Nancy Garcia’s 16-year-old cousin was picking fruit with his father at a ranch in rural Michoacan when armed gunmen upended his and his family’s life.

Men kidnapped by drug hitmen are seen at a ranch near the municipality of Sabinas Hidalgo, some 100 km away from Monterrey April 27, 2010 (REUTERS/Tomas Bravo).

Bullet-filled bodies of nine people were found early Thursday morning hanging on a bridge decorated with avocado murals in Uruapan, Mexico, photos posted to Twitter showed. Next to the bodies, a white banner hung with a message threatening residents if they helped certain individuals they would end up like the victims on the bridge.

How a Mexican narco-trafficker found safe haven on Bolivian cattle ranches.

The Mexican Government auctioned on Sunday luxurious properties seized from criminal cartels, raising only one third of the expected US$8.8 million as buyers showed limited appetite for gang safe houses and mansions with swimming pools and escape tunnels that belonged to drug traffickers.

A former state attorney general from Mexico is facing life in prison for using his position as a top law enforcement official to facilitate drug trafficking into the United States in exchange for bribes, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York announcedlast week.

Joining the biggest caravan of Central American migrants heading North is not just a matter of escaping gang violence, it is a better alternative to more dangerous and expensive human smuggling routes,the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The US is offering US$10 million for information on “El Mencho,” the alleged leader of a Mexican drug gang that has replaced the infamous Sinaloa Cartel as the country’s largest and most violent drug-traffickers.

The District Court in Atlanta said on Monday it sentenced a US-born former high school football player who joined a Mexican drug cartel to 49 years in prison for cocaine trafficking and money laundering.

A video circulating in local media showed a man approaching and shooting a candidate for Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies after an electoral debate.

A Mexican soccer star who captained the national team was among 22 people sanctioned by the US on Wednesday for alleged drug cartel links, according to the US Treasury.

A Sinaloa cartel boss was arraigned in federal court on Monday on a drug smuggling indictment after he self-surrendered at the end of July at the border to Mexico.

Activists claim that China’s demand for swim bladders of an endemic fish from the Gulf of Mexico has put not only that species in danger of extinction but also a rare porpoise that gets tangled in the criminals’ gillnets.