Mexico Drug War: List Of Missing Raises Doubts In Mexico

Huffington Post, 12/22/2012

Federal police officer Luis Angel Leon Rodriguez disappeared in 2009 along with six fellow police as they headed to the western state of Michoacan to fight drug traffickers. Since then, his mother, Araceli Rodriguez, has taken it into her own hands to investigate her son’s disappearance and has publicized the case inside and outside Mexico. She’s found some clues about what happened but still doesn’t have any certainty about her son’s whereabouts.

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US Marijuana Vote Unlikely to Impact Mexico in Short Term

InSight Crime, 11/7/2012

A recent study by Mexican free trade think tank the Mexican Institute of Competitiveness (IMCO), (co-authored by analyst Alejandro Hope, an InSight Crime contributor) found that if the marijuana legalization ballots passed in Oregon, Washington, and Colorado, it could reduce the revenue of Mexican drug trafficking organizations by as much as 30 percent. But as Hope pointed out on Animal Politico, the impact of these measure will depend on the US federal government’s response. Drug legalization activists — and critics — have expressed surprise that US Attorney General Eric Holder did not issue any strong statements opposing the marijuana legalization initiatives as the election approached. This was in marked contrast to the strongly worded statement Holder issued before California residents voted on Proposition 19 in 2010. So far, the response from the federal government remains muted: according to Reuters, the US Justice Department reacted to the measures by stating that its drug enforcement policy had not changed.

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Mexico: Risking Life for Truth

The New York Review of Books, 11/12/2012

Let us say that you are a Mexican reporter working for peanuts at a local television station somewhere in the provinces—the state of Durango, for example—and that one day you get a friendly invitation from a powerful drug-trafficking group. Imagine that it is the Zetas, and that thanks to their efforts in your city several dozen people have recently perished in various unspeakable ways, while justice turned a blind eye. Among the dead is one of your colleagues.

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Mexico charges 14 federal police over attack on US officers

Reuters, 11/9/2012

Mexico on Friday formally charged 14 federal police officers with attempted murder for an August attack on two U.S. agents, identified by sources as CIA agents, that embarrassed the Mexican government with its powerful northern neighbor. Mexican security sources have placed responsibility for the attack on corrupt police working in cahoots with drug gangs.

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New Fact Sheet on U.S. Southwest Border Security Initiatives

This report lists some of the various projects, programs, and activities undertaken by the U.S. government
to enhance security at the U.S.-Mexico border and to combat transnational contraband trafficking.

Since the March 2009 announcement of a Southwest Border Security Initiative by the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. government has stepped up efforts to strengthen security along its Southwest Border out of concern for increasing drug trafficking violence afflicting northern Mexico.

These efforts aimed to halt the flow of drugs, cash, and guns between both countries that is responsible
for much of this violence. This report is based entirely on U.S. government documents, and we have made no assessment of these initiatives. This compilation groups such initiatives by agency.

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Investigators Battle Giant Coke Operation

Associated Press, 7/17/2009

In this Midwestern town 1,500 miles from Mexico, in a place that proudly proclaims itself the birthplace of kindergarten, Coco the cocaine kingpin flourished.

Coco came to the United States illegally, and used layers of family members and henchmen to build an operation that saturated southeastern Wisconsin with cocaine until authorities moved in. Then the players started falling – two dead in Mexico, nearly two dozen locked up in American prisons.

It’s a story that echoes elsewhere. The U.S. Justice Department says more than 200 U.S. cities have seen cartel-related drug smuggling. Much has been made of Houston’s gun trafficking, Phoenix’s kidnappings and Atlanta’s status as a drug-distribution hub.

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