THE BORDER REPORT

The rats are growing bolder in southern Sonora, specifically the major NAFTA city of Ciudad Obregón, where a radio reporter was released yesterday after being kidnapped the day before. Unknown abductors came for Laura Elena Ochoa Wednesday afternoon, forcing her into a maroon Jeep Cherokee, blindfolding her and holding her for more than a day, before releasing her in the hills outside the city, El Imparcial reports this morning.

Tensions have been escalating in Cd. Obregón lately as the narco-juniors, hijos de los Güeritos, have been getting arrested, hospitalized and in minor gunbattles between themselves. This past week, reporters were being told a journalist was going to go down; but nobody knew whom or when.

Some reporters, trusted colleagues I've known for years, tell me they are now walking around armed; others have moved their families to neighboring cities.

In other incidences, a cops reporter for Nuevo Día reported being assaulted by federal preventive police who tried to take his camera. Alfonso Campos Rubio, a salty cops reporter for more than 20 years in Hermosillo, was unharmed, and, he later said, "los cabrones no lograron con mi camára."

-- Michel Marizco