A Guatemalan man suspected of being a boss of Mexico's Zetas drug cartel was captured by police Monday in northern Guatemala, Government Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said. Wilmer Arnulfo Cabrera Franco was arrested in San Pedro Carcha, a town in the northern province of Alta Verapaz, Lopez said. Cabrera is from Teculutan, a city in the eastern province of Zacapa, Lopez said. "He was arrested as he was leaving a residence he frequently visited in San Pedro Carcha and will transported...

Ivan Velasquez-Caballero, aka Talivan or 50, has entered guilty pleas to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, announced United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson. Velasquez-Caballero, 44, of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, has been in custody in the United States since he was extradited to Laredo on Nov. 21, 2013. The charges stem from a Feb. 17, 2010, indictment charging Velasquez-Caballero and 33 others with 47...

Violence and threats to many Mexican journalists reporting along the U.S. border has led to less investigative and crime reporting, a phenomenon described as "self-censorship," the UA researchers found. From intimidation threats to assassinations, the daily danger faced by many Mexican journalists is the focus of a newly published University of Arizona research study. The study ranks Mexico as one of the most dangerous places in the world for reporters to work. "Silencing...

Police in Mexico arrested on Sunday two members of the armed Basque separatist group ETA who belonged to a unit that killed 18 people, the Spanish government said. The pair, a man and a woman who have been on the run from the authorities for over two decades, were detained in the Pacific tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta by Mexican police, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Juan Jesus Narvaez Goni and Itziar Alberdi joined an ETA unit in 1990 that was charged with carrying out...

The journalist Gregorio Jiménez was killed and his body was found buried on Tuesday in the municipality of Las Chopas, Veracruz. The Attorney General's Office confirmed this afternoon that Veracruz state agents found the body of the reporter for Notisur and Liberal South in a grave in the Las Choapas during a special operation. Two other bodies were found in mass graves in the same place. Four people were arrested in that area of the state of Veracruz, who confessed that they were hired...

Mexican armed forces will take over security in a large swath of a western state where shootouts between vigilante groups and drug traffickers erupted over the weekend, a top official has announced. Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, the Mexican interior secretary, said federal forces with support from Michoacán state police would patrol an area in the state known as Tierra Caliente, the home base of the Knights Templar drug cartel. "Be certain we will contain the violence in...

The family of Zoila Márquez Chiu, a journalist with the Linea Informativa news website who disappeared on 7 December, has confirmed that she returned to her home in the central state of Zacatecas on 23 December. She was missing for 17 days. “We are relieved to learn that Márquez is back with her family,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Officials say she did not suffer any attack but the circumstances of her disappearance are still largely unexplained. It is...

At least 23 bodies with gunshot wounds and hands bound have been found in western Mexico where drug cartels, vigilantes and and security forces have been fighting for much of the year. The bodies were discovered on an abandoned property near the town of Buenavista Tomatlan in Michoacan state along with a sign indicating they may have been members of the Knights Templar cartel, state prosecutor's spokesman Alejandro Arellano said. The area near the Jalisco state border has suffered a wave of...

The Mexican government should ensure that the process of developing a national database of the disappeared is thorough, efficient, and transparent, Human Rights Watch said today. Development of the database should be coupled with serious investigations to determine the fate of thousands of people who remain unaccounted for. The government announced in February 2013 that it was revising a database of more than 26,000 people reported disappeared or missing (extraviadas) that had been compiled by...

A small-town Mexican mayor known for speaking out against drug gangs has been found dead on a roadside. The director of the Association of Local Authorities of Mexico said on Friday that Ygnacio Lopez Mendoza, the mayor of Santa Ana Maya in the western state of Michoacan, had been abducted, tortured and killed. His body was discovered in his truck in the neighbouring state of Guanajuato. Michoacan has been dominated for years by the Knights Templar drug cartel. Its members routinely extort...