Drug Violence

Mexico ranked 10th among the world's most popular tourist destinations, according to the latest estimate by a United Nations agency. But the country's head of tourism said she fears Mexico might drop a couple of spots, falling out of the top 10 list. "We have indications that we may drop one or two places, but we're not sure because the figures aren't ours, they are from the World Tourism Organization," Mexico's Tourism Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu told the Associated Press Monday.

MEXICO CITY - Responding to mounting concern about disorder in the Mexican state of Michoacan, officials announced Thursday that an army general would take over as its public security chief, overseeing both state and federal security forces. The appointment of the general, Alberto Reyes Vaca, was announced by state officials but had been arranged in coordination with the federal government. For President Enrique Peña Nieto's administration, the move is part of a promised new focus on the southwestern state, long a hotbed of drug cartel violence.

MEXICO CITY - Responding to mounting concern about disorder in the Mexican state of Michoacan, officials announced Thursday that an army general would take over as its public security chief, overseeing both state and federal security forces. The appointment of the general, Alberto Reyes Vaca, was announced by state officials but had been arranged in coordination with the federal government. For President Enrique Peña Nieto's administration, the move is part of a promised new focus on the southwestern state, long a hotbed of drug cartel violence.

President Obama has much to discuss with Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, when they meet in Mexico City this week. No issue, however, is more urgent than the search for peace, justice and dignity for and between our peoples. For seven years, Mexico has been living a nightmare. More than 70,000 people, by some estimates, have been killed and thousands more have been disappeared in the wave of criminal and institutional violence of Mexico's war on drug cartels. The collateral damage is a humanitarian tragedy that requires our leaders to have deep and frank discussions about how to transform the failed policies exacerbating the violence.

An estimated 70,000 people have been killed in Mexico's brutal drug-cartel wars over the past six years. Those costs are horrific enough. But there are also collateral damages, including a precipitous drop-off in tourism that has dented Mexico's otherwise robust economy; a chilling effect on the Mexican media, which faces constant threats, kidnappings and worse from the warring cartels; and frequent indifference or ineptitude from the country's legal...

CULIACAN, Mexico - The cartel henchman nicknamed "El Loco" was reported behind the latest atrocity in Mexico's ever-more-depraved drug war: mutilating 49 people and piling their bodies - heads, hands and feet missing - by the side of a road leading to the U.S. border. Authorities say he acted this month on orders from the top commanders of the brutal Zeta paramilitary force, who wanted to send a message to the long-dominant Sinaloa cartel and its allies, in a new phase of a conflict that has claimed more than 50,000 lives in less than six years.

Buried under two months of winter in Buffalo, N.Y., Kim Kramer could take no more. "I came home and said, 'I've got to get out of here,' " said Kramer, a 44-year-old teacher. Two weeks later, she was awash in sunshine here on Mexico's Caribbean coast, sipping a midday Hurricane and looking pleasantly thawed. Before Kramer got on the plane to Cancun, though, she made sure to check: Was it dangerous to go there?

The black-and-white photos still hang in the faded Hotel Los Flamingos. Over there is the muscled star of "Tarzan," Johnny Weissmuller, who owned the hotel for a time during Acapulco's heyday. There's Maureen O'Sullivan. Tyrone Power. Errol Flynn. Fred MacMurray. They all came, mixed booze in a coconut ? called it a Coco Loco. When mortals gazed at Acapulco, they saw romance itself smiling back. So they came too. As did a fortress of high-rise hotels that packed the beach and diminished the very thing everyone was chasing.

Bearing white balloons and fake bloodstains, tens of thousands of demonstrators crowded Mexico City's historic downtown Sunday to call for an end to the country's unrelenting drug violence. The primary target of the protest was President Felipe Calderon, who has ruled during a period of extraordinary bloodshed. More than 34,000 people have been killed since Calderon declared an all-out assault on drug cartels after taking office four and a half years ago. Demonstrators, holding placards saying "No more blood!"

The ritual exodus from Mexico City for Easter holidays usually launches around Palm Sunday, then shifts into full gear by right about now. This congested capital of about 20 million people virtually empties out, blissfully so for those who remain. But this year there have been signs that Mexicans were reconsidering their holiday travel patterns. And that bodes ill for public faith in the government's efforts to make the country safe. With a vicious war against drug cartels claiming hundreds of lives a month, and with that violence moving into traditional tourist areas such as legendary coastal enclave Acapulco, some Mexico City residents have decided it's better to forgo the annual spring trip and stay at home.

LAREDO, Texas - This border city is trying to clear its name. It is so conjoined with its Mexican sister city across the Rio Grande, Nuevo Laredo, that the two are often referred to as "Los Dos Laredos," or simply Laredo. That was great for tourism in happier days. But as drug cartel violence exploded in Nuevo Laredo in recent years, pictures broadcast around the world of gunfights, decapitated bodies piled in abandoned minivans, and severed heads dumped in coolers often bore the same headline: "Laredo.

MEXICO CITY - Debate is intensifying over armed vigilante patrols that have sprung up in crime-plagued sections of rural Mexico, particularly in the state of Guerrero, where some patrols joined forces this week with a radical teachers union that has been wreaking havoc with massive protests, vandalism and violent confrontations with police. The two groups, on the surface, would appear to have little in common. The vigilante patrols, typically made up of masked campesinos , are among dozens that have emerged in the countryside in recent months, purporting to protect their communities from the depredations of the drug cartels.

An estimated 70,000 people have been killed in Mexico's brutal drug-cartel wars over the past six years. Those costs are horrific enough. But there are also collateral damages, including a precipitous drop-off in tourism that has dented Mexico's otherwise robust economy; a chilling effect on the Mexican media, which faces constant threats, kidnappings and worse from the warring cartels; and frequent indifference or ineptitude from the country's legal...

A look at some recent and recommended books: BIOGRAPHY Photojournalist Tim Hetherington died in 2011 in Libya, two months after attending the Oscars for "Restrepo," the documentary he made with Sebastian Junger. In "Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer" (Grove Press, $25), the companion to an April HBO documentary, Alan Huffman vividly chronicles the short life of a man drawn to danger zones to capture the horrors of modern warfare. THRILLER Scandinavian crime fiction finds a new voice in Alexander Söderberg, whose dark, intricate debut novel "The Andalucian Friend" (Crown, $26)

Mexico ranked 10th among the world's most popular tourist destinations, according to the latest estimate by a United Nations agency. But the country's head of tourism said she fears Mexico might drop a couple of spots, falling out of the top 10 list. "We have indications that we may drop one or two places, but we're not sure because the figures aren't ours, they are from the World Tourism Organization," Mexico's Tourism Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu told the Associated Press Monday.

Despite past assurances that tourists are safe in their country, Mexican tourism officials are again faced with trying to explain away another report of crime against foreign visitors. The latest incident took place in the resort town of Acapulco, where six Spanish tourists on vacation were raped Sunday by masked gunmen. Unlike many crimes involving drug violence in the country's interior states, the rapes took place near the beach, where the tourists were renting bungalows near four-star hotels.

Public dismay over Mexico's drug violence mixed with election-season jockeying have put President Felipe Calderon on the defensive amid finger-pointing over the carnage. Following the slaying of a poet's son and discoveries of hundreds of bodies in mass graves in northern Mexico, critics have stepped up charges that the conservative Calderon is the author of a failed anti-crime strategy. A massive demonstration to protest the country's rampant violence is planned Sunday in Mexico City.

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.

MEXICO CITY -- Six Spanish tourists on vacation in Acapulco were raped by masked gunmen who burst into their lodgings in the middle of the night, roughed up their companions and made off with cash, laptops and other valuables, authorities said. The attack early Monday on what was in Mexico a long holiday weekend came as the one-time tourist mecca struggles to salvage its reputation. Acapulco, faded gem of Mexico's Pacific coast, has become one of the deadliest cities in the country as rival drug traffickers fight for control.