Free Republic

two cities that, while separated only by a narrow river, are rapidly growing further apart. Ciudad Juarez is undergoing wrenching change as dysfunctional state institutions confront powerful, hyper-violent criminal groups. El Paso has witnessed an unprecedented buildup of the U.S. government’s security and law enforcement apparatus. The flow of migrants from Mexico into the El Paso region has nearly ground to a halt due to greatly increased U.S. security-force presence, the poor U.S. economy, and the danger that organized-crime groups pose for migrants on the Mexican side of the border. The flow of drugs, meanwhile, continues at or near the...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Three U.S. citizens were among those killed when gunmen attacked buses in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, said a U.S. State Department official said on Saturday. The three were traveling for the holidays when they and several other passengers on the bus were killed by gunmen on Thursday, according to the U.S. official and local media. The incident was one of several that day in which gunmen attacked busses in the eastern state, a major oil export hub that has lately become a flashpoint for drug gang violence. On Friday, the tortured bodies of 10...

Insight: Violence creeping into Mexican capital By Ioan Grillo | Reuters MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - In a nation wracked by drug violence, this sprawling capital city of more than 20 million has been an oasis of relative peace. But the key to that calm - an informal truce among rival gangs - may be cracking. On a sunny afternoon this month, a group of gunmen drove into a slum in the north of Mexico City, the streets packed with shoppers and children leaving school. In plain sight, the killers lined three crack cocaine dealers against a wall and shot them...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — When convoys of soldiers or federal police move through the scrubland of northern Mexico, the Zetas drug cartel knows they are coming. The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a "halcon," or hawk. The radio signal travels deep into the arid countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There, the 8-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) dark-green branches of the rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a...

MEXICO CITY – The Mexican army says it has dealt a significant blow to the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel with the arrest of the cartel leader's security chief. The army says special military forces seized computer files and other data when they detained Felipe Cabrera Sarabia. But Chief Army spokesman Gen. Ricardo Trevillo offered few details about the hunt for cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Trevillo told a news conference Monday that Cabrera was captured without a shot being fired Friday in the capital of Sinaloa state, headquarters of the cartel allegedly run by