By Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star columnist

Mexico is dripping with blood. You may have seen news coverage of the bold murders committed south of the border in the past couple of months. Your reaction might have been similar to that of other Americans:

What’s wrong with those people? But what you may not know is that we comfortable gringos north of the border are pretty intimately involved in the mayhem unfolding down there.

In one of the more recent outrages, a 45-year-old man was found shot dead in a vacant lot in Juarez, a town that shares the border with El Paso, Texas.

The man’s hands had been severed and laid atop his private parts. The taking of this man’s life was not newsworthy — dozens are murdered every week in Juarez. What put his name in the papers was the dismemberment, no doubt a message of some sort.

Mutilation is a mode of communication currently in vogue among Mexico’s drug lords. In Juarez more than 1,600 people died in drug-related killings last year. For all of Mexico, the tally was more than 5,000 dead — more than double the drug murders of 2007.

Most of the victims are found riddled with gunshots, rounds and rounds of ammunition that make the gang-related drive-by shootings of U.S. cities appear tame. Gory, Mafia-style “examplesâ€