BEHIND THE CHICAGO CONNECTION

Does a Mexican Drug Kingpin Have a Case Against the DEA?

by Andrew Kennis and Jason McGahan, Time Out Chicago

The abandoned car of Margarito Flores Sr., a resident of Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, was discovered in western Mexico’s Sinaloa desert in 2009. A message directed to his twin sons, Pedro and Margarito, was stuck to its windshield: tell those fuckers to shut up or we are going to send you his head.

The Flores twins, 31-year-old Chicago drug traffickers, had warned their father not to return to Mexico, and especially not to the drug-war-torn state of Sinaloa, home to the Sinaloa cartel, which US intelligence considers one of the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world.

Margarito Sr. was never heard from again.

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The Andes

Peru: campesino vigilance at Conga mine site

Campesinos in Cajamarca are organizing round-the-clock vigilance at the proposed site of the Conga gold mine, skeptical of official assurances that the project is suspended. 

The Andes

Peru: narco-mineral integration

The US Justice Department has frozen the assets of mineral companies owned by Peru’s Sánchez-Paredes family, finding that they are fronts for cocaine trafficking.