hecklongtree

Here's an article I thought you'd like:



Mexico hit by fresh wave of drug killings Sat Jan 21, 1:11 AM ET



Drug gangs mowed down three people in a drive-by shooting in Acapulco on Friday, a day after members of a drug cartel in the northern border town of Nuevo Laredo murdered 3 others and set their bodies on fire.

The killers in the Pacific resort of Acapulco shot their victims in the street in an outlying district of the city, home to some 700,000 people.

"The characteristics of the crime show it was an execution by those who are caught up in drugs," Acapulco Mayor Felix Salgado said.

A feud between rival drug gangs broke out in Acapulco in 2005, surprising Mexicans more used to drug violence on the U.S. border or in the drug-producing states of western Mexico.

Last year, the deputy head of a state police force was shot dead leaving a beachside restaurant and suspected members of a drug gang attacked a police station with grenades.

Tourists have not been involved in the violence and Salgado said the city, popular with U.S. visitors, was safe.

"People involved in illicit activities have problems, but tourists are respected here, they walk about here, they are looked after here," he said.

More than 1,000 people died in drug killings in Mexico last year, mostly in a fight between the Gulf cartel in northeastern Mexico and an alliance of traffickers from the western state of Sinaloa.

On Thursday, firemen in Nuevo Laredo found the bodies of three men who had been shot and set ablaze to warn off rivals in a drug war that has claimed 16 victims this month in the town, just across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas.

The bodies were found in the trunk of a burning sport utility vehicle. Two of the men were handcuffed.

Dousing victims with gasoline and burning them is a favored tactic of the warring cartels, designed to spread fear.

Nuevo Laredo is on the front line of a war for control of the lucrative cross-border trade in cocaine, heroin and marijuana. Border violence has increased since Mexican President Vicente Fox declared war on drug cartels a year ago.

Fox temporarily ordered the army on to the streets in June, after the city's newly appointed public security chief was gunned down on the day of his appointment.

The U.S. State Department has issued several travel alerts for Nuevo Laredo in the past year, warning that drug-related violence was getting out of hand in border cities.

Thanks for the birthday wish-belated happy birthday to you too!

Happy Birthday!!!

I think one of the best ways to handle the drug problem is rather than cut out supply, cut out the demand, but maybe thats easier said than done.

Hey, you have to update on your birthday and tell people what you did!

I'm sure something will come to mind

Awesome!!!

Swwet, just got FD7 myself. Love it.
Cheers to that mate!

Thankyou!

I love stories that have to do with events that weren't in the public american eye....well, I shouldn't say that, I wasn't around in 1968, but have never heard of that event until just now.

Nah.

Actually, I was expecting my friends list to be cut in half when I came back.

And welcome back to you, too!

I wish I had the creativity and patience to write like that

[Edited on Dec 21, 2005 6:29PM]

I would try to think of some way to humanise him, somehow. Give him some sort of link to the "common people", or something that makes him "less" villainish from one perspective, yet just as antagonizing at the same time, perhaps...

I read something a while back about Nazi soldiers during WWII, and that while many of them were indeed wrapped up in the ridiculousness of the whole Nazi party thing, a lot of them were simply soldiers who were going to work every day to put food on the tables for their wives and children. This made their apparent lack of humanity towards their concentration-camp prisoners, and the Allied forces, that much more disturbing...

I also read somewhere, about the fact that while the cartels in South America were ruthlessly cruel and murderous to their competition and people trying to shut them down in the 70s and 80s, they were extremely generous, sometimes to a fault, with the local and surrounding communities, using cash out of their pockets to build schools and hospitals...

I don't know. You said you didn't want him to be a simple cartoony, one-dimensional type of character. I personally find characters who aren't really "villains" (in the purest sense of the word), yet find themselves and their goals to be completely at odds with someone else, to be much more interesting in the long run... They actually believe in what they're doing, they personally have some sort of internal drive behind their actions, a personal investment, rather than simply serving as a foil to the main character, or protagonist...

Find some way to link him to the candidate picked to be assassinated. Make it personal, moreso than simply as a threat to "business". Give him a reason not to do it, and then when it does finally happen, then maybe that action will have even more impact.

Think about the scene in the Godfather, when Michael has Fredo killed. It's such a simple thing for a director and screenwriter to sit down and do, yet it had such an impact on the story... The whole "kiss scene" at the party? Yep. That's the kind of impact I'm thinking of...

Sorry this turned out to be so long... I don't even know what I'm talking about, really. That's just what happened to pop into my head right now... See ya.

I'm back