Barreling down the highway at 100 mph, a convoy of state police vehicles blew through speed bumps as it entered a small town in the Sonoran Desert. Blasting over them was hell, but Alejandro Sánchez knew that slowing down was too risky: here, locals call them “death bumps,” because reducing your speed gives cartel snipers a better chance of taking you out. Sánchez and the officers protecting him had left Hermosillo, the capital of the state of Sonora, before sunrise on June 23 and, by 7 a.m., had arrived in Altar. There’s not much pedestrian traffic because the town sits in the heart of a cartel war zone, and anyone ... (full story)