Along the northern Mexican border, fear rules ... as the death toll grows in a drug smuggling war.

Warrior Stills
Originally uploaded by brucesingman.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."

http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751
http://www.warriorthefilm.blogspot.com

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-laredo23nov23,1,3185104.story?coll=la-headlines-world
Along the northern Mexican border, fear rules
Police jobs go unfilled and a terrorized public demands reform as the death toll grows in a drug smuggling war.
By Sam Enriquez and Richard Marosi
Times Staff Writers

November 23, 2006

NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO — The top cop in this unhinged border city has 300 openings on a 600-member police force, and his fearful greeting gave a big clue why.

"Please, please don't use my name or take a photograph," the interim chief begged.

One police chief was killed last year, a second quit in the spring, and no one else appears brave enough, or foolhardy enough, to work this side of the law in Nuevo Laredo.

Mexican President Vicente Fox quietly withdrew the federal police he dispatched with great fanfare last year to bring peace, leaving the city virtually unprotected in a smuggling war that has claimed 170 lives since January.

This isn't the only border city where law and order are on the ropes.

In Tijuana, the rate of kidnappings ranks among the world's worst and some state police have refused postings after the killings of more than a dozen officers, some at restaurants and on city streets.

Organized crime is out of control, Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon said after a police commander was ambushed this month. The killing of police officers, he said, "speaks to the impunity of organized crime, that they think they're above the law, or protected."

As Mexico prepares for a peaceful transfer of power Dec. 1 with the inauguration of Felipe Calderon, the president-elect must take stock of the country's 2,000 drug-related slayings this year, residents and officials say.

"Calderon needs to apply the law or reform the law," said Nuevo Laredo resident Ana de la Cruz, the mother of two teenage daughters. "We urgently need help."

The drug problem that spans the United States and Mexico neither starts nor ends in these two border cities. But a healthy chunk of U.S.-bound dope lumbers past each day.

"The number of addicts is growing," said Adan Rosa Ramos, 24, a recovering methamphetamine user who works at a rehabilitation house in Nuevo Laredo. "There's a lot more drugs on the street."

The proximity of these cities to the United States is a blessing and a curse. The Tijuana-San Diego frontier is the busiest border crossing in the world. At Nuevo Laredo, trucks and trains ferry more than 40% of the goods traded between the neighboring countries.

The two cities also account for the most lucrative smuggling routes in the hemisphere. The tons of cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine seized by authorities each year is a fraction of what moves past them in trucks, cars, planes and tunnels.

Here's the arithmetic, said Daniel Covarrubias, the director of economic development in Nuevo Laredo: "The U.S. checks maybe 10% of the trucks that pass. Any more than that and it slows commerce. You run 10 trucks and take your chances."

Battle for control of the Nuevo Laredo corridor pits the Pacific Coast Sinaloa cartel against the Gulf cartel, whose top gunmen defected from an elite Mexican army task force. The conflict has spread to the states of Michoacan and Guerrero, where nearly 600 people were believed killed in drug-related homicides this year.

In Tijuana, the August arrest of alleged drug cartel leader Francisco Javier Arellano Felix escalated a battle among rivals believed responsible this year for many of the 318 killings in that city.

With government all but ceding control of the border, civil society has fallen into disarray or been cowed into silence. Newspapers in Nuevo Laredo have stopped reporting drug killings under pressure from advertisers, government and drug dealers.

Residents learned a lesson from Police Chief Alejandro Dominguez, who was gunned down in June 2005 within hours of taking office. He'd pledged to stand up to drug traffickers, who presumably responded in kind.

Dominguez's replacement quit and the interim chief closed his office door during a recent interview and said he wouldn't speak a word about the drug business and didn't want to be identified.

His name isn't important, and apparently neither is his job. Most of the force of almost 800 police officers was fired last year for corruption. About 300 recruits are working, but they spend their days mostly staying out of sight and out of trouble.

Even with out-of-town recruiting trips, there are no takers for 300 police jobs, including the chief's slot. Starting salaries of $600 a month apparently aren't worth it.

"Last year was bad," said the La Paz funeral home's assistant director, Alvaro Ordañez Sanchez. "A lot of cops."

Tallying the 170 people shot, burned and garroted so far in the drug war, Ordañez estimated the toll in Nuevo Laredo would approach 200 this year. That would make up about 10% of the drug-related homicides in Mexico, even though Nuevo Laredo, a city of 380,000, accounts for less than 0.4% of the nation's population.

Ordañez, whose firm also performs autopsies for the city, seems to be the only one willing to talk about the drug violence.

Elizabeth Hernandez, a state prosecutor responsible for deciding whether a homicide in Nuevo Laredo should be investigated by state or federal authorities, said she didn't know how many people had been killed.

"I've only been on the job nine months," said Hernandez, who suggested a visit to the federal prosecutor's office.

Assistant federal prosecutor Jose Enrique Corona rolled his eyes an hour later. "Of course she knows," he said.

When asked whether his office was investigating the slaying of Dominguez, the 56-year-old father who served only six hours as chief, Corona said the case was being handled by federal investigators in Mexico City. Prosecutors in Mexico City said it wasn't theirs. The truth is, few killings are investigated and almost none are solved.

"This is a city of lies," said one of the local reporters whose daily newspaper no longer covers drug killings. He was afraid to be named. "Last year we reported on all the killings, and business and government officials blamed us for disrupting commerce. Now police say nothing happens here. What a paradise."

Residents take pains to dodge the menace of drug trafficking. Some deny it exists. Look at the peaceful plazas, say boosters, and the thousands of trucks that ferry commercial goods daily to and from the United States.

"If you behave on the streets, you won't get into trouble," Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernandez Flores told potential investors during a business forum in Nuevo Laredo, which is linked by bridges with Laredo, Texas. An unofficial tally by the newspaper Milenio found 145 police officers were slain this year, a dozen of whom were from Tamaulipas.

When the Tijuana mayor favorably compared his city's crime rate with that of San Diego, some residents were stunned.

"Apparently, he's living somewhere else," said Genaro de la Torre, leader of a citizens safety group that helped organize a recent anti-violence march. "He needs to suffer what the people have suffered to realize what is really going on."

President-elect Calderon has proposed better police training, consolidation of federal law enforcement units into a single agency and creation of a national crime database.

"During the last few years, and really the last months, violence and organized crime have grown in an alarming way," Calderon told a business group last week. "We can't accept that as the image of Mexico. We can't have a daily image of executions and other bloody acts that go unpunished."

The Lopez family, which used to run a money exchange house on Nuevo Laredo's central plaza, is still waiting for justice. Thugs kidnapped one brother last month and returned the next morning for a second brother.

"He grabbed onto the pole of a payphone and wouldn't let go, so they shot him in the leg," said a reporter who interviewed witnesses. "He still wouldn't let go, so they shot him in the arm and took him. People said they called police, but nobody came."

*
sam.enriquez@latimes.com

richard.marosi@latimes.com

Enriquez reported from Nuevo Laredo and Marosi from Tijuana. Carlos Martínez and Cecilia Sánchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.

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"the action adventure fantasy feature film 'Warrior' ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

U.S. crackdown sends meth labs south of border

Warrior Stills
Originally uploaded by brucesingman.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."

http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751
http://www.warriorthefilm.blogspot.com

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-meth26nov26,0,2656249.story?coll=la-home-headlines
U.S. crackdown sends meth labs south of border
Mexico inherits a problem that was long California's.
By Richard Marosi
Times Staff Writer

November 26, 2006

GUADALAJARA — The methamphetamine laboratories that once plagued California's hinterlands and powered a national explosion of drug abuse have been replaced by an increasing supply from Mexico, U.S. law enforcement officials say.

Methamphetamine production has surged south of the border, from Baja California ranches to the highlands of Michoacan to the industrial parks here in Mexico's second largest city, where authorities in January busted the largest laboratory ever discovered in the Americas.

The fortress-like compound ringed by high brick walls housed 11 custom-designed pressure cookers that could produce 400 pounds of the drug per day. It dwarfed anything ever found in California, where the standard cooking tool is a 23-quart beaker and a 20-pound batch is considered a good production day.

"It was the mother lode of mother lodes," a U.S. law enforcement official said.

The boom in Mexican methamphetamine production stems from successful efforts in the U.S. to control the sale of chemicals used to produce the drug, including the cold medicine pseudoephedrine.

Drug traffickers, some of them ex-convicts and fugitives from the United States, including a former chemistry professor from Idaho arrested last month, authorities say, have resettled in Mexico because of the easy access to pseudoephedrine and other chemicals.

The largest share of the chemicals is believed to be shipped to Mexico from factories in China and India and routed through Hong Kong. China has emerged as the top concern for U.S. authorities.

Like traffic in heroin and cocaine, the methamphetamine economy has become a global phenomenon. So too is the battle to control what most U.S. law enforcement authorities consider the country's greatest drug threat.



'A new ice age'

"The cliche is coming true: We've entered a new ice age," said Misha Piastro, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration who has worked on the U.S.-Mexico border, referring to the smokable form of the drug called ice.

The trend began surfacing about two years ago as a crackdown on the bulk distribution of ingredients cut off producers from supplies in the U.S. and, later, Canada.

The rural fringes of California metropolitan areas, including the Inland Empire, which once were centers of methamphetamine production, remain important distribution hubs. But the number of "superlab" discoveries in California has dropped from 125 in 2003 to 12 through mid-October this year, according to the DEA. Nationwide, the numbers have dropped from 130 to 19 during the same period. Superlabs are operations that can produce more than 10 pounds of methamphetamine per cooking cycle.

Authorities now estimate that 80% of the methamphetamine on U.S. streets is controlled by Mexican drug traffickers, with most of the supply smuggled in from Mexico. Methamphetamine seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border jumped 50% from 2003 through 2005, from 4,030 to 6,063 pounds.

Mapping the methamphetamine production network is difficult in a country of remote ranchlands and under-patrolled metropolitan areas. Few law enforcement authorities are trained to recognize the signs of a drug lab, including the fumes and pollutants that pose significant environmental hazards.

Nonetheless, the number of labs discovered by Mexican authorities nearly tripled from 2002 to 2005, from 13 to 37, and methamphetamine seizures more than doubled, to 2,169 pounds, during the same period. U.S. authorities believe the numbers are a fraction of actual activity, as signs of an extensive production infrastructure have surfaced in the last year or so.

Among those signs: Mexico's importation of cold medicines jumped suddenly in recent years, from 92,000 tons in 2002 to 150,000 tons in 2005. Though recently imposed restrictions have cut legal imports by about half this year, U.S. authorities believe significant amounts are still being smuggled through corruption-ridden Mexican ports.

Last December, Mexican authorities at the Pacific Coast port of Manzanillo found 5.1 million pseudoephedrine tablets hidden in a cargo of ceiling fans from China. The cache would have been enough to produce about 3 tons of finished product, authorities said.

Last November, China toughened its reporting and licensing requirements for those manufacturing, shipping, trading and exporting bulk chemicals such as pseudoephedrine, a step welcomed by international drug enforcement officials.

But Beijing did not impose limits or reporting requirements on end users. Smugglers are still free to buy millions of cold tablets, hide these in Chinese export products and ship them to Mexico or other destinations, as seen with the ceiling-fan discovery.

China also faces problems similar to those in Mexico — budget constraints, corruption, turf battles and inadequate detection and monitoring equipment.



Public health problem

In Mexico, meanwhile, drug lab discoveries have spanned the country. In Mexicali, several labs have erupted in flames. In Michoacan, authorities have discovered large production operations and believe lab activity is rife in the state's rural areas.

Producers also have flooded the Mexican domestic market with the drug, creating an epidemic of methamphetamine addiction and drug-related crime in many cities.

"It's a grave public health problem of enormous dimensions," said Victor Clark Alfaro, a border expert and director of the Binational Center for Human Rights in Tijuana.

Guadalajara, capital of the western state of Jalisco, has emerged as a production hub for methamphetamine, authorities say. Lab activity is easily camouflaged in the metropolitan area of 4 million people, which encompasses isolated ranchlands, industrial areas and densely packed urban neighborhoods where exhaust and sewer smells mask the fumes of superlabs.

The ease of operating in Guadalajara was vividly illustrated in October, officials say, when authorities acting on an anonymous tip arrested Frederick Wells, a former Idaho State University professor who was allegedly running a superlab in his pink stucco home half a mile from the U.S. Consulate.

Wells, 57, who fled the United States in 1998 after being charged with operating a drug lab in his university office, had only to walk down the street to purchase industrial chemicals at a storefront business in Guadalajara. Authorities say Wells told them that neighbors in the quiet area of neat homes never noticed the smells during the nearly two years he operated the lab.

The enormous lab discovered in January was in a gritty area of chemical plants, small ranches and cornfields outside the city.

"We smelled things but didn't know what it was. There are lots of factories around here; you never know what you smell," said Armando Murillo, who lives behind the former lab on a small ranch where he raises goats and sheep.

Murillo's property was transformed into a campground for about 150 soldiers who guarded the lab for weeks. The suspects, a trio of chemists and former classmates at the University of Guadalajara, left behind more than 1,000 pounds of powdered methamphetamine in three barrels, and enough precursor chemicals to produce another 1,000 pounds, authorities said.

After the arrest of one suspect, authorities found four more superlabs they said were tied to the group. Another suspect is believed to have been killed by a local paramilitary-style gang, which is charged with burying alive five men at a ranch, one of them an ex-convict from Riverside County who had moved to Jalisco to get into the methamphetamine trade, a U.S. law enforcement source said.

Two other ex-convicts — one from Riverside County, the other from Phoenix — were arrested in August on suspicion of operating a lab at a ranch where Mexican authorities discovered 220 pounds of methamphetamine.

The migration south of fugitives and ex-convicts worries authorities who say it coincides with the release from U.S. prisons of many drug traffickers who have finished serving sentences dating from the early era of the methamphetamine trade.



Scarce resources

With narcotics-related violence flaring across the country, experts say Mexico is ill-prepared to open another front against methamphetamine production. The DEA has donated equipment and begun to teach their Mexican counterparts how to find drug labs, but resources for a wide-ranging enforcement effort are scarce.

Authorities in Guadalajara, for instance, delayed dismantling the lab in January because the nearest lab truck, filled with protective suits and equipment to safely dispose of chemicals, was five hours away, in Mexico City.

"The problem is too new," said Marcos Pablo Moloeznick Gruer, a political science professor at the University of Guadalajara. He said Mexican law enforcement was not "aware or concerned enough" about the rise in methamphetamine production.


richard.marosi@latimes.com

*

(INFOBOX BELOW)

Border surge

As the number of methamphetamine "superlabs" in the U.S. has dropped, the amount of the drug seized en route from Mexico has increased.

Superlab seizures

2003

- California: 125

- U.S.: 130

2004

- California: 43

- U.S.: 55

2005

- California: 29

- U.S.: 35

2006*

- California: 12

U.S.: 19

*Through Oct. 15

Methamphetamine seizures at U.S.-Mexican border (in pounds)

2003: 4,030

2004: 5,335

2005: 6,063

Source: Drug Enforcement Administration

California

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"the action adventure fantasy feature film 'Warrior' ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

Drug wars and political unrest deter Americans and others from day trips and resort vacations in Mexico ...

Warrior Stills
Originally uploaded by brucesingman.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."

http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751
http://www.warriorthefilm.blogspot.com

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mextourism19nov19,1,88730.story?coll=la-headlines-business
Fewer days at the beach
Drug wars and political unrest deter Americans and others from day trips and resort vacations in Mexico, costing the country more than $200 million this year.
By Marla Dickerson
Times Staff Writer

November 19, 2006

Lounging poolside at her hotel on the Pacific Ocean, Donna Littleton recounted the highlights of her vacation: cliff divers, an air show, jewelry shopping and a tasty buffet.

But one element clouded her sunny mood: the memory of police with automatic weapons patrolling the beach.

"It makes you feel uneasy," said the 48-year-old Georgia resident. "I doubt that we'll be back."

Drug wars and political unrest are taking a toll on Mexico's tourism industry, one of the nation's biggest employers and revenue earners. The number of international visitors to Mexico in the first nine months of the year fell by nearly 4 million, or 5.1%, from the same period last year, according to the latest government figures.

The drop has cost Mexico more than $200 million in tourism revenue this year, most of that from Americans, who make up the vast majority of foreign visitors.

The U.S. State Department put out a bulletin in September cautioning U.S. travelers to be aware of "the rising level of brutal violence" along Mexico's northern border.

That alert was followed by an October announcement urging Americans to avoid the southern tourist magnet of Oaxaca. The city has been racked by nearly six months of civil unrest that has killed at least 10 people, including an American freelance journalist. The State Department last week expanded the scope of that bulletin, calling on Americans to "be alert to increased security concerns related to protest violence throughout Mexico" after explosives damaged three buildings in Mexico City in early November in attacks that may have been related to events in Oaxaca.

The biggest decline in foreign visitors — more than 2.7 million — has been among day-trippers to northern Mexico. Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo have been convulsed by a spasm of kidnappings and narcotics-related murders this year, spooking Americans who used to zip across the border in search of souvenirs, discount medications or a spicy meal. Their trepidation is hurting Mexican merchants who depend on their spending.

"We are barely holding on," said Pablo Jacobo "Jack" Suneson, owner of Marti's, an upscale boutique in Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas. He said scores of businesses had been shuttered in the Mexican border town, where more than 160 people have been murdered this year.

The migration of dollars is prompting Suneson to build a store in San Antonio so that his American clients don't have to cross the border.

Some operators are lowering their rates to lure visitors to Mexico.

Littleton and her husband, Gary, got a weeklong vacation package to Acapulco that included airfare, luxury hotel, meals and other extras for $1,200 each.

They were accompanied by their friends Royce and Nancy Duncan. It was Royce, an Atlanta-area accountant, who found the deal on the Internet and persuaded the Littletons to go along.

Nancy, a librarian, said she was pleased with the bargain price on the nonrefundable package. That is, until she went online and started reading the crime coverage.

"I was not happy," she said, relaxing in the shade in Acapulco. "But it was too late to change our minds."

Her husband, who ended the trip with a digestive ailment, vowed that they wouldn't return anytime soon.

"There are just too many nice places to visit without the seemingly inherent risks of Mexico," he said by e-mail.

Fear of violence isn't the only factor depressing Mexico's tourist trade. The resorts of Cancun and the Riviera Maya, which are the country's top international tourist draw, spent the first part of 2006 rebuilding from Hurricane Wilma. That reduced the number of cruise passengers going ashore this year. Tens of thousands of air travelers skipped Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula for other warm-weather destinations.

"The only thing missing is the tourists," said Juan Carrillo Padilla, president of Cancun's Chamber of Commerce, who said that virtually all of the city's 27,000 hotel rooms were back in service.

Getting them filled is crucial for Mexico because the region accounted for nearly 40% of the $11.8 billion that foreign visitors spent here in 2005. Domestic and international tourism pumps $60 billion into the Mexican economy and employs 1.8 million people, according to government estimates.

It can take a few years for a destination to regain favor with travelers once it has fallen off their radar, some travel agents said. Chris DeRose, president of Villa Park-based First Travel of California, recently traveled to Cancun to gauge the recovery. She said the hotels she visited had been beautifully restored and that the stretches of beach she saw had borne no remnants of the powerful storm that devoured Cancun's sugary sand in October 2005.

Still, she said, Mexico is proving to be a tougher sell than in the past, in part because other Caribbean destinations are cheaper, but also because of resentment over illegal immigration.

Her clients, she said, "are just getting irritated with it all and have told me, 'I don't feel like going to Mexico.' "

Foreign no-shows aren't the only concern. Mexico's domestic travelers have stayed at home in greater numbers in 2006. Some hoteliers blamed a poor summer season on June's World Cup soccer tournament, which kept fanatics glued to televisions. Then came July's presidential elections. The contest pitted leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador against conservative Felipe Calderon in a bitter slugfest whose outcome was uncertain for weeks until an election tribunal upheld a slim victory for Calderon.

Supporters of Lopez Obrador seized Mexico City's historic center and blocked a main thoroughfare of the capital for six weeks to protest alleged vote fraud. Their encampment along stately Paseo de la Reforma, a major tourist draw, was largely peaceful, but business travelers and sightseers stayed away in droves. The protest cost local businesses nearly $750 million, according to some estimates.

Political tension has also scared tourists away from Oaxaca, the charming colonial capital of the state of Oaxaca. A May teachers strike and sit-in has mushroomed into a larger protest movement by groups calling for the resignation of Gov. Ulises Ruiz after a heavy-handed police crackdown on strikers in June. The lengthy standoff and spiraling violence have all but snuffed out Oaxaca's visitor trade, the lifeblood of its economy.

"In the center of the city it's practically empty," said Eduardo Garcia Moreno, president of Oaxaca's Chamber of Commerce, who said scores of businesses had closed and thousands of workers had lost their jobs. "This is much, much worse than Hurricane Wilma in Cancun."

In contrast, Acapulco on Mexico's Pacific coast looked vibrant on a recent holiday weekend, with many hotels full and the beaches packed with merrymakers.

Still, tourism officials in Acapulco say the city is suffering from a wet summer, violence-filled headlines and under-investment by the Mexican government. Federal statistics show a drop in the number of visitors in the first nine months of 2006 compared with the same period in 2005. Figures compiled by Acapulco's own local tourist board show a slight gain to just over 4.5 million people.

Whatever the actual number, some of the city's hoteliers say 2006 has been nothing to write home about.

"It has been a tough year," said Christopher Payne, general director of the Hotel Emporio Acapulco, a 419-room luxury hotel. He said this year's occupancy levels wouldn't match those of 2005.

Nestled on Acapulco Bay where the Sierra Madre mountains meet the sea, Acapulco boasts stunning topography and tropical weather year-round. Hollywood jet-setters such as John Wayne and Cary Grant made it their playground in the 1950s and 60s. Elvis Presley immortalized it in the 1963 film "Fun in Acapulco" when he sang: "This is no time for siesta, this is time for fun!"

But the venerable resort has lost much of its star power and is now mainly a weekend getaway for residents of Mexico City, about 200 miles away. Like an aging B-list player, it could stand some nips and tucks.

The toll road from Mexico City is one the most poorly maintained and the most expensive in Mexico, costing nearly $100 round trip — a small fortune here. Acapulco's main drag is potholed and choked with traffic. Raw sewage is making its way into the bay. Many of the hotels need updating.

The economic backbone of Guerrero, one of Mexico's poorest states, needs help modernizing its infrastructure, local authorities said. But they said they felt abandoned by federal officials who have channeled most tourism development resources into government-sponsored destinations such as Cancun, Ixtapa and Los Cabos.

"It isn't equitable," said Jesus Radilla Calderon, general manager of the Acapulco Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Tourism veterans say they feel victimized by publicity about rising drug violence. A number of severed heads have surfaced in Acapulco this year, most notably those of two policemen that were found with a note reading: "So that you learn to respect."

No tourists have been hurt in the bloodshed, which many here believe is entirely narcotics-related. But the hoteliers and restaurant owners say their establishments are paying the price.

"Every time [a beheading] makes the front page, we get cancellations the next day," said Marco Martinez, director of leisure sales at the Fairmont Acapulco Princess and Fairmont Pierre Marques hotels.

Tourism officials have implored law-enforcement authorities to get the violence under control to help them protect one of Mexico's most important industries.

In the meantime, entrepreneurs are doing what they can to survive. Suneson said Nuevo Laredo recently did the tourism equivalent of making lemonade out of lemons by capitalizing on its dangerous image. It hosted a gathering of the only big group it has been able to attract in recent years — a rally of hundreds of leather-clad motorcyclists.

Said Suneson: "They like a challenge."


marla.dickerson@latimes.com

*

Times staff writer Cecilia Sanchez contributed to this report.

--

*

(INFOBOX BELOW)

Rough sailing

--

Hurricanes, political unrest and drug wars have battered Mexico's tourism industry, one of the country's main sources of income.

--

Number of international visitors to Mexico*

(In Millions)

--

Total

2005: 76.7 | 2006: 72.8

--

Daytrippers

2005: 55.2 | 2006: 52.5

--

Other

2005: 8.7 | 2006: 8.2

--

Arriving by air

2005: 7.9 | 2006: 7.6

--

Cruising passengers

2005: 4.9 | 2006: 4.4

--

Source: Mexico's Secretary of Tourism

*January through September

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service
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"the action adventure fantasy feature film 'Warrior' ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

The subterranean smuggling routes breed chaos along U.S.-Mexico border.

Warrior Stills
Originally uploaded by brucesingman.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."

http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751
http://www.warriorthefilm.blogspot.com

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tunnel19nov19,0,1619996.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Tunnels act as highways for migrants
The subterranean smuggling routes breed chaos along U.S.-Mexico border.
By Richard Marosi
Times Staff Writer

November 19, 2006

NOGALES, MEXICO — One mile deep into the drafty tunnel under this hilly frontier city, a flashlight beam cuts through the pitch-black darkness and illuminates a yellow line painted on the concrete wall: the U.S.-Mexico border.

Just beyond the boundary a graffiti-message believed to have been scrawled by U.S. law enforcement warns intruders: "USA Tunnel Rats. Este lugar es de nosotros" — This place is ours.

Not exactly.

Inside the largest known tunnels on the border — two passages that make up an enormous drainage system linking Nogales, Mexico, with Nogales, Ariz. — migrants stumble blindly through toxic puddles and duck low-flying bats. Methamphetamine-addicted assailants lurk. And young men working as drug mules lug burlap sacks filled with contraband.

There are shootouts and rapes. Rising floodwaters sweep people to their deaths. U.S. Border Patrol agents pursue smugglers in frenzied chases, insults and threats echoing as they go. And tangles of rebar metal — points sharpened by smugglers — gouge people who get too close to some walls.

"It's another world down there," said Pat Thompson, a police detective in Nogales, Ariz. "You don't know what to expect."

As the United States prepares to fence much of the border above ground, the situation below ground could grow increasingly chaotic. Authorities have discovered dozens of illegal tunnels in recent years, including a nearly half-mile passage connecting Tijuana with San Diego.

Illegal immigrants have breached drainage systems all the way along the border, from El Paso to San Diego. Most of them are of the claustrophobic crawl-through variety that prevents large-scale incursions.

The Nogales tunnels, by comparison, are superhighways.

Once open waterways, today they stretch for miles under the traffic-clogged downtown streets of both cities, zigzagging roughly parallel to each other.

In the smaller one, called the Morley Tunnel, an ankle-high stream of raw sewage and chemical runoff from factories in Mexico usually flows. The neighboring Grand Tunnel is up to 15 feet high and wide enough to fit a Humvee. Dozens of illegal immigrants can travel through it at one time.

Above ground, fences, sensors and stadium lighting clearly separate the two cities. Underground, they remain linked of necessity by the system built decades ago to channel monsoon rains.

The tunnels doubled as smuggling routes from the beginning. For many years, gangs of children took control of the passages. Nogales police once encountered Mexican soldiers on the U.S. side, prompting a brief but tense standoff.

In recent years, the U.S. Border Patrol has had some success stemming the underground flow of illegal immigrants and drugs by installing heavy steel doors, surveillance cameras and sensors. But when heavy monsoon rains this summer triggered floodwaters that tore down the gates, smugglers ripped down the cameras and shattered the lights and siren used to discourage incursions — and the chaotic human flow resumed.

From July through October, agents apprehended 1,704 illegal immigrants in the tunnels, a nearly five-fold increase from the previous six months. Agents seized more than a ton of marijuana from tunnel arrests during the same period. In July, bandits raped two women from Oaxaca, Mexico, in the tunnels on the Mexican side.

This summer, five people are believed to have drowned after being caught in floodwater.

Two others fell into a sewage drain branching off one tunnel and were carried nine miles before being found alive in a shaft near a sewage treatment plant.

Imelda Guevara Lopez, 17, said she survived by never letting go of her friend's hand as she struggled to keep her head above the flow of raw sewage. Lopez, whose backside was shredded by the concrete walls, told workers at a migrant shelter in Mexico that she would never again enter the underground.

"I prefer working in the fields and being poor but alive," said Lopez, who went home to Hidalgo, according to an account in a Mexican newspaper.

Patrolling the tunnels is a tactical nightmare for law enforcement on both sides of the border, mainly U.S. Border Patrol agents and Grupo Beta, Mexico's migrant safety force.

U.S. agents often can't go into the Morley Tunnel because overpowering ammonia and chlorine smells leave them nauseated and dizzy. On the Mexican side, some stretches of the tunnel are so low that Grupo Beta agents ride their all-terrain vehicles lying on their stomachs.

Teams of U.S. agents enter the Grand Tunnel daily, sometimes toting M-4 assault rifles. But their high-tech night vision goggles are rendered almost useless in the tunnel's black hole-like reaches.

"It's so dark, you feel vertigo — like the walls are coming in on you," Agent Scott Wencel said.

A distant flicker of flashlights — sometimes half a mile away — usually signals an approaching group. They could be drug traffickers or bandits or illegal immigrants. Some have walked one mile already after descending from Avenida Reforma in Nogales, Mexico, taking advantage of the cracked grate in front of Elvira's Bar.

"They climb down every day … people from all over Mexico," said 62-year-old Sebastian Flores, an auxiliary traffic police officer in Nogales, Mexico.

The groups cross the yellow line in complete silence — the only sounds the distant hum of traffic, the chirping of crickets, the scurrying of rats. Sometimes the tunnel itself seems to be alive, producing from the humming and air flows a pulsing, low groan.

The darkness is so thick that migrants sometimes cross within an arm's length of U.S. agents without noticing. That's the agents' preferred tactic: lying in wait, pressed against the walls, letting groups pass before pouncing and cutting off any escape back to Mexico.

Some illegal immigrants are so startled that they run smack into the walls, agents say. During one sweep last December, when smugglers heard them coming, agents yelled out: "Somos migra!" — Border Patrol. They ordered the group to stop.

"Migra go home!" came the shouted reply as the people ran back into Mexico.

If the migrants manage to evade agents in the tunnels, another huge challenge remains: getting out. People pop up from manholes into the middle of busy streets, sometimes stopping traffic.

Curb storm drains are often too small, so smugglers use hydraulic jacks to pry them open so people can squeeze through.

Some grates have been opened so often that Nogales city workers have placed huge boulders and concrete blocks on top of them. At a park, one manhole was covered with a steel plate and a bench to prevent breaches. One curb storm drain downtown was pried open so often that the sidewalk buckled, leaving a telephone pole listing over parked cars near a furniture store.

Now many migrants walk a mile past where the border is marked underground to reach the open end of the drainage tunnels. Outside again, they climb an embankment to waiting cars.

Border Patrol agents hope to regain control of the tunnels after the rains stop and they are able to repair the gates and cameras at the border. But Mexican authorities doubt that it will make much of a long-term difference.

The migrants, they say, are willing to brave anything to get through. Every day, they see the evidence of the risks the illegal immigrants take: the scattered clothing, letters and family pictures left behind by bandits rummaging through migrants' stolen backpacks; the prayer books and offerings left behind by illegal immigrants in a tunnel nook fashioned into a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Enrique Palafox, the Nogales director of Grupo Beta, was shot in the chest by bandits years ago in a tunnel battle.

He still patrols the passages every day. "I like it down here. It's so quiet, and I know that when I'm here, the migrants are safe," he said.

But Palafox's force can't patrol the tunnels 24 hours a day. A message for migrants has been spray-painted on the wall just before the yellow line marking the frontier. Believed to have been written by Beta agents, it reads: Cuidense — Be careful.

*
richard.marosi@latimes.com

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Toll mounts in Mexico's drug war

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"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexdrug14nov14,1,5403024.story?coll=la-headlines-world

Toll mounts in Mexico's drug war
A newspaper editor and police chief are among the latest victims. More than 2,000 have died this year, reports say.
By Héctor Tobar and Cecilia Sánchez
Times Staff Writers

November 14, 2006

MEXICO CITY — The death toll in Mexico's drug war has surpassed 2,000 this year, with a newspaper editor found dead in the resort city of Zihuatanejo and a police commander assassinated in Tijuana apparently among the latest victims, according to news reports.

Another police commander was killed Monday in the northern city of Monterrey, and four people were reported killed in the southern state of Guerrero.

No government agency keeps a tally of the drug-related killings, but according to human rights organizations and newspapers, an average of six people are killed in the country's drug wars every day.

The newspaper El Universal said Saturday that its tally of drug-related killings for the year had reached 2,012. Last year, more than 1,500 people were killed in violence related to a lucrative trade in illicit drugs, including cocaine and methamphetamines.

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

But in a country where drug killings are often public events — a hail of bullets on a busy street, a decapitated head deposited on the steps of a government building — Tamayo's death was different.

He died before dawn in a Zihuatanejo hotel room, officials said. His sister Ruth Tamayo, who identified his body at the hotel, said he was neither shot, nor strangled with a towel, nor tied up and executed, as reported by various local media.

The editor was found with three puncture wounds on his shoulder, she said. The coroner established the cause of death as a heart attack, but could not rule out foul play until a toxicology report was complete, officials said.

"We still haven't managed to understand what happened," Ruth Tamayo said. "We're very sad, our entire family is distraught. We still can't believe it."

Having last seen him Thursday morning, Tamayo's family and co-workers became worried after he failed to show up at a 6:30 p.m. meeting at his newspaper. Within an hour, reporters and family members began searching for him.

"My brother never let the paper go to print like that," Ruth said. "The newspaper was his passion. He was the kind to call in every 10 minutes to see how things were going."

Days before he was found dead, the editor had written a column denouncing local corruption. 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.

Three days before Tamayo's death, Mexican President-elect Felipe Calderon visited Zihuatanejo to deliver a speech to a foreign trade conference. He dedicated a part of his speech to addressing fears that the wave of drug-related violence might chase away foreign investment.

Calderon, set to take the oath of office Dec. 1, promised his government would not waver in its battle against drug violence.

"It's going to take work, time and money" to win the battle, Calderon said. "And it will probably cost us human lives as well…. But there is no other alternative."

In April, hit men left two severed heads outside a Guerrero state government building in Acapulco. "So that you learn to respect," read a message scrawled on a red sheet left nearby. In October, two more heads were found on Acapulco's beach.

In Tijuana on Thursday, more than 10 heavily armed men ambushed a police vehicle on a busy thoroughfare near downtown, killing one officer in a wild shootout that left a flower vendor and a taxi driver injured.

A police commander, Hector Gaxiola Gamez, narrowly escaped the attack. But the next morning, gunmen again caught up to the commander, and this time they didn't miss. Gaxiola's body, handcuffed to that of his brother, was found in an empty lot, disfigured by more than 100 gunshot wounds.

Gaxiola was the 19th law enforcement officer to be killed this year in Tijuana. Many were slain after the August capture of alleged drug lord Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, which many experts believe has triggered a battle for control of the lucrative narcotics trade in the city.

Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon blamed the media, saying a story erroneously identifying Gaxiola as a witness in the case of the killing of another police officer had led to his death.

"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 Gaxiola.

*

hector.tobar@latimes.com

Times staff writer Richard Marosi in Tijuana contributed to this report.

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"the action adventure fantasy feature film 'Warrior' ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."