Mexico's Drug War - Page 19

ACAPULCO, Mexico – A spate of attacks on taxis in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco has left 12 drivers or passengers dead, just ahead of Monday's start of the Mexican Open tennis tournament.

Acapulco has been the scene of bloody drug cartel turf wars, and taxi drivers have often been targeted for extortion or recruited as lookouts by the gangs.

The organizers of the largest tennis tournament in Latin America say the Mexican government has pledged that appropriate security measures have been taken for the event.

State police said Sunday that four suspects have been detained in relation with some of the attacks. The suspects had guns, a grenade and a machete that police say may have been used to decapitate some of the victims.

On February 21 2011 04:28 Cuh wrote:
Mainly, from what i see if your not involved in the drug business, they wont bother you....
I've seen a man hung from an underpass with warning of not to intrude on there business carved into him. Very scary stuff indeed

On February 23 2011 14:56 Falcon-sw wrote:
Eh? Last I checked, marijuana was merely one of the many different types of illegal drugs the cartels are dealin. How does legalizing one of them (marijuana, heroin, cocaine, I don't care) "decimate" organized crime?

Instinct tells me people who love pot just want to be able to smoke it without worrying about the cops, and will use whatever argument they can to further that goal. Even if it makes no sense.

On February 23 2011 15:09 sashamunguia wrote:
I'm tired of simple-minded people....

legalizing marijuana is just one small thing indeed... besides, legalizing it where? in the US? still the problem will be drug transport on Mexico... what about the other things besides drugs and/or marijuana? still, which cartel is gonna be the one dealing it over which territories? (actual major dispute btw)

MEXICO CITY – An alleged Zetas drug cartel member arrested in the killing of a U.S. immigration agent told soldiers Wednesday the attack was a mistake, saying gunmen mistook the officer's SUV for a vehicle used by a rival gang, the army said.

Julian Zapata Espinoza — known by the nickname "El Piolin," or Tweety Bird, apparently because of his short stature — was captured along with five other suspected Zetas members during an army raid Wednesday on gang safehouses in the northern city of San Luis Potosi.

President Barack Obama and other top U.S. officials offered congratulations for the arrests a week after the killing.

Attorney General's Office spokesman Ricardo Najera told The Associated Press that Zapata Espinoza had been arrested on unspecified federal charges in 2009, but jumped bail and disappeared until he was re-arrested Wednesday.

On February 21 2011 04:54 Trowabarton756 wrote:


=\ How do you say that when I see multiple reports of people in clubs/all over dying because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.....seems to me that maybe the government should be in lock-down or something and have curfews and what not...

WASHINGTON – Federal, state and local authorities across the country are sending an unequivocal message to Mexican drug cartel members in the U.S. and Latin America: If you kill a U.S. agent, there will be repercussions.

"This is personal," Louie Garcia, deputy special agent with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Thursday as authorities arrested more than 500 people in a nationwide sweep. "We lost an agent, we lost a good agent. And we have to respond."

The massive search for people connected to any Mexican drug cartel working in the United States began Wednesday night as a direct response to the Feb. 15 killing of ICE agent Jaime Zapata in a roadside ambush in Mexico. Fellow ICE agent Victor Avila was wounded in the attack.

As part of the effort coordinated by the Drug Enforcement Administration and ICE, authorities seized at least $10 million in cash and confiscated millions of dollars' worth of illegal drugs. Authorities in Brazil, El Salvador, Panama, Colombia and Mexico conducted similar sweeps in concert with U.S. authorities.

By late Thursday afternoon police and federal agents around the U.S. had seized nearly 300 weapons and more than 16 tons of marijuana along with other drugs. The sweep was expected to continue through Friday.

Fri Feb 25, 9:55 pm ET

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Mexican police on Friday discovered the bodies of three people related to a human rights activist who was killed last year in the volatile northern border state of Chihuahua.

The bodies of a sister and brother of Josefina Reyes and her sister-in-law were found in the desert outside Guadalupe Distrito Bravos, southeast of Ciudad Juarez, said Carlos Gonzalez, spokesman for the state prosecutor's office.

The three had been missing since Feb. 7, when witnesses reported that armed men forced the trio from a vehicle.

The bodies of Maria Magdalena Reyes Salazar, Elias Reyes Salazar and his wife, Luisa Ornelas, were found with messages alluding to organized crime, according to Gonzalez, who did not immediately release details.

Their bodies appear to have been buried, then dug up again and left on a road, as if someone wanted to call attention to their deaths.

The discovery led surviving relatives to demand justice, urging Mexican President Felipe Calderon to act with the same determination used to pursue the killers of Jaime Zapata, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who was fatally shot in northern Mexico on Feb. 15.

MEXICO CITY – Mexican police have captured the alleged leader of a drug gang that calls itself "The Resistance," a group that operates in western Mexico, officials said Monday.

Victor Torres Garcia was detained in the Michoacan state city of Uruapan, along with two alleged associates, several guns and bags of drugs, federal police announced.

Torres Garcia allegedly led a gang whose members came several other cartels and who grouped together to resist the incursion of the Zetas drug gang. It also sought to fill a vacuum left by the death or capture of top members of the Beltran Leyva cartel in 2008 and 2009.

The Resistance operated in the states of Jalisco, Michoacan and Mexico City and surrounding Mexico state.

Federal police said in a statement that Torres Garcia had once worked for the Beltran Leyva cartel, and that Resistance members came from the La Familia, Gulf and Milenio cartels.