Thousands of guns lie on the ground before their destruction in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua State, Mexico on February 16, 2012. At least 6000 rifles and pistols seized to drugs cartels were destroyed by members of the Mexican Army.

MIAMI – "If they're going to kill you, they're going to kill you," said Luz del Carmen Sosa, a reporter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and mother of two, who spends most of her day running from one murder scene to another. "Even if you arrive surrounded by police, security escorts, whoever wants to hurt you will hurt you."

Just 20 miles from Ciudad Juarez, photojournalist Alejandro Hernández Pacheco did get hurt. On July 26, 2010, Hernandez was part of a TV news crew videotaping at a prison in the city of Gomez Palacio when he was kidnapped at gunpoint, along with two colleagues.

"They took us to a place that was covered with dried blood, with teeth and hair stuck to the walls," said Hernandez. He stopped himself from describing the room any further, saying it brings back terrifying memories.

"They hit us until they tired," he said, adding that the gunmen also threatened to burn him alive. "They hit me in the head with a piece of wood, on my back, my knees, my ankles."  The men were released five days later.  Authorities believe the kidnappers were members of the notorious Sinaloa cartel.

Stringer/Mexico / Reuters

Galia Rodriguez, 8, daughter of reporter Armando Rodriguez who was killed in Ciudad Juarez, takes part in an anniversary in the journalists's park in the border city of Ciudad Juarez on Nov. 13, 2010. Suspected drug gangs shot dead Rodriguez, a Mexican crime reporter who worked for El Diario de Ciudad Juarez on Nov. 13, 2008 in Ciudad Juarez.

Mexico has become a killing field for reporters, according to a study released this week by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. The organization’s "Attacks on the Press in 2011" study shows 48 Mexican journalists have disappeared or have been killed in the last five years across the country.

CPJ's survey found the increase in crimes against media workers began with the start of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's escalated war against narcotics traffickers, a crusade which has led rival cartels to fight for control of the profitable drug routes into the United States. 

‘Nothing has changed’
Pressure from international press organizations like CPJ prompted the Calderon administration to launch an initiative to protect the country's journalists. London-based writers group PEN has called for "immediate and definitive action" to end the killings of journalists in Mexico. 

But the killings and kidnappings continue.

"Nothing has changed," Hernandez said.  "No one is going to protect them [journalists], they have no one to turn to for protection, but themselves."

In Ciudad Juarez, a city that sees an average of eight murders a day, Sosa says journalists put competition for exclusive stories aside and call each other when news breaks, so they can travel to cover developments as a group. A 23-year veteran crime reporter of the award-winning El Diario, Sosa and other experienced journalists have also gotten used to giving up their byline for a simple "staff" byline  when they write a story that may infuriate a cartel leader or government official.  

Slideshow: Narco culture permeates Mexico, leaks across border

Mexico's drug war is also part of a drug culture with roots in music, movies and even religion

Launch slideshow

Self-censorship
Journalists complain the threats have led to the spread of self-censorship.  Mexico City-based correspondent Ana Arana said much of the country is suffering from what she calls "news black holes."

Arana runs Fundacion MEPI, an independent investigative nonprofit. In an effort to determine how pervasive self-censorship has become, the group studied the coverage of drug-related crimes by 11 regional newspapers, as well as the national edition of Milenio and El Universal in 2010 and then again in 2011.

MEPI found that in Nuevo Laredo and other crime-ridden cities, the press was barely covering gangland executions and other drug-related crimes. And if they published stories on those types of crimes, they did so without mentioning suspects.

"We don't know how bad things are in some regions of the country because of self-censorship," said Dallas Morning News reporter Alfredo Corchado, who has been covering Mexico for many years. "Who can blame Mexican journalists for self-censoring themselves when the government is incapable of protecting them, or even solving one case of colleagues killed," he added.

Some Mexican authorities seem to be censoring their information too, according to many reporters. "What we are seeing is that the government forces are slow to respond, or against sharing statistics or details about specific drug violence," said Arana.

That increasingly leaves the public depending on social media for information. Many turn to Facebook and Twitter for the latest on crime hot spots. But even that source of information is being curtailed, especially after the murder of Marisol Macias Castro.

The 39-year-old Twitter user posted notes on the criminal activities of local cartel members last September. She was found decapitated shortly after. Two other murders have also been linked to the use of social media to denounce a drug cartel.

‘Not going to retire because I'm scared’
While the risk of reporting worsens, many won't give up their dangerous profession.  Sosa has told her children, now 17 and 20 years old, she does not want a funeral when she dies, because she has seen so many she has developed an aversion to them.

But she says the drug war violence won't force her to quit. "I'm not going to retire because I'm scared or because I'm tired," she said. "This is what I know how to do and this is what I love doing." 

Hernandez also refused to give up being a journalist, but 19 months after being kidnapped he now practices his profession in the U.S.  He was granted political asylum and now works as a photojournalist for a TV network in Texas, where he lives with his wife and three sons.

But those still reporting from Mexico have to continue to brave the dangers.

Culiacan reporter Javier Valdez Cardenas survived a grenade attack in the course of his work. Last year, he was the awarded the CPJ's International Press Freedom award. In his acceptance speech last September, he spoke about the grim tragedy continuing to unfold in his country.

"Mexico is living a tragedy that should shame us,” said Cardenas.  “The youth will remember this as a time of war. Their DNA is tattooed with bullets and guns and blood, and this is a form of killing tomorrow."

EDINBURG, Texas – While flying an afternoon patrol along the twists and turns of the Rio Grande, Lt. Johnny Prince, a veteran pilot for the Texas Department of Public Safety, spotted something suspicious: "Look here, we got a raft, a raft right here." 

Below him, in the middle of the river which separates Mexico from the United States was a group of men frantically paddling back to the southern riverbank, their attempt to reach the American side thwarted by the helicopter patrol.

Prince said he suspected the men were a team of drug cartel scouts who were planning to search the U.S. side of the river to make sure there were no law enforcement officers nearby.  If they determined the area was clear, he explained, they would then signal others to sneak a load of narcotics across the river in a raft.

Mike Avila, the helicopter's tactical flight officer, said that this was happening near an area nicknamed "Smugglers' Alley," because of all the illicit activity here.  Well-worn trails and a narrowing of the river have made this area a favorite for Mexican drug traffickers.

‘That car's loaded to the gills’
Earlier that same day, Prince and Avila found themselves flying inland in hot pursuit of two vehicles –a car and a truck –loaded with Mexican marijuana.  As the vehicles sped through city streets on the American side of the river, Avila trained the helicopter’s high-powered camera on the fleeing smugglers and Prince called out their locations by radio to pursuing troopers on the ground.

Mark Potter / NBC News

Lt. Johnny Prince, the pilot on the right, and Mike Avila, the tactical flight officer on the left, patrol the Rio Grande in a helicopter looking for drug smugglers.

One of the drivers sped along the wrong side of the road, then he raced through an intersection, almost striking two cars with his pickup truck.  "Oh no, oh no," groaned Prince.  Avila described another close call as the driver raced through a school zone before crashing into a building: "He nearly struck two school buses."

In both cases, the drivers – a man and a woman – were apprehended and troopers seized loads of marijuana from both their vehicles. Even from the sky, the pilots could see that one of the cars was carrying a lot of drug bundles.  "That car's loaded to the gills," said Prince. 

Increased aggression along a ‘porous’ border
For the helicopter teams, chasing smugglers along the Rio Grande in South Texas is virtually a daily occurrence. Pilots say they've seen the Mexican traffickers pushing larger amounts of illicit drugs into the United States over the last few years and have watched them become more menacing toward law enforcement officers and U.S. citizens.

"I've been working along the border for 14 years and in those 14 years I've seen the level of aggression increase exponentially.  The sheer volume of narcotics that's being pumped into our border has risen," said Capt. Stacy Holland, of the Texas Department of Public Safety Aircraft Section.

It's not unusual, Holland said, for smugglers to take only a couple of minutes to move more than a ton of marijuana across the river, up the U.S. side of the riverbank and into a vehicle which then heads north. "Our border is very open, our border is very porous," he said.

The pilots said they are convinced traffickers are much more likely now than they were a few years ago to confront U.S. law enforcement officials.  "We have video of them carrying AK-47's and side arms during these operations and they are not afraid to use them," said Holland. 

While flying in his helicopter, Prince has more than once been eye to eye with smugglers on the ground upset with his presence above.  "I've seen guns pointed at me, long guns.  I've seen rocks thrown at us.  One of the things they do is use sling shots with ball bearings in them," he said.  "A ball bearing with a good slingshot can do damage to this helicopter and that's been done."

Another serious concern is for the safety of Texas troopers and U.S. Border Patrol agents who have to tangle with the traffickers on the ground.  A particularly dangerous scenario involves agents coming upon a large group of smugglers loading a car with illegal drugs on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande. 

"Usually there's only one or two officers that first arrive at the particular vehicle on the river and they are encountering 15 or 20 cartel members," said Prince.  "On the other side, you will see another 10 to 15 cartel members, and if you see them armed they are going to be trying to cover the guys on the U.S. side."

Splashdowns
A highly unusual technique used by Mexican smugglers to elude capture by American authorities involves them driving trucks loaded with drugs into the waters of the Rio Grande.  It happens after Border Patrol agents or Texas troopers spot a drug-laden vehicle on the U.S. side of the river and give chase. 

If the smugglers can't elude their pursuers – either by speeding up or by throwing spikes into the road to flatten the tires of the officers behind they – they will then head back to the same spot along the river where traffickers brought the drugs ashore after floating them across from Mexico.

"If the loads get compromised, they will drive around in the United States, in Texas here, until they get their recovery teams set up on the river, to return the drugs back to Mexico," said Prince. 

The Texas Department of Public Safety has shot numerous helicopter videos of Mexican smugglers paddling over to the American side of the river to await the arrival of the truck racing toward them.  When the truck reaches the riverbank, it keeps going – right into the water. 

Texas Dept. Of Public Safety / Texas Dept. of Public Safety

Photo taken of a "splashdown" taken by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Drug smugglers drove their truck back into the Rio Grande river to escape U.S. law enforcement.

"Bam! All units, we have a splashdown, a splashdown in the river," a pilot on one of the videos can be heard transmitting on the radio. 

Before the truck sinks, the driver climbs out through the window and the recovery teams move quickly to save as much of the drug load as possible, throwing the tightly-wrapped bales into rafts. 

"Ok, we've got rafts in the river, a bunch of people on the U.S. side; that thing is loaded," said a pilot watching from above in one video.  "Suspects are in the water, trying to unload the vehicle," said another pilot hovering over a different scene.

As soon as the rafts are filled with off-loaded drugs, the smugglers paddle back to the Mexican side of the river where they are safe from arrest by American authorities.  Sometimes, the traffickers are so brazen they will make obscene hand gestures toward U.S. agents watching from across the river, or from above in helicopters.

The agents' only recourse at that moment is to notify Mexican authorities and hope they arrive in time to apprehend the smugglers.  Or, they can hope to catch the loads of drugs next time, when inevitably they are floated back across the Rio Grande during another smuggling attempt – sometimes on the very same day the drugs are recovered after a splashdown.

No end in sight
The pilots who routinely fly along the Rio Grande said they see nothing that would suggest there is any let up in the amount of smuggling along the river.  In fact, they predict increased violence on U.S. soil.

"You get a lot more home invasions, a lot of crook on crook crimes, a lot of kidnappings, the cartels coming over here maybe trying to collect money and then retreating back over to Mexico," said Holland. 

Texas newspapers have reported recently on cartel shoot-outs in Houston and McAllen, the wounding of a deputy, the arrests of alleged cartel leaders in the Rio Grande Valley and the seizure of cartel property in the U.S.—along with the almost daily news of major drug seizures.

Statements by the Obama Administration and by some local officials that the U.S.-Mexican border is safer than ever are derided by many of the pilots.

"Our citizens in our border towns are caught in the crossfire, and I mean that in the most literal sense sometimes," said Holland.  "It's important that our citizens, not only in the state (of Texas), but in the United States are aware of how porous our border is and what the threats are, and could be."

More coverage from Mark Potter: Along Mexican border, US ranchers say they live in fear

See more of Mark Potter's reporting on NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams Tuesday evening.

Reuters

Police and members of a forensic team stand around the 35 bodies abandoned on a road on the outskirts of Veracruz on Tuesday.

By Julio Vaqueiro, Telemundo Correspondent

MEXICO CITY – The scene was shocking. Masked gunmen blocked a busy road in the once-quiet port city of Veracruz, abandoning two trucks with 35 bodies inside, near a big shopping center. It was Tuesday at 5 p.m., broad daylight.

People on the streets watched the corpses being left at an underpass. Some of the victims had their hands tied and showed signs of having been tortured. The picture could have been extracted from a horror movie.

According to Veracruz state Attorney General, Reynaldo Escobar, 23 of the victims were men and 12 were women. “We have never seen a situation like this before,” said Escobar.

His words resounded across the country: Mexico is becoming the country of “never befores.”

Never before had we seen so many corpses dumped together on a busy avenue in a tourist port. Never before had we seen 52 people being killed inside a casino in the city of Monterrey until a group of criminals burned the place on Aug. 25. Never before had we seen a car bomb explosion in a Mexican city until it happened on July 2010 in Ciudad Juarez. Never before had panic gripped fans during a shooting near a soccer match until it happened in Torreon, Coahuila state. Within seconds of the first pops of gunfire, people ducked under their seats for cover, then thousands rushed onto the field, seeking escape, some carrying children.

But we have seen all of that now, and the new problem seems to be that we are running out of “never befores.”

‘Lack of governability’
More than 36,000 people have been killed since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched his crackdown on Mexican drug cartels in December 2006, according to figures released by the Mexican government in January 2011. But many put the number closer to 40,000, and the deaths include suspected drug gang members, security forces and innocent bystanders.   

Criminal organizations have thrived here for decades, smuggling narcotics north into the United States. The cost to the Mexican people, though, has never been this high. The public brutality of the killings has terrorized whole communities.

Narco culture permeates Mexico and is leaking across the border into the U.S. Click on the photo above to see a complete slideshow about Mexico's narco culture.

“These crimes occurring during day light prove the lack of governability we’re living in,” said security analyst José Reveles. “You shouldn’t be able to drive two trucks full of corpses around the streets of Veracruz. But these criminals did.”

Many feel let down by the authorities. Corruption is rampant, and the presence of the army and federal police in the country’s drug hot spots seems to have only created an upsurge in violence.

In many cases, authorities say it is just a matter of criminals killing criminals, and they rarely investigate the murders; however, the situation is much more complicated than that. It is true that among the 35 bodies found in Veracruz, many had criminal records, but it is also true that one of the victims was a police officer, and two of them were under 18 years old.

Furthermore, every one of the 35 men and women dumped there, and every one of the tens of thousands killed during this war, has left behind a family in grief.

Many of the victims’ relatives have given up hope of finding justice. Many Mexicans who have witnessed the violence on the streets live in fear and in silence. Some never even report the deaths of loved ones to the authorities out of fear of retribution.

‘Enough is enough’
Poet Javier Sicilia is a leader in the fight against the rampant drug violence. The killing of his 24-year-old son, Juan Francisco, in an episode blamed on drug gangs during March of this year, has made him the loudest voice condemning the bloodshed that has ravaged parts of Mexico. He has given a face and a name to the victims and their relatives. Now they are expressing their anger and giving a more transparent picture of the damage these atrocities have had on Mexican society.

“I’m a moral voice – I have to do this out of my moral convictions, because people have asked me to do it,” Sicilia has told the media more than once. Thousands have followed him in four different marches across the country with the rallying cry “enough is enough.”

The massacre in Veracruz is only the latest in an ongoing stream of horrors.Just as the 35 bodies were dumped in the tourist zone in Veracruz, Calderon unveiled a new TV program to try to lure tourists back to the country. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

“It’s between ridiculous and pathetic to see President Calderon taking his time to go around the country’s beauty in the times we’re living in,” journalist Carmen Aristegui told Telemundo. “It’s black humor.”

The images from the travel television program – a happy president climbing Mayan pyramids, and more – clash with the pictures of the half-naked bodies on Veracruz’s road. Just as the country Mexicans actually want to live in clashes with the reality of it.