Mexico Narco-Death Box Score
11/14/2006
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The latest tally of over 2,000 bodies in the warfare between Mexican drug cartels shows how the mask is falling from the face official Mexico tries to present to the world. An average of six people are killed daily in the country's drug wars, and the formerly sacrosanct tourist areas are now home to gun battles and heads washing up on the beach. The number killed in the narco-wars last year was 1500, so the violence is increasing.

Sadly, the journalists brave enough to tell the truth about Mexico's violence and corruption tend to end up dead. [ Mexico's drug war death toll tops 2,000, San Francisco Chronicle 11/14/06]

The death Friday of Misael Tamayo Hernandez, editor of the daily newspaper El Despertar de la Costa, appeared to be the sixth killing of a Mexican journalist this year, according to the group Reporters Without Borders. [...]

Days before he was found dead, the editor had written a column denouncing local corruption. The southern state of Guerrero, which includes Zihuatanejo and Acapulco, has been ravaged by a battle between competing drug cartels and the police. Tamayo's newspaper reported extensively on the violence.

"Are we becoming used to this being a 'normal' day in our country?" El Universal asked in a Saturday editorial, as the paper reported on the deaths of Tamayo and a wild shootout in the southern state of Michoacan that left a suspected cartel "soldier" dead.

See Vacation Spot Becoming Narcopulco? for the answer.

Meanwhile, the White House is pushing forward with its plan for a shotgun marriage (aka the "North American Union") with the failing state next door.

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