Zetas

Federal authorities announced indictments Monday against the reputed leaders of Mexico's Gulf cartel and its paramilitary force, the Zetas, accusing them of trafficking tons of cocaine and marijuana from South America through the Texas-Mexico border. Three of the men are identified as the "triumvirate" that manages the far-flung enterprise, dividing its territories among themselves.

A top leader of the notorious La Familia drug-trafficking gang, locked in an especially deadly internal fight in recent months, has been captured by Mexican federal police, authorities announced Tuesday. Jose de Jesus Mendez, alias "El Chango," one of Mexico's most-wanted drug lords, was taken into custody in the central Mexican state of Aguascalientes, apparently without a struggle, authorities said. Mendez led a faction of La Familia, the ruthless and sometimes cult-like network that authorities say specializes in producing and shipping methamphetamine to the United States.

The callers to the radio program were voicing their support for the Matazetas, the Zeta killers. Better they fight among themselves. Let them kill each other. Anything to rid us of the thugs who long ago took control of our city and are slaughtering our people. It is a sign of the desperation and deep outrage over surging drug-war violence that a shadowy group of vigilante killers is not only tolerated but welcomed by many here in Mexico's third-most populous state. Full coverage: The drug war in Mexico Yet it also comes with a disturbing question: Just who is behind the killings of Zetas — another drug gang?

The Mexican drug gangs rapidly infiltrating Central America call El Salvador "El Caminito," the little pathway. Once a bystander in the region's narco-business, this tiny country now finds itself enmeshed in an expanding drug trade, a shift brought on in part by the presence of a new, U.S.-funded highway that provides an overland route for shipping cocaine north. For years, traffickers used speedboats and small submarine-type vessels to move drugs from Colombia to northern Guatemala or Mexico, using water routes to circumvent much of Central America.

MEXICO CITY - Authorities have captured the top leader of the Gulf cartel, a potentially fatal blow to one of Mexico's major drug-trafficking networks that could also unleash a violent power struggle that would pose an immediate and explosive challenge to the incoming government of President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto. It is the second big catch of a suspected Gulf cartel capo in 10 days and essentially wipes out the leadership of an organization that once dominated large parts of Mexico.

MEXICO CITY -- Guatemalan authorities said Friday they had not yet recovered the bodies from a gun battle between Mexican drug traffickers in a remote part of the country where one of the world's most-wanted fugitive kingpins is known to operate. Reports of the shootout on Thursday led to wide speculation that the dead might include Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, billionaire chieftain of the powerful Sinaloa cartel and the much-wanted mastermind of Mexico's largest and oldest drug-trafficking organization.

MEXICO CITY - The nearly simultaneous attacks on the offices of the two newspapers were disturbingly similar: Gunmen armed with automatic rifles and grenade launchers opened fire, shattering glass and terrifying those inside. But the responses by the two news outlets that came under siege, leaving staffers shaken but unhurt, have been markedly different. El Mañana newspaper in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, the northeastern region's dominant daily, announced in an editorial a day later that it would no longer report on "violent disputes," an allusion to the battle between rival drug-trafficking networks fighting over a vast network of criminal activities.

At least 27 people were slain early Sunday in a remote area of northern Guatemala that has become a key base for Mexican drug-trafficking groups, authorities said. Police said a small army of gunmen attacked workers on a coconut farm in the northern province of Peten, a zone that has become increasingly dangerous as Mexican drug smugglers extend operations in Central America to escape a crackdown at home. The victims included 25 men and two women, all of whom were decapitated, according to Jaime Leonel Otzin, director of Guatemala's National Civil Police.

WASHINGTON - Federal law enforcement officials theorize that five people found dead in a burned-out vehicle in southern Arizona were hostages killed by a Mexican drug cartel and that their deaths last weekend could mark another example of violence spreading from Mexico across the Southwest border into the United States. “That is what it sounds like to us,” said a Border Patrol official who has been briefed on the bodies found Saturday morning in a white Ford Expedition in a remote desert area off Interstate 8 between Phoenix and Tucson.

The state of Texas is warning Americans to avoid travel to the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo this holiday weekend because of an anticipated surge in drug cartel violence aimed at Americans. In a news release   Saturday, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Webb County Sheriff's Office said their sources indicated that the Zetas drug cartel was "planning to target U.S. citizens who travel to Nuevo Laredo this weekend. "  Steven C. McCraw, the department's director, also said in the statement:  "According to the information we have received, the Zetas are planning a possible surge in criminal activity, such as robberies, extortions, car-jackings and vehicle theft, specifically against U.S. citizens.