Fight to control corridors on Arizona border turns violent

By Dianne Solis
The Dallas Morning News
(MCT)

ALTAR, Mexico - For nearly a decade this village on the edge of the Sonoran Desert has been a supermarket for smugglers and the smuggled. Migrants choose from an array of packages offered by coyotes and pick up day packs and anti-dehydration potions for the trek north.

Now drug smugglers want their route. And to drive home their point, they've burned nearly two-dozen vehicles of van drivers in the last two months, and left migrants shoeless in the sands of the Sonora.

The violence spilled into Arizona last week: Three Guatemalans in a truck carrying illegal immigrants were killed in a shooting northwest of Tucson.

Some officials say human smugglers are fighting among themselves and ripping off migrant customers.

But others point to veteran drug-cartel leader, Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman - whose nickname is Spanish slang for "Shorty."

Guzman heads the drug cartel named for his Mexican home state of Sinaloa. And he wants the Sonoran route in the same way that Mexico's Zeta gang wants Interstate 35 from Laredo through Texas, said two law enforcement officials in the U.S.