MEXICO CITY — Investigators in Mexico said they have largely confirmed the contents of a grisly drug cartel video showing gunmen shooting, kicking and burning the corpses of their enemies. In a country where videos of decapitations and executions have appeared on social media before, the video released Tuesday was still chilling. A squad of … Read more
MEXICO CITY — Four Roman Catholic bishops met with Mexican drug cartel bosses in a bid to negotiate a possible peace accord, one of the bishops said, and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday he approves of such talks. The revelation by Bishop of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, José de Jesús González Hernández, in remarks at a … Read more
MEXICO CITY — An American woman and a man from Belize have been killed in what appears to have been a dispute between drug dealers at a beach club in the Mexican resort city of Tulum, officials confirmed Sunday. Prosecutors in the Caribbean coast state of Quintana Roo stressed the American woman had no connection … Read more
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s government has acknowledged that at least two well-known Mayan ruin sites are unreachable by visitors due to a toxic mix of cartel violence and land disputes. But two tourist guides in the southern state of Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala, say two other sites that the government claims are still … Read more
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president called on citizens Friday not to support drug cartels, or oppose the installation of National Guard barracks, after a number of videos surfaced showing residents cheering convoys of cartel gunmen. Several videos have been posted on social media in recent weeks of villages in southern Chiapas, showing farmers lining roadways … Read more
BRUSSELS — Customs seized 116 tons of cocaine in the port of Antwerp in 2023, setting a record for the second year in a row, Belgian authorities said on Wednesday. Demand for cocaine is growing rapidly across the EU, and governments blame the drug trade for outbreaks of violence in major port cities like Antwerp, … Read more
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s two main drug cartels have long taken their deadly rivalry with them as they expand into distant markets from Asia to Australia to Africa, but never before with such intensive street gang violence and a presidential declaration of a state of “internal armed conflict” this week in Ecuador. Gunmen from an … Read more
QUITO, Ecuador — A bomb threat sent an anti-explosives unit scrambling into a bustling area of Ecuador’s tense capital Thursday while authorities in an eastern city reported a nightclub arson killed two people as the South American country staggers under a spike of violence blamed on drug gangs. Police in the capital, Quito, said they … Read more
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador — It was a day like any other at the TC Television studio in Ecuador, with its mid-afternoon newscast underway, when masked gunmen burst in, unleashing at least 15 minutes of threats and fear — all broadcast live. First, a man with a pistol appeared in the middle of the public TV station’s … Read more
MEXICO CITY — Three gunmen pulled up to a party early on Friday in northern Mexico and opened fire on partygoers, killing six people and wounding 26 others. Two of the dead were under 18 years old, and five of the wounded were children. Four of the wounded were reported to be in critical condition … Read more