(image by Prometeo Lucero [aka Prom] via flickr)

Three weeks ago, nearly a thousand punks and metal heads took over the Plaza de Armas in Querétaro, central México, to rid the park of "emos." Outnumbered, the mob's victims could do little but huddle together and try to absorb the punches and taunts. Only a few days later, a similar confrontation took place a hundred miles away in Mexico City.

Mexicans, long accustomed to disturbing news of violent crime, were shocked by television coverage of the mass violence. Over the last few years, emo, a fashion and music style defined by androgynous make-up, angular haircuts, tight clothes and a pop-punk sound, has become popular with teens throughout México largely due to the spread of MySpace and the global appeal of such bands as My Chemical Romance and Dashboard Confessional. The wave has lifted Mexican groups like Pxndx (Panda), Insite and Avella Ink into the spotlight. But not everyone in this often traditional and sometimes machista society is keen on this gender and genre bending youth movement.

News reports cite homophobia as a likely factor in the attacks. Many anti-emo videos, blogs and bulletins contain slogans like "Movimiento Anti Emosexual" and "Emo is gay."

Some have blamed Telehit VJ Kristoff for provoking anti-emo sentiment with angry rants and emo-bashing sketches. (Telehit is owned by the powerful Mexican broadcaster Televisa.) After the attacks, Kristoff responded: "I may not agree with the emo philosophy, but I would die to defend their right to express themselves."

Last weekend, demonstrations were held in Mexico City and Tijuana in solidarity with the victims of the violent attacks, but tensions remain high. Few are certain as to what sparked the violence and whether there is yet more to come.

K-Paz de la Sierra

The discovery of Jose Luis Aquino's lifeless body last Wednesday marked the end of a bloody week in México. The trumpet player for Los Conde had been bound and badly beaten, his head covered with a plastic bag. Aquino was the third regional music star murdered last week.

Zayda Peña, the 28-year-old leader of Zayda y Los Culpables, was killed in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Known as "La Dama del Sentimiento," Peña was shot in the back and survived only to be shot again – this time, mortally – while recovering in a hospital room.

Hours later that same day, Sergio Gómez of duranguense band K-Paz de la Sierra, was kidnapped in Morelia, Michoacán. He was later found tortured and strangled to death.

The three killings come a little over a year after banda singer Valentín Elizalde, "El Gallo de Oro," was shot to death leaving a concert hall in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. The motives for all four murders have not been confirmed, but some speculate that at least two are the handiwork of drug cartels.

But unlike Elizalde, last week's victims did not perform narcocorridos, but up-tempo romantic songs, prompting Mexican authorities to speculate that organized crime is now targeting mainstream acts. Political analyst Sergio Sarmiento sees a trend: "The murdered artists are no different than the rest of the victims of crime in our country...Their deaths however, have the advantage of getting the people's attention."

This year, over one thousand men, women and children have been murdered in México by crime syndicates involved in drug trafficking, according to Mexican law enforcement officials.

Update below.

Mexican authorities report they have confiscated more than $200 million in U.S. currency from a luxury home in Mexico City. The stash of mostly $100 bills weighed over 4,500 pounds, apparent revenues from the sale of meth in the United States by a drug ring allegedly run by a naturalized Mexican citizen of Chinese descent. Two Chinese nationals were among the seven arrested during the raid.

Mexican officials say the drug traffickers purchased the drug's raw materials, pseudoephedrine acetate, in India, imported these chemicals illegally to China, then shipped them to Mexico where they were processed into meth and finally smuggled into and sold in the U.S. The proceeds from these sales were then transported back into Mexico, mainly in $10 and $20 bills, before being converted into Benjamins.

If confirmed, it would be the largest seizure of drug trafficking assets in history.

(More photos of the raid courtesy of the Mexican attorney general's office.)

Update (7/2/7/2007)

In the months following this report, the alleged ringleader, Zhenli Ye Gon, has claimed that the money confiscated in his home had nothing to do with the illegal drug trade.

Instead, Ye Gon has fingered the heads of the ruling political party in Mexico, the PAN, saying they blackmailed him into using his home as a vault for safekeeping millions of dollars in illegal campaign funds.

Ye Gon, who has filed for political asylum in the U.S., was arrested earlier this week in Wheaton, Maryland. His girlfriend was also detained this week in Las Vegas. Ye Gon's wife was one of the seven detained during the initial raid of his Mexico home.

(image via bwalsh)

According to the British newspaper The Observer and The Dallas Morning News, agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department (ICE), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, continued working with a Mexican informant even after learning that said recruit was engaged in a murder spree in the El Paso-Juarez area on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, is believed to have murdered over a dozen people while working for ICE – at one point, allegedly while wearing a wire. According to press reports, when Peyro attempted to also kill an undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), as well as the agent's family, a senior DEA officer in El Paso, Texas, filed a formal complaint with his counterpart at ICE. The same DEA agent, Sandy Gonzalez, now claims he was forced into retirement after filing his complaint.

In recent years, Mexican organized crime took control over the flow of narcotics into the United States, leading to an increase in drug-trafficking-related violence in border cities. According to the DEA, "West Texas serves as the gateway for narcotics destined to major metropolitan areas in the U.S., which is commonly referred to as the El Paso/Juarez Corridor." The illegal drug trade imposes costs on the U.S. government estimated at $70 billion each year.