Just an Ordinary Day of Death in Mexico's War on Drug Traffickers

By DAVID LUHNOW in Ciudad Juárez, NICHOLAS CASEY in Acapulco and JOSé DE CóRDOBA in Monterrey
WSJ

A little past midnight on a recent Friday, Manuel López, a 26-year-old lawyer, accidentally drives his beige Volkswagen Polo into a gun battle between rival drug gangs in the tourist resort of Acapulco. As bullets tear into his car, he hits the brakes and tries to run. He makes it less than a yard before falling dead.

In the last four years, roughly 43,000 people have been killed in Mexico in drug-related killings. Three Wall Street Journal reporters went to three of the country's most violent cities to tell the stories from a single day: Friday, July 29, 2011.

Mr. López is the first victim of July 29, a hot summer day much like any other in Mexico's battle against powerful drug-trafficking gangs. Over the next 24 hours, at least 25 people die across Mexico in murders carrying the hallmarks of drug-gang hits.

Among the victims: three policemen, three 15-year-olds, one 14-year-old and a woman so thoroughly tortured that police can't estimate her age. The day ends in Ciudad Juárez with a 28-year-old woman holding the head of her younger brother as he bleeds to death outside their home.

Since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006, declaring war on traffickers, roughly 43,000 people have been killed in drug-related homicides here, according to government figures and newspaper estimates. The pace of killings is escalating. More than half the dead, 22,000, were killed in the past 18 months, a rate of one every 35 minutes.

(More here.)