Since 2006, 11,000 Mexican citizens have been murdered, primarily by drug cartels. The wave of violence has become so serious, CNN purports that Mexico is now spinning toward civil war.

Perpetuating the increasing drug violence is the proliferation of gun smuggling from the U.S. into Mexico--and into the hands of drug traffikers. Unfortunately, many who have been killed have no ties to the drug trade, but are simply caught in the crossfire.                                                    

Killings Fuel Concerns Over Mexico's Drug Offensive

By ELISABETH MALKIN and GINGER THOMPSON

A soldier photographed the crime scene where an American couple were killed in Ciudad Juarez on Saturday.

The city braced for a visit on Tuesday from Mr. Calderón, who has been forced by the relentless violence here to recalibrate his strategy and acknowledge that merely concentrating firepower on the drug gangs is not working.

Across the Rio Grande in El Paso — where the American consulate employee,

Lesley A. Enriquez, and her husband, Arthur H. Redelfs, lived — their families waited on Monday to receive their bodies and make funeral arrangements. F.B.I.agents interviewed relatives. The couple's 7-month-old daughter, who was in the car but was not hurt in the attack, wailed in the arms of her grieving uncle.

The tipping point in the reconsideration of Mr. Calderón's strategy occurred five weeks ago, when gunmen killed 15 people, most of them students celebrating a birthday party. After Mr. Calderón was forced to back down from his initial claim that the victims were gang members settling accounts, his government began to outline a list of social programs to help the embattled residents of this city reclaim their streets.

Mr. Calderón has visited the city twice since then, facing the fury of mothers who have lost their children. He will likely face more anger when he arrives on Tuesday.

"There are two myths that have fallen here in Juárez," said Lalas Tapia, a local teacher who will be organizing a protest on Tuesday with many families who have lost members to the drug wars.

"It's not true that the violence is just between the drug gangs," he said. "And this will not end soon. It has already been two years."

Ms. Enriquez, 35, who worked at the fortress-like American consulate here, and Mr. Redelfs were killed in broad daylight on Saturday afternoon as they drove home to El Paso after a children's birthday party.

At almost the same time, Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, the Mexican husband of another consulate employee who had also been at the party, was killed as he drove home with his two children, ages 4 and 7. They were wounded and are being treated in a hospital in Juárez.

Mr. Redelfs was an officer at the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, where he worked in the county jail. The couple, who was expecting their second child, had been married for several years, said Mr. Redelfs's brother, Reuben.

"He was a wonderful man," Reuben Redelfs said. "We just regret this senseless act of violence."

Few of the many shootings in Juárez get the attention being given to the consulate killings.

Jahaziel Orlando Gutiérrez Márquez, 26, was shot and killed early Sunday morning as he was walking home from his mother's house. He walked into a bar because he had seen a friend's car parked outside, and as he entered he was shot by gunmen who were apparently looking for someone else, said his wife, Kauri Flores, 23.

Ms. Flores, a local activist who runs a small community center, was returning from Mexico City with mothers of victims of drug violence who had gone to a rally when she got word of her husband's death.

"There's no justice in this city," she said. "It's one more murder. I feel so powerless."

Elisabeth Malkin reported from Ciudad Juárez, and Ginger Thompson from Washington.

Dec. 17, 2009 12:00 AM
Associated Press

CUERNAVACA, Mexico - Two hundred sailors raided an upscale apartment complex and killed one of Mexico's top kingpins in a two-hour gun battle Wednesday, one of the biggest victories yet in President Felipe Calderon's drug war.

Arturo Beltran Leyva, the "boss of bosses," and three members of his cartel were slain in the shootout in Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City, according to a navy statement. A fifth cartel member committed suicide during the shootout.

Cartel gunmen hurled grenades that injured three sailors, the navy said. An Associated Press reporter at the scene heard at least 10 explosions.

Beltran Levya is the highest-ranking figure taken down under Calderon, who has deployed more than 45,000 troops across Mexico to crush the cartels since taking office in December 2006. The offensive has earned Calderon praise from Washington even as 14,000 people have been killed in a wave of drug-related violence.

The last time Mexican authorities killed a major drug lord was in 2002, when Ramon Arellano Felix of the Tijuana Cartel was shot by a police officer in the Sinaloa resort of Mazatlan.

Beltran Levya was one of five brothers who split from the Sinaloa Cartel several years ago and aligned themselves with Los Zetas, a group of former soldiers hired by the rival Gulf Cartel as hit men. The split is believed to have fueled much of the bloodshed of recent years.

The Mexican government had listed Arturo Beltran Leyva as one its 24 most-wanted drug lords and had offered a $2.1 million reward for his capture.

By
Legal News
on March 26, 2009 9:23 AM 
Due to the violent drug war currently underway in Mexico, thousands of Mexican citizens have begun seeking asylum in the U.S.

The number of asylum petitions from Mexican citizens increased from 1,331 in 2005 to 2,231 in 2008.  However, many petitions are being denied because the U.S. does not recognize fear of violence as grounds for automatic asylum.

Lawyers representing asylum-seekers disagree with the U.S. government's stand that the country doesn't grant asylum on grounds of fear of violence alone, and point to the approximately 6,000 people who've been killed over the past year in the Mexican drug war. They worry that failure to grant more requests for asylum will result in more deaths.

Human rights activists are also challenging the U.S. position that fear or threats of violence by non-governmental entities (such as drug cartels) do not entitle a person to asylum.

"Asylum jurisprudence is replete with examples of cases in which people fleeing their home countries based on persecution by a nongovernment actor have received protection," said Regina Germain, the author of a textbook on asylum and legal director of the Rocky Mountain Survivors Center in Colorado.

Mexican consular officials in the U.S. acknowledge that Mexicans are fleeing for safety, but that Mexican citizens receiving threats should "ask for the protection from the Mexican government. That should be their first option," said legal affairs consul Jorge Gonzalez-Mayagoitia.

The problem is that Mexican citizens do not trust the government, saying the government has been infiltrated by the drug cartels, and there is no way to tell who in the government is loyal to the drug cartels and who can be trusted by the citizens who need them.

Mexican politician killed despite increased efforts to bridle drug-related violence  
 
 
2009-09-06 
 
    MEXICO CITY, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- A state congressional candidate and his whole family members were killed at home on Saturday in Mexico's southern Gulf coastal state of Tabasco, the latest in a spate of violence that has plagued the Latin American nation for more than two years.

    Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon, 43, was found dead by relatives along with his wife and two sons in the state capital of Villahermosa, local press reported.

    After the incident, the state government offered immediate protection for all candidates who will run in the Oct. 18 elections, state Attorney General Rafael Gonzalez Lastra said.

    President Felipe Calderon also urged a thorough investigation into the brutal murder case.

    Also on Saturday, 11 other people were killed in separate incidents in Mexico. In the southern state of Guerrero, police found the bodies of two boys who had gone missing a week earlier. In Santiago in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, five gunmen and a bystander died in a shootout between assailants and the army.

    According to the army, the assailants belong to a group of drug enforcers tied to the Gulf cartel which carried out kidnappings, extortions and drug sales.

    More than 4,000 people have been killed this year in incidents linked to organized crime.

    Residents have been fleeing their homes in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez after the deaths of 18 people on Wednesday.

    "We are looking for another home," said a former resident of Ciudad Juarez. The city of 1.3 million people saw the worst of the nation's drug violence that has claimed more than 1,600 lives so far this year.

    Gunmen attacked a rehabilitation center in the city on Wednesday night, killing 18 and injuring another five.

        Innocent civilians and politicians have continued to fall victim to violence despite a war waged by the Mexican government to curb violence.

    More than 45,000 Mexican army troops have been deployed to aid the fight against organized crimes and drug cartels, the top priorities of Calderon's administration since he took office in late 2006.

    The strategies the government adopted on the two fronts include establishing legal tools and draining the financial resources of the drug gangs.

    Many experts believe that a necessary step for the government to crack down on drug-related violence is to purge corruption in the police and judiciary.

The War Just Across The Border

(CBS)  It's a bloodbath that started as a drug-gang kidnapping, ended in a shoot-out with Mexican troops. Twenty-one were killed in a snowy, desert town, including one soldier.

Since January 1, some 230 drug slayings have occurred around Juarez, Mexico's murder capital. Compare that to 75 this time last year, and you get a sense of the exploding violence, CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports.

Vicious cartels are battling to control the $14 billion a year illicit trade feeding an insatiable U.S. appetite for drugs. Mexican authorities are hitting the cartels with all they have.

Soldiers stormed a Juarez warehouse last week, seizing two tons of marijuana. Tuesday 10 gangsters were arrested in Mexico City with their cache of guns and grenades.

But the gangs have the money and the weapons to fight back.

"While drugs are being smuggled north, a lot of guns are going south," said Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at Rand Corp.

By U.S. estimates, 95 percent of cartel guns are smuggled from the states - 2,000 a day according to a recent investigation.

Janet Napolitano, the new head of Homeland Security, has ordered a crackdown on gun smuggling. On the streets of Juarez, it feels like war.

"It's such a huge fight that I don't think it will end," said Juarez resident Ricardo Felix. "It's going to continue until one of the cartels takes control of the country."

They had taken control of Villa Ahumada, the desert town where 21 died Tuesday.

Troops came in last year after traffickers killed three police chiefs, and forced the mayor to flee. Tijuana journalist, Vicente Calderon, says the government was slow to react the cartels' growing threat.

"The government used to tell us this is just a problem among drug cartels," said Calderon. "During the last two years, it's coming out into the surface and affecting everybody else."

With more than 6,000 slayings, 2008 was Mexico's most deadly year for drug violence. This year is starting to look even worse.