The teenager practiced driving from his apartment in San Diego down to Tijuana and back, on the orders of the criminals he was working for in Mexico. He rehearsed how he would respond to questions from U.S. border officers. He tracked when the drug-sniffing dogs took a break.
The men who were paying him had cut a secret compartment into his car big enough to fit several bricks of fentanyl. When they loaded it up for the first time and sent him toward the border, Gustavo, who was only 19 at the time, began to tremble.
At the checkpoint, he steadied himself like he had practiced, and calmly told the border officers that he was just heading home.
They looked at his American passport — and waved him through.
Since 2019, when Mexico overtook China to become the dominant supplier of fentanyl in the United States, cartels have been flooding the country with the synthetic opioid. The amount of fentanyl crossing the border has increased tenfold in the past five years. Mexico has been the source of almost all of the fentanyl seized by U.S. law enforcement in recent years.
dnyuz.com/2024/09/28/the-american-drug-mules-smuggling-fentanyl-into-the-u-s/
Gunfire, murders and threats — insecurity is part of everyday life across much of Mexico and one of the main challenges awaiting Claudia Sheinbaum when she becomes president on Tuesday.
A shooting this month in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco left two people wounded in a seafront bar. In late August, a human head was thrown in front of the establishment.
When contacted about the incident, a bar manager cut the questioner short.
Locals speculated that he had refused to pay “rent” to one of two local gangs.
Farther back from the seafront, the El Progreso neighborhood is one of those most affected by violence in Acapulco.
A man was killed in a cobbler’s shop a few days ago, a resident said. “It’s a daily occurrence,” he added with a sigh.
“Six murders in Acapulco” was the headline in the newspaper El Sur on September 10.
“That’s a total of 26 crimes this month, presumably linked to organized crime,” the local newspaper said, without naming the two rival gangs involved in extortion and drugs.
www.yahoo.com/news/acapulco-across-mexico-violence-poses-143920631.html