#cartel-violence

#cartel-violence

The highway from the Guadalajara city airport to downtown is newly paved and the city's famous roundabout has gotten a $4-million facelift. The city is abuzz with renovation projects as Guadalajara prepares to host four World Cup soccer matches in June. But there's one thing the 3 million fans expected to flock to the city won't see - the sites where hundreds of bodies have been found in clandestine graves dug by Mexico's notorious New Generation Jalisco Cartel.

What comes next will not resemble a clean succession. It will be a struggle over who holds the center of gravity inside the organization, and that result is not preordained. Many Mexicans fear a troubling third scenario: a bloody power struggle that fragments the cartel, opening new fronts of conflict in an already volatile criminal landscape.

Mexico braced for a further wave of violence Monday following the killing of a drug kingpin known as "El Mencho," with officials canceling school in some states and warning communities to stay inside as reports spread of cartel members blocking roads. Security forces said they killed Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, 59, in an operation in Tapalpa, a town in the western Mexican state of Jalisco.

Mexico's Attorney General's Office said on Monday that authorities have identified five bodies found at a property in El Verde, a rural locality in the state of Sinaloa, and are working to identify the remains of five other people. It is important to note that prosecutorial authorities have remained in contact with the victims' relatives, the office said in a statement. In the cases where the bodies have already been identified, they will be transferred to the states of Zacatecas in two cases, as well as to Chihuahua, Sonora, and Guerrero, it added.

Gunmen opened fire at a football match in central Mexico on Sunday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 12, authorities said. Cesar Prieto, the mayor of the town of Salamanca in central Guanajuato state, said in a statement posted to social media platforms that the gunmen arrived at the end of a match. Ten people were killed at the scene and one died later at a hospital. Prieto said a woman and a child were among the wounded.

The mariachi band had just struck up its first ranchera when Axel grabbed his mother's hand. Come on, mama! the lanky 16-year-old shouted, spinning Daniela beneath a canopy of paper lanterns glowing in the warm night air. The courtyard pulsed with music and laughter as cousins joined in, skirts twirling and shoes scuffing the ground.

Four decapitated bodies were found hanging from a bridge in Sinaloa, Mexico, amid escalating cartel violence, which claimed the lives of 20 individuals in one day.