Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel-are battling for control of this city and the surrounding state of Tamaulipas, a prized smuggling corridor. [continues 2420 words]
Many Expected to Stay Home on Sept. 16 REYNOSA - The latest casualty of Mexico's drug violence isn't a cartel hit man, an elected official, a cop, a soldier or even an innocent bystander. No, that body being carted away on a stretcher is the freedom and festivity one would typically expect as a nation celebrates the bicentennial of its independence from its erstwhile colonial master. After several months of escalating drug violence, some Mexican cities have moved their bicentennial celebrations to earlier, ostensibly safer, times or have beefed up security - even in the absence of any specific threat. Other cities have cancelled independence celebrations altogether. [continues 944 words]
In Rare Request, Defense Lawyer For Alleged Kingpin 'La Barbie,' A Texas Native, Asks Americans To Pursue Deportation MEXICO CITY - Edgar Valdez Villareal, a U.S.-born alleged drug lord who was captured in Mexico last week, wants to return to his roots in Texas to face trial rather than stay in a Mexican jail, his lawyer said. Mr. Valdez, called "La Barbie" in Mexico for his green eyes and sandy colored hair, has a reputation for beheading opponents in Mexico's violent drug wars. He fears that he will get killed in a Mexican prison, according to Kent Schaffer, his Houston-based lawyer. [continues 858 words]
MONTERREY, Mexico - A surge of violence by drug gangs in this industrial hub is leading to an exodus of wealthy Mexicans as well as scores of U.S. and foreign expatriates, dealing a blow to what has long been one of Latin America's richest and safest cities. The security situation is so alarming in Monterrey, known as the "Sultan of the North" for its industrial power, that the mayor has sent his family to live in Dallas, according to people familiar with the matter. The mayor's office didn't respond to requests for comment. [continues 1313 words]
Their names change, but all meet the same end: dead, in jail or on the run One by one, Mexico's notorious warlords have come and gone - household names and nightmares with a modern-day twist. Instead of Al Capone or John Gotti, they are drug cartel kingpins with private armies and nicknames like Shorty, Blondie, Friend Killer and most recently, Texas-born La Barbie. Part terrorist. Part rock star. Part legend. But eventually they all meet the same fate, ending up dead, in prison or on the run for life. [continues 1272 words]
MEXICO CITY-Mexico arrested seven gunmen allegedly involved in the recent execution-style killings of 72 U.S.-bound undocumented migrants in the northern border state of Tamaulipas, officials said Wednesday. The gunmen are believed to belong to the Zetas drug cartel, said Alejandro Poire, the Mexican government's national-security spokesman. Earlier Wednesday, officials said they had found the bodies of a Tamaulipas prosecutor and police chief who had gone missing shortly after beginning an investigation into the massacre. The discovery of the bodies of Roberto Suarez, a state detective, and Juan Carlos Suarez Sanchez, a local police chief, sent a chilling message to authorities investigating the work of organized crime in Mexico's troubled north. [continues 230 words]
Mexico is setting the stage for a multifaceted, multimillion-dollar, star-studded celebration. Sept. 16 is the bicentennial of the country's independence. It's a day known as "El Grito," or "The Call," for independence from Spanish rule. But the celebration risks being overshadowed by the many challenges the Mexican government faces regarding security issues. Mexican drug cartels have been operating in the country for years and have gained more strength with the downfall of Colombian drug lords. But in the past decade, they have grown increasingly violent. [continues 669 words]
The Kidnappings of 35 Terrorize the State Firm Pemex, Stopping Work in Areas of One Major Petroleum Basin The meandering network of pipes, wells and tankers belonging to the gigantic state oil company Pemex have long been an easy target of crooks and drug traffickers who siphon off natural gas, gasoline and even crude, robbing the Mexican treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Now the cartels have taken sabotage to a new level: They've hobbled key operations in parts of the Burgos Basin, home to Mexico's biggest natural gas fields. [continues 1260 words]
ALTHOUGH we should learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others, we persist in following the failed tactics of the US in relation to drugs. Our drug problems, which began in Dublin, have gradually spread throughout the country. Gardai currently estimate there are around 100 heroin users in Tralee. How long will it be before other places witness the gunplay currently blighting the Finglas area of Dublin? Our problems are minor compared to Mexico, but this should be a warning. On coming to power in late 2006 Felipe Calderon vowed to intensify the war on drugs in Mexico. Half a million people there are involved in the drug trade, producing marijuana, opium and amphetamines, as well as trafficking cocaine. The drug trade contributes $5bn annually to the Mexican economy. [continues 1105 words]
Often times, the word "war" is employed as a metaphor to describe something less than a major armed struggle. There have been wars on poverty, wars on diseases, wars that aren't really wars on just about everything. But what's happening in Mexico right now is the real thing. As a Saturday front page headline in the Express-News put it, the drug war across the Rio Grande is just that - a war. Mexico's drug war has for some time resembled the violent conflicts of the Middle East, featuring tactics similar to those of terrorist groups. The cartels and their enforcers have carried out assassinations, beheaded adversaries, set off car bombs and engaged in seemingly random acts of violence. [continues 331 words]
Mexico's bloody drug war can be traced to seven cartel-related conflicts, the Mexican government recently reported. And a Texas-born drug kingpin recently arrested in Mexico, Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez Villarreal, said Juarez was the flash point for the fighting. The government report, titled "Information on the Criminal Phenomenon in Mexico," says 80 percent of the drug-related homicides (22,701 out of 28,353 ) took place in 162 communities, Juarez among the highest. The biggest number of drug-related deaths involves Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman Loera's battles against four other drug-trafficking organizations. [continues 1142 words]
Oblivious Canadians Romp on the Beach As Thousands Executed in Vile Drug War What conflict has resulted in more than four times the deaths of allied casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan combined? Would it help to know it's a country where more than one million Canadians vacation every year? Would you be surprised to know it's right here in North America? It's Mexico. As we contentedly sip margaritas on the beach from behind protected resort walls, more than 28,000 Mexicans have lost their lives in a vicious drug war. [continues 602 words]
Oblivious Canadians Romp on the Beach As Thousands Executed in Vile Drug War What conflict has resulted in more than four times the deaths of allied casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan combined? Would it help to know it's a country where more than one million Canadians vacation every year? Would you be surprised to know it's right here in North America? It's Mexico. As we contentedly sip margaritas on the beach from behind protected resort walls, more than 28,000 Mexicans have lost their lives in a vicious drug war. [continues 604 words]
