Latin American Herald Tribune

A growing number of Mexicans who live near the border with the United States are seeking to transfer their residence to El Paso to flee the danger of kidnappings, extortion and executions that is part of daily existence just across the Rio Grande in Ciudad Juarez.

“We’re moving to live in El Paso after they kidnapped us and attacked our own house in Ciudad Juarez,” Gabriela – a Mexican shop-owner who did not want to give her last name because her family had been the victims of extortion on many occasions – told Efe.

“I know that I’m taking a risk that they’ll take away the local crossing visa if they discover that I’m living in U.S. territory, but at least here I can sleep at night,” she said.

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Latin American Herald Tribune

A little more than 1 million people work in the illegal drug trade including “around 200,000” women, according to the COCyP association of peasant organizations, based on police estimates.

The president of that organization, Jose Jacobo Femat, said in a communique Friday that the situation is “an alarming phenomenon” that, in the case of women, is the result of “gender inequality and the lack of opportunities to find legal employment.”

“It shows how mistaken the federal government’s public policies are for easing poverty in rural areas with its assistance programs, since the female sector has seen the alternative to be taking part in growing drug crops and in drug production and distribution,” Femat said.

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Knight Center

The assassination of police reporter Bladimir Antuna in Durango has once again exposed the helplessness of media workers in Mexico. The situation makes the country one of the world's most riskiest in which to practice journalism.

Several organizations have demanded that the government take serious measures to confront the wave of violence against journalists, El Universal reports. Among them are the Inter American Press Association, the International Press Institute, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders, and the Foundation for Freedom of Expression (Fundalex).

According to the IPI, seven reporters have been killed this year in Mexico, the same number as in Pakistan and more than in war-torn Somalia. Reporters Without Borders insisted that Antuna had reported death threats several times to authorities and that his killing was, therefore, inevitable.

The impunity of the killings worsens the helplnessness of the journalists, who are "easy target(s) for criminals," a separate story in El Universal explains. The media workers must confront an "authority that does not accept criticism, nor journalistic work," and they are caught in the crossfire in the government's campaign against drug trafficking, EFE says, quoting Darío Ramírez, national director for the Article 19 NGO. “The silence and inaction by the state and federal governments are what is most worrying," he says.

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CNN

The reputed leader of the Zetas drug cartel in the Mexican state of Veracruz was killed in a gunbattle with federal authorities, the Mexican attorney general's office has said.

Braulio Arellano Dominguez, also known as "El Gonzo," "Zeta 20" or "El Verdugo," was mortally wounded when federal police and sailors went to search a house in the city of Soledad de Doblado, the attorney general said in a release Tuesday.

Arellano Dominguez opened fire with a .38-caliber revolver and was wounded in the firefight, officials said. He died while being transported to a hospital.

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Reuters

Gunmen with automatic weapons burst into a Mexican strip club on the U.S. border, opened fire on patrons and killed six people including an American soldier, the army said on Wednesday.

The hooded gunmen stormed into the bar in Ciudad Juarez as strippers were dancing for customers, sought out the six men and shot them each several times. A 26-year-old off-duty U.S. soldier who had crossed over from El Paso, Texas, was among the dead, army spokesman Enrique Torres said.

"It appears drugs were being sold at the place," Torres said of the strip joint. "The hitmen went directly for their victims, no one else."

The suspected drug hitmen escaped the bar easily, while panicking customers fled in their cars as pools of blood gathered around spent bullet cases on the bar floor.

Ciudad Juarez is reckoned to be one of the world's most violent cities as it has become the bloodiest flashpoint in Mexico's three-year fight against feuding drug cartels.

As cartels fight over the city's local drug market and smuggling routes into the United States, dealers, addicts, cops and hitmen are all targeted by rivals in a spiraling and increasingly chaotic drug war.

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Somehow, I missed this until recently:

The Making of a Narco State

I did inhale.