Drug Cartels

A new word has been written into the lexicon of Mexico's drug war: narco-censorship. It's when reporters and editors, out of fear or caution, are forced to write what the traffickers want them to write, or to simply refrain from publishing the whole truth in a country where members of the press have been intimidated, kidnapped and killed. That big shootout the other day near a Reynosa shopping mall? Convoys of gunmen whizzed through the streets and fired on each other for hours, paralyzing the city.

Re "Dozens of bodies found dumped," May 14 Heads, hands and feet missing, another 50-some bodies get dumped beside a road outside Monterrey, Mexico. Imagine if instead of drug cartels, the perpetrators were under the command of a present-day Ho Chi Minh. Good heavens, the U.S. defense budget would double overnight and our boys would be back from the Mideast in no time at all. Where's Graham Greene now that we really need him? John Crandell Sacramento ALSO: Letters: Finding life on Mars Letters: Golden rule without God Letters: Business is still in business at City Hall

MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities responding to an anonymous tip discovered about 50 mostly mutilated bodies dumped on the side of a highway between Monterrey and the U.S. border, a region where rival gangs are battling for control over a lucrative drug-trafficking corridor. The bodies of at least 43 men and half a dozen women were found Sunday in plastic garbage bags near the town of Cadereyta Jimenez, the location of a large state-run oil refinery, officials in the state prosecutor's office told The Times.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities responding to an anonymous tip discovered about 50 mostly mutilated bodies dumped on the side of a highway between Monterrey and the U.S. border, a region where rival gangs are battling for control over a lucrative drug-trafficking corridor. The bodies of at least 43 men and half a dozen women were found Sunday in plastic garbage bags near the town of Cadereyta Jimenez, the location of a large state-run oil refinery, officials in the state prosecutor's office told The Times.

As drug cartels wreak murderous havoc from Mexico to Panama, the Obama administration is unable to show that the billions of dollars spent in the war on drugs have significantly stemmed the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States, according to two government reports and outside experts. The reports specifically criticize the government's growing use of U.S. contractors, which were paid more than $3 billion to train local prosecutors and police, help eradicate fields of coca, operate surveillance equipment and otherwise battle the widening drug trade in Latin America over the last five years.

The U.S. State Department issued a new state-by-state warning for travelers to Mexico that details the more violent areas of the country but also points out popular places such as Cabo San Lucas and Mexico City where travel advisories aren't in effect. The warning announced Wednesday gives specific cities and states, with a map of the country, where gun battles and drug trafficking violence are likely to occur. Mexican tourism has been under a cloud for the last six years since gruesome killings related to drug cartels scared off visitors to many parts of the country.

Four men were convicted Thursday in last year's killing of 15 people at a teen party in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. A three-judge panel delivered guilty verdicts on several counts after a two-week trial in Juarez, which in recent years has been the deadliest zone in Mexico amid spiraling drug violence. President Felipe Calderon set off national outrage when he referred to the victims of the Jan. 30, 2010, massacre as gang members. He backpedaled after it turned out they were promising students and athletes.

The curly-haired suspect in the sweatshirt faced the flash of news cameras, looking impossibly small. "When did you start to kill?" he was asked. "How much did you earn?" "How many did you execute?" He said he began killing at age 11. A drug cartel paid him $200 a week. He'd killed four people. "How?" came the final question. "I cut their throats," he replied. Then masked Mexican soldiers hustled him off, the way they do other drug suspects. The detainee's name was Edgar Jimenez Lugo, but everyone knew him as Ponchi.

Mexico has some of the strictest gun laws in the hemisphere. Citizens are permitted to buy low-caliber firearms for self-protection or hunting, but only after a background check and approval by the defense ministry; they must also purchase the guns directly from the ministry. The goal of this parsimonious approach to allotting firearms is a society free from gun violence. Unfortunately for Mexico, however, its weapons management strategy is sabotaged by an accident of location ? its residence next door to the gun capital of the world.

On a cloudless afternoon in northern Sonora, migrants and drug runners lounge in equal numbers under scattered mesquite trees, playing cards or sipping water. The sun climbs high and the temperature rises well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In such heat, nothing, human or otherwise, moves more than required. Known as La Sierrita, this otherwise unremarkable patch of Mexican desert is a final stop for those looking to enter the U.S. illegally. The Arizona border is only a 40-minute walk north.

WASHINGTON — Police and federal agents pulled the car over in a suburb north of Denver. An FBI agent showed his badge. The driver appeared not startled at all. "My friend," he said, "I have been waiting for you. " And with that, Jesus Audel Miramontes-Varela stepped out of his white 2002 BMW X5 and into the arms of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Over the next several days at his ranch in Colorado and an FBI safe house in Albuquerque, the Mexican cartel chieftain — who had reputedly fed one of his victims to lions in Mexico — was transformed into one of the FBI's top informants on the Southwest border.

MEXICO CITY - Elections can be times of great promise and hope for the future. But as Mexican voters prepare to choose a new president in July, those sentiments are hard to come by. In a country struggling with a vicious drug war and attempts to solidify democracy, many Mexicans are utterly disillusioned with the candidates and dismayed at the choices before them. At the heart of the matter is a sense that the three main candidates offer no solutions, no real hope for change.

  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has undertaken an unusual campaign of sorts: warning migrants of the dangers of crossing the U.S. border illegally. As The Times reported Monday, agents have reached out to Mexican and Central American media to detail the dangers that face those who attempt to enter illegally, especially along the Arizona-Mexico border. Just how much of an impact the outreach campaign is having, however, is unclear. The number of people attempting to cross into the U.S. illegally has dropped dramatically in recent years.

The unchecked scourge of drug violence in Mexico and that country's campaign to hobble the cartels is expected to overshadow economic discussions when Mexican President Felipe Calderon visits the White House today. Calderon will be meeting with President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss economic policies, climate change and security issues facing the three North American nations, according to the White House. U.S. officials have been pushing for Mexico to reform the state-owned oil monopoly, Pemex, to open the country's oil sector to private investment and develop new oil and gas reserves.

SAN DIEGO - For years, Benjamin Arellano Felix eluded U.S. law enforcement while running a Mexican drug cartel that terrorized rivals and poured hundreds of tons of cocaine into the country. So when the handcuffed kingpin arrived in San Diego aboard a government plane last year, U.S. authorities gathered on the tarmac, sharing hugs and handshakes as he was handed over to his longtime pursuers. But the sense of triumph has turned to disappointment in some quarters as Arellano Felix approaches his judgment hour in court Monday.

"Fast and Furious," the federal government's ill-fated operation to track gun sales along the Mexican border, set out to penetrate drug cartels before it spiraled out of control. Under the program, agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives watched, but did not arrest, purchasers of high-powered weapons with hopes of tracking the guns back to the cartels. Instead, the ATF lost track of more than 1,700 guns, some of which later turned up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico, including two found near Tucson where a Border Patrol officer was shot to death.

A 59-year-old American missionary was shot in the head and killed in northern Mexico, possibly because one of the local drug cartels coveted her heavy-duty pickup truck, authorities said Thursday. Nancy Davis' husband, Sam, drove the bullet-riddled blue 2008 Chevrolet against traffic to the border Wednesday afternoon. He crossed the bridge into Pharr, Texas, where he told authorities that the couple had been ambushed about 70 miles south of the border on a Mexican highway by gunmen in a black pickup, according to the Pharr Police Department.

In the tense state of Durango, Roman Catholic Archbishop Hector Gonzalez announced over the weekend that the fugitive drug trafficker who tops Mexico's most wanted list was living nearby. And everyone knows it, he added. Except, it would seem, the authorities, who fail to make an arrest. A shocking revelation indeed.

Pope Benedict XVI traveled to Mexico on Friday, urging this nation's Catholics to resist the temptations of violent drug traffickers and calling for change in Cuba. This is Benedict's first voyage to the Spanish-speaking Americas; after three days in Mexico, he continues to Cuba, the first papal visit to the island nation since John Paul II's historic trip to Havana in 1998. Landing on a sun-drenched afternoon in Mexico's conservative and traditionally Catholic midsection, Benedict was greeted by President Felipe Calderon.

War without end Re " A drug war success story? ," Opinion, Feb. 29 William C. Rempel's Op-Ed article on the 1989 cocaine bust in Sylmar that ultimately strengthened the Mexican drug cartels illustrates the folly of the continuing war on drugs. This war is an arms race in which the opponent has no morals and no qualms about a scorched-earth strategy. Increasingly, the casualties are innocent people and entire economic sectors, such as Mexican tourism and trips by charitable organizations to the country.