Source:
TimesFriday, Jan. 18, 2008 By IOAN GRILLO/MEXICO CITY
Juan Carlos Reyna had been driving a Jeep Liberty through Cancun's wealthiest neighborhood on a sweltering December afternoon when he was surrounded by three cars. A masked man bearing a Kalashnikov rifle leaned out of the car in front of him and shot Reyna in the head. Against all odds, the Cuban-American survived and was airlifted from Mexico's Caribbean resort to a U.S. hospital, where he is fighting for his life.
Others have been less fortunate. Since June, at least four Cuban-Americans, including Reyna's brother Maximiliano, have been shot dead on Cancun's glitzy boulevards in gangland-style hits. Mexican officials allege that these killings, and those of at least five Mexicans, stem from what they say is a turf war over lucrative human smuggling routes of Cubans via Mexico to the United States.
The blood being spilled in broad daylight in Mexico's most popular international tourist spot has raised the pressure on a police force already struggling against heavily-armed drug cartels.
Senior Mexican officials blame the violence on Washington's "Wet Feet, Dry Feet" policy, in which Cubans caught at sea trying to enter the U.S. are turned back but those apprehended on U.S. soil after entering the country illegally are allowed to apply for asylum.
"This has to do with U.S. policy toward Cubans, that those who make it to
territory by their own means can get automatic refugee status," Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said in a recent news conference. "People of Cuban origin who are citizens of the United States are involved, financing these people-smuggling operations, obviously with the complicity of Mexicans," he said.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1704913,00.html