Mexican civil war that is raging between the Mexican Government, the Mexican Drug Cartels (MDC’s) and the cartels

Mexican civil war that is raging between the Mexican Government, the Mexican Drug Cartels (MDC’s) and the cartels fighting among themselves over lucrative drug and human smuggling routes in both Mexico and the U.S. Many believe they are safer here than in Mexico. Many of these refugees are Mexican business people, ranchers, police, politicians and even cartel members who fear for their lives. Still others were victims being shaken down for protection money by the cartels similar to the American mafia tactics of the twenty’s and thirty’s. Many of them fear retaliation for not paying the cash or are just not welling to pay anymore.
Shopkeepers along the U.S. Mexican border recite the list of "protection" fees they pay to the MDC’s to just stay in business: 100 pesos a month for a stall in a street market, 30,000 pesos for an auto dealership or construction-supply firm.
First offense for nonpayment: a severe beating. Those who keep ignoring the fees - or try to charge their own - may pay with their lives.
"Every day you can see the people they have beaten up being taken to the IMSS," said auto mechanic Jesus Hernandez, motioning to the government-run hospital a few doors from his repair shop.
Mexican drug cartels have morphed into full-scale mafias, running extortion and protection rackets and are trafficking in everything from people to pirated DVDs and even entered the black market oil and gas business. As once-lucrative cocaine profits have fallen and U.S. and Mexican authorities crack down on all drug trafficking to the U.S., gangs are branching into new ventures - some easier and more profitable than drugsNo one knows the real number of these refugees but some experts believe they number in the thousands
“There’s an increasing number of (cartel) leaders living in the U.S., probably either to escape law enforcement or their enemies in Mexico, so that’s one of the risks that has increased in the last few years,” said Stephen Meiners, a senior tactical analyst for Latin America at Stratfor, a global intelligence company based in Austin, Texas.
“There’s a possibility that this thing could get out of hand,” he said.
Shannon O’Neil, an expert on Latin America at the Council on Foreign Relations, said she knows of no other high-level killings in the U.S., but fears it won’t be the last.
“We have started to see more brazenness close to the border on the Mexican side and on the U.S. side,” O’Neil said. “Once you get these organizations firmly established in Mexico and the United States, you will have killings at all different levels.”
But no one is safe against the Mexican mobsters not even in the states where not only Mexican nationals but American men, women and children have been kidnapped taken to Mexico and killed and other Americans murdered right here on American soil by orders of the MDC’s. Recently a deputy U.S. marshal and Ice informant have been tracked down and assassinated by the cartel henchmen.MDC’s are ordering decapitations hooding victims before they shoot them. The Cartels are sending a chilling message to the Mexican President Felipe Calderon Administration by adopting methods of intimidation made notorious by Middle Eastern terrorist groups.