Fox News – Three reporters on assignment with Arab news channel Al Jazeera were attacked in Navolato, a city in Sinaloa. The reporters – a Spanish, a Briton and a Mexican – had their vehicle, gear and cell phones taken, but they were not harmed in the incident.
Category Archives: Crime
Mass grave with 10 bodies found in Colima
UPI – Gov. José Ignacio Peralta Sánchez of Colima said at least 10 bodies were found in a mass grave near the town of Queseria on the border with Jalisco. Peralta Sánchez said that though it is unclear in which state jurisdiction the bodies were found, authorities need to establish not only in which state the bodies were recovered, but where the killings were committed.
Search underway for more bodies at Veracruz mass grave
AP – Volunteer searchers pounded metal probes into hard-packed earth at a clandestine grave site in Mexico’s Veracruz state on Thursday, redoubling efforts after receiving a tip that hundreds more bodies may be buried there.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/tips-back-search-mexico-mass-grave-site-46475039
Prison riot leaves 2 dead in Monterrey
BBC – A fresh riot broke out in Cadereyta prison near the northern Mexican city of Monterrey on Tuesday. Two inmates died and 13 were injured as prisoners set alight cells and attacked the jail’s pharmacy in protest over a lack of food and water caused by a riot the previous day.
Ex-Chihuahua governor flees to Texas
AP – Chihuahua Gov. Javier Corral said during a news conference that ex-Gov. Cesar Duarte has gone to the border city of El Paso and is considered “a fugitive from justice.” Corral said officials would seek an international arrest and extradition order. Duarte is suspected of heading a ring of corruption for personal enrichment.
Indigenous Catholic priest killed in Nayarit
AP – Mexico’s Catholic council of bishops says a priest has been killed in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit.The council identifies Felipe Altamirano Carrillo as an Indigenous priest and says he was killed early Monday.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/03/28/priest-killed-in-mexico-pacific-coast-state-nayarit.html
Scores protest slaying of journalist in Tamaulipas
VOA – About 100 journalists and free-speech supporters demonstrated Saturday to protest the killing of a Mexican reporter gunned down in the northern state of Chihuahua on Thursday. Miroslava Breach was the third journalist to be killed this month in one of the most dangerous countries for media workers. Those present held up signs with slogans like “Killing reporters doesn’t kill the truth.”
http://www.voanews.com/a/scores-protest-slaying-journalist-northern-mexico/3782199.html
Another Mexican journalist killed – the 3rd this month
LAT -Mexican journalist Miroslava Breach spent her final days documenting murders. On Thursday, Breach became a victim of the growing violence in Mexico that she chronicled so thoroughly. The 54-year-old mother of three was killed as she left her home in the capital city of Chihuahua — the third journalist slain in Mexico this month.
http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-journalist-murders-20170323-story.html
29 inmates tunnel out of Tamaulipas prison
AP – A group of 29 inmates have tunneled their way out of a prison in the northern Mexico border state of Tamaulipas. One of the inmates shot to death a passing motorist in an apparent carjacking. Twelve of the 29 have been recaptured.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/29-inmates-tunnel-northern-mexico-prison-46332480
How drug cartels get U.S. guns into Mexico
Houston Chronicle – Guns aren’t so easy to get in Mexico, but in the United States, it’s a whole different story. That’s why, federal prosecutors say, organizations like the Gulf Cartel and other drug selling operations turn to buyers in America to help them assemble arsenals they otherwise wouldn’t be able to accumulate.
http://www.chron.com/crime/article/To-get-guns-cartels-use-straw-buyers-in-U-S-11017900.php
3 bodies found in coolers in Cabo San Lucas
CTV – Mexican authorities say the remains of three people have been found in the Pacific resort city of Cabo San Lucas. The Baja California Sur state prosecutor’s office reports that the remains of two men and a woman were discovered late Sunday inside two ice chests left on a sidewalk.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/mexico-3-bodies-found-in-coolers-near-tourist-beach-1.3332663
Another journalist killed in Veracruz
CBS – An attacker shot a journalist to death Sunday in Veracruz, adding to the toll in a region plagued by drug gang violence and allegations of government corruption. Journalist Ricardo Monlui is at least the 11th journalist to be slain in just over six years in Veracruz state, but the first since former Gov. Javier Duarte quit last year and vanished in the face of corruption charges.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/journalist-shot-veracruz-mexico-ricardo-monlui/
250 human skulls found in Veracruz grave
NYT – A mass grave discovered in the Mexican state of Veracruz contained more than 250 human skulls, most likely the victims of criminal drug cartels. Veracruz, on Mexico’s Gulf coast, has been the epicenter of battles among the country’s drug gangs. The remains found at the site indicated that the victims might have been killed years ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/world/americas/mexico-veracruz-mass-grave.html
Illegal wildlife trade booming across border
National Geographic – The southern border of the U.S. is a hot zone for wildlife smuggling, and while President Trump has vowed to stop illegal immigration from Mexico, it’s unclear what he intends to do to thwart the flow of illicit wildlife.
In Mexico, deadly turf war erupts in vacuum left by ‘El Chapo’
USAToday
Gangland-style murders are a daily event in Culiacán, the capital of Mexico’s Sinaloa state, where businesses close early, schools suspend classes and people must take precautions to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.
The extradition of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to the United States in January was supposed to curb the violent drug wars raging south of the border. Instead, rival factions of Guzmán’s organization have ignited a new deadly turf war for control of the drug lord’s rudderless empire.
“It is a nightmare but one we have lived many times before,” said Rosita Méndez, a mother of two young children who lives in Culiacán.
Mexican Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos acknowledged at a recent news conference that Guzmán’s criminal organization “is fighting an internal struggle for control of the organization due to the absence of its leader.”
A rival faction within the cartel headed by a former lieutenant of El Chapo, former state police official Dámaso López, aka “El Licenciado” or “the Graduate,” is believed to have killed Guzmán’s sister and wounded his two adult sons in a shootout in western Mexico earlier in February.
“It appears that we are seeing a generational transition from El Chapo to his sons,” said Alejandro Hope, an independent security expert in Mexico City. “It is the greatest such power shift within the organization for many years, and all hell is breaking loose.”
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/in-mexico-deadly-turf-war-erupts-in-vacuum-left-by-el-chapo/
Top U.S. drug official praises cooperation with Mexico
LAT – A top U.S. drug official made a strong case Thursday for continued cooperation with Mexico on fighting drug-trafficking, saying successful law enforcement already has created a virtual wall. In a subtle dig at the Trump administration, William Brownfield, the State department’s senior diplomat involved in drug policy, said that despite a crisis drug epidemic, the United States and Mexico were in a better position than ever to combat it.
11 bodies, some tortured, found in Veracruz
Reuters – Eleven bodies were found near a tourist area in the Mexican state of Veracruz on Wednesday, a day after the government said it would send federal police to calm one of the most violent regions of the country.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-violence-idUSKBN1685VJ
Mexico investigating robbery of tons of silver
Channel NewsAisa – Mexican prosecutors said they were investigating the robbery of more than 1.4 metric tons of silver from the “El Pilon” mine in Jalisco in which robbers walked into the mine and stole 57 bars of silver estimated at a value of more than $800,000.
Still no justice for Mexico’s missing students
NYT – The “disappearance” of 43 students shocked Mexico and much of the world. Earlier, the Peña Nieto administration took steps to mitigate criticism at home and from abroad over its inept handling of the case by allowing that international team, the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts, to investigate. Now it seems that the government doesn’t care about international criticism of its new hard line, or maybe it anticipates that there isn’t going to be much.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/opinion/still-no-justice-for-mexicos-missing-students.html?_r=0
Cartels are causing Mexicans to flee towns
Insight Crime -Mexico’s violence-induced forced displacement crisis is only beginning. Almost a third of the country’s municipalities have fewer inhabitants than they did before homicides became widespread across the country.
During the course of the last decade, population rates began to decrease in 691 Mexican municipalities, 28 percent of the country’s total.
Although the municipalities affected are scattered all across the country, most of them are found in three major regions located in the areas most affected by the conflict between different criminal organizations: first, the northwest and west controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel; secondly, the northeast, controlled by the Zetas; and third, the southeast, in the states dominated by the Familia Michoacana and the Knights Templar.