The former attorney general of Chihuahua said she would seek help outside Mexico to solve her brother's kidnapping after a video showed her abducted sibling accusing her of having narco ties.

In the video, Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez, while held at gunpoint, said his sister Patricia Gonzalez Rodriguez has protected the Juarez drug cartel. When questioned, he also said she ordered the murders of two journalists, as well as Mormon community members in the Colonia LeBaron in northwest Chihuahua.

Mario Gonzalez, kidnapped last week, appears in the video seated and handcuffed, ringed by five gunmen in military uniforms. The video popped up on the Internet Monday. In 10 minutes, Mario Gonzalez answers questions from a man off-camera about high-profile killings and kidnappings supposedly carried out by La Linea, or the Juarez drug cartel.

[continues 483 words]

The kidnapped brother of the former Chihuahua attorney general appeared in an Internet video on Monday confessing ties to the Juarez drug cartel.

Gunmen kidnapped Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez, a lawyer and brother of former Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez Rodriguez, on Thursday in Chihuahua City.

On Monday, a video appeared on the Internet showing Mario Gonzalez handcuffed, sitting in a chair, and surrounded by five men dressed in desert camouflage, wearing black ski masks and holding assault rifles.

At gunpoint, he answers a list of questions asked by a man off-camera. The group holding Mario Gonzalez is not identified in the video and the authenticity of his answers is unknown.

[continues 173 words]

Mexican authorities announced arrests made last week have crippled the Juarez drug cartel, La Linea. On Thursday, Fernando Contreras Meraz, known as "El Dorado," confessed to being responsible for activating a deadly car bomb in Juarez July 15.

He is the reputed No. 3 in La Linea behind Juan Pablo Ledezma, who reputedly is directly under cartel leader Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

In the Juarez area of Mexico, the drug war is between La Linea and the invading Sinaloa cartel, headed by Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman.

[continues 261 words]

MEXICO CITY-Armed men carried out a massacre in a Tijuana drug-rehabilitation center, Mexican authorities said Monday, showing that violence persists even in one of the few border towns where officials claim to be defeating powerful crime groups.

The attack occurred late Sunday evening when armed commandos entered El Camino, a recovery center for drug addicts, and killed 13 people with scores of automatic rifle rounds.

Investigators were gathering evidence at the scene of the attack Monday, said a spokesman for the attorney general's office of Baja California, the state where Tijuana is located.

[continues 551 words]

TIJUANA, Mexico -- To embattled authorities here, where heavily armed soldiers patrol the streets and more than 500 people have been killed this year, marijuana is a poisonous weed that enriches death-dealing cartel bosses who earn huge profits smuggling the product north.

"Marijuana arrives in the United States soaked with the blood of Tijuana residents," said Mayor Jorge Ramos, whose police department has lost 45 officers to drug violence in the past three years.

But just over the border in California, cannabis is considered by law a healing herb. After the Obama administration announced that it would not prosecute the purveyors, about 100 medical marijuana dispensaries opened in San Diego alone in the past year, selling vast quantities of Purple Goo, Green Crack and other varieties of super-charged pot to virtually any adult willing to pay $59 for a doctor's prescription and $10 for a joint.

[continues 741 words]

Culiacan, Mexico - FOUR years ago Mexico invented a civil war: the government decided to confront the seven major drug cartels. The army was sent into the streets, mountains and country paths. Even the navy was on alert.

Here in Sinaloa, the western state where the modern drug trade began, poorly armed and ill-outfitted federal and state police were the first to fall. Around 50 of them, killed by the cartels. Those who survived took to the streets in protest, demanding better weapons and bulletproof vests. In Culiacan, the state capital, students are always staging protest marches; it was strange to see the police do the same. You could smell the fear and uncertainty in the air.

[continues 544 words]

Monterrey, Mexico - INVISIBLE paths to the United States, it seems, have always passed through Monterrey. People and their merchandise come and go via paved roads and dusty lanes, but also through the famous little walkways, somewhere between manicured and overgrown, that are hidden among the thickets of underbrush.

Increasingly, Mexico has a hidden drug problem - but it's not entirely the kind that you'd think. And the traffic won't stop until it's exposed.

As early as the 1940s, the local newspapers were reporting on captured smugglers. Those going north to the United States transported humans (generally seasonal farm workers) and substances for attaining those "artificial paradises" that so fascinated the French poetes maudits of the late 19th century. The other group, those going south, could bring almost anything they fancied into the country - you could bring a building into Mexico, people joked, as long as it fit under the bridge. And they knew, though they talked about it only in hushed tones, that quite a bit of money was being made.

[continues 406 words]

MEXICO CITY -- In two weeks, Californians will decide whether to legalize small amounts of marijuana for recreational use, in a vote that polls show could be close.

Now, for a change in the drug war, it is Mexico wondering about the possible spillover, this time of an idea. Will such a bold step by its neighbor to the north add momentum to a burgeoning movement here for broad drug legalization?

The backdrop is the drug war, which has left Americans worrying about many of the ills that spill over the border: kidnappings, murders and, of course, drugs themselves. At the same time, Mexicans chafe at the guns flowing in from the States, the nearly 30,000 people killed in drug-related violence here in the past four years and the American demand and consumption that largely sustain the drug trade.

[continues 1033 words]

Tijuana, Mexico - THERE are two Tijuanas: that of the locals, and that of the rest. The true Tijuana belongs only to the oldest families, the grandparents and great-grandparents of Tijuana. The view from outside, on the other hand, tends to come into focus through fantasy, stereotype and cliche.

But the outside world helped create Tijuana.

In the 19th century, Tijuana resembled the set of an old Western -- a few houses, some wooden corrals, mud-caked roads and a customs hut to register the passage of caravans heading to the port at Ensenada.

[continues 528 words]

Puebla, Mexico - HOW has life in Mexico changed under the rising tide of drug violence? It's difficult to say; it is what it is. It goes on. For long stretches of time, it is easy to forget about the violence. But then reality breaks through, and it becomes once again impossible to ignore.

All my life I have lived in Puebla, a city of more than one million inhabitants about 70 miles southeast of Mexico's sprawling capital. Puebla has a reputation for being a moderately safe place to live (considering the general standard in the country today). Mexico City residents, called chilangos, have been moving here for years - particularly since so many were driven from the capital by the earthquake of 1985, which destroyed hundreds of buildings and killed thousands of people.

[continues 639 words]

MEXICO CITY - A taped telephone conversation between a person believed to be a federal congressman and a drug lord has raised new questions about the extent to which Mexican drug gangs have bought off politicians and whether the politicians, if exposed, can even be punished.

Julio Cesar Godoy, a newly elected lawmaker from the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, failed to turn up at Mexico's Congress on Friday, a day after a radio station broadcast what it said was a conversation between the congressman and Servando Gomez, a top official in the La Familia drug cartel.

[continues 576 words]

In Monterrey, Mexico, Cement Giant Plays Role in Battle Against Narcotics Cartels

MONTERREY, Mexico-One of this city's leading companies, cement giant Cementos Mexicanos SAB, is lending a hand in an effort to rescue Monterrey, Mexico's northern business capital, from the drug-related violence that has engulfed it.

Like many of Monterrey's four million residents, executives at Cemex, one of the world's biggest cement makers, have watched in horror as the violence roiling much of Mexico's north has taken hold here with dizzying speed.

[continues 1013 words]

JUAREZ -- Pedro turned 9 years old the day somebody killed his father.

A gunman shot him in the head at a convenience store last summer.

"Pedro was enraged," said his mother, Bertha, a social worker. She did not want her family's last names to be published for safety reasons. "I told him that sometimes things happen that we don't understand, but that his father is with God."

Pedro heard the words, but the violence he experienced changed him.

Once docile and quiet, he became an angry child, his mother said. He also began to have breathing problems.

[continues 714 words]

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is expected to visit Juarez next week to reinforce his initiatives to revitalize the crime-plagued city. Exactly when he will be in Juarez is uncertain.

Jaime Torres, a Juarez city spokesman, said Calderon will visit either Wednesday or Thursday to discuss the "Todos Somos Juarez," or We Are Juarez, initiative, with city and state officials.

A spokeswoman for Calderon said that the president is planning to visit Juarez on Tuesday, but that his agenda wouldn't be confirmed until Monday.

[continues 452 words]

Border security concerns arose again Thursday morning when a Juarez traffic officer was ambushed by a group of armed men near the U.S. border.

Roxana Rodriguez Monroy, 33, was shot and killed about 10:30 a.m. while she was escorting a vehicle to a lot where vehicles involved in traffic violations are kept, said Juarez city spokesman Jaime Torres.

She was riding a motorcycle near the intersection of Norzagaray Boulevard and Plomo Street at the time, according to Chihuahua state news release. That intersection is directly across from the El Paso Downtown neighborhood of Chihuahuita.

[continues 523 words]

JUAREZ - As murder numbers skyrocket in Juarez, another crime there is becoming even more common: carjackings.

Chihuahua state records show that carjackings peaked in August at 341, more than the city's 333 murders in the same month. Since 2008, 5,643 people have reported carjackings in Juarez compared with 86 in El Paso in the same period.

Investigators worry that these attacks have gone "beyond logic," and that criminals are finding innovative ways to trick drivers.

As the city is under siege from drug cartels fighting a turf war, Juarez's lawlessness spreads with terrified drivers running red lights and speeding or simply staying home. They are scared for their lives and their property.

[continues 907 words]

Prop. 19 Would Undercut His Government's Fight Against Drug Cartels, Calderon Says.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon strongly opposes the California ballot measure that would legalize small amounts of marijuana, saying it reflects softening attitudes toward drug consumption in the U.S. that are undercutting efforts to control organized crime groups in Mexico.

Calderon, in an interview in Tijuana, said he was disappointed that the U.S. federal government, which for years has pushed Mexico to crack down on drug traffickers, has not done more to oppose the measure.

[continues 910 words]

Juarez residents are caught between drug violence and human-rights violations by Mexico's security forces, according to a report released Tuesday by the Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA, and the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center, known as Center Prodh.

The report, "Abused and Afraid in Ciudad Juarez," focuses on human-rights violations during Joint Operation Chihuahua.

The report cites five cases that involved alleged acts of torture, disappearance and sexual harassment of women by Mexican soldiers who were deployed to Juarez for the operation that began in March 2008.

[continues 272 words]

Mexican federal intelligence indicates suspected Aztecas gang leaders arrested earlier this month acquired a rocket launcher supposedly to target federal police, officials said.

Federal police arrested [name1 redacted] and [name2 redacted] at a house in Juarez, but the rocket launcher was not on a list of firearms and other items seized.

[name1 and name2 redacted], both age 29, are accused of leading an Aztecas gang crew and are suspected of taking part in at least 10 homicides in Juarez.

[name1 redacted], alias "[name1 alias redacted]," was reputedly the crew leader, a federal police spokesman said. [name2 redacted] , alias "[name2 alias redacted]," was allegedly second in command.

[continues 248 words]

As drug violence in Juarez rages on, Mexico is using the city as a testing ground for programs to combat cartels and eventually defeat them.

A recently released U.S. Department of State report states that Juarez, the hotbed of the Mexican drug wars, is being used to implement federal police programs before they are used in other cities.

For example, in Juarez the federal Department of Public Safety has taken control of the emergency call center and is looking for ways to improve emergency response times, the U.S. report states. The federal police has placed a GPS in every federal, municipal and state police vehicle.

[continues 308 words]