THE BORDER REPORT

Leonel Páez Benitez, aka El Gavilan, was killed a little while in Caborca after a gunfight outside the city. That's a good hit, something akin to El Ingeniero or JT being taken out. I'm still making calls but we'll have more information in a while.

Páez has been wanted for quite awhile, at least as far back as 2007 when former Mexican Army Gen. Sergio Aponte put a bounty on his head after his people took down a Mexican Army plane that summer.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Is Caborca, Sonora, changing hands? If so, the latest would-be owners want everybody out, the narcos, the cops and the mayors from every town in the Pinacate Desert. And the new guys are backed by Macho Prieto himself, Mayo Zambada's security chief.

What happened here last week was a sheer massacre, the carnage going far beyond what now passes for normal along the Mexican border. (Be warned: Gross).

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THE BORDER REPORT

Events in Sonora have been dwarfed by news of a fire at a daycare center that killed anywhere from 10 to 14 infants a few minutes ago in Hermosillo. I'm not going to have anything that the Sonoran media won't already have on this tragedy. El Imparcial is updating, as is Radio Los Cheros if you can get their media player to work.

Meanwhile, the Sonorans captured two or three of the guys accused in the murder of 11 people found yesterday morning. Nine of the bodies had been hacked up, I don't know how many were decapitated. Cops are saying they found a couple grenades in the car when they popped the killers.

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THE BORDER REPORT

No sé, maybe someone figured it was a good time to get into the body removal business in Sonora what with most of Sonora's state police commanders up in Tucson for the annual conference. Thank you, LOL, for pushing the issue, I stopped at five, but no, 11 was the final body count in that Yukon popped outside Caborca this morning.

The situation was already getting hinky yesterday afternoon when the Arizona-Sonora law enforcement meeting being held in Tucson was cut short for a handful of Sonoran state police after someone opened fire on the state police headquarters in Caborca.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Sick of swine yet? You oughtta be, but this one's a little different.

Somebody left a pair of severed pig heads outside the offices of two daily newspapers in Nogales, Sonora, last Monday, along with the message: everybody's going to die.

I'm not sure what the allegorical meaning behind the heads was; Death by Virus, maybe?

The newspapers themselves haven't published anything about the two incidences, and even the major daily, El Imparcial, gracefully backed away. Thankfully, the owners of this Web site lack the grace to do so as well.

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