Mexico's cartel wars: in some ways, the nation's rampant violence is a sign of progress.(Report)

Mexico City

A RCHBISHOP HECTOR GONZALEZ caused a mini-scandal in Mexico when he declared recently that the country's most notorious drug baron, Joaquin "El Chapo" ("The Kid") Guzman, was living right outside a small town in the archbishop's home state of Durango, and that "everyone except the authorities" knew it. No sooner had Gonzalez apologized for what one commentator called an irresponsible "diffusion of gossip" than the bodies of two military-intelligence officers on an undercover surveillance operation turned up right where the archbishop had indicated, riddled with bullets from high-powered rifles. The bodies bore a characteristic warning: "Neither ...