18 more slaughtered in Mexico, including an editor

The domestic terrorism and drug wars that have claimed thousands of lives in Mexico in recent years added 18 new victims just since Sunday. Ten agricultural workers were gunned down in a melon field in the Tierra Caliente region of Guerrero state on Sunday. In Sinaloa, four police officers and three other people were killed at dawn on Monday, the LA Times reports tonight. And in Chihuahua, the state that borders Texas and New Mexico, gunmen on Sunday murdered Jaime Guadalupe González, the editor of Ojinaga Noticias, an online newspaper. The site posted a notice that it has suspended publication: "Este sitio ha sido suspendido...Favor de regresar más tarde."

The melon-field attack, reported by Guerrero’s attorney general and Mexico’s state news agency, was among a number of disturbing recent events that underscored the challenge facing new President Enrique Peña Nieto, who inherited the war on organized crime from his predecessor.

Guerrero’s Tierra Caliente region is home to the Knights Templar cartel, which has scared off residents of more than 20 small towns in the nearby Costa Grande area, creating an eerie string of “ghost pueblos.” A recent Times report described how the Knights Templar sought to integrate rural residents into their effort, demanding monthly extortion payments and loyalty pledges....

The slain Chihuahuan journalist, Jaime Guadalupe González, ran a news website based in Ojinaga, along the border with Texas just west of Big Bend National Park. According to the newspaper El Universal, he was shot 15 times as he was headed to his office to publish a story.

“This site has been suspended,” his news organization, Ojinaga Noticias, declared on an otherwise blank Web page Monday afternoon. “Please come back later.”

More coverage:

Mexican journalist killed In Ojinaga (Fronteras)

Prensa condena homicidio de director de Ojinaga Noticias (El Universal)

Condena Observatorio asesinato del director de Ojinaga Noticias (Milenio)

Ojinaga Noticias, en silencio tras asesinato de su director (Vanguardia)