An alliance of media outlets and civil society groups is courting potential whistle-blowers with a new digital platform that promises anonymity.
Mexico’s body count of innocents and gangsters rises as cartel feuds increase and spare no one.
The US border is just the final challenge; first groups have to dodge gangs of kidnappers.
<b>Rory Carroll</b> and <b>Jo Tuckman</b> report from the epicentre of drug-cartel violence in Mexico, which has claimed 28 000 lives.
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/ 6 November 2009
One day a year cemeteries in Mexico City burst with life. Jo Tuckman joins locals at one on the outskirts of the capital.
A classroom in Mexico City: hands shoot in the air. A nod sends one boy bounding to the digital board at the front, where he taps the nipple of a three-dimensional body image. There is a loud “ping” and a hyper-reality picture of the mammary glands is highlighted with such vigour it seems to jump out of the wall. The boy smiles and takes his seat and the class launches into a discussion about what different glands do.
Male, about 40, gaffer tape over his eyes, tortured, strangled, shot twice, and dumped on a patch of wasteland — and wrapped in Christmas paper. Without the yuletide motif the unidentified corpse would have been just another statistic. As it was, the extra detail earned him a brief mention in the nightly news roundup.