Sort of a sub section to this thread:
Briefing: The gang war that’s ravaging Mexico
How powerful are Mexico’s drug gangs?
In much of the country, more powerful than the government itself. Mexico’s three main drug cartels are effectively in control of swaths of the country’s Pacific Coast, industrial heartland, and tourist havens of the Gulf Coast.
With their staggering income from drug smuggling—$8 billion to $23 billion a year, according to U.S. estimates—the gangs can afford more powerful weapons than the police, and they don’t hesitate to kill the politicians, cops, and journalists they can’t bribe or intimidate.
http://www.theweekdaily.com/news_opi...ng_mexico.html
Drug trade tyranny on the border
Mexican cartels maintain grasp with weapons, cash and savagery
TIJUANA, Mexico - The killers prowled through Loma Bonita in the pre-dawn chill.
In silence, they navigated a labyrinth of wood shacks at the crest of a dirt lane in the blighted Tijuana neighborhood, police say. They were looking for Margarito Saldaña, an easygoing 43-year-old district police commander. They found a house full of sleeping people.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23656496/