May 17, 2008

Cartel drug carnage tears Mexico apart


The coffins of Armando and Luis Carreon, slain in a drug-land turf dispute, are lowered in to the ground.
Image :1 of 2
Anthony Loyd in Palomas
The lash of a dust-laden wind wrestled with the weeping of women, the scrape of shovels and the ballad of a corrido band as two murdered brothers were buried under the heat of the desert sky.

A group of spurred ranchero horsemen, lassoes at the saddle, waited among the assembled pick-up trucks and four-wheel drives on one side of the cemetery to pay their respects to the dead. Nearby, too, a platoon of heavily armed Mexican troops, some masked, stood ready to search the mourners as they left Tuesday's funeral.

For in Palomas, a small frontier settlement with one of the worst murder rates in Mexico, grief offers no exemption from the depredations of the drug war that is convulsing the country, and the soldiers were leaving nothing to chance.

“Drugs. Guns. They can be anywhere, even at a funeral,â€