Mexico's Drug Wars

(Map from the Washington Post)

Life In Mexico's Deadliest Drug War City -- Reuters

Ignacio Alvarado, 40, is a freelance investigative reporter and Reuters contributor in the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez where he was born and now lives with his wife and two children. He has been a journalist for 20 years -- seven in Mexico City, the rest in Ciudad Juarez. In the following story, he describes life in an increasingly lawless city where it's becoming almost commonplace to see daylight drug gang shootings and walk past dumped bodies.

By Ignacio Alvarado

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - My neighbor has been kidnapped and my six-year-old daughter witnessed an armed robbery at the local store. A friend was almost killed by a stray bullet in a gun battle at a set of traffic lights.

I hear gunfire in the streets as I work in my house, behind a front door bolted with four locks, and I feel a knot in my stomach whenever the telephone rings.

Another friend recently picked up to hear a voice say: "I'll kill your children if you don't pay me a lot of money."

With dozens of abductions and extortions daily in this rundown northern Mexican border city, he didn't wait to find out if it was real or a hoax. He just moved to Toronto.

Read more ....

My Comment: What is shocking about this war .... is that it is getting worse. If Mexico should ever become a failed state, it will be because of rampant government control and corruption, and the drug wars.