Business 13 workers wounded in shooting in Mexican border city

05/23/2018 The Washington Post

A bus full of assembly plant workers was hit by gunfire in the northern Mexico border city of Reynosa on Wednesday, and 13 people were wounded, two of them seriously.

The driver told authorities that the bus was in motion when it apparently entered the crossfire between two rival gang factions before 7 a.m.

Tamaulipas state security spokesman Luis Alberto Rodriguez said the bus shooting could be related to other shooting incidents in which three alleged gunmen died in the city on the border with Texas.

Reynosa’s violence has been attributed to factions of the Gulf cartel fighting for control of lucrative smuggling routes.

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School shooting in northern Mexico wounds 5 students

04/25/2018 The Washington Post

Gunmen in a car apparently tried to kidnap a high school student, then opened fire on the youth as he fled into the building, wounding five young people, authorities in the northern Mexico border state of Tamaulipas said Wednesday.

State prosecutors said three suspected assailants and two purported accomplices were detained after Tuesday’s shooting in Ciudad Victoria, the state capital.

Three male high school students and two females were wounded. Three were treated and released, while two were hospitalized, one of them in serious condition, authorities said.

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Soldiers took them in the night. Now Mexico’s key drug war strategy is on trial.

04/25/2018 Los Angeles Times

The soldiers took them in the night.

First they came for Nitza Alvarado Espinoza and Jose Alvarado Herrera. The 31-year-old cousins were sitting in a van outside a family member’s house when troops forced them into a military truck.

Minutes later, soldiers arrived at the house of another Alvarado cousin, 18-year-old Rocio Alvarado Reyes. She was carried away screaming at gunpoint in front of her young brothers and baby daughter.

It was Dec. 29, 2009 — the last time the cousins were seen alive.

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Mexico arrest over murder of reporter Javier Valdez

04/24/2018 BBC News

Police in Mexico have arrested a man they suspect of killing award-winning journalist Javier Valdez last year.

He was shot dead in May 2017 in northern Sinaloa state near the office of the news weekly he had founded, Ríodoce.

Mr Valdez wrote extensively on drug-trafficking and organised crime in Mexico, including the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel.

He was one of at least 11 journalists to be killed in Mexico in 2017.

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Three missing Mexican students were slain, their bodies dissolved in acid

04/23/2018 Los Angeles Times

Three Mexican film students whose disappearance last month sparked large-scale protests in the city of Guadalajara were beaten, killed and their bodies dissolved in acid, Mexican authorities said Monday.

Two suspects have been arrested in connection with the gruesome crime, said officials of the attorney general’s office in Jalisco state, which includes Guadalajara. Arrest warrants have been issued for six other suspects.

The investigation is continuing, the Jalisco state attorney general, Raul Sanchez, told reporters in a videotaped news conference providing shocking new details on the closely watched case.

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Mexican troops, police evacuate 92 people fleeing drug gangs

04/11/2018 The Washington Post

Mexican soldiers and police in the troubled southern state of Guerrero have escorted a convoy of 92 people terrorized by drug cartels out of their mountain hamlet.

Guerrero state security spokesman Roberto Alvarez says the convoy of mostly the elderly, women and children left Laguna de Huayanalco in the township of Totolapan because they fear the drug gangs that operate in the area.

Alvarez said in a statement Wednesday that the residents loaded into 11 private vehicles and were escorted out of town.

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Study finds record violence costing Mexico billions of dollars

04/11/2018 The San Diego Union-Tribune

As fighting among drug trafficking groups drives up violence in Mexico to record levels, a new study released on Wednesday measures the economic impact in 2017 at $249 billion in losses — close to 21 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Authors of the study presented at the University of San Diego say that focusing on homicides alone fails to address the broad range of factors that drive the violence, and affect the well being of Mexicans on a multitude of levels. To bring down the violence will mean addressing issues such as corruption and the weak rule of law, the study states.

“ ‘End drug violence’ is not an actionable policy statement for peace building,” states the “Mexico Peace Index” report by the Australia-based Institute for Economics & Peace, an independent non-partisan think tank. “A much broader peace-building strategy is needed to address the causes as well as the symptoms of lawlessness.”

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