Mexico Under Siege: 2010

All of the dead in the Durango prison uprising are inmates. The fighting is said to have been between members of rival drug-trafficking cartels.

In the traumatized border city, he talks of social programs aimed at boosting the fight against drug cartels.

Sugar cane farmers from a tiny Mexican county use savvy marketing and low prices to push black-tar heroin in the United States.

University-sponsored activities there are frozen because of drug war violence. Students, faculty and Baja California officials say the policy is based on a distorted perception of the city.

The charges against Gregorio Sanchez, on leave to run for governor, add new force to worries organized crime has infiltrated politics at all levels and is undermining moves toward a real democracy.

A new U.S.-Mexico government study estimates that $19 billion to $29 billion is shipped south, then laundered through cash purchases of land, luxury hotels, cars and other high-end items.

News reports said the shooting broke out when troops went to search a suspected criminal hide-out in Taxco, a picturesque town that draws thousands of visitors. All the dead were said to be gunmen.

The military had said the two children were killed at Easter after their van was caught in cross-fire between troops and drug gang gunmen. But the human rights official rejects the account.

Mexican officials say Miguel Ortiz Miranda, alias ‘El Tyson,’ directed operations in Morelia for the Michoacan-based La Familia, including an attack on security chief Minerva Bautista Gomez’s convoy.

After the slaying of a gubernatorial candidate, Mexico’s president urges citizens to fight ‘a common enemy that today threatens to destroy not only our tranquility but our democratic institutions.’

Police say Jesus Ernesto Chavez told them that Lesley A. Enriquez, 35, was shot to death in Ciudad Juarez because his gang thought she was providing visas to rivals.

A shift from military to police control is part of a broadened strategy aimed at curbing violence that has killed more than 5,000 people in Ciudad Juarez since 2008. So far, the results are mixed.

The attack in Ciudad Juarez, near a federal police headquarters, was a well-planned trap, officials say. It is the first time traffickers have used a vehicle bomb in many years.

Dozens are accused in racketeering conspiracy case, including a top official in the Baja California attorney general’s office and other current or former Mexican law enforcement officers.

Police officials ban Los Tucanes de Tijuana from their hometown over accusations that their music celebrates drug bosses.

Edelmiro Cavazos of Santiago was seized at his home near Monterrey on Sunday. He might have been targeted because of his efforts to purge corrupt local police, the state governor says.

A police agent who was Santiago Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos’ bodyguard is among the suspects held. A state prosecutor says the detainees ‘confessed.’ He predicts additional arrests.

Julian Leyzaola has chased out major drug traffickers, purged his force of corrupt cops, and helped set the stage for the return of investment and tourism. But he may fall victim to partisan politics.

In his state of the nation report, President Felipe Calderon notes the arrests or killings of drug kingpins and efforts to clean up police. He also touts job gains and other economic improvements.

U.S. Atty. Laura Duffy gets much of the credit for crippling it, and now she vows to shut it down for good.

Gustavo Sanchez of Tancitaro in Michoacan state is found beaten to death with rocks, authorities say. He is the fifth mayor in Mexico killed in six weeks.

Its citizens have made Luis Estrada’s ‘El Infierno’ a blockbuster. But the film, which gives a bleak view of the country’s raging drug war, has angered government officials.

President Felipe Calderon’s reform would eliminate Mexico’s 2,000 local police departments, seen as tainted by corruption from the drug war. The plan must still be approved by Congress and the states.