Mexico Under Siege: 2008

Observers fear the deployment will hurt democracy and civil institutions, but they see no alternative.

President Felipe Calderon says the violence is one measure of success: It shows that the cartels have been hurt badly and are now lashing out at the government and one another.

The Plascencia family boasts the brand name for fine dining in Tijuana.

In case decapitating their victims and dumping the heads in picnic coolers didn’t make the point, the killers left a note.

As violence has soared, more than 30 reporters have died or disappeared in Mexico since 2000, the group Reporters Without Borders says.

The grisly manner of the deaths suggests the victims were slain in drug-related violence, authorities say.

In daylight near the center of Sinaloa’s capital, gunmen kill nine at a shop and three pursuing officers.

At least 21 people are killed in five days as turf wars between splintered gangs appear to heat up.

Drug-related killings have taken thousands of lives, but now those uninvolved in the cartel battles are falling victim, even children.

As drug-related violence escalates, Tijuana is losing its taste for songs that glorify gangsters.

Many are afraid to contact authorities about abductions, fearing officers could be involved. The problem is an awkward one for President Felipe Calderon’s drug war.

Licensed weapons dealers abound at the border. ‘Straw buyers’ aid traffickers, and the ATF is stretched

The victims include two top commanders in Michoacan, a senior investigator in Chihuahua and a deputy chief in Quintana Roo.

The men are believed to have aided drug smugglers in Sinaloa state, officials say.

Officers and others wounded across the border are increasingly being transferred to an El Paso hospital.

Chihuahua leader asks federal authorities to reform their strategy after 13 people are killed in a shooting.

President Calderon proposes new anti-kidnapping squads, special prisons, cellphone tracking and aid for local forces.

The discovery is the first sign of a major outbreak of drug cartel violence in Yucatan.

The heap of 11 decapitated bodies found in Yucatan shows that the battle to control the multibillion-dollar drug trade knows no boundaries.

‘Enough’ they say as they blame officials for failing to curb the rising violence caused by drug gangs.

The number is rising, and the rich are not the only ones targeted. Criminals sometimes want as little as $500.

A new law allows President Felipe Calderon to give his state of the nation report without having to appear before Congress, a move that avoids disturbances.

Juan Jose Soriano, deputy commander of the Tecate Police Department, helped U.S. authorities find a drug-smuggling tunnel. The next morning, gunmen shot him 45 times in his bedroom.

Drug money and corruption have long tainted law enforcement. But Genaro Garcia Luna, with President Calderon’s backing and the aid of technology, may succeed in reforming the system, analysts say.

Daniel LaPorte went to Mexico and never came back. His parents didn’t know of his drug involvement.

‘I was hiding it in my hands and it made me shudder,’ Juan Carlos Castro Galeana tells an interrogator in a videotaped session about the deadly attack in Mexico. ‘I was desperate to get rid of it.’

Though an attack on civilians in Morelia has tested the public’s stomach for the increasingly savage conflict, the president has little room to pull back from his crackdown.

With dozens of bodies found in the last week, some in law enforcement see ‘the tail end’ of the organization. But others warn that elements of the ruthless cartel remain very much alive.

The slaying of a rising political star is ascribed to his refusal to have any contact with drug traffickers.

Long a corridor for narcotics headed for the U.S., Mexico is now contending with its own addiction problem, as U.S. border controls push traffickers to look elsewhere.

The suspects, a police commander and a security firm owner, are detained in connection with the discovery last month of bodies piled in a park near Mexico City.

The Mexican government’s crackdown on drug traffickers has sent the big players underground, along with all their free-flowing dollars.

Jesus Zambada Garcia is captured after a gun battle in Mexico City. He commanded one of four branches of the Sinaloa cartel, officials say.

Youths are increasingly exposed to the grisly violence that pervades the city.

Eduardo Arellano Felix, an original member of a notorious cartel, is nabbed after a shootout in Tijuana.

At least 35 officials and agents from an elite unit have been fired or arrested following tips from an informant involving the so-called Beltran Leyva cartel.

A recent raid in Mexico City turns up a menagerie filled with big cats and a monkey, another case of an alleged cartel boss collecting rare exotic species.

Sightings, real or not, of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman are reported often, and the kingpin always manages to stay one step ahead of Mexican and U.S. law officials.

One of the killings occurs in Mexico state, where 12 officers have been killed in five days, apparently by gangs seeking a foothold in areas near the capital.

The government sees nothing nefarious in the crash that killed Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño and 13 others, but Mexicans are convinced foul play was involved. The investigation continues.

The mayor still pushes his seaside city as a cut-rate paradise. ‘Tourists are not targeted,’ he says. But violence linked to the drug war has made it a harder sell.

Few regions of the U.S. are immune to drug-trafficking organizations that have left a trail of death, kidnappings and other crimes.

Mexican federal agents and army troops are dispatched in a bid to rid the Tijuana police department of cops suspected of having links to drug traffickers.

Five federal and state police agents are killed in an ambush in Culiacan as drug gangs try to fight off a government crackdown. The day’s toll is 10.

Noe Ramirez Mandujano, a prosecutor who resigned as head of the SIEDO organized crime unit in July, is arrested on suspicion of passing intelligence to Sinaloa drug gangsters.

Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, who helped supervise the Brookings Institution study, says Washington needs to focus on consumption in addition to targeting traffickers.

The new posture on extradition signals President Felipe Calderon’s determination to combat violent smuggling groups through closer collaboration with U.S. authorities, officials and analysts say.

The increase in slayings and kidnappings related to the nation’s war on drug traffickers has created a climate of fear. Legal experts see too many obstacles to restoring capital punishment.

When four people in a Monterrey jewelry store were killed by gunmen who took nothing, few doubted that it was a message.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon says his government has made strides in combating graft. But police corruption remains a big problem in the battle against drug trafficking.

Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora says 5,376 people have been killed so far in 2008, more than twice the toll for the first 11 months of 2007.

The National Drug Threat Assessment cites increased drug seizures on smuggling routes and Mexico’s war on organized crime.

Teodoro Garcia Simental is believed to run a network of hide-outs where kidnap victims are caged. And he is said to be behind most of Tijuana’s gang war bloodshed.

Two journalists visiting Ciudad Juarez for three days find that death is always just around the corner. Killings in 2008: 1,350, and counting.

The heads and bodies are found at separate places in Guerrero state, a hot spot in the country’s drug war. Governor says eight of the victims were soldiers and one was a former state police commander.

In many cases, the network that turns ill-gotten gains into legal tender, crucial to operations and lavish lifestyles, continues to spin unhindered.

A reigning Mexican beauty queen from the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa was arrested with suspected gang members in a truck filled guns and ammunition, police say.

‘Narcos’ have made their way into government, business and culture in this Pacific state, where kids want to grow up to be traffickers.

Experts and public figures in the U.S. and Latin America offer a range of views, from stepped-up policing to legalization.

The U.S. and Mexico agree that cartels have morphed into crime syndicates that pose an urgent security threat to the region. But working together has not been easy.