Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, reported head of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, ranked 701st on Forbes' yearly report of the wealthiest men alive, and worth an estimated $1 billion, today officially thanked United States politicians for making sure that drugs remain illegal. According to one of his closest confidants, he said, "I couldn't have gotten so stinking rich without George Bush, George Bush Jr., Ronald Reagan, even El Presidente Obama, none of them have the cajones to stand up to all the big money that wants to keep this stuff illegal. From the bottom of my heart, I want to say, Gracias amigos, I owe my whole empire to you." Read more »
Three years of violence and thousands of deaths have seen the volume of drugs actually increase.
The Toronto Star
By Jorge Castaneda, professor of Politics and Latin American Studies at New York University and former foreign Minister of Mexico
Three years ago this month, Mexican President Felipe Calderón donned military fatigues and declared a full-scale war on drugs, ordering the army into Mexico's streets, highways and villages.
Although I had heard reports about drug-violence problems in Mexico—mostly from friends who received travel warnings while planning spring-break trips to Cancun—a recent trip to Mexico proved that the drug problem producing this violence is unavoidable even in the “safest” parts of the country. After only a week, my family stumbled upon a murder scene and learned of the death of a close friend at the hands of La Familia. A recent law to legalize possession of small amounts of drugs in Mexico is a step in the right direction, but much more remains to be done.
WARM SPRINGS, Ore. -- Police Chief Carmen Smith says he knows three things about suspected drug trafficker Artemio Corona: He's from Mexico, prefers a Glock .40-caliber handgun, and is quite possibly growing marijuana on the Indian reservation that Mr. Smith patrols.
Last year, Mr. Smith's detectives identified Mr. Corona as the alleged mastermind behind several large marijuana plantations on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in central Oregon. These "grows," as police call them, had a harvest of 12,000 adult plants, with an estimated street value of $10 million. Five suspects were arrested and pleaded guilty to federal trafficking charges. But their alleged boss, Mr. Corona, who has not been indicted, remains a "person of interest" to federal authorities and hasn't been found.
Mexico City prosecutors say corpse of Hector 'Black' Saldaña not discovered until three hours after Mauricio Fernandez declared him dead
Mauricio Fernandez could have been forgiven for sounding triumphant when he announced that the drug boss who had threatened to assassinate him had been shot dead by police in Mexico City.
Editor's note: This article contains profanity and graphic images that some may find offensive. This is part two of a three part series showing different aspects of life inside Colombia's drug gangs.
Samir Romero, wanted by police for two murders, was killed in August. He was shot 13 times.
MEDELLIN, Colombia (CNN) -- This city's drug underworld is littered with "poseurs" -- lowlife triggermen pretending they're the real hard cases.
But a longstanding and trusted source, with intimate knowledge of Medellin's violent subculture, assured me the two men I was about to meet were the real deal.
My destination: a single-story home in the city's notorious "Commune 13" district where I had set up a meeting with two hit men, who have for years hired their lethal services out to the cocaine cartels.
Inside the house, a man called "Red" sat on a couch toying a fully loaded 9mm Ruger pistol. "This will stop somebody nicely," he said, as I glanced at it. Read more »
One 'Bulletproof Lawyer' survived four assassination attempts before being gunned down. Such unsolved killings highlight the violence within a judicial system manipulated by powerful drug cartels.
By Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson
October 12, 2009
Reporting from Culiacan, Mexico, and Monterrey, Mexico -- Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, once hailed here as "the Bulletproof Lawyer," could outrun the bullets no longer.
Villanueva, one of Mexico's most controversial attorneys, was shopping in Monterrey in August when hooded gunmen with automatic weapons tracked her down amid stalls of handbags, perfume and videos, then pumped more than a dozen shots into her body.
The killers delivered a final shot to the head before fleeing the covered market, busy with shoppers at midday on a Sunday. Read more »
Michael Webster, Investigative Reporter
October 07, 2009
According to a DEA operative in the L.A. area who insists on remaining anonymous told the U.S. Border Fire Report that businesses along the dangerous U.S. Mexican border from Texas to California have been the victims of extortion attempts and threats. He further indicated that he believes that a good number of minority owned businesses in the Los Angeles area are also victims of extortion and that Mexican Drug Cartels and L.A. gangs and others are responsible. "He said that many of the victims especially those without papers are fearful of reporting the crime to authorities as they fear retaliation".
Recently in the Los Angeles area grand jury indictments have come down charging hundreds of gang members of notorious L. A. street gangs with wide ranging criminal charges including extortion and 88 of those have been named in a wide-ranging federal RICO racketeering indictment. Read more »
A careful reading shows how much of the underworld activity moved from north to south, especially but not exclusively during the Prohibition Era, in contrast to the contemporary media stories of violence and mayhem threatening to spill across the US border from Mexico.
Posted on October 5, 2009
Editor’s Note: The following story is the second and last report on the US War on Drugs conference held in El Paso, Texas, on September 21 and 22 of this year. The event was initiated by faculty from the University of Texas at El Paso and supported by a host of local organizations and agencies.
The struggling corn fields of northern Chihuahua and the shuttered textile plants of North Philadelphia might seem worlds apart. Although nationhood, language and culture separate the two places, a history of globalization, deindustrialization and drug culture shape both entities. Read more »
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Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, reported head of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, ranked 701st on Forbes' yearly report of the wealthiest men alive, and worth an estimated $1 billion, today officially thanked United States politicians for making sure that drugs remain illegal. According to one of his closest confidants, he said, "I couldn't have gotten so stinking rich without George Bush, George Bush Jr., Ronald Reagan, even El Presidente Obama, none of them have the cajones to stand up to all the big money that wants to keep this stuff illegal. From the bottom of my heart, I want to say, Gracias amigos, I owe my whole empire to you." 
Three years of violence and thousands of deaths have seen the volume of drugs actually increase.
![[Washington State Police got to this marijuana harvest before the Mexican gangs did.]](/sites/default/files/resize/remote/b80da305c23b12ce2c2a1d6c344fe8be-200x133.jpg)
WARM SPRINGS, Ore. -- Police Chief Carmen Smith says he knows three things about suspected drug trafficker Artemio Corona: He's from Mexico, prefers a Glock .40-caliber handgun, and is quite possibly growing marijuana on the Indian reservation that Mr. Smith patrols.
By 
