12,456 SLAIN IN DRUG WAR THIS YEAR, OFFICIALS SAY

More than 12,000 people have died this year in Mexico's drug war, officials said Thursday, making it the deadliest year since President Felipe Calderon launched a government crackdown against traffickers in 2006.

The federal attorney general's office said 12,456 people were killed through Nov. 30.

The overall death toll since the launch of the drug war stands at 30,196, according to figures given to reporters during a year-end breakfast session with Atty. Gen. Arturo Chavez Chavez.

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MEXICO CITY - Despite being a federal fugitive, accused of laundering millions of dollars for one of Mexico's most ruthless drug cartels, Julio Cesar Godoy says he simply walked into the national legislature here unnoticed in September, right past the cordon of federal police officers watching the building.

He then raised his right arm, swore allegiance to the Mexican Constitution and, 15 months after disappearing from public view, finally claimed the congressional seat he won last year.

It was too late for prosecutors to do much about it. Mr. Godoy's newly conferred status came with a special perk: immunity from prosecution.

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MEXICO CITY-Mexico's Congress voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to strip parliamentary immunity from a congressman accused of links to a drug cartel, the first time a sitting Mexican lawmaker has faced charges of ties to organized crime.

Legislators voted 384-2 to lift the immunity of Julio Cesar Godoy, a congressman from the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution. Mr. Godoy, 45 years old, has been accused by Mexican prosecutors of ties to La Familia, a violent cartel based in the western state of Michoacan.

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The Collapse Is an Embarrassment for Efforts to Crack Down on Drug Corruption.

When 35 mayors, prosecutors, police chiefs and other officials in the state of Michoacan were hauled into jail and accused of taking bribes from a cartel last year, it looked as if the federal government was finally attacking the political collusion that has long nurtured the drug gangs.

But instead of heralding a bold new front in Mexican President Felipe Calderon's 4-year-old drug war, the case has turned out to be an embarrassing example of how that offensive is failing.

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Chihuahua state officials will collaborate with a United Nations specialized unit to develop new anti-crime strategies in Mexico's northern border state, officials announced Tuesday.

Chihuahua's new governor, Cesar Duarte, and Antonio Luigi Mazzitelli, a representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, signed an agreement of cooperation in Chihuahua City.

U.N. experts will provide advice only to local law enforcement officials.

Former United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime officials Carlos Castresana and Antonio Buscaglia, both prominent anti-organized-crime experts, traveled to Juarez in 2003 to review the files on murdered women, and offered recommendations.

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The drug violence in Mexico has a new potential victim: the potent agricultural sector in that country and its multi-billion-dollar ties to consumers, farmers and ranchers in the United States.

So far, two South Texas produce companies have changed the way they conduct business there.

It's primarily how they move strawberries, melons, onions and other produce out of Mexico that has been impacted rather than the growing practices themselves, company representatives said.

While officials agreed that the U.S.'s booming agricultural trade with Mexico was not facing significant risks from drug cartels now, they were less certain it could stand up to several more years of drug-related challenges.

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MEXICO CITY -- Gunmen blockaded President Felipe Calderon's hometown on Thursday, forcing drivers from their cars, trucks and buses, then setting the vehicles ablaze in the middle of major intersections.

Jonathan Arredondo, a spokesman for the attorney general's office in Michoacan State, where the blockade occurred, said the brazen effort stopped traffic around 11 a.m. at all five entrances to Mr. Calderon's hometown, the colonial city of Morelia, ending only after the fires died down.

It appeared to be a show of force by La Familia, a drug gang. Several of its leaders have been arrested in recent months, but the criminal outfit -- notorious for beheadings, methamphetamine production and brash attacks on government forces -- continues to fight for control of the area west of Mexico City that it has dominated for years.

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Ciudad Juarez - A rusting seesaw is sinking even further into the marsh on the edge of the world's most dangerous city. A year ago, only a few of the relentlessly identical brick houses in the area were abandoned, burned out or turned into crack dens. Now, whole swaths of them are empty-or converted into lairs for the drug-dealing street gangs that control the terrain and tag it: PFK, WEST SIDE. The MK 18 gang has apparently taken over a row of houses leading down to an open sewer.

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A man Mexican prosecutors say is one of the country's most-wanted drug kingpins has collected a salary from the Mexican school system for years, according to official documents published Wednesday, showing the ability of fugitives to draw support from the very government charged with capturing them.

Servando "La Tuta" Gomez, a reputed leader and spokesman for the La Familia drug cartel, held a tenured position at an elementary school in the central state of Michoacan and has received paychecks for 15 years.

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U.S. diplomats in Mexico were concerned that drug cartels might attack U.S. personnel and institutions, according to a leaked government document provided by Wikileaks.

"We do know from sources that cartel members have at least contemplated the possibility of doing harm to our personnel and institutions, but we don't know enough about how DTO (drug-trafficking organizations) think and operate to know what factors might trigger a decision to mount such an attack, but the potential threat is very real," states a U.S. cable titled "The Battle Joined: Narco Violence Trends in 2008."

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Over the border and through the cartels to Abuelita's casa we go.

A scary new reality arrived with the long Christmas season in Mexico. For generations, families have driven across the border from the U.S. to spend much of December and into January visiting relatives.

This year, the Mexican government put out stark warnings to such merry travelers. Travel in convoys, in daylight and if possible, contact federal authorities for a military escort through the portions of Mexico where the drug cartel violence has been particularly gruesome.

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MEXICO CITY-Mexican troops arrested a 14-year-old U.S. citizen suspected of being a hit man for a drug cartel and beheading his victims, the latest shocking development in Mexico's war on drug-trafficking gangs.

Edgar Jimenez was captured late Thursday at an airport in Cuernavaca, a tourist destination about an hour south of Mexico City, as he attempted to board a flight to Tijuana, the Mexican army said in a statement.

The teenager-short and slight with curly black hair-was allegedly trying to make his way back to San Diego, where he has lived previously and where his stepmother is believed to live, officials said.

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VERACRUZ, Mexico -- Thousands of families left this depressed coastal state 15 years ago for blue-collar jobs in the bustling factories of Juarez.

Now many of them are fleeing Juarez, one of the most violent cities in the world, to return to Veracruz, an impoverished place that has been ravaged by natural disasters.

The Veracruz state government is subsidizing the exodus from the border. This year, it has paid for seven charter flights that ferried 1,600 people from Juarez to the port of Veracruz.

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A Mexican Woman Police Chief Who Vowed To Take On Drug Cartels Has Been Shot Dead After Only Two Months In The Job.

Hermila Garcia, 36, was killed by several gunmen as she drove to work in the town of Meoqui, outside Chihuahua city in the north of the country.

Ms Garcia, who did not carry weapons or have bodyguards, was one of a small but increasing number of women to take on top police jobs because men have been too afraid of reprisals by criminal gangs.

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Horrors unfold in this book like a revenger's tragedy, as lines in the Mexican gangster's codebook are constantly crossed. It becomes acceptable to target the spouses and children of a murdered rival in the drugs trade. Then the guests who attend the funeral; then the police investigating the case; then their families in turn. The ripples of violence spread out inexorably. Bodies are left hanging from traffic bridges for dawn commuters to see, often with a warning message displayed beside them. Those are the bodies that have not been dissolved in the acid baths.

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It is unlikely the arrest of the suspected leader of the Aztecas gang over the weekend will end the bloodshed in Juarez, said an researcher who studies Mexico.

Mexican federal police arrested Arturo Gallegos Castrellon, known as "El Farmero," who allegedly told police he was responsible for 80 percent of the homicides in Juarez since August 2009.

Gallegos, 32, was arrested along with two other people during a raid Saturday at a home in Juarez. Police seized two rifles, two handguns, drugs and four vehicles, including a bulletproof pickup.

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VERACRUZ, MEXICO - Exploiting loopholes in the global economy, Mexican crime syndicates are importing mass quantities of the cold medicines and common chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine - turning Mexico into the No. 1 source for all meth sold in the United States, law enforcement agents say.

Nearly three years ago, the Mexican government appeared on the verge of controlling the sale of chemicals used to make the drugs, but the syndicates have since moved to the top of the drug trade.

Cartels have quickly learned to use dummy corporations and false labeling and take advantage of lax customs enforcement in China, India and Bangladesh to smuggle tons of the pills into Mexico for conversion into methamphetamine. Ordinary cold, flu and allergy medicine used to make methamphetamine - pills banned in Mexico and restricted in the United States - are still widely available in many countries.

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MEXICO CITY -- A notorious drug gang leader has been captured and has confessed to ordering most killings in the battle-scarred border city of Ciudad Juarez since August 2009, including the drive-by shootings of a United States consular employee and her husband, Mexico's federal police said Sunday.

Arturo Gallegos Castrellon, 32, leader of the gang Los Aztecas, was arrested along with two other gang leaders in a Juarez neighborhood on Saturday, said Luis Cardenas Palomino, chief of the regional security division of the federal police.

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GUADALUPE, Mexico -- The only police officer in a long and deadly stretch of border towns in the Juarez Valley is 28-year-old Erika Gandara.

She works in plainclothes but keeps a semi-automatic rifle, an AR-15, hidden between cushions in her stark office. A bulletproof vest hangs near the door. A portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Mexican version of the Virgin Mary, adorns one wall. These items are all Gandara has for company at the station.

Eight officers constituted the police force of Guadalupe. One was shot dead the week Gandara joined the department as a dispatcher in June 2009. The other seven resigned within a year, driven out by fear, Gandara said. The last one quit in June, and no potential replacements have applied, Gandara said.

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Maria Vizcaino still looks for her brother, three years after he disappeared in a country fraught with corruption, drugs and death.

She said Cesar Vizcaino Amaro vanished on Feb. 20, 2008, after the Mexican army arrested him on suspicion of trafficking drugs and possessing weapons in Juarez.

Vizcaino Amaro, then 35, was one of eight men arrested that day, army records show. The others were booked into a Juarez jail, but nobody saw or heard from Vizcaino Amaro again, his sister said.

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