Mexican Drug War

A Mexican newspaper in the heartland of the country's drug prohibition war has asked traffickers for guidance on whether it should publish stories on the conflict. The killing of a 21-year-old photographer last week prompted the newspaper to run a front-page editorial asking: "What do you want from us?"

Gunmen attacked two newspaper photographers Thursday in the drug prohibition-torn border city of Ciudad Juarez, killing one and seriously wounding the other. Mexican journalists are increasingly under siege from drug traffickers seeking to control the flow of information. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based watchdog group, said in a recent report that at least 22 Mexican journalists have been killed since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon intensified a crackdown on drug traffickers by deploying tens of thousands of troops and federal police across the country.

No mas. That's what the police force in the Mexican town of Purepero said when all 45 of it members resigned en masse. Purepero isn't the first town to experience a mass resignation of officials afraid to continue their role in the nation's prohibitionist war on drug traffickers.

Mexico became a manufacturing mecca thanks, in part, to its inexpensive labor and proximity to the massive U.S. market. But there is a new reality on the ground in that country these days: a surge in violence tied to the prohibition-based war on drug traffickers that Mexico's President Felipe Calderon mounted after his election in 2006. The result has been a wave of kidnappings, extortion and murder that is threatening the country's economic health and causing multinationals to examine closely how they operate and invest in Mexico.

On the bullet-ridden streets of Mexico, weary residents ask a pertinent question about the recent arrests of some leading alleged drug traffickers -- do they really mean the Mexican government is regaining control or will they only lead to more bloodshed? GlobalPost's Ioan Grillo tracks the string of high-profile arrests, but concludes they won't end the drug war.

Mexico is celebrating its 200th anniversary as an independent nation and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican revolution. But some of the celebrations are being scaled back as the country is being swept by a wave of drug prohibition violence.

Old, wealthy men held hostage and humiliated; paramilitary cops in ski masks taking dudes into custody; people walking the streets in body armor, automatic weapons out; and all the dead bodies and shot-up cars. Facing a situation like that, it’s no surprise that Blog Del Narco’s author, who’s not even 30 years old, would want to stay anonymous. Which is why it’s remarkable that he’s given an interview to Boing Boing describing what it’s like to work in a wealthy city turned urban warzone.

Border Patrol agents in Texas were fired upon after chasing a suspected drug smuggler back to the banks of the Rio Grande close to Anzalduas Park. Though rarely reported by the mainstream press, armed conflicts along the border with Mexican drug smugglers are becoming a rather common event.

Over the past weekend Mexico saw a proliferation of drug prohibition violence, including the slaying of 25 people in the border city of Ciudad Juarez and a prison break that saw 85 inmates escape.

The meandering network of pipes, wells and tankers belonging to the gigantic state oil company Pemex has long been an easy target of crooks and drug traffickers who siphon off natural gas, gasoline and even crude, robbing the Mexican treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Now the prohibition-created drug traffickers have taken sabotage to a new level: They've hobbled key operations in parts of the Burgos Basin, home to Mexico's biggest natural-gas fields.