Word: narco
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...security expert at Mexico's Alliant International University. Krame says criminal organizations are using Twitter and other social networks to communicate with one another through key words that mean something different to people outside their circles. For example, drug cartels will post videos of corridos, or ballads, about the narco world on YouTube with lyrics that contain subtle clues as to the current hierarchies of gangs - as well as threats.(See the world of Twitter through the lens of celebrity users...
That night, narco gunmen massacred 15 Juárez teenagers at a party. After apologizing for initially suggesting that the victims were somehow involved with drugs themselves, Calderón has since made two visits to Juárez, which saw some 2,500 drug-related murders last year. He is making another visit on Tuesday. But rather than throwing more troops onto the city's streets, as he did last year, Calderón is pushing social and financial reform - including the kind of judicial modernization that tends to spook drug lords more than soldiers do. Last week...
...with Mexican President Felipe Calderón and his government to break the power of the drug-trafficking organizations that operate in Mexico and far too often target and kill the innocent." Calderón for his part called them "grave crimes" and pledged a thorough investigation - though most narco killings in Mexico today go unsolved. Because of recent narco-related threats, U.S. consulates in Mexico had already begun letting employees take their families out of the country, and that process is being stepped up this week...
...recent years may have been due to the dominance of one local overlord. Paramilitary leader Diego Fernando Murillo, a.k.a. Don Berna, had a monopoly over the drug trade, ruling his empire and followers even from prison. But when Don Berna was extradited to the U.S. in 2008, mid-level narco-traffickers started fighting to fill the power vacuum the capo had left. "Little cats became tigers," says a former drug trafficker. Many demobilized paramilitary fighters picked up arms again instead of pursuing the work training and education opportunities offered by the government...
Today, the two leaders of the Office of Envigado, whose aliases are "Sebastian" and "Valenciano," are feuding for total control over its drug-trafficking network. "There are two bosses, and there can only be one," says "Eduardo," a pseudonym given to a narco-trafficker ruling over several of Medellín's most violent neighborhoods, who spoke on condition of anonymity. As an estimated 150 to 300 criminal bands fight over control and turf, "the civilian population is caught in the middle," says Ana Patricia Aristizábal, the human-rights delegate of Medellín's ombudsman's office...