Turf Wars

The Mexican president gave his annual state of the union speech last week, but that had no impact on the killing.

Along with the usual carnage and corruption, suspected Zetas killed 52 casino goers in a gasoline/fire attack, teachers skipped school following extortion threats, authorities bust a Sinaloa Cartel "cell" in Utah, and one cartel has put up "wanted" posters targeting leaders of another cartel and offered rewards for them.

We review John Gibler's To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War and find it very powerful and disturbing indeed.

The University of Texas-El Paso Border Security Conference saw a shift announced in Plan Merida priorities and a lot of happy talk about defeating the cartels, but little discussion of ending the drug war.

CIA agents and US mercenaries stationed at a military base in northern Mexico are helping fight the drug cartels. And the killing continues...

You know things are messed up when the federal police are shooting at the head of the Ciudad Juarez police. Oh, and 216 more people were killed there in the drug wars last month.

The violence rages unabated in Mexico...

Weak Central American states are hard-pressed to go up against the Mexican cartels, and now, Guatemala's president wants to build a NATO-style regional military force to go up against them. And for the US to pay for it.

At an absolute minimum, at least 74 people were killed in prohibition-related violence in Mexico in the last week. Sad to say, there's nothing unusual about the death toll.

The Mexican government appears to be going after the Zetas, which must please the cartel's rivals.