Word: mexicanitis
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...gone back to making a living as a lawyer in Los Angeles. "The military patrols have cut down on carjackings and their presence has slowed real estate sales," she says. "You can thank the narco wars for preventing more Americans from losing all their money in bad Mexican real estate deals...
Pedro Rojas is the sort of wealthy Mexican who's usually in control of his world. "I don't panic or scare easily," says Rojas, a business owner and rancher from the Mexican border city of Juárez. But last year narcos, or drug traffickers, moved into his upscale neighborhood--punks in cowboy attire and sparkling pickup trucks buying expensive homes. Rojas and his neighbors were awakened at night or horrified in broad daylight by assault-rifle fire and the screaming of tires as cars raced away after kidnappings. One afternoon, local children watched as a pickup rammed down...
...taken many years for Mexico to finally make that admission, decades in which the country's powerful and violent drug cartels have been allowed to terrorize far too many neighborhoods in too many cities like Juárez. Summoning his army to fill in for unreliable cops, Mexican President Felipe Calderón has brought the fight to the gangs, but their furious backlash has left more than 7,000 Mexicans murdered since the start of last year - almost 2,000 in Juárez alone. Still, through the fog of the drug war, especially on the bloodied border, it has become clearer...
Juárez civic leaders like Vargas have long called for the kind of Mexican police and judicial reform that both countries are only now starting to make a priority. Meanwhile, Americans like El Paso County sheriff Richard Wiles want the U.S. to renew the assault-weapons ban that George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress allowed to expire in 2004. If it doesn't, they fear, the few Black Hawk helicopters that Washington ships to Mexico's antidrug warriors won't make up for the thousands of AK-47 rifles and even rocket-propelled grenades pouring into the hands...
...troops. Calderón's supporters insist the brutal counteroffensive by the gangs is a sign that they were rattled. Critics call the relentless violence proof that Calderón took a baseball bat to a hornet's nest but wasn't ready for the hornets - and point out that the Mexican army is not particularly well trained for the urban-guerrilla nature of drug wars. Either way, by last year Washington had become alarmed at Mexico's slaughter: Congress approved $400 million in aid for Mexico's drug war, the first installment of what is supposed to be a three-year...