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Day of the Dead, Culiacán, Sinaloa.

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This photo is from a trip I made to the mountains of Sinaloa in late 2015, when this farmer told me that the price of marijuana had dropped through the floor due to growing legalization of the plant in the United States, where most of his crop goes. When I was in the same area in February this year, a different farmer told me he’d stopped growing marijuana because he couldn’t sell it to the cartels anymore and was growing poppy instead - although demand and the price for that was dropping too due to a preference for synthetics by the cartels. Today, the influential non-profit México Unido Contra la Delincuencia says that the marijuana legalization bill being considered in the Senate favors industry over these humble farmers by creating expensive barriers to entry and other requisites for cultivating cannabis and marijuana legally.
I have low hopes for legal marijuana to bring down drug-related violence when criminal syndicates are now so diversified into other drugs - cocaine, meth and fentanyl - and markets (extortion, fuel theft, kidnapping etc.) But if the bill that gets passed in Mexico excludes the humble farmer masses, it has even less chance of making a tiny impact on their economies and the violence that surrounds them.

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Talking marijuana legalization with #ioangrillo and Juan Torres Landa on @ajstream - will violence go down if we take weed out of the hands of organized crime? See the link in my bio for the full program....

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Even for Mexico, which has become synonymous with cartel violence and drug trafficking around the world, last week was unprecedented.
A botched military operation by the government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Amlo) that briefly detained the son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, Ovidio - an alleged drug trafficker - was forced to release him and retreat.
On Thursday afternoon, cartel henchmen paralysed the city of Culiacán and surrounded the house in which the younger Guzmán – a power in the Sinaloa Cartel criminal empire – was being held, vastly outnumbering the soldiers inside.

The gunmen threatened to massacre those who were holding him if he wasn’t set free.
Social media was flooded with videos showing henchmen in bullet-proof vests roaming the city in broad daylight and shooting into the streets with high-calibre weapons that outgunned those of the military. “The point and the problem is that it happened in real time and plain view of everybody and this was a major blow to the government’s credibility and standing,” said Jaime Lopez, a former government security official turned analyst. “It sends all the wrong signals to the cartel, because back in the day if you pulled this kind of stunt there would have been hell to pay, but now basically the cartel won.” The incident was the latest in a string of violent blowouts that took place last week.
In the southern state of Michoacán – where former president Felipe Calderon launched his “drug war” in 2007 – 14 municipal policemen were killed in an ambush in the town of Aguililla Monday.

On Tuesday, another 14 people were killed in a gunfight between alleged criminals and the military in the town of Tepochica, Guerrero - a state in which 43 teaching students were kidnapped and presumably killed five years ago.

Mexico is seeing its highest homicide rates since records began and the latest surge of violence has prompted many to ask whether Mexico’s government has lost control. See full story in bio link.

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eduardo

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After a week away - most of which was spent working on an assignment for @ozy on drug addiction - I’m back in Mexico City, and of course Mexico, with mixed feelings. Whilst I was away, two friends and colleagues survived an attack in Ciudad Juárez. They got caught in a shootout between criminal groups whilst preparing to interview a gang member. The director they were working with - an American from National Geographic - took a bullet in the leg. Both of my colleagues, who were lucky to make it out alive, are very experienced and at the top of their game. The incident is a sober reminder of how Mexico is shit out of security these days.

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Irapuato, Guanajuato. Drug users show me what a baggie of cristal (meth) looks like on the streets. They call them ‘cebollitas’ - spring onions. It is now the drug of choice for most users in this city and in this state. On assignment for @ozy ... more to come.

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Finally got this in the post - so little is know about the details of China’s role in the fentanyl trade, can’t wait to read “Fentanyl, Inc.” Thanks for the freebie Ben Westhoff!

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Since President Nicolás Maduro took power in Venezuela, more than 4 million people have fled to neighboring Colombia and other countries in the region. Such numbers are unprecedented and have been labeled a humanitarian crisis. Both Colombia and Ecuador have each taken in 1.2 million migrants or refugees since 2015. Around the world, migrants fleeing their lands in desperation frequently fall victim to crimes such as human trafficking and sex trafficking. But at least in Colombia, organized crime is taking advantage of the flood of vulnerable Venezuelan migrants to increasingly also pull many of them into its criminal ranks. See my bio-link for the whole story.

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i know how furiously your heart is beating

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