MEXICO CITY - Latin American leaders have joined together to condemn the U.S. government for soaring drug violence in their countries, blaming the United States for the transnational cartels that have grown rich and powerful smuggling dope north and guns south.

Alongside official declarations, Latin American governments have expressed growing disgust for U.S. drug consumers - both the addict and the weekend recreational user heedless to the misery and destruction paid for their pleasures.

"Our region is seriously threatened by organized crime, but there is very little responsibility taken by the drug-consuming countries," Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said at a meeting this month of Latin leaders in Caracas. Colom said the hemisphere was paying the price for drug consumption in the United States with "our blood, our fear and our human sacrifice."

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Casualties of the Mexican Drug War

While Cartel Violence Has Spread into the U.S., It Hasn't Reached Jackson County, Sheriff Says

Margarita Castillo worries that members of her family who remain in Mexico could get caught in the crossfire of a war raging between two rival cartels who are fighting over the lucrative drug smuggling route to the Western United States.

Castillo, who owns La Placita, an eight-store mini-mall on West Main Street in Medford, said the cartels have put law-abiding, hard-working Mexican citizens at risk because of the violence ripping across the nation.

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Nearly five years ago, Mexico's president, Felipe Calderon, declared war on the country's powerful and vicious drug cartels. His strategy of using the military against them initially enjoyed widespread domestic popularity, as well as Washington's strong support, but it has failed to yield results. Some 42,000 people have perished in the resulting violence, and the cartels seem more powerful than ever.

The Mexican people are increasingly disenchanted with the drug war, and influential political figures are urging a different approach. Some say the government should negotiate a truce with the cartels. Others, most notably Calderon's predecessor, Vicente Fox, are bolder, advocating drug legalization to deprive the criminal enterprises of their vast black-market profits.

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WASHINGTON --- American law enforcement agencies have significantly built up networks of Mexican informants that have allowed them to secretly infiltrate some of that country's most powerful and dangerous criminal organizations, according to security officials on both sides of the border.

As the United States has opened new law enforcement and intelligence outposts across Mexico in recent years, Washington's networks of informants have grown there as well, current and former officials said. They have helped Mexican authorities capture or kill about two dozen high-ranking and midlevel drug traffickers, and sometimes have given American counternarcotics agents access to the top leaders of the cartels they are trying to dismantle.

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Several Police Officers in Northern Mexico Allowed a Violent Drug Gang to Hold Kidnap Victims in the Local Jail While Ransom Payments Were Being Negotiated, a State Official Said Thursday.

Hours later, the navy reported finding 32 bodies in three houses in the Gulf coast seaport of Veracruz, where just two weeks ago 35 tortured bodies were dumped in front of shocked motorists on a main avenue. The first incident appeared tied to fighting between rival drug cartels, but officials did not immediately say if Thursday's find was drug releated.

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52 Killed As Gunmen Set Fire To Casino

MEXICO CITY Felipe Calderon, the Mexican President, declared three days of mourning Friday and demanded a crackdown on drugs in the United States after armed men set fire to a casino in northern Mexico, killing at least 52 people.

I earnestly ask you to end once and for all the criminal sales of assault weapons to the criminals that operate in Mexico," Mr. Calderon, 49, said in a speech broadcast to the nation.

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Mexican President Cites Lax Gun Laws, Demand For Drugs For Fueling Cartels' Violence

MEXICO CITY -His voice cracking with emotion, President Felipe Calderon said Friday that the United States bore some blame for 'an act of terror' by gangsters who doused a casino with gasoline and set a blaze that killed at least 52 people.

The attack Thursday in Monterrey, an industrial city of 4 million barely a two-hour drive from Texas, stunned Mexicans and seemed likely to mark a watershed in the country's intensifying war against criminal syndicates.

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MEXICO CITY - His voice cracking with emotion, President Felipe Calderon said Friday that the United States bears some blame for 'an act of terror' by gangsters who doused a casino with gasoline and set a fire that killed at least 52 people.

The attack Thursday in Monterrey, an industrial city of 4 million barely a two-hour drive from Texas, stunned Mexicans and seemed likely to mark a watershed in the country's intensifying war against criminal syndicates.

In a 20-minute televised address to the nation, Calderon gave an unusually blunt assessment of the causes of Mexico's surging violence before flying to Monterrey to place a wreath at the burned-out hulk of the Casino Royale.

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Before we destroy the Mexican government and bring narco-terrorism to our own cities by our ruinous drug policies (which make their distribution the most lucrative occupation in the Western Hemisphere) we should have a real debate (not sound bites) on legalization.

The cancer of the cartels and Zetas will not stop at the Rio Grande; indeed it is daily seeping further into this country. Consider the following:

After a delicious San Antonio supper of enchiladas smothered in chili con carne and onions, I had a dream wherein I was allowed to read a story from the Jan. 24, 2018, Express-News:

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Cartels Boost Mass Production Of The Deadly Synthetic Drug, As U.S. Consumption Rebounds

MEXICO CITY-Mexican drug cartels already control the bulk of cocaine, marijuana and heroin that enters the U.S. market. Now, they are fast becoming the kings of methamphetamines, the deadly synthetic drug that is making a comeback in the U.S., say Mexican and U.S. officials.

Mexico's military has uncovered 103 clandestine methamphetamine labs during the first six months of this year-a 25% jump over the same period last year. In 2010, a record 5,588 kilograms (6.2 tons) of meth were seized at the U.S. border with Mexico, up from 3,602 kilos the year before. Almost that much has been seized so far this year.

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The ranking Democrat on the House committee investigating the controversial federal gun-trafficking operation known as Fast and Furious accused its Republican chairman on Wednesday of stifling discussion of whether U.S. gun laws have contributed to the violence in Mexico.

A report released Wednesday by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) said weak laws impede federal firearms agents trying to counter gun trafficking by Mexican drug cartels. It criticizes Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, for making "efforts to wall off any discussion of the nation's gun laws."

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Ease of Production, High Demand Make Pot a Sure Bet for Gangs

MEXICO CITY -- But for its problematic pedigree, Mexico's marijuana might be hailed as a marketing miracle.

The much-maligned weed has suffered decades of punishment -- burned, poisoned, ripped from the earth by its roots. Customers have been jailed, suppliers battered by literally cutthroat competition. Better products from Colombia, California and countless suburban back-rooms have somewhat eroded its popularity. Governments refuse to make it honest.

Yet, this pot has persevered. Production grows, quality improves and exports northward hum along. Despite decades of U.S. officials' efforts against it, Mexican marijuana remains widely available, frequently used and commonly disregarded as a danger.

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Author John Gibler's New Book Surveys Surveys the Unending Flow of Drugs North and Guns and Cash South and the Tens of Thousands of Murders They Cause.

In Mexico, journalist John Gibler points out, there is the War on Drugs and then there is the drug war. The War on Drugs is the spectacle -- the well-publicized deployment of troops, the high-level diplomatic meetings, the perp walks of captured capos before the media, all designed to show that the Mexican government is dead serious about confronting the "menace to society" that Mexican drug trafficking organizations, the mislabeled "cartels," represent.

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MEXICO CITY-Hundreds of investigative police, prosecutors and forensics experts and other staff from Mexico's Attorney General's Office are being investigated amid suspicion of links to organized crime, the latest corruption scandal to hit Mexico's government.

Mexican Attorney General Marisela Morales said late Tuesday that the agency was in the process of firing 424 officials, the majority for failing to pass lie-detector tests aimed at rooting out corruption.

"We are strengthening our vigilance to make sure that our own officials abide by the law," Ms. Morales said in a speech.

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A San Diego-born teen accused in the beheadings of four young men on behalf of a drug cartel went on trial Monday at a juvenile detention center in central Mexico.

Fourteen at the time of the killings, Edgar Jimenez Lugo faces up to three years in juvenile detention under Mexican laws designed to rehabilitate young offenders.

The victims' mutilated bodies were found strung from a highway bridge in August in Cuernavaca, a popular vacation spot near Mexico City that has seen a surge in violence linked to feuding drug trafficking gangs.

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Grandmother Protects Edgar and Other Children, but Her Death Results in Family's Disintegration

Part two

The 71-year-old widow was nearing the end of a 1,500-mile journey from central Mexico to restore order to the lives of her grandchildren.

A social worker held up a handmade sign to greet Carmen Solis Gil at the Tijuana airport and take her to adoption court in San Diego.

Carmen was preparing to be a mother all over again, this time to six grandchildren who were placed in foster care after the youngest, Edgar Jimenez Lugo, was born with cocaine in his bloodstream. She was filling in for a son and his common-law wife who had entered the United States illegally and fallen into a life of squalor and drug addiction.

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Drug Gangs Unleash Wave Of Violence After Chief Slain By Special Forces; Edgar Gets Mixed Up With A Group Of Killers

Part three

Mexican marines had cornered the "Boss of Bosses" in a condominium high-rise in Cuernavaca, a sunny retreat an hour's drive from the nation's capital.

Special forces quietly evacuated the towers and cordoned off traffic.

The clatter of assault rifles rang out for two hours until Arturo Beltran Leyva -- the leader of a fearsome band of drug-trafficking brothers -- was shot dead inside a bloodied, bullet-pocked room on Dec. 16, 2009.

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Probe Reveals That the U.S. Agency Running the 'Fast and Furious' Anti-Gun-Trafficking Operation Didn't Know About the Alleged FBI Informants. Congressional Investigators Are Looking into the Matter.

Reporting from Washington-- Congressional investigators probing the controversial "Fast and Furious" anti-gun-trafficking operation on the border with Mexico believe at least six Mexican drug cartel figures involved in gun smuggling also were paid FBI informants, officials said Saturday.

The investigators have asked the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration for details about the alleged informants, as well as why agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which ran the Fast and Furious operation, were not told about them.

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Mexican soldiers discovered one of the largest marijuana plantations ever found in the country, just 200 miles south of San Diego, Calif., the Mexican Defense Ministry said.

Mexican officials said on Thursday that the plantation, in Baja California, stretched as far as the eye could see-totaling some 120 hectares (296 acres). The crop would yield about 120 metric tons and be worth an estimated $160 million, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Video of the plantation showed a sophisticated system of piped-in irrigation to support the plants, some of which were several feet tall, according to the Associated Press. The plantation was shielded by a black screen.

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A RECENTLY arrested leader and founder of Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas says the group gets their drugs in Guatemala and their weapons are smuggled from the US across the Rio Grande.

Rejon Jesus Enrique Aguilar, also known as "El Mamito", was arrested on July 3 in a district near the Mexican capital.

"We buy (narcotics) in Guatemala," Aguilar said in a video. "It is not reliable (buying from) the Colombians," he added.

The authorities declared Guatemala's Peten department, on the border with Mexico, under siege in May after the slaughter and beheading of 27 people. The crime was attributed to Zetas.

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