  
Southwest Border Narco-Violence
ONDCP FACT SHEET
Mexican traffickers have been taking ownership of the cocaine business that was once controlled from leaf to consumer by the Colombians. This enormous potential for profit has increased the power of these drug trafficking organizations to corrupt, and has heightened their tendency toward violence.
This tendency has been demonstrated by the increasing chaos along the southwest border, where narco-violence has increased dramatically as drug trafficking organizations fight one another for control of strategic traffic routes entering the United States.
There have been around 1,400 narco-related murders in Mexico during 2005. The majority of these murders took place in the states of Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Sonora, Baja California and Sinaloa. However, Nuevo Laredo remains the epicenter of the bloodshed. At least 136 drug-related murders took place in 2005, and at least 57 occurred in the first 75 days of 2006. Most of these deaths were caused by the drug war between the gunmen of Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzmán Loera and Osiel Cárdenas, who are fighting to seize the lucrative Nuevo Laredo corridor.
Police officers are given the option of plata or plomo (silver or lead). If they choose plata, they live… but work for the traffickers. The plomo option means death. Corruption continues to be a harsh reality in Mexico, where police salaries are low and fear is high. Traffickers possess large amounts of money and the power to easily assassinate public officials.
Journalists are also being targeted by drug traffickers' gunmen. During the Fox administration, at least 18 reporters have been killed after divulging negative information regarding various drug trafficking organizations. In February 2006, suspected drug traffickers used a hand grenade to attack the El Mañana newspaper newsroom in the besieged city of Nuevo Laredo. Shortly after, presumed traffickers' gunmen killed a radio reporter, leading many news outlets to either cease reporting stories on the murderous chaos or at least provide abbreviated accounts.
After recognizing that the public security program called Operation Safe Mexico was inadequate, the Government of Mexico announced a new operation in mid-March 2006 called Northern Border. Under the program, 600 to 800 Federal Preventive Police were deployed to Nuevo Laredo. After the announcement of the new initiative, drug traffickers' assassins gunned down four federal police intelligence agents in broad daylight outside a school.
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