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U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

MONTERREY, Mexico - Suspected Mexican drug hit men dumped the head of a murdered man on top of a car in the street, police said on Friday, in a rare outrage in the wealthy city of Monterrey. The head, found on Thursday night on the roof of a car parked in a middle-class residential area, had a written message next to it signed by the Gulf cartel, the country's most violent drug organization. The ears were chopped off, a senior state police officer told reporters on condition of anonymity. Mexican drug gangs, engaged in a bitter fight with each other...

WASHINGTON — As many as 200 U.S.-trained Mexican security personnel have defected to drug cartels to carry out killings on both sides of the border and as far north as Dallas, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, told Congress on Wednesday. The renegade members of Mexico's elite counter-narcotics teams trained at Fort Benning, Ga., have switched sides, contributing to a wave of violence that has claimed some 6,000 victims over the past 30 months, including prominent law enforcement leaders, the Houston-area Republican told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The slaughter has gained urgency amid high-profile assassinations of law officers in Mexico since...

NUEVO LAREDO - A gunfight between military forces and alleged drug traffickers that lasted more than an hour in the predawn hours Wednesday left one soldier dead and at least three others injured, authorities confirmed Thursday. An unknown number of traffickers also were killed and injured, authorities said. The assault occurred in Ciudad Mier, about 60 miles east of Nuevo Laredo, at about 1 a.m. Wednesday, said Gen. Rigoberto García Cortés, head of the border military forces headquartered in Nuevo Laredo, at a news conference Thursday. The national Defense Department reported that after the gunfight, soldiers searched two sport utility...

Authorities have arrested a father and son believed to be top leaders in the Tamaulipas-based Gulf Cartel, Mexican officials announced Thursday. Federal prosecutors allege Rogelio "El Rojo" Díaz Cuellar led the drug trafficking organization's operations in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas State and coordinated the movements of several loads of drugs into the United States. His son - Rogelio "El Roger" Díaz Contreras - was also arrested for allegedly playing an active role in his father's cell, Mexico's attorney general's office said in a statement. "The cell led by this drug trafficker was an important support for the (cartel),"...

Security was heavy Thursday as the nine defendants named so far in an indictment targeting the Gulf Cartel's enforcers, the Zetas, appeared in federal court for pre-trial proceedings.At least half a dozen stone-faced U.S. Marshals kept watch over the defendants in U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez's court, along with members of the Correction Corp. of America's special operations response team, who wore body armor. Prosecutors allege that the nine defendants named in the 47-count indictment are members or associates of the Zetas, a violent wing of the Gulf Cartel believed to control most of the narcotics trafficking in Nuevo Laredo....

Mexican authorities have scored key victories in recent months in their ongoing campaign against the Tamaulipas-based Gulf Cartel. An increased military presence in cities along the nation's northern border has yielded numerous arrests of top organization officials and high-profile raids on drug stashes and safe houses. But there is evidence that despite their successes, the cartel and its paramilitary wing, the Zetas, are adapting. Leaders of both have moved out of once prominent hotspots and may be entering new forms of criminal and legitimate business, say law enforcement officials and analysts. "When the smoke clears and the military leaves, we...

GUATEMALA CITY -- Reuters news agency is reporting that Guatemalan officials have captured a senior member of Mexico's powerful Gulf cartel. Daniel Perez Rojas, who is wanted in the United States, and believed to be the second in command of the Gulf cartel's armed wing, the Zetas, was arrested last week in Guatemala City where he was posing as a car salesman. A former Mexican soldier who helped create the Zetas in the lates 1990s, Perez is accused of involvement in a deadly shootout in southern Guatemala in March, Reuters reported. Experts told the news agency the arrest of Rojas...

The two men who broke into the house of a maquinitas owner who was cooperating with the federal government and threatened him with a gun were likely doing so in an attempted kidnapping or murder for hire, a federal prosecutor said in court Tuesday.Jose Manuel "Whiskey" Nuñez Sanchez, 23, a Mexican citizen, and Sergio "Pelon" Oslan Rivera, 25, a Honduran citizen, were in federal court on Tuesday. They awaited sentencing on weapons charges that stemmed from their involvement in the home invasion of Linh "Larry" Tuan Do. At the time, Do was the owner of Entertainment World and an important...

MEXICO CITY — Hit men tied to the Gulf cartel appear to be boldly seeking recruits by posting help-wanted signs in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, including a giant banner hung across a thoroughfare, a federal anti-drug enforcement official said today. The banner appeared over the weekend in Nuevo Laredo near the border with Texas: "Operative group 'The Zetas' wants you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer a good salary, food and benefits for your family. Don't suffer anymore mistreatment and don't go hungry." Photos of the banner were displayed prominently in Mexico's national media today. The Zetas is the...

MEXICO CITY — Mexican federal police in the border city of Nuevo Laredo seized $6 million in cash Thursday after arresting five alleged paramilitary members at a Pan-American Highway checkpoint. The seizure, officials said, marked the latest blow against the Gulf Cartel, the drug smuggling organization based in the Mexican cities bordering South Texas. Authorities said the arrested men are members of the Zetas, a paramilitary group of gunmen led by deserters from elite Mexican army units. The five men were arrested at a checkpoint about 15 miles south of Nuevo Laredo. After their arrest, they led police to a...

Federal authorities have their sights set on high-ranking members of the Zetas working in Nuevo Laredo, as indicated by a 50-page indictment partially unsealed earlier this week.The indictment alleges a wide-ranging, drug-smuggling conspiracy that involved several murders, including one in which a defendant is accused of collecting the blood of his victim and making a toast to Santa Muerte before killing the man and burning his body. Two of the 32 people listed in the 47-count indictment were in federal court Thursday. Only four names have been made public; the others are blacked out on the court records because they...

CAMARGO, Mexico – The ranch near this border community is isolated, desolate and laced by arroyos – an ideal place, experts say, for training drug cartel assassins. Mexican drug cartels have conducted military-style training camps in at least six such locations in northern Tamaulipas and Nuevo León states, some within a few miles of the Texas border, according to U.S. and Mexican authorities and the printed testimony of five protected witnesses who were trained in the camps. Also Online Cartel training camps copy pattern set by international terrorists The camps near the Texas border and at other locations in Mexico...

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – The government of Mexican President Felipe Calderón on Thursday announced a military surge of more than 2,000 soldiers in this besieged border community – caught in the crossfire between two warring drug cartels. "Operation Chihuahua," named after Mexico's biggest state, nestled against New Mexico and Texas, is aimed at restoring law and order in a region that many say has grown lawless. Since Jan. 1, nearly 200 people have been killed in this city of 1.2 million. "In this fight, Chihuahua is not alone," said Mexico's interior secretary Juan Camilo Muriño, who was accompanied by the...

Juan Manuel Marquez-Rodriguez was supposed to use a baggie of marijuana to lure Julio Adrian Serrano out of his home on Gallagher Avenue that cool December morning in 2006, as two other men lay in wait to kidnap him at gunpoint.But when Serrano went out to meet Marquez, he spotted Sergio "Pelon" Oslan Rivera jumping over a nearby fence. Serrano immediately turned around and ran back into his trailer. Marquez, 27, pulled out a .40 caliber pistol and fired at Serrano, then 19. One bullet hit Serrano in the back, killing him on the spot, according to information Laredo police...

The Geopolitics of Dope January 29, 2008 | 2103 GMT By George Friedman Over recent months, the level of violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has begun to rise substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. Last week, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican gangs engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States. The action apparently pushed some of the gang members north into the United States in a bid for sanctuary. Low-level violence is endemic to the border region. But while not without precedent, movement of organized, armed cadres...

Over recent months, the level of violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has begun to rise substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. Last week, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican gangs engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States. The action apparently pushed some of the gang members north into the United States in a bid for sanctuary. Low-level violence is endemic to the border region. But while not without precedent, movement of organized, armed cadres into the United States on this scale goes beyond what has become accepted...

Firefights on the Border Despite a security crackdown launched a month ago in several Mexican cities along the U.S. border, the area was once again the scene of deadly gunbattles during the past week between Mexican security forces and heavily armed members of the Gulf drug cartel. A long firefight in several parts of Rio Bravo on Jan. 7 left at least three people dead and several security personnel wounded. The following day in the nearby city of Reynosa, just across the border from McAllen, Texas, a gunbattle outside a hotel left two federal agents dead. Cartel members reportedly used...

Deadly gunbattles in two Mexican border cities last week left their sister communities in the Rio Grande Valley hoping that the brutal cross-border violence plaguing Nuevo Laredo for years had not spread downstream permanently. Five people died in fierce firefights between suspected Gulf Cartel gunmen and Mexican troops and federal agents in Rio Bravo and Reynosa. Those cities sit just across the Rio Grande from lucrative havens for so-called Winter Texans, setting the multi-billion dollar drug trade on a collision course with a growing tourism industry. "We're very concerned that the Mexican military controls its violence," said Hidalgo County Judge...

MEXICO CITY — With drug violence raging unchecked along the Texas border and deep into Mexico's heartland, President Felipe Calderon called for security forces and citizens to "close ranks" against the powerful criminal gangs. "It's indeed possible to win the battle," Calderon said Wednesday at meeting with Cabinet ministers involved in law enforcement. "But to achieve that we must remain united. We must close ranks against criminality." Calderon has made the crackdown on Mexico's crime lords a cornerstone of his 13-month-old administration. But while the campaign has scored some notable successes — including the seizure of more than 40 tons...

McALLEN, Texas — Three Americans were among 10 suspects arrested in a shootout with Mexican federal troops Monday that left three gunmen dead in the Mexican border city of Rio Bravo. A gunfight broke out in front of the Rio Bravo police station between Mexican soldiers, federal police and suspected drug cartel members, officials said. The Americans arrested Monday were Esteban Valdez de los Santos of Texas and Ricardo Zamora Lopez and Jose Raul Gonzalez Sanchez, both of Detroit, The McAllen Monitor reported. It wasn't immediately known where in Texas Valdez was from. The Monitor reported that at least two...

MONTERREY, Mexico — In another cruel display of organized crime firepower, a heavily armed commando attacked a police convoy in the central state of Zacatecas , killing seven police officers and freeing two alleged kidnappers, federal police said Saturday. The attack Friday appeared to be retaliation for the arrests of the kidnap suspects hours earlier, during which a fourth suspect died while exchanging fire with police, according to the federal Attorney General's office, or PGR. The killings capped a bloody year in Mexico's brutal drug gang war, which claimed more than 2,200 lives in 2007, including scores of law enforcers....

Increased Military Presence in Sinaloa The military will increase its presence in urban areas of Sinaloa state to help the state government combat violence associated with the drug trade, Mexican Defense Secretary Guillermo Galvan Galvan said Dec. 16. No cities were specified, though this most likely means highway checkpoints will be set up around the state capital, Culiacan, and the port cities of Mazatlan and Los Mochis. Additional military units reportedly will patrol rural areas to eradicate marijuana crops. The secretary's announcement came after he met with the governor of Sinaloa, who reportedly has sought federal assistance for several months....

Border Violence Prompted by a series of attacks along the Mexico-Texas border, Mexican federal police and army troops were sent this past week to five border towns in Tamaulipas state -- Matamoros, Rio Bravo, Reynosa, Ciudad Miguel Aleman and Ciudad Mier. In one attack, on Nov. 29, a group of heavily armed men aboard several vehicles killed six men as they were walking out of a business in Rio Bravo, just across the border from Weslaco, Texas. The apparent target of the attack was former Rio Bravo mayor Juan Antonio Guajardo Anzaldua, who was killed along with two federal agents...

Shooting outside downtown restaurant left 6 dead, 3 wounded RIO BRAVO — The Mexican army cordoned off Rio Bravo early Friday, one day after a shooting outside a downtown restaurant left three hospitalized and six dead, including prominent political figure Juan Antonio Guajardo Anzalduá. Soldiers searched vehicles leaving and entering the city, which sits in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas across the Rio Grande from Donna(Texas). Some residents of the city said the incident has frightened them, and the residents fear violence in the city could escalate. “We are afraid. We are very scared,” one Rio Bravo woman said in...

RIO BRAVO — Assailants wielding automatic weapons on Thursday shot and killed the former mayor of a Mexican border city and five companions outside a restaurant, local media reported. Juan Guajardo, a career politician and the former mayor of the Rio Bravo, a city across the Texas border from Mercedes, was arriving at a restaurant in downtown Rio Bravo when the gunmen opened fire, killing him, his brother, two bodyguards, his driver and an unidentified man, the government news agency Notimex reported. Officials at the attorney general's office in Tamaulipas state, where Rio Bravo is located, did not return calls....

Court records describe how Zetas gave money, instructions to hit men LAREDO – Rosalio Reta killed his first man at age 13. He didn't like it much, he told police. The guy was tied up and kneeling. Mr. Reta just had to pick up a pistol and shoot him in the head. Rosalio Reta "He told us that wasn't his style. There was no challenge," said Webb County Assistant District Attorney Jesus Guillen, who successfully prosecuted Mr. Reta for murder. "He preferred to run surveillance on a victim, pick the right moment and surprise him. Like he was playing Grand...

Saying he will defend his district against anybody trying to portray it as a "war zone," U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar defended Thursday the statements he made during a heated exchange with Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores on national television."He cannot expect to attack me, to attack my city that I care so much about, and portray it as a war zone," Cuellar said during a videoconference Friday. "(People) are going to think Laredo is a bad place to come to." The exchange occurred Thursday during a taped interview on CNN's nightly news show featuring Glenn Beck. Cuellar said he was...

An extensive, multi-agency investigation has begun into the death of Mario Cruz Espinosa Lobato. Espinosa, a prominent business owner and city councilman for Ciudad Acuña, Coah., Mexico, was gunned down at his home on Qualia Drive around 3:20 p.m. Wednesday. Espinosa’s wife discovered the body of her husband around 3:30 p.m. lying next to his Toyota Tundra pickup in the family garage when she returned home after picking up her grandchildren, said Val Verde County Sheriff A. D’Wayne Jernigan, whose office is leading the investigation. Family and friends said Espinosa, 58, was an outspoken advocate for the poor and protector...

LAREDO — When police investigators realized the hit men they had under surveillance were about to attack a local dentist driving a Hummer, they issued a hurried order to a patrol car. Pull the Hummer over, right now. A few frantic moments later, the dentist was parked, the police cruiser behind him, lights flashing. The hit men kept driving, thrown off by an apparent routine traffic stop. They had almost killed the wrong man — again. But police were only days away from stopping them for good. At its ferocious peak in 2005 and 2006, a war between Mexico's two...

LAREDO — The shadowy figure who directed a Texas hit squad from 2005 to 2006 had a much bigger job on his hands — breaking a rival drug cartel's murderous three-year siege of his territory in and around Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. He did it with ruthless efficiency. Residents of the Mexican border city have heard about Miguel Treviño Morales, nicknamed "El Cuarenta," or "40" — but they don't talk about him. He was well known to Mexican law enforcement officials, too. Yet he never appeared on the "most wanted" lists of Mexico's federal or Tamaulipas state's attorney general's offices. "No...

McALLEN — Pharr and McAllen police arrested five people Tuesday and Wednesday accused of operating an auto theft ring that provided stolen cars to drug cartels and the paramilitary Zetas in Mexico. Police are continuing seek the whereabouts of another man who has auto theft warrants from 2005 and is believed to be associated with the ring. Among those busted as suspected participants in the ring are Luis Alberto Cardenas, 24, of Reynosa; Alfredo Marcos Bautista, 18, of Reynosa; Jorge Alvarez Hernandez, 22, a Mexican national; and two juveniles, including a 15-year-old boy from Reynosa. Charges against the suspects include...

McALLEN — The accused second-in-command of the Gulf Cartel’s operations in Reynosa fled to the United States because he feared for his life, his attorney said Wednesday. Carlos Landín-Martinez, who was arrested while grocery shopping at a McAllen H-E-B on Saturday, appeared in federal court Thursday for a detention hearing on charges of conspiracy to transport a controlled substance. But his attorney, Oscar Alvarez, characterized the man as an honorable police officer who feared retribution from drug traffickers. Landín-Martinez previously served as a commander in the Tamaulipas state police force but has also been linked to Los Zetas, a violent...

LAREDO -- With chains around his waist and legs, a federal prisoner testified this morning how Rosalio Reta was part of a group of enforcers operating in the U.S. for the notorious Gulf Cartel. The prisoner, who only identified himself as David in court, said the Mexican drug trafficking gang established three groups of young men in Laredo that would carry out orders coming from a cartel commander in Nuevo Laredo, known as "El Cuarenta" - the 40. Court documents identify "El Cuarenta" as Miguel Trevino Morales. David admitted he was in one of the three-person groups of Zetas. He...

MEXICO CITY, July 13 -- The San Antonio Express-News, a 230,000-circulation daily, this week withdrew its U.S.-Mexico border reporter after learning of what appears to be an unprecedented plan to assassinate American journalists who frequently write about drug cartels in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Sources have told several Texas newspapers that hit men from Los Zetas, a group of former Mexican military officers who operate as the Gulf cartel's assassins, may have been hired to cross into the United States and execute American reporters. Word of the threat shattered the widely held perception here that foreign journalists are somehow shielded from...

US authorities deported a former Mexican soldier and a known member of the ‘zetas' back to Mexico. Wanted by Mexico's attorney general's office, Raul Hernandez-Barron known as ‘Flander', was turned over to Mexican authorities around two in the afternoon by the Reynosa international bridge. He was arrested in a Starr county residence by a combined task force made of state and federal agencies. Hernandez-Barron deserted the Mexican army and became a member of the ‘zetas', a commando known to carry out killings and acting as drug couriers for the gulf cartel. Once in Reynosa, Mexican authorities said the suspect would...

SAN DIEGO -- A June 8 kidnapping in Chula Vista is raising fears that brazen crimes related to drug cartels south of the border are making their way north. Federal authorities rescued the victim earlier this month and took five people into custody, but are being especially closed-mouth about the crime because of its possible connection to drug traffickers, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The house where the man was held for eight days is about a mile from where Mexican-drug-trafficking suspects shot at a Chula Vista police officer in 2005 and about 3 miles from where a body was...

NUEVO LAREDO When Roberto Martinez and his family crossed into Mexico from Laredo over the weekend, they were planning to travel to the interior to visit family members.Instead, just minutes after they arrived in this city via the Lincoln-Juarez International Bridge, they were accosted in broad daylight by a group of armed, masked men claiming to be federal agents. The family members were forced to get out of their 2002 Chevrolet Suburban and turn over all of their money, credit cards and jewelry before they were released unharmed. The thieves also took the Suburban, leaving the family members in the...

HIDALGO — The U.S. Border Patrol turned over a fugitive believed to have ties to a powerful Mexican paramilitary group to agents in that country Thursday, federal authorities said. Miguel Angel Hernandez Barrón was wanted for deserting the army and separate gun charges, said Reynosa-based Judge Ayala Santos, with the Instituto Nacional de Migración, a federal immigration court. Hernandez Barrón is believed to be the brother of Victor Manuel Hernandez Barrón, a top member of the Zetas and the purported personal bodyguard of alleged Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas, authorities said. Federal agents detained Miguel Hernandez Barrón on Wednesday in...

Failure to track the thousands of deserters may lead to a pool of hit men, critics say MEXICO CITY — The most ruthless gang of drug-cartel hit men in Mexico are deserters from the army's elite. But the Zetas, as the ex-soldiers are known, may not be the only troops who abandoned their posts to work for the cartels. In the eight years since the Zetas were organized, more than 120,000 Mexican soldiers have deserted the army, according to the government's records. Yet the country's defense officials have made little effort to track their whereabouts, security experts said, creating a...

Zetas grow into paramilitary group now hitting Mexico's casinos (snip) The Zetas, created by a group of highly trained military deserters to work as enforcers for the Gulf drug cartel, have become so powerful that their old handlers are quickly losing control, authorities said. (snip) "Now they want to control the nation's drug routes and along the way topple the traditional cartel leaders," said Mr. Benitez. "We're witnessing a classic coup under way." (snip) Working with brutal Central American gangs and former death squads from Guatemala known as Kaibiles, the Zetas have morphed into a 2,000-member paramilitary organization operating in...

ORO VALLEY, Ariz. - A power struggle between drug cartels in northern Mexico is "an outright war" and its bleed-over into Arizona is a major concern, law enforcement officials attending an annual Arizona-Sonora police conference say. Three weeks ago, some 50 gunmen arrived in a convoy in Cananea in northern Sonora and killed seven people, including five police officers, before Army troops and police pursued them, killing 16 according to Mexican authorities. The shootings have remained a prime topic of discussion among lawmen on both sides of the border, including at the 23rd conference of Policia International Sonora-Arizona meeting here...

MEXICO CITY — Police found unexploded grenades in two Mexico City subway stations Friday, and said the explosives were accompanied by messages against the "Zetas," a gang of hit men tied to the Gulf drug cartel. The three grenades — which the city's Public Safety Department said were operable, but meant to be fired by a grenade launcher — were found Friday in gift-bags marked "Danger" and left on platforms at two stations on the city's south side. One bag contained two gift boxes, each containing a grenade. Mexico City's subway system is one of the world's busiest, serving about...

NUEVO LAREDO - Men wearing military style uniforms kidnapped a Command, Control, Computer and Communications Center (C-4) supervisor and operator after they left work Friday. The supervisor and operator, both females, and a man not related to C-4, were captured at the latter's home in the 2200 block of Juarez Avenue en Colonia Juarez, seven blocks from the C-4 offices. A law enforcement official who asked not to be identified originally said two people were with the C-4 employees when they were kidnapped, but later said it was one. Francisco Arturo Morales Cabral, C-4 coordinator, said the kidnapping took place...

Hit men known as the Zetas are aiming at their own as a power struggle spreads. VERACRUZ, MEXICO — The two thoroughbreds sprinted down a country track, a few million dollars in the bettors' kitty and an old-fashioned camera waiting at the finish line. When the race was over, as veterinarians guided the expensive equines back to their air-conditioned trailers, gamblers at the private track began to argue over the nose-to-nose conclusion. Among them were members of a band of hit men known as the Zetas, employees of the Gulf cartel of drug traffickers. Let's just wait for the film...

MEXICO CITY — Five soldiers and a suspected drug cartel enforcer were killed in a shootout in the western state of Michoacan, which has been plagued by drug violence and is the target of a military-led anti-drug offensive. More than a dozen suspected Zetas — a group of Gulf cartel hitmen that includes former soldiers — opened fire on the troops late Tuesday in Caracuaro, 120 miles west of Mexico City, police spokesman Miguel Covarrubias said Wednesday. The Defense Ministry said five soldiers were killed but declined to give details or confirm media reports that at least four more were...

(Editor’s note: This is the second of two stories on Gabriel Cardona that first appeared in the Houston Chronicle.) A young Gulf Cartel hit man pleaded guilty Monday, April 16 to three murders in exchange for a prison sentence of 80 years. The plea agreement, entered in the 49th District Court in Laredo, will make 20-year-old Gabriel Cardona, an admitted quintuple murderer, eligible for parole at age 50, said Fausto Sosa, his lawyer. All of Cardona’s murder sentences are to run concurrently, making him eligible for parole in 30 years — or after serving half of the sentenced time, including...

(Editors note: This is the first of two stories on Gabriel Cardona that first appeared in the Houston Chronicle. The second is scheduled to appear Monday in the Laredo Morning Times.)If the teenage hitman had stayed locked up in his concrete cell after the first murder, maybe Moises Garcia would still sing goofy Spanish songs to his son. Maybe Noe Lopez, a 27-year-old father of four, wouldn’t be buried under a sapling in the city cemetery. Maybe. If a judge hadn’t reduced Gabriel Cardona’s bail after the second murder charge, perhaps Mariano Resendez would be close to finishing his junior...

ACAPULCO, Mexico — A video purportedly showing the beheading of a drug cartel hit man appeared on video-sharing Web site YouTube, and its makers called on Mexicans to kill more members of the gang. The video appeared as the rival Gulf and Sinaloa gangs wage a bloody battle for trafficking routes and President Felipe Calderon is taking on organized crime with thousands of troops sent to drug-plagued areas. "Do something for your country, kill a Zeta!" read a written message opening the five-minute video posted Friday. The Zetas are believed to be ex-army operatives serving as hit men for the...

MEXICO CITY — A human head was found today outside the state security office in the Gulf state of Tabasco. A state police official who wasn't authorized to give his name told The Associated Press by telephone that the head was found in a plastic bag early today by employees of the office in Villahermosa, 400 miles east of Mexico City. Officials are trying to determine the victim's identity, as well as why he was killed and by whom. In the past year, beheadings have become common among rival drug cartels, and the heads are often left outside security offices,...