THE BORDER REPORT

This story and photos probably should have run with this week's earlier package but the victim photos tell the story far better than I ever could. They come courtesy of TijuanaPress.com.

The victims were three young women from Mexicali. Nataly Medrano, 17, and her older sister Ivon Denisse Medrano, 20. Both worked at a Mexicali strip club, La Taberna. Laura Gabriela Mejia, 22, was a hairstylist. They disappeared in August 2008; Milenio gives the most detailed account I've seen yet of what happened to them.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Only a fool would assume women don't play a role in the splintering tensions of Mexico's cartel woes but this year's proving to be a particularly nasty one for femicide in northern Mexico. They've been strangled, dissolved in acid, one was thrown in front of a train, others, like this unidentified woman, were shot in the head, their bodies laid out on the street. A message to somebody, no different than the fate of their male counterparts.

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THE BORDER REPORT

The Feds are calling for an end to the bogged down thinking behind the War on Drugs, an ambitious idea with many immediate benefits – except that where the government wants to spend its anti-drug money these days suggests the Feds aren’t so much intent on ending the war on drugs as they are on moving the battlefield a little south.

Last week, the new drug czar took the stage, saying the analogy of a “war on drugs” was understood more as a war on people than a war on a substance and that this type of thinking needed to change.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Poring over an FBI intel report this afternoon that focuses on the Zetas, I came across an interesting piece of conjecture that a snitch had passed over about a U.S. citizen killed in Mexico in December. If you'll recall, that was the month a kidnapping expert was himself kidnapped. According to the snitch in this report, the victim was picked up and murdered, then his killers intended to send his head back as a message to U.S. law enforcement.

The report, a law enforcement intel bulletin published by the FBI, focuses on the growing influence of the Zetas in the United States.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Every few years, it seems, Mexico flips a new federal law enforcement agency; each one supposedly impermeable to corruption and politicking, some a little scary, others simply worthless. The latest federal public security agency doesn’t look very worthless, we'll have to see about the other.

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