drug cartels

PITAL DE SAN CARLOS, Alajuela – A yucca packing company in the northern Costa Rican community of La Tabla de Pital de San Carlos and a pineapple processor in Chilamate de Sarapiquí were fronts for the Italian mafia to traffic cocaine to the United States and Europe, Costa Rican authorities announced Wednesday following several morning raids.

Gilbert Bell, better known today as "Macho Coca," allegedly used a network of docks, fishermen and bribed public officials to build himself a drug trafficking empire, but until last week no one could prove it.

While Mexican prosecutors declared last year that 43 missing students were incinerated at a landfill, official documents show one gang suspect testified that at least nine were slaughtered elsewhere.

British rock legend Sting urged Mexico's government on Monday to do more to end the "epidemic" of disappearances after meeting with families of some of the country's many missing people.

LIMÓN – The name “Macho Coca” is well-known in Costa Rica’s Caribbean port city of Limón. His real surname is Bell, and for many years locals quietly gossiped about his suspected involvement in drug trafficking. Macho Coca also was a target of a long investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

MEXICO CITY – Parents of 43 students who disappeared last year began a 43-hour hunger strike on Wednesday, a day before meeting with President Enrique Peña Nieto ahead of the case's one-year anniversary.

Protesters demanding justice for 43 missing students and their families clashed with police and torched a truck in Mexico's southern state of Guerrero on Tuesday, just days before the tragedy's first anniversary.

Lawyer Juan Pablo Badillo has nothing but praise for his client Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, but says he doesn't know where he is.

In an interview with The Tico Times, former Medellín cartel hit man John Jairo Velázquez Vásquez, aka “Popeye,” says he loves Costa Rica, and his former boss used to park his drug airplanes here.

"Mexico needs to resolve the case as soon as possible, not only to solve this crime, but also to prove to the world that there is a light at the end of the tunnel of impunity in Mexico," El Universal newspaper said in an editorial.