Word: mexicanization
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...more vexed than Mexican President Vicente Fox, who is under pressure from the Bush Administration to crack down on the flow of drugs and illegal migrants across the Mexican border, amid fears that terrorists might exploit the lawlessness to sneak into the U.S. Mexico was infuriated by a recent U.S. alert about security dangers on the Mexican border and by a State Department report last month claiming that 90% of the cocaine hitting U.S. streets comes via Mexico, much higher than prior estimates of less than 75%. Mexico disputes the report, especially since it has made strides in breaking...
...harder for Fox to trumpet his accomplishments when criminals like El Verdugo are on the loose. According to Mexican officials, Lazcano was a clean-cut Mexican army recruit from the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz when he was picked a decade ago to be part of the highly trained Airborne Special Forces Group. The unit was sent to the eastern border to battle drug trafficking. But in the late 1990s, Lazcano and more than 30 other members of the special forces began working for drug lord Osiel Cárdenas, head of the Matamoros-based Gulf cartel, which at the time...
...organized crime: "You had soldiers from an élite force transferring all the heavy military mystique--the honor, valor, loyalty--to a drug trafficker." After the government captured Cárdenas in 2003, the Zetas had to strike out more on their own. They launched a lethal campaign against Mexican authorities and rival traffickers gunning for control over Cárdenas' former trafficking routes. Mexican officials insist that half the original Zetas have been arrested or killed, but because of intense recruitment and training of hundreds of Zetitas (Little Zetas), the gang has cells scattered around Mexico. They engage in ransom kidnappings...
Some U.S. officials privately complain that many Mexican police aid the Zetas. And other potential microcartels are proliferating on the U.S.'s doorstep: in the Tijuana--San Diego corridor, police are dealing with a gang known as Narco-Juniors, a group of affluent juvenile delinquents recruited as hit men in the 1990s by the Tijuana drug cartel. Authorities in the Juarez--El Paso corridor, meanwhile, report a growing presence of the Mara Salvatrucha, a machete-wielding gang that has terrified Central America in recent years. The threat from groups like the Zetas may persist for years. "This is like...
Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, spoke last year, and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo addressed graduates...