Word: cartels
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Following Félix Gallardo's arrest, some observers and journalists expressed hopes that Mexican drug gangs would be obliterated. But in the two decades of his incarceration, bigger and bloodier cartels have emerged, unleashing decapitations, massacres and pitched battles in town centers. Since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006, there have been more than 10,000 drug-related slayings. In his prison scrawlings, Félix Gallardo argued that fighting poverty would be the best way to stop young people from joining the ranks of cartel foot soldiers. "Today, the violence in the cities needs...
...will only make things worse. Where do you think these deported immigrants will find jobs? Maybe with the drug gangs south of the border? Or perhaps with the pirates off the coast of Somalia? Let's not forget that a newly recruited pirate, extremist or mercenary for a drug cartel is much worse than an honest, hardworking immigrant looking for a better life. Pablo Cortes, INNSBRUCK, AUSTRIA...
...more worrisome are the increasingly sophisticated tunnels that display mining engineering expertise and significant investments of money. A tunnel discovered in 2006 believed to have been financed by the Tijuana Cartel led by the family of Ramon Arellano Felix was around 2,400 feet long and about nine stories deep. It had concrete floors in certain sections, ventilation, electricity and a water drainage system. It went from an industrial area of Tijuana across the border to a warehouse in Otay Mesa, the main commercial port of entry near San Diego. "The technology it used was shocking," says Brian Damkroger...
Hitting a Hornet's Nest Mexico's drug plague is a product of both its authoritarian past and its new democratic present. When it ruled Mexico as an elective dictatorship, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) accommodated but regulated the drug cartels. But after the PRI lost the presidency in 2000 and its quasi-control of the cartels broke down, those groups split into more vicious gangs like the Zetas, a band of former army commandos who now head the Gulf Cartel. Cities from Nuevo Laredo to Cancún were soon reeling from turf battles. The Juárez Cartel, once Mexico...
...more than 100 heavy-caliber bullets. The sad reality, however, is that too many of Juárez's police die not in the noble line of duty but because they moonlight for gangs. Last month federal cops arrested a Juárez police captain for allegedly detaining people on the cartels' hit lists and then delivering them to their executions. And the rot goes even higher: in 2008, Calderón's former federal antidrug czar was arrested and charged with allegedly taking $450,000 to feed intelligence to the Sinaloa Cartel. (He denies...