Corruption along U.S.-Mexico border

Bright paint decorates a building in Palomas, Mexico, just across the border from Columbus, N.M. Inside is the Pancho Villa Restaurant and souvenir shop that used to draw visitors from the U.S. Now the tourism industry has collapsed over fear about the drug violence in Mexico.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Street musicians in Palomas, Mexico, play a song for a local woman sitting in her car in January 2009. Tourists from U.S. side have all but evaporated because of drug violence Mexico. The Pink Store in the background was once a hugely popular stop for souvenir hunters.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

A student who is an American citizen runs towards the border gate at Columbus, N.M., in January 2009. About 300 students who live in Palomas, Mexico, but go to school on the U.S. side. A sign looms at the pedestrian gate warning that “Guns are illegal in Mexico.”  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Border Patrol sector chief Daniel C. Serrato gives a tour along the reinforced, 15-ft-high border fence. “Please don’t call it a wall,” he said. “If anyone asks you if the barriers work, they do work.”   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

The junction of Highway 9 and Highway 11 across from the old railroad station in Columbus, N.M., in January 2009. Pancho Villa’s Mexican troops crossed the border four miles away and raided and burned businesses in 1916. One theory for Villa’s raid on the village was in retaliation for a gun deal that went bad.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

A boot with two bullet holes through the ankle hangs on a weathered fence in a Columbus, N.M., cemetery.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Park Avenue in the dusty village of Columbus, N.M.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

During a city meeting in January 2009 in Columbus, N.M., Mayor Eddie Espinoza tries to answer citizens’ suspicions that he might be involved with Mexican drug cartels and about his firing of the police chief. Last year he pleaded guilty in a gun-smuggling scheme.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

A boy runs with his dog along Boundry Street in Columbus, N.M., a ranching town a few miles north of the Mexican border that has been rocked by a corruption scandal.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)