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TTAG started the week with a post reporting that Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s silence on the ATF Gunwalker scandal—in which agents of the United States government let smugglers transport some 3000 guns into the hands of vicious Mexican drug thugs—was down to the fact that his administration was in bed with the Sinaloa drug cartel. And that the U.S. DEA was also giving the Sinaloas a pass. As predicted, Sinaloa member Ismael Zambada has filed a brief in federal court fingering the feds for their involvement in his gang’s activities. [Click here for the pdf] And here’s the kicker ....

ACAPULCO, Mexico — Authorities say a clash between soldiers and gunmen in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco left three people dead and caused a fire that destroyed a supermarket, movie complex and stores in a shopping center. The Public Safety Department in Guerrero state says a soldier and two gunmen were killed in the clash early Monday along a major thoroughfare in Acapulco. Acapulco police also found two human heads along a main avenue in the exclusive Las Brisas neighborhood.

ALAMO - Sadness fills the home of the Valdez family. The loss of a loved one has them holding on to each other for strength in these trying times. Elizabeth Vega is the younger sister of Robert Valdez, a man murdered in cold blood south of the border. Vega tells us her family is in unimaginable pain. She said, "They are distraught they can't believe it. They are still in shock." Vega says her brother went to Mexico to visit a girlfriend. He was found stabbed 10 times; he was also run over by a car. Vega tells CHANNEL 5...

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's human rights commission said that more than 5,000 people have disappeared in the country since President Felipe Calderón began the fight against organized crime, La Jornada newspaper reported Sunday. The report from the National Commission on Human Rights reported that from 2006 to 2011, it recorded a total of 5,397 people who have been reported "missing or absent." The commission said that 3,457 were men and 1,885 women, while there was no data provided on 55 cases. The data collected is provided by relatives. The information also includes victims of kidnapping and economic migrants whose whereabouts...

MEXICO CITY — Fifty-nine bodies were found buried Wednesday in a series of pits in the northern Mexico state of Tamaulipas, near the site where suspected drug gang members massacred 72 migrants last summer, officials said. Security forces stumbled on the site as they were investigating reports that passengers had been pulled off several buses by gunmen in the area in what may have been an attempt at forced recruitment by a drug gang. State and federal authorities conducted a raid that netted several suspected kidnappers and freed five kidnap victims. Then they made a grisly discovery - a total...

It's jaw dropping. "Many of our country's safest communities are actually at the border...." [VIDEO AT SITE] Two Americans were gunned down while waiting to cross one of those safest borders A mixed martial arts fighter was one of two Americans gunned down in an execution-style killing near the San Ysidro border crossing Monday morning. Mexican authorities say Sergio Salcido Luna and Kevin Joel Romero were waiting in their company truck while waiting to cross into the U.S. before dawn. A gunman walked up to the white Mazda truck with California license plates and opened fire at least five...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Using unusually blunt language, FBI Director Robert Mueller told US legislators on Capitol Hill Wednesday that there is an "unprecedented" level of violence in Mexico linked to the country's drug wars. "I would not call it a full-scale war," Mueller told members of the House of Representatives as he discussed his agency's 2012 budget. "I would say there are full-scale warring factions that utilize homicide as a mechanism of retaliation, staking out one's turf, retribution, that have contributed substantially to the number of deaths in Mexico," Mueller said. There have been some 35,000 homicides in the past...

Four people were killed during a shootout between Mexican Military and alleged members of organized crime Sunday morning in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The shooting happened shortly after 2 a.m. after soldiers tried to stop two vehicles carrying several men for a routine inspection, according to a news release from SEDENA, Mexico’s ministry of defense. The victims, whose identities were not disclosed, apparently shot at soldiers, who “were then forced to retaliate.” After the shooting, Mexican authorities seized two vehicles, six long guns, 74 magazines and 1,110 cartridges of various calibers, officials said.

Colombia's armed forces say they have killed a Farc rebel leader who acted as the group's main contact with Mexico's drug cartels. The rebel known as Oliver Solarte controlled drugs and weapons smuggling operations in southern Colombia, President Juan Manuel Santos said. He died in an attack on rebel positions near the border with Ecuador. It is the latest in a series of blows to the guerrillas, who have lost many of their top leaders in recent years.Farc setbacks President Santos said the death of Oliver Solarte was an "important blow" to the left-wing group. ""I want to tell them...

It was tough picking a Liberal to lampoon for today’s column. Yes, children, the chum slick was thick this week, and I was tyrannized with too many options upon which to opine for my 900-word screed. For instance, one of the things I wanted to write about was how James O’Keefe handed NPR their testicles in his undercover video slam-dance that finally showed America these taxpayer-funded weasels for the anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti- Second Amendment, Muslim Brotherhood courting radio rats we’ve always known them to be. That was a tempting topic. Yep, should I spotlight how we now have these “elites”...

Note: The following text is a quote: Travel Warning United States Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs Washington, DC 20520 This information is current as of today, Sun Mar 14 2010 15:23:05 GMT-0700 (PDT). MEXICO March 14, 2010 The Department of State has issued this Travel Warning to inform U.S. citizens traveling to and living in Mexico of concerns about the security situation in Mexico, and that it has authorized the departure of the dependents of U.S. government personnel from U.S. consulates in the Northern Mexican border cities of Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and Matamoros until...

(CNN) -- Two additional suspects have surfaced in the fatal shooting of an American man on a lake that straddles the United States and Mexico last September, Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez told CNN. David Hartley was allegedly shot on the Mexican side of Falcon Lake. He and his wife, Tiffany, were on personal watercraft on the lake when gunmen opened fire on them, authorities say. The killing remains unsolved. Gonzalez said officials would not release the new suspects' names.

A pitiful, malnourished abandoned drug horse, used to move drugs across the Mexican border into Arizona, was so weak it kept trying to sit back on its hind legs because its front legs were too weak to hold it up, according to [the] NY TIMES. Brad Cowan, a 28 year livestock officer with the Arizona Department of Agriculture, and his partner had to carry it into a horse trailer. “I’d get angry when I’d see the condition these horses were in,” he said. Horrible sores from poorly fitting make shift saddles become infected, and their hooves get severely cut and...

More civilians were killed last year in Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city across the border from El Paso, Texas, than were killed in all of Afghanistan. There were 3,111 civilians murdered in the city of Juarez in 2010 and 2,421 in the entire country of Afghanistan. On a per capita basis, a civilian was 30 times more likely to be murdered last year in Juarez, where there are 1,328,017 inhabitants according to Mexico’s 2010 census, than in Afghanistan, where there are 29,121,286 people according to the CIA World Factbook. The number of civilians killed in Afghanistan was compiled by the...

Are El Paso residents in denial about the daily war and slaughter going on just across the river? And, just why is Obama ignoring the war just across the river from the United States? It is past time to seal off our borders. Juarez Mexico morgues literally ran out of room for the bodies last week, and violence is creeping across our border. The Juarez and the Sinaloa cartels are behind the slaughter. In one of the deadliest three days on record, fifty three people were killed in possible narco related murders. Fourteen people, including a police officer were killed...

MEXICO CITY - As his fellow officer was dying in the seat beside him after gunmen ambushed their vehicle this week, U.S. special agent Victor Avila, wounded himself, telephoned the U.S. Embassy here to shout that they were under attack. Avila and Jaime Zapata were traveling in an armored Chevrolet Suburban with diplomatic license plates on a popular four-lane highway four hours north of Mexico City. They were returning from a meeting with fellow agents in Monterrey, who had met them at a halfway point near San Luis Potosi to exchange technical equipment. According to U.S. officials who spoke on...

On Feb. 15, gunmen on a highway in central Mexico stopped a vehicle with U.S. diplomatic license plates and shot the two men inside. Killed in the attack was Jaime Zapata, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. A second ICE agent was wounded. In response to the attack, U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) declared that "this tragic event is a game changer" that "should be a long overdue wake-up call for the Obama administration that there is a war on our nation's doorstep."

One US immigration and customs agent was killed and a second was wounded in a suspected ambush in Mexico. Life has become horribly cheap in Mexico's drug wars, but when the victim is an American special agent, the price rises sharply. Tuesday's shootings have forced US-Mexican relations up Washington's list of priorities, even as the Obama administration responds to the tumultuous events in the Middle East. "If it turns out that these two agents were directly targeted, it changes everything," says one US law enforcement official. ICE has about 30 agents in Mexico, and those on permanent assignment are authorised...

The female police chief of Guadalupe, Mexico, has not been seen or heard from since being abducted two days before Christmas. Erika Gandara was a former radio dispatcher for the police department in the town of 9,000, which is just across the U.S. border, one mile from Fabens, Texas. The previous police chief was murdered and decapitated. ...Many of the houses in Guadalupe have been burned down by the cartels.

In news across the border, the bodies of two men tortured and killed, then put on display at one of Nuevo Laredos busy intersections. We have to warn you, you may find these images disturbing. According to Mexican reports the bodys of these two men were found around midnight in an area on Paseo Colon Boulavard near a hotdog stand. That's where we're told passerbys who spotted the men stopped to try and help them only to discover they were already dead. The men were found in sports clothing with no shoes. A message was placed above there heads blaming...