Mexico – Failed State

A Texas trooper is warning Americans to rethink traveling to Mexico after three women vanished when crossing the border to sell clothes at a flea market – joining the more than 500 US citizens currently missing in the country.

Lieutenant Chris Olivarez, of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told travelers gearing up for Spring Break to be careful when planning vacations to the popular travel destination.

‘Our department is urging anyone traveling to Mexico, especially spring breakers, to avoid those areas, because right now it is too dangerous with the increase in violence and kidnappings in Mexico,’ Lieutenant Olivarez told Fox News. ‘I can’t express enough to those thinking about traveling to Mexico, especially to spring breakers…to avoid those areas as much as possible.’

It’s time to treat the drug cartels like terrorist organizations they are

Over the past week, a security policy conversation that’s been taking place behind the scenes has emerged into the open. It involves those engaged on issues related to Mexico, trafficking across the southern border, and the cartel-fueled and China-backed flow of deadly fentanyl into the United States. It’s that the time has come to escalate where the Mexican government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) will not, including through the use of military force.

Two of the four Americans kidnapped at gunpoint in Mexico last week are dead and two are still alive, a Mexican state governor has said.

Four US citizens were kidnapped by armed men on 3 March while driving into the city of Matamoros in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas, Mexico across the border from Texas.

They had travelled there for cosmetic surgery, relatives told US media.

US officials have yet to confirm the deaths.

Never been to Mexico, not dying to go either.

Genaro García Luna, once the architect and public face of Mexico’s bloody war on its powerful criminal groups, was convicted on Tuesday in a New York courtroom of betraying his country and colleagues by taking millions of dollars in bribes from the violent drug cartels he was meant to be pursuing.

The guilty verdict, which came after three days of deliberation in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, was a stunning downfall for Mr. García Luna, a jut-jawed former law-enforcement officer who was so enmeshed in his country’s security establishment that he was often described as the J. Edgar Hoover of Mexico.

Mexican ex-security chief on trial: multimillion bribe claims and a cat named cocaine

The blockbuster trial of one of Mexico’s top former law enforcement officials is drawing toward its conclusion in a Brooklyn court, with the prosecution likely to rest its case next week after providing explosive accusations from convicted criminals but little in the way of hard evidence.

Genaro García Luna, who once led Mexico’s security ministry and its bloody war against powerful cartels, is standing trial accused of conspiring to traffic drugs into the US and of taking multimillion-dollar bribes from the violent Sinaloa cartel in exchange for impunity.

The trial of a former top Mexican law enforcement official got under way in a Brooklyn court on Monday, one of the most significant drug trafficking cases since the prosecution of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán more than four years ago.

Genaro García Luna, who ran Mexico’s version of the FBI before being appointed to lead the country’s security ministry – and therefore its war on drug trafficking groups – is accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for granting protection to the violent Sinaloa cartel.

JESÚS MARÍA, Mexico—In the predawn hours of Jan. 5, hundreds of Sinaloa cartel gunmen raced to this dusty town to try to rescue their boss from Mexican soldiers who had laid siege to his ranch, according to residents, gang members and Mexico’s military.

But the small army of gunmen proved no match for Mexico’s military, which used gunships to strafe the convoy of pickup trucks rigged with makeshift armor and high-caliber guns in the capture of Ovidio Guzmán, the son of former Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, witnesses said.

Mexico’s new cartel queen comes from trafficking royalty. Not only is she the daughter-in-law of perhaps the most infamous drug lord of recent years, her father was a high-ranking Sinaloa enforcer until he was tortured and murdered.

Adriana Meza Torres, believed to be in her early 30s, is said to have established herself as a queenpin of Los Chapitos, a faction of the deadly Sinaloa cartel. Her husband, Ovidio Guzmán López, a son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, was captured in a gunfight this month that claimed the lives of 29 people, ten of them Mexican troops.

Meza Torres is flaunting her newfound power, calling herself “boss’s wife” on social media and demonstrating her wealth in a series of flashy posts and videos on sites such as TikTok. Her apparent elevation to the role has been long in the making.

Álvaro Arandas was approaching the check-in counter at Culiacán international airport when the pandemonium began.

“You could hear the shooting – huge blasts, so much noise,” said the Mexican businessman, who had planned to board a flight to the eastern city of San Luis Potosí.

Instead, Arandas found himself scrambling for cover as security forces and cartel gunmen fought for control of an airfield that had become the latest frontline of a Latin American drug conflict that claims tens of thousands of lives every year.

And the beat goes on …

Mexican authorities have captured Ovidio Guzmán, a son of incarcerated drugs kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, prompting a furious response from cartel gunmen in the northern city of Culiacán.

After a night of violence, gunmen exchanged fire with security forces, blocking roads with burning vehicles and shooting at army helicopters and police aeroplanes bringing reinforcements to the city.

According to one resident, heavy fighting raged for hours after Guzmán – a key figure in the Sinaloa cartel since the arrest of his father – was arrested early on Thursday.