Word: mexicans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...masked marines invited photographers into the shrapnel-ridden apartment to snap photos of the corpse late into Wednesday night. The graphic images of the bullet-ridden 51-year-old man, clothes hanging off and hands grasping religious beads, were soon plastered across the Internet alongside triumphant declarations from Mexican officials. The marines had shot Arturo Beltrán Leyva, or "The Beard," one of the bloodiest and most powerful drug traffickers in Latin America, they said. This death, they claimed, marked a major victory in the war against the drug cartels that are wreaking havoc south of the Rio Grande...
There is little doubt that Beltrán Leyva was a bona fide kingpin and a genuine threat to the Mexican security services. Born in a rough-hewn village of the northern Sierra Madre, he was alleged to have been trafficking heroin and marijuana since the 1980s. As Mexican cartels grew in power, drug agents say, he forged a smuggling empire stretching from the jungles of Colombia to the avenues of New York City. He is alleged to have masterminded the killing of hundreds who stood in his way, including federal police chief Edgar Millan, who was shot dead...
However, some agents worry that the reins of this smuggling empire may now be taken over by Beltrán Leyva's feared chief of hit men, Edgar Valdez, 36, a Texas-born fugitive known as "The Barbie" because of his blond hair. Mexican officials allege that Valdez was behind the videotaped torture and killing of a rival gangster in Acapulco in 2005. Similar to an al-Qaeda propaganda film, the video triggered a wave of copycat movies posted on the Internet, raising the stakes in the Mexican drug war. Such a figure could unleash even more carnage...
...Gonzalez's more immediate problems came from the trafficking networks to the south and the even richer and more violent mafias from the north. In his six years as director general of the National Office for Combating Drug Trafficking, he had seen the presence of Mexican cartels explode in his country. "Almost all of the big Mexican organizations are carving out territory here. And when they run into each other, they will fight over it," he said. Among the Mexican gangs warring in Honduras are the Sinaloa Cartel of billionaire fugitive Joaquín (Shorty) Guzmán, the bloodthirsty...
...Mexican cartels subcontract Honduran groups to move drugs for them - sometimes "executing" those accused of stealing the product, Gonzalez alleged. And they have also been buying up real estate and businesses to launder money and provide bases for operations. "We found one huge hacienda bought by Mexicans with landing strips for major aircraft," he said, showing the photo of a concrete runway built in a seized jungle property. The traffickers have also been unloading an increased amount of crack onto the Honduran market, which is sold on corners by street gangs like the Mara Salvatrucha, he said...