Deserted Villages Left to Become Ghost Towns

Friday, July 8, 2011
Borderland Beat Reporter Layla
Story by Michel Marizco Fronteras, NPR

A sparse crowd gathers for a festival in the Mexican town of Tubutama. Many residents have been driven away by that country's drug war.

In northern Mexico’s smallest towns, cartel violence has led to a diaspora as people flee to larger cities. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, villages in the Mexican states of Sonora, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas are emptying out, leaving lawless ghost towns.

In some of those towns in Sonora, residents say the government can no longer protect them.

The long ribbon of highway outside of town stretches for miles. Desert scrub grows out onto the cheaply paved road in the mountains of Northern Sonora. Locals warn don’t go too far up into the hills. Even the Sinaloa Cartel stays out. So does the Mexican Army. They circle them instead.

In the hills, their target is a narco-trafficker who has successfully fought both the Army and the cartels off for the past year. He goes by the name “El Giloâ€