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MEXICO CITY — Gunmen massacred 20 people on Sunday night in a suspected gangland attack at a clandestine cockfighting venue in western Mexico, authorities said, in one of the worst mass shootings under the current government. The killings took place in Las Tinajas in the state of Michoacan, where the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has been fighting local gangs for control of drug routes. “It was a massacre of one group by another,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told a regular news conference, expressing his regret at the deaths. He blamed criminal gangs in the area for the...

he U.S. has suspended imports of Mexican avocados—as the lucrative fruit continues to play a key role in the turf wars between drug cartels. Mexico's Agriculture Ministry said U.S. health authorities notified Mexico of their decision to suspend avocado shipments "until further notice" after a U.S. plant inspector working in Uruapan in Michoacán, a major producing region of avocados, received a threatening phone call. In a statement, the ministry said the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) is carrying out an investigation "to assess the threat and determine the necessary mitigation measures to guarantee the...

A convoy of vigilantes snakes along a road in western Mexico, vowing to defend their avocado orchards from gangs sowing terror in a country reeling from a new wave of bloodshed. Armed with assault rifles and other firearms, the masked men travel between plantations and maintain checkpoints in Ario de Rosales in Michoacan state, the scene of a bloody cartel turf war. Before they began patrolling the area, residents lived in fear of kidnapping, extortion and theft of avocados, according to a member of the self-defense group Pueblos Unidos, which says it has 700 members.

Alejandra Frausto, the Mexican government’s Secretary of Culture, lamented the March 7 destruction of the church on social media.MORELIA, Mexico — St. James the Apostle church in Nurio, in the Mexican state of Michoacán, was destroyed by a fire on Sunday. The church building which dates to 1639, contained historical works of indigenous art preserved there for centuries. Its exterior walls are standing, but the roof and interior have been gutted. Nurio is located about 80 miles west of Morelia. Alejandra Frausto, the Mexican government’s Secretary of Culture, lamented the March 7 destruction of the church on Twitter. “Devastating images...

The massacre happened in Uruapan, in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, on Monday, according to the state’s attorney general’s office. Four people walked into the amusement arcade, asked questions of some patrons and began firing with military-grade weapons, the attorney general’s office said in a statement. The attackers were apparently searching for specific targets, but then opened fire indiscriminately on customers, the Associated Press reported.

Five police vehicles were traveling through the municipality of Aguililla in the early morning when they were ambushed by more than 30 armed individuals, according to a statement from the Michoacan state prosecutor. The attackers, in five "presumably armored" vehicles, opened fire with high caliber weapons, said the prosecutor, Adrián López Solís. Security forces dispatched to the scene found officers slain and injured with bullet wounds, their vehicles shot up and two of them on fire, the statement said. Images published on social media showed posters left on police vehicles signed "CJNG" -- the initials of the Jalisco New Generation...

All five states -- Tamaulipas on the U.S. border and Sinaloa, Colima, Michoacan and Guerrero on the Pacific coast -- are hotspots of drug cartel activity, either hosting trafficking routes or extensive drug-crop cultivation. The new warning system designates the states as a "level 4" risk, the highest level of potential danger. Mexico as a whole has a level 2 rating, meaning Americans should "exercise increased caution" because of concerns about crime. But an additional 11 Mexican states got a level 3 warning Wednesday, which urges people to "reconsider travel" there. Mexico has 31 states in all. Those states where...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The governor of the embattled western state of Michoacan has left his post for health reasons, the Mexican government announced Wednesday. Mexico's presidency said in a statement that Michoacan Gov. Fausto Vallejo met with President Enrique Pena Nieto to inform him of his decision. Vallejo is a member of Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party. Neither the presidency nor Vallejo have said what ails him. Vallejo, 65, took a leave of absence last year to have a kidney transplant and then Michoacan state interior secretary Jose Jesus Reyna took control of the government. Reyna was charged last...

Mexico has disarmed more than 1,200 local police officers suspected of colluding with drug traffickers in Michoacan state and arrested 38 members of the notorious Knights Templar drug cartel active in the region. Among those arrested was Jesus Vasquez Macias, 37, who goes by the alias "El Toro," a leading figure in the cartel, Monte Alejandro Rubido Garcia, a top federal security official, announced late Sunday. Garcia said federal forces have taken control of 27 municipalities in the western Mexico state and disarmed 1,209 of the local police officers. The officers will undergo investigations, Garcia said. They are accused of...

[Members of a self-defense group guard a road near Nueva Italia, Mexico, Jan. 15. The government wants the groups to give up their guns, but locals, including many priests, say the government has been unable to keep them safe. Members of a self-defense group guard a road near Nueva Italia, Mexico, Jan. 15. The government wants the groups to give up their guns, but locals, including many priests, say the government has been unable to keep them safe.] NUEVA ITALIA, Mexico - A Mexican bishop has rebuked the federal government for sending soldiers to grab the guns of the...

Mexico's top security officials promised Tuesday that a new federal offensive to rescue towns besieged by the Knights Templar drug cartel in western Michoacan state would stay "until there is security and peace for all state residents." Interior Secretary Miguel Osorio Chong and his national security team met with local officials in the state capital of Morelia at a time of escalating tensions in Michoacan, where communities mistrustful of state authorities have been creating their own vigilante forces for protection against the cartels. Michoacan is the Mexican state most visibly dominated by a drug cartel. Gunmen in vehicles marked only...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Police raided three teachers colleges on Monday in the western state of Michoacan, where dozens of students had been hijacking buses and delivery trucks for a week to protest curriculum changes. Masked protesters battled police with rocks and fireworks. Student involved in the campus takeovers burned a dozen trucks and buses before authorities swept in, detaining 176 strikers. Ten police officers were injured, three seriously, the Michoacan state government reported. The massive police raids early Monday indicate patience is running out with campus takeovers, which have become common and often violent in Mexico. In recent weeks,...

Mysteries come in many forms: ancient, modern, unsolved, and unexplained. But the world's most mysterious buildings are a physical force to be reckoned with. They've become popularized on websites full of user-generated and editor-curated like Abandoned-places.com, weburbanist.com, and AtlasObscura.com, an exhaustive database of the unusual. "In an age where it sometimes seems like there's nothing left to discover, our site is for people who still believe in exploration," says AtlasObscura.com cofounder Joshua Foer. Our definition of mysterious is broad and varied. Some buildings on our list are being eaten alive by the earth, such as a lava-buried church in the...

MORELIA, Mexico (AP) — Authorities in western Mexico say two men wielding automatic rifles have opened fire on a group of men from a town that last year defied illegal loggers and drug traffickers, killing eight. Michoacan state prosecutors' spokesman Jonathan Arredondo says another four men were wounded in the Wednesday attack in the town of Cheran.

MEXICO CITY, Sept 27 (Reuters) - The mayor of a small town in western Mexico was found on Monday stoned to death in the third attack on a public official in the country in less than a week, local authorities said. The bodies of Gustavo Sanchez, mayor of Tancitaro in Michoacan state, and an aide were found, officials said. "It appears they stoned them to death," a source from the local prosecutor's office said on condition of anonymity. Local media reported that the bodies were found in the back of a flat-bed truck. There was no immediate indication whether the...

MEXICO CITY — Gunmen killed 15 federal police officers Monday in separate attacks in two drug-plagued states, marking one of the bloodiest days for security forces since the government stepped up its fight with drug cartels. Twelve officers died in an ambush near a high school in the western state of Michoacan, while assailants killed three more officers in a northern border state. The latest in a series of mass slayings came as President Felipe Calderon defended his crackdown on traffickers in an essay on his office's website. He vowed he won't back down despite criticism that violence has only...

MORELIA, Mexico — A government media tour to promote tourism in southwestern Mexico went awry when machete-wielding Indians briefly kidnapped 13 reporters on the trip, officials said Sunday. Fifteen people trying to film a beer commercial were also abducted. Nobody was harmed during the abductions Saturday, said a Michoacan state government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media. Government officials were still negotiating Sunday to recover the cameras and other media equipment stolen by the Nahua Indians. The indigenous communal landowners were upset that Grupo Modelo, the maker of Corona...

Public Safety Secretary Minerva Bautista, the top security official in Mexico's western state of Michoacan where the cult-like drug cartel La Familia has been engaged in an insurgency against the government, was wounded today in an ambush which killed four others as reported by Gustavo Ruiz for The Associated Press: She was traveling in a bullet-resistant sport utility vehicle. State Attorney General Jesus Montejano told the local Milenio television station that the attackers used assault rifles, grenades, a grenade launcher and a powerful .50-caliber sniper rifle whose rounds are capable of penetrating bullet-resistant materials. * * * The dead included...

La Familia quickly set itself apart as a kind of criminal organization not seen before in Mexico. The cartel employed a public relations specialist known as El Tio, or the Uncle, and presented itself as a semi-legitimate company that hired only Michoacan residents and worked for the benefit of the mostly impoverished state. .... Rafael Pequeño García, chief of anti-drug operations at Mexico's Public Security Ministry, said La Familia filled a vacuum in social services and community development. "When you needed help, you didn't go to the government. You went to the narcos," he said. "They are a parallel structure,...

The two teenage boys had arrived in Houston from Mexico last week, hoping to find work and better lives for themselves. On Sunday, they went with an older brother for an early morning fishing trip to one of his favorite fishing holes near Lake Houston. Now, their older sister is making arrangements to have all three shipped home for burial in Mexico’s interior. The drowned bodies of the young men were recovered from a tributary of Lake Houston by Houston Police Department divers Monday afternoon, as their relatives, friends and neighbors watched from behind police lines. Police said they do...