Violence

La Familia leaders say they want the truce to demonstrate they are not responsible for the crimes they are accused in the media of committing. The Mexican Federal Police have been committing much of the recent violence in western and southern Mexico but blaming it on La Familia, the statement says. The police commit the attacks "without caring if it is women, children ... or adults," the La Familia statement said.

Mexico's drug prohibition war continues to claim victims at an astounding rate, and there are no signs that the violence will ease any time soon. In 2010 alone, the death toll from the violence was more than double the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq during the past seven years. This NPR broadcast explores whether the situation might improve in 2011.

Since the start of Mexico's drug prohibition war, 200 people wounded in Mexico have been treated at El Paso's county-run hospital at a cost of $4.7 million, according to the latest figures from the University Medical Center of El Paso. "Local taxpayers are footing the bill for the consequences of a conflict that is occurring on foreign soil," said Jim Valenti, UMC's chief executive officer, and Dr. Jose Manuel de la Rosa, founding dean of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at El Paso Paul L. Foster School of Medicine.

A dozen unidentified gunmen set Erika Gandara’s home ablaze on and torched two cars parked outside before abducting her. She joined the police force in 2009, when there were 12 agents on the force with her. As rampant drug prohibition violence spiraled, Ms. Gandara began to lose her colleagues, one after the next.

Evan Wood, director of the Urban Health Research Initiative at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS; an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at UBC; and founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy, opines on the role marijuana prohibition plays in producing gang violence.

Joseph Proctor told his girlfriend he was popping out to the convenience store in the quiet Mexican beach town where the couple had just moved, intending to start a new life. The next morning, the 32-year-old New York native was dead inside his crashed van on a road outside Acapulco. It is at least the third case this year in which soldiers, locked in a prohibitionist drug war with trafficking organizations, have been accused of killing innocent civilians and faking evidence in cover-ups. Such scandals are driving calls for civilian investigators to take over cases that are almost exclusively handled by military prosecutors and judges who rarely convict one of their own.

Amidst a deadly drug prohibition war in Juarez, Mexico, a group of college students have emerged from the violence to tell their city that they've had enough. The Juarez "students are quite heroic," said Bruce Bagley, who heads the Latin American affairs department at the University of Miami. "The fact that they are standing up to the military has highlighted the fact that the military in its conduct of the war on drugs in Mexico has actually fallen into numerous human rights violations.

A breeched oil pipeline caused a massive blast in the Mexican town of San Martin Texmelucan. Rivers of fire coursed through the streets, killing at least 27 people and damaging 115 houses.

More than 12,000 people have died this year as a result of Mexico's drug prohibition war, although officials said the number could be higher. Through November 30, 12,456 people were killed, making 2010 the deadliest year since Mexican President Felipe Calderon began a government crackdown against traffickers in 2006. In a recent survey, 59 percent of respondents said organized crime groups are winning the drug prohibition war against federal forces; a different poll said 80 of the respondents believe there is more violence in Mexico than a year ago.