Mexico’s presidential election: The man to beat
As the presidential campaign officially begins, time is running out to catch up with Enrique Peña Nieto(86)
Drug policy in Latin America: Burn-out and battle fatigue
As violence soars, so do voices of dissent against drug prohibition(66)
Mexico’s election: Calderón the campaigner
The president bends the rules(9)
Joe Biden in Mexico and Honduras: Just say no
America's vice-president reiterates his opposition to drug legalisation(60)
Mexico’s do-nothing legislature: The siesta congress
Reforms languish while overpaid, underworked lawmakers bicker(120)
Mexican politics: A fatal crash
The interior minister dies in a helicopter crash(47)
Human rights in Mexico: Friendly fire
Sending soldiers to do the job of police has led to widespread abuses(40)
Mexico’s presidential race: A flash in the PAN
The ruling party’s best hope(4)
Crime and politics in Mexico: A turning tide
With a year to go until the presidential election, voters are tiring of the drug war(19)
Mexico captures another capo: Family breakdown
Another criminal boss is captured. Who will take his place?(1)
Mexico's drug war: Shallow graves, deepening alarm
Still no end to the horrors(25)
Mexico's politics: It's the economy...right?
Mexico's main opposition party will campaign on the economy rather than security(5)
Mexican-American relations: A state of insecurity
The American ambassador to Mexico resigns(8)
Mexico's presidential campaign: Saddling up for the trail to Los Pinos
Can anyone stop Enrique Peña Nieto (pictured, second from left) restoring the PRI to power next year?(11)
The costs of drug prohibition: Let them chew coca
Beware talk of victory in Latin America’s drug wars(17)
Mexico's drug wars: A pax narcotica?
Mexico faces a choice: disrupt the cartels and accept higher levels of violence, or let them get on with their “business” in exchange for peace.(24)
Impunity in Mexico: Getting soldiers in the dock
MEXICO’S army has been thrust into a leading role in the country’s ongoing fight against organised crime. The police are poorly organised and, in some states, rotten with corruption, whereas the criminal gangs are continually replenishing their firepower using cash from the lucrative drug trade. As a result, the president, Felipe Calderón, has drafted in the army, which is better-equipped than the police and widely believed to be less corrupt, to confront the gangsters.(12)
Organised crime in Mexico: Under the volcano
The drugs trade has spread corruption and violence across Mexico. Can the police ever catch up with them?(48)
Mexico's drug war: A possible turning point
BLOODY violence has torn through parts of Mexico over the past four years, as the government has ramped up its fight against the criminal gangs that have grown rich smuggling drugs into the United States. More than 28,000 people—many of them traffickers, but plenty of them innocents—are believed to have been killed since Felipe Calderón launched an intensified fight against the “cartels” on becoming president at the end of 2006. The government has boasted of recent successes in the form of the capture or killing of a series of senior mobsters, but as long as the rate of killing continued to grow, it was hard to see these achievements as being more than public-relations coups.(10)
This week in print: Ethanol in limbo and the PAN's growing pains
THIS week's print Americas section leads with an in-depth look at Brazil's potential to become a global ethanol giant, and what might stand in its way. As Felipe Calderón, Mexico's president, gives his fourth annual report to Congress, it also reports on how his National Action Party has struggled to adjust to life in the establishment after six decades in opposition.(0)
Mexico's ruling party: The new old guard
How ten years in power have changed the former opposition leaders(14)
Mexico's drug war: Barbie behind bars
AFTER weeks of unrelentingly grim headlines, Mexico’s government announced a rare bit of good news this morning: the federal police had arrested Édgar Valdez Villarreal, one of the country’s most powerful gangsters and quite possibly its most violent. Known as “La Barbie” for his supposed (and unconvincing) resemblance to a Ken doll, the Texas-born Mr Valdez cut his teeth as the chief enforcer for Joaquín El Chapo (“Shorty”) Guzmán, whose Sinaloa “cartel” is the world’s biggest drug-trafficking organisation. Mr Valdez led the group’s takeover battle for the border city of Nuevo Laredo in 2005, but left it when Arturo Beltrán Leyva, one of Mr Guzmán’s top lieutenants, split off to form his own mob three years later. Once the Mexican navy killed Mr Beltrán Leyva last December, his brother Héctor sparred with Mr Valdez for control of the organisation.(31)
Mexico and drugs: Thinking the unthinkable
Amid drug-war weariness, Felipe Calderón calls for a debate on legalisation(149)
Mexico's paralysed politics: Rising violence, fading hopes
Felipe Calderón has got an electoral boost, but Mexico is still sliding dangerously downward(20)
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