Drug Cartels Terrorize Mexico and U.S.

For people caught inside Mexico's drug corridors, life is about keeping your head down and watching your back, especially when the sun goes down.

No town knows this better than Villa Ahumada, where the entire police force quit after 70 cartel hit men roared through last spring, killing the police chief, two officers and three townspeople.

Residents of Villa Ahumada were left defenseless again last week when gunmen returned and kidnapped nine people, despite the checkpoints outside of town manned by soldiers.

A team of gunmen in southeastern Mexico opened fire on the home of state police officer Carlos Reyes Lopez and his extended family, killing 12 people, including a 2-year-old and five other children. The 12th victim was a fruit vendor who was there to deliver frozen strawberries. No arrests have been reported.

The shootings Saturday night, Feb. 14, in the state of Tabasco stunned residents of the oil-rich community that has not experienced the same level of drug-related warfare common elsewhere in Mexico, despite its strategic importance to traffickers.

The killing of officer Carlos Reyes Lopez came just days after police in Tabasco captured four gunmen and left one suspect dead.

Although some speculate that their motive was retaliation, the state prosecutor's office suggested that a personal dispute involving Reyes Lopez might have been behind the attack.

"They killed my brother Carlos, his whole family, my son, and my mother," said a sister of the dead officer and mother of the 2-year-old, according to the Tabasco Hoy newspaper.

Carlos Reyes Lopez was a member of an elite police agency formed last year amid efforts to rid public security forces of rampant corruption.

In other violence Saturday night, gunmen using grenades and assault rifles attacked, for the fourth time in two days, a police station in the state of Michoacan. A police officer was injured, adding to two other officers and eight civilians who have been wounded in the string of attacks.

Michoacan is the home state of President Felipe Calderon, and a drug mafia called La Familia has been active in parts of the state.

In Mexico City, police on Sunday discovered the decapitated bodies of two woman in the trunk of a parked car. The heads were in a cooler in the car's back seat.

Seven people were killed in a shootout at a restaurant in Jalisco state and five at a wake in Durango state.

Also on Sunday, a photographer for a newspaper in the town of Iguala, in Guerrero state was killed. And the Mexican navy has announced the discovery and confiscation of 7 tons of cocaine on a ship off the Pacific coast.

Related Blackwell reports:
Mexican Drug Cartels in U.S. Cities
Mexican National gets 15 Years for Laundering Drug Money in Colorado

Sara Kilgore