Drug Cartels Muscle Into Mexican Town Packed With Americans

San Miguel de Allende oozes old Mexico charm. There are the cobblestone streets, the colonial-era buildings and wrought-iron balconies, the neo-Gothic steeples soaring high above the pink-sandstone church anchoring a corner of the main plaza. Travel and Leisure magazine has twice named it the best city in the world, a ratification of how beloved it is with tourists and retirees from the U.S., Canada and beyond. But lately, San Miguel has been attracting a very different sort of crowd: the drug cartels. And the moment they arrived and began pushing cocaine and imposing their brutal brand of property tax, the murders began. A restaurateur died in a hail of gunfire in front of horrified customers after he refused to pay extortion demands. The son of the owner of a construction-materials business was killed on his way to work. A tortilla shop owner in the nearby town of Celaya was gunned down along with two of her employees. And a fruit vendor, a convenience store operator, another restaurateur and three cantina owners closed their doors after shakedown-visits and, it would appear, are laying low. San Miguel has joined the chilling list of tourist destinations—Cancun, Los Cabos, even Mexico City itself—that are losing their perceived immunity from the drug wars that have ravaged much of Mexico for years, captured in headlines about beheadings, mass graves and broad-daylight shootouts...MORE