Drug violence

MEXICO CITY — He was the face of Mexico’s federal government, the chief public servant carrying a message to stay tough and bringing new offensives to states beleaguered by drug violence.

BALTIMORE -- It took an act of God, some wayward city snowplows and a few diligent neighbors to get Tiffany Square back on track.

Since the memorial in west Baltimore was created in 1991 to honor a 6-year-old killed by an errant bullet, time had given way to neglect, and the drug dealers had returned. Then plows clearing last year's double-dose of heavy snowfall inadvertently crumbled the colorful but fading retaining walls.

For Mable Gordon and other residents, enough was enough. After months of hounding city agencies, they got the help they needed to repair the memorial, and in May Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was on hand for a rededication celebration.

PHARR, Texas -- An American missionary couple who were allegedly attacked by gunmen in a dangerous part of Mexico may have been targeted for their expensive pickup truck, because drug gangs covet the vehicles, police said Thursday.

Damage to the 2008 Chevrolet pickup truck that Sam Davis frantically drove against traffic across a border bridge Wednesday with his bleeding wife next to him suggests that another vehicle tried to run the couple off the road, Pharr police Chief Ruben Villescas said Thursday.

Nancy Davis was pronounced dead at a McAllen, Texas, hospital more than an hour after her husband reached the Pharr International Bridge border checkpoint. Her husband told investigators that that he and his wife were driving near the city of San Fernando, about 70 miles south of the Mexican border city of Reynosa, when gunmen in a pickup truck tried to stop them. When the Davises sped up, the gunmen fired, shooting Nancy Davis in the head.

ACAPULCO, Mexico -- The black-and-white photos still hang in the faded Hotel Los Flamingos. Over there is the muscled star of "Tarzan," Johnny Weissmuller, who owned the hotel for a time during Acapulco's heyday. There's Maureen O'Sullivan. Tyrone Power. Errol Flynn. Fred MacMurray.

They all came, mixed booze in a coconut -- called it a Coco Loco.

When mortals gazed at Acapulco, they saw romance itself smiling back. So they came too. As did a fortress of high-rise hotels that packed the beach and diminished the very thing everyone was chasing.

Now, just as it hopes to regain some of its cachet, Acapulco is confronting more than the weight of history. The famed resort city has been the scene of vicious fighting among rival drug gangs that has killed more than 650 people in four years, the fifth-highest count for any Mexican city, according to government figures. The toll includes 30 men slain two weekends ago in and around the city. Fifteen of them were decapitated.

The annual Mexican Christmas pilgrimage, traditionally a joyous journey culminating in pozole stew and Nativity re-enactments, is now fraught with fear and foreboding.

About a million Mexican immigrants are expected to return from the United States to Mexico this month to share the holidays with relatives they left behind years ago.

Most are driving. And many, including Sacramento State freshman Alex Rodriguez, wonder if they'll make it to Christmas dinner without being robbed, shot or kidnapped.