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Violence along the southern border has gotten so out of control that both Mexican and American journalists have stopped reporting it out of fear that drug cartels will retaliate against them and their families. This means Americans will be kept in the dark about the crisis along the porous and increasingly dangerous Mexican border. We certainly can’t expect the truth from the government. Remember that the nation’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, insists that the region is “as secure as it has ever been.” This delusional assessment has been repeated by Napolitano over and over again in a seemingly...

A Mexican officer claims the military is indeed at war with drug cartels for territory in northern Mexico and that vast numbers of children have been left homeless and hungry by the war in the seemingly unreachable cartel-controlled territory. The officer spoke with me in person on the condition of anonymity. When I asked him to explain which cartels were fighting in Nuevo Laredo, he explained that things were not so simple and not so easily defined. The officer did not speak in law enforcement terms but instead used military terms. It grew clear that the troubles facing Mexico had...

There are so many killer children working for the Mexican drug cartels that perhaps kiddy network Nickleodeon should launch a comedy series titled I Was A Teenage Hitman or something (hey, it's already making the mob movie Nicky Deuce). The tortured and slain body of a 13-year-old boy who last month confessed to his involvement with ten murders for Los Zetas was found in the Central Mexican state of Zacatecas as reported by Rafael Romo for CNN: "After his February arrest, the Federal Police released the boy into the custody of the Mexican Attorney General's Office, which later set him...

Hundreds of thousands of kilograms (pounds) of cocaine are seized en route to the U.S. every year, and the Defense Department estimates about 850 metric tons of cocaine departed South America last year toward the U.S., down 20 percent in just a year. The most recent U.S. survey found cocaine use fell significantly, from 2.4 million people in 2006 to 1.4 million in 2011. ... Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield, head of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs said the goal is to make it so hard for traffickers to move drugs to the U.S. that...

Forget about blessing the beasts and the children; sometimes the children are just beasts. Two teen girls -- one 13, the other 15 -- have confessed to gunning down a man in Guatemala City as reported by the Deccan Herald: "Criminal organizations are hiring and training minors as contract killers to exploit provisions in Guatemalan law that exempt minors from prosecution for such crimes, Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez said." Gutemalan crime groups must be pulling a page from the playbook of the Mexican drug cartels. In December 2010 Mexican authorities arrested Edgar Jimenez a/k/a El Ponchis or The Cloak, an...

America has almost 12 million illegal immigrants. Many of them came here on visas and never left. But about 60 percent of them walked in from just one country -- Mexico. Though the stalled Obama Economy has caused about 900,000 to go home since 2007, there are still about 6 million Mexicans living in the United States who've sneaked across our borders. Everyone from Marco Rubio to John McCain and our golfer in chief are trying to figure out how to deal with the illegal immigrants we have already and prevent future waves of Mexican migrants. But no one seems...

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the Forbes-listed billionaire who heads the Sinaloa cartel, may have died in a shootout with rival narcos in Guatemala's northern Peten province as reported by Sonia Perez for The Associated Press. However, it's still too early to pop the champagne, dance in the streets and celebrate with joy on the hopeful news because "officials stressed late Thursday that they had not yet found any bodies or even confirmed a shootout happened." Guatemala is among the major transit points for cocaine smuggled from Colombia through Central America and Mexico before reaching crazed druggies in the United States....

A drug kingpin in Mexico who has never set foot in Chicago has been named the city's new Public Enemy No. 1 — the same notorious label assigned to Al Capone at the height of the Prohibition-era gang wars. The Chicago Crime Commission announced the move Thursday, saying it considers Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman even more menacing than Capone because he's the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, which supplies most of the narcotics sold in the city. "Of the two, Guzman is by far the greater threat. ... And he has more power and financial capability than Capone ever dreamed...

Last Thursday Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was gunned down outside the local courthouse by two men in tactical gear who remain at large as reported by Frank Heinz for NBC in Dallas-Fort Worth. Hasse prosecuted organized crime cases, and was likely targeted for retribution. Investigators are looking at the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas which is a major methamphetamine distributor for the Gulf cartel as reported by Dave Gibson for the Examiner. The drug cartels freelance their retail distribution and enforcement work to local street and prison gangs across the United States, and have recently been targeting both...

"In less than a month, they have done something that the army and state and federal police haven't been able to do in years," said local resident Lorena Morales Castro, who waited in a line of cars at a checkpoint Friday. "They are our anonymous heroes." Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/01/21/vigilante-squads-spring-up-in-mexico-in-fight-against-cartels/#ixzz2IlDpMg3b

Tired of the scourge of organized crime, civilians in two rural towns in southwestern Mexico have taken matters into their own hands over the last two weeks. Since the second week of January, around 800 masked and armed residents have set up vigilante groups who are manning checkpoints, imposing curfews and arresting alleged criminals. This unofficial police force says they are providing security for the municipalities of Ayutla de los Libres and Teconoapa in Guerrero state, an area that has been hit hard by Mexico's drug violence. More than 70,000 people killed across the country since 2006 and residents in...

11 killed in Mexican drugs clashes AFP - Police and army troops squared off with presumed hitmen working for drug traffickers in two deadly incidents in Mexico that left 11 gunmen dead, authorities said. In Puente Nacional, in the eastern state of Veracruz, armed men attacked army troops who responded, killing six of the gunmen. And in Culiacan, in northwestern Sinaloa state, police and army troops clashed with gunmen, and five more gunmen were killed in that incident. Mexico's relentless drug violence has claimed more than 70,000 lives across the country since 2006.

Gangs need gun control, not the Law Abiding Gun Owners Gangs don't understand gun control or laws See all 4 photos Source: FBI My Goal For This Hub My goal is to shed some light on a area of violent crimes that is going unnoticed during the media coverage on gun control. That light should shine on the gangs and gang members operating their illegal businesses in the United States and across its borders. They use guns and violence in protecting and conducting these illegal businesses which are in the multiple billions of dollars a year. The statements shown...

In the past few years they have taken control of Mexico’s Coahuila region in the north, along the border of Texas, and are now starting to thrive like never before. Los Zetas covertly entered the region, and under the threat of extreme violence for those who didn’t cooperate they swiftly brought every aspect of commerce, politics, and business under their control in less than three years.This expansion was not undertaken to increase its drug trafficking or prostitution ring operations, but rather to enter into the business of coal mining.

At Stratfor, we follow Mexico's criminal cartels closely. In fact, we are currently finishing our 2013 cartel forecast, which will be released later this month. As we analyze the Mexican cartels, we recognize that to understand their actions and the interactions between them, we need to acknowledge that at their core they are businesses and not politically motivated militant organizations. This means that although violence between and within the cartels grabs much of the spotlight, a careful analysis of the cartels must look beyond the violence to the business factors that drive their interests -- and their bankrolls.  There are several distinct business factors that have...

Drug cartels are all over the place in Mexico, but the Los Zetas have gained the title of the most technologically advanced and dangerous cartel in the country. They’re ex-paramilitary, tooled up like a miniature army, and have even set up their own radio communications network to organize all their horrible, murderous, people-trafficking business. Los Zetas' radio network is the rock of the low-level operations carried out by the "street-soldiers." It keeps daily activity running smoothly as well as providing a quick method of communication for the network of lookouts monitoring police movement and making sure the cartel is always...

The Mexican drug cartels once again have taken deadly aim against U.S. law enforcement. This time the narco terrorists intentionally rammed their smuggling panga boat against an approaching Coast Guard inflatable which resulted in the death of Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne III and the injury of another guardsman after they fell into the sea off the southern California coast as reported by the Los Angeles Times. Two suspects have been detained. The narco insurgents from Mexico increasingly are targeting U.S. officials on both sides of the border: last August two CIA officials were injured in a shooting ambush against...

The woman mayor who was kidnapped and murdered by a Mexican drug gang pleaded with her attackers for her young daughter’s life, it emerged today. Maria Santos Gorrostieta, who had already survived two assassination attempts, was driving the child to school at around 8.30am when she was ambushed by a car in the city of Morelia. The 36-year-old was hauled from her vehicle and physically assaulted as horrified witnesses watched, according to newspaper El Universal. They described how she begged for her child to be left alone and then appeared to get into her abductors’ car willingly. The little girl...

A new congressional report from the House Homeland Security Committee Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management ties Middle East terror organizations to Mexican drug cartels. The report, released Thursday, is titled “A Line in the Sand: Countering Crime, Violence and Terror at the Southwest Border.” It found that the “Southwest border has now become the greatest threat of terrorist infiltration into the United States.” It specifically cites a “growing influence” from Iranian and Hezbollah terror forces in Latin America. “The presence of Hezbollah in Latin America is partially explained by the large Lebanese diaspora in South America,” the report reads....

With little pushback from law enforcement within its borders the United States increasingly is serving as a global distribution hub for the Mexican drug cartels. Last week police in Melbourne, Australia busted two suspects including a reputed "high ranking member of the Comanchero Motorcycle Club" for their alleged roles in receiving cocaine shipments from an unidentified Mexican drug cartel in the United States as reported by Andrew O'Reilly for Fox News: "while it is unclear which cartel the outlaw motorcycle club members were working with, it is well known that Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán's Sinaloa cartel has a major stake...