I kept going out with the rescue workers and one day we came upon this scene that was so sad that the rescue workers gave me a vest to cross the police line. I shot the scene a bunch of different ways, but the way that worked best was just showing it from the front. These people were killed by one single bullet. The woman is far into her pregnancy. The hit man came in from the left-hand side of the car and fired a bullet into the man’s head when they were embracing and killed both of them.

The violence is really hard to show in a way that is humane. It is almost impossible to give any kind of dignity to the people that have died, because of how horribly they have been maimed. Taking pictures of those things, you feel like you are supporting what the narcos are doing because you are spreading out their message of horror. So I really became obsessed with making a picture that was intimate – while still showing violence – and encompassed humanity and dignity. I wanted to give these people a story.
posted by barnacles on Mar 25, 2012 - 7 comments

A helicopter crashed this morning near Mexico City, killing all eight aboard, including Mexican Secretary of the Interior, Francisco Blake Mora. This has happened almost exactly three years to the day a plane crashed in Mexico City, killing a previous mexican Secretary of the Interior, Juan Camilo Mouriño (Blake Mora even tweeted about remembering Mouriño last week, in his last tweet [link in Spanish]). [more inside]
posted by omegar on Nov 11, 2011 - 23 comments

Following a months-long investigation, the Department of Justice has announced the existence of a well-funded plot "conceived, sponsored and directed" by "high-ranking members of the Iranian government" to assassinate Saudi Arabian ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir on U.S. soil in conjunction with informants in Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas. The "Hollywood" plot, revealed in an afternoon press conference and described in a detailed 21-page complaint [PDF], is alleged to have involved an attack on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C. One suspect, naturalized American citizen Arbab Arbabsiar, has been arrested, while co-conspirator and Quds Force member Gholam Shakuri remains at large. Iranian officials were quick to label the charges a "fabrication" intended to distract from America's economic troubles.
posted by Rhaomi on Oct 11, 2011 - 251 comments

A Mexican government official confirmed that Mexican military helicopters have permission to use Texas as a staging ground for missions into Mexico to fight drug traffickers.
posted by Renoroc on Sep 5, 2011 - 48 comments

About one person is murdered every 35 minutes in Mexico. Statistics are bland, so the WSJ decided to track down the 25 murders on July 29th, an ordinary day of death.
posted by stbalbach on Aug 27, 2011 - 57 comments

Panic inside a Mexican soccer stadium. In live footage that could be seen all over Mexico and some other parts of the world, audiences who were peacefully enjoying a soccer match between Torreón's "Santos" and Morelia's "Monarcas" watched as the sound of gunshots made players run out of the field and into the cover of their locker rooms, while spectators crouched in their seats and later, panicked, ran toward the exits. (SLYT, comments in spanish, but images are self explanatory.) [more inside]
posted by CrazyLemonade on Aug 22, 2011 - 71 comments

Special report: If Monterrey falls, Mexico falls. 'In just four years, Monterrey, a manufacturing city of 4 million people 140 miles from the Texan border, has gone from being a model for developing economies to a symbol of Mexico's drug war chaos, sucked down into a dark spiral of gangland killings, violent crime and growing lawlessness.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword on Jun 2, 2011 - 319 comments

The town on the wrong side of America's drug war. An article on the Brownsville, Texas neighborhood cut off by the border fence. Via Crooked Timber
posted by serazin on May 16, 2011 - 26 comments

Cocaine - how it's made, how it moves, and who might be cutting it with a deadly cattle-deworming drug, a follow up to the mystery of the tainted cocaine.
posted by Artw on Nov 6, 2010 - 41 comments

The Mexican legislature has voted quietly to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and other drugs.
posted by flyinghamster on Jun 22, 2009 - 162 comments

Become a Virtual Texas Deputy! (via)
posted by cjorgensen on Feb 23, 2009 - 50 comments