Mass Murders Mexico

The principal target of the massacre that left 18 people dead just outside this Baja California resort was a known drug gang leader, and the killings were probably the result of a feud between drug traffickers, Mexican officials said Friday. Fermin Castro, also known to authorities as "the Ice Man," was critically wounded in Thursday's predawn attack, in which Castro and 20 members of his extended family, including eight children, were dragged from their beds and shot execution-style.

Gunmen pulled 21 people from their beds early Thursday in a placid farm community just north of here, herded them onto a patio and opened fire, killing 18 in what authorities describe as the deadliest crime in Baja California history. Eight children--including youngsters ages 1, 2 and 4--were among the dead. One teenager who hid under a bed escaped the carnage. Authorities said the 15-year-old girl, whom they plan to interview for clues to the killers, was in shock after the massacre.

Investigators uncovered a small cache of arms buried outside the home of a suspect in the massacre of 45 Mexican villagers, authorities announced Friday. The two .22-caliber rifles, a shotgun, a revolver and ammunition "are similar to those used Dec. 22 in Acteal," the attorney general's office said in a statement.

The men arrested in the massacre of 45 people in the village of Acteal look much like their victims. They speak the same Maya Indian language. They live in the same highlands municipality. They farm the same subsistence plots. That has left many Mexicans struggling to understand how political differences among them could have led those men to form a death squad and gun down their neighbors with chilling brutality.

Authorities on Saturday night charged the mayor of this mountain community with murder, also alleging that he provided the weapons used to slaughter 45 villagers and then tried to cover up the killings. Jacinto Arias Cruz and 23 supporters from villages near the Maya hamlet of Acteal were formally charged with homicide, causing injuries and illegal association. They were taken to a prison in the Chiapas state capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez.

As federal investigators scoured the killing fields in this tiny town for evidence, the Christmas lights still flickered Wednesday above the nativity scene in the deserted chapel where villagers were praying two days earlier when gunmen descended and killed 45 people.

Dozens of gunmen fired on churchgoers who were praying for peace in a remote Mexican village, killing at least 45 people--including 14 children and a baby--in a brutal escalation of the 4-year-old conflict in the southern state of Chiapas, officials confirmed Tuesday.

Investigators probing the brutal slaying of a prominent author and her family said Friday that revenge--by drug traffickers or personal enemies--is among the possible motives for a crime that has shocked the Mexican capital.

Two gunmen burst into a home and opened fire, killing a woman, her two sons and three friends as they watched television, police said Sunday. Officer Filiberto Diaz said police believed at least 13 shots were fired at the scene but that officers knew of no motive. An investigation continued. The victims were watching a boxing match just before midnight when the gunmen entered the house in Colonia Libertad, not far from downtown, neighbors said.

Long before 24 men in the Pena family were gunned down in a gruesome ambush last week, Mayor Pedro Moreno Chapa had complained to state authorities of the murder and lawlessness in his mountain town. The Pena murders may be the worst case of revenge to hit this heavily armed farm community in the southern Sierra Madre, but it is certainly not the only one.