How the US Arms the Mexican Drug Cartels

There are only two gun stores in Mexico, and both are located on military bases. Yet the country still suffers from a major gun homicide problem. So where are the guns coming from?

In 2015, a Mexican military helicopter was shot down by cartel fighters using a Browning machine gun and a Barrett .50-caliber rifle. Both weapons were traced back to legal purchases in U.S. gun shops. This stark example highlights a brutal reality: Mexico’s gun violence crisis is fueled by American guns.

Mexico’s biggest challenge is that it shares a border with a country where almost anyone can legally purchase a gun. A significant number of these firearms are then trafficked across the border, primarily into the hands of violent drug cartels. According to The Conversation, an estimated 135,000 guns are smuggled annually from the U.S. into Mexico.

The Conversation, in Mexican drug cartels use hundreds of thousands of guns bought from licensed US gun shops, has been investigating the flow of illicit weapons trafficked from the U.S. to Mexico. The map at the top of this post shows that the majority of the firearms trafficked to Mexico came from cities and small towns that are close to the Mexican border. The article also features an interactive map showing the widespread presence of drug cartels across Mexico. This visual data underscores that trafficked American guns are contributing to violence in nearly every region of the country.

The gun violence crisis in Mexico cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the role of the United States as a major source of illicit firearms. While Mexico maintains some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, they are undermined by the easy availability of weapons just across the border. This cross-border flow of guns from the United States empowers criminal organizations, destabilizes communities, and fuels a cycle of violence that affects both nations.

The Butterfly Superhighway

Every year, millions of Monarch butterflies undertake an epic journey across North America, traveling thousands of miles from their breeding grounds in the United States and Canada to their wintering habitats in central Mexico. In the spring, they then return to their northern locations in the United States and Canada.

What makes this migration even more astonishing is that no single butterfly completes the entire round trip. The Monarch migration is an extraordinary multi-generational journey, a relay race across generations, with each butterfly passing the baton to its offspring. The entire migration is too long for a single butterfly to complete in its lifetime and it takes multiple generations of Monarch butterflies to complete the journey north. Although a super-generation does make the entire return journey from North America to the wintering grounds in Mexico.

The Butterfly Superhighway invites you to join these incredible creatures on their long journey. The Butterfly Superhighway uses Google Earth and Google Street View to create a series of virtual Monarch butterfly migration journeys. By selecting one of the white route-line maps shown on the homepage, users can follow each incredible migratory journey across North America through a sequence of Street View panoramas and transitional 3D fly-overs captured on Google Earth.

I suspect there is no real map-coding involved in the Butterfly Superhighway. It seems that each migratory journey is simply a series of connected screen recordings made on Google Earth. Despite this, Butterfly Superhighway offers a visually engaging and accessible introduction to the Monarch butterfly's migration. However, "introduction" might be the operative word here, as the Butterfly Superhighway feels like a landing page for a broader website on Monarch butterflies - a website that has yet to be fully developed.

Via: Webcurios

The Migratory Patterns of Birds

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is running the largest citizen science project in the world. For fifteen years bird watchers across the globe have been reporting their observations to eBird. The result is a huge database of over 750 million observations, recording dated sightings of thousands of species of birds.

The eBird Science team has used the observations made in North America to create animated migration and seasonal abundance maps for 610 bird species. The maps visualize the abundance of each species across North America and allow you to observe their migratory patterns over the course of each year.

The abundance maps show where each bird species is most common across the continent. These maps use different colors to show the relative abundance of a bird species at different times of the year. The migratory maps allow you to view the migratory patterns of whole populations of bird species across the whole continent of North America. For example in the map above you can observe the abundance of waterfowl in different locations over the course of a year. Note how in the winter the Mississippi River Valley shows up on the map as thousands of waterfowl visit.

The Ecoregions of North America

North America encompasses a number of wildly different ecosystems. From the Arctic tundra of the extreme north to the tropical forests of southern Mexico there are many different ecoregions with very different climates and ecological systems within the continent of North America.

bplant.org divides North America into 15 distinct ecoregions, which are then divided into 50 level 2 ecoregions. These ecoregions are based on classifications from the US EPA, Canada's CEC, and Mexico's INEGI.

The Ecoregions of North America interactive map divides Canada, the USA and Mexico into these 15 different ecoregions. Each ecoregion is shown on the map using a distinct color. You can learn more about the characteristics of any of the ecoregions by clicking on it on the map. This will take you to information on the ecoregion's climate, vegetation and biodiversity characteristics. It will also provide information on the subregions which exist within the selected ecoregion.


You can explore ecoregions around the world on the Ecoregions 2017 interactive map. This map provides a guide to 846 ecoregions around the globe. Using the map you can view the different ecoregions which can be found across the world and discover more about the distinct characteristics of each ecoregion.

Ecoregions are ecologically and geographically defined areas which have distinct natural characteristics, species and habitats. The ecoregions are colored on the map by the type of habitats that exist within them. If you hover over an ecoregion on the map you can view more details about the region's natural habitat and the biogeographic realm in which it exists.

The Ecoregions 2017 map also includes a number of other layers. These include a layer showing the global distribution of biomes, a layer showing the protected status of regions around the world and a 'realms' layer showing the Earth's eight biogeographic realms.

Mapping 2000 Unmarked Graves

Between 2006 and 2016 nearly 2,000 clandestine graves were found in Mexico. The graves contained 2,884 corpses, 324 skulls and thousands of fragments of bones belonging to an undetermined number of individuals. The graves were dug by criminal gangs. The bodies were the victims of gang violence.

In The Country of 2000 Graves A donde van los desaparecidos has mapped out the locations of all 2000 clandestine graves. To collect the data for the map A donde van los desaparecidos submitted freedom of information requests to all Mexico's state attorney's offices. The interactive map includes a timeline which allows you to explore the data by year. This timeline includes two animation options to either view how many graves were discovered each year or view the accumulated total of graves discovered over time since 2006.

Not all of the state attorney's offices responded to the request for data so it is highly likely that there are more clandestine graves which have been discovered and that are not shown on the map. The article accompanying the interactive map includes an analysis of which states have discovered the most clandestine graves and bodies. The article also includes links to view individual interactive maps for each state. These individual state maps include charts showing the number of graves and corpses discovered in each state by year.

Trump's Wall and the Rio Grande

There have been a lot of interactive maps which visualize the scale of Trump's border wall between the USA and Mexico. These include USA Today's The Wall - an in-depth examination of Donald Trump's border wall, Reveal's The Wall and the Intercept's Visualizing the U.S.-Mexico Border.

The Border Wall and the Rio Grande takes a different approach to these three maps. This Esri Story Map, created by the Defenders of Wildlife, takes a closer look at the environmental and social impacts a huge wall could have on the national wildlife refuge land in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The Border Wall and the Rio Grande includes a before and after interactive map which shows the National Wildlife Refuge areas which are currently accessible, but will be cut-off by Trump's wall.

Another interactive map uses aerial imagery to take you on a tour of the route of Trump's proposed wall in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. This tour shows you where the existing border fences, walls and other barriers exist and where it is proposed to build new barriers. Some of these new barriers will be built two miles in from the border and cut off state & federal land and land which is privately owned. The tour along the border looks at some of the important wildlife areas which will be affected by Trump's wall, including the National Butterfly Center.

Cutting off these areas will have an impact on the wildlife habitat of the rare, endangered and threatened species of the area. As well as having a huge effect on people's access to wildlife areas the new proposed wall will also stop many individuals from easily accessing their own private property, including many farms and businesses.

Flying Over Trump's Wall

The Washington Post has created an impressive fly-over of the USA - Mexico border. The map takes you on a tour of the entire border, from the west coast to the Gulf of Mexico. The Post's Borderline interactive gives you a complete overview of the invisible and physical barriers which already separate the two countries and the huge job that Trump has ahead of him if he wants to build his wall.

The map provides an oblique bird's eye aerial view of the border. As you scroll down on the page you get to fly along the entire route of the border. As you progress along this border information windows appear which tell you about the existing use of fences or walls along the border. The information windows include quick links which allow you to jump ahead, along the border, to the next annotated part of the Post's interactive.

The Washington Post's interactive map is just the latest in a long line of attempts to map and document the huge job that Donald Trump has set himself. For example the Berliner Morgenpost's Trump Wall Comparison Map allows you to overlay an outline of Trump's proposed border wall between the USA and Mexico on any other location on Earth.

You can also get a good sense of the scale of construction needed to build Trump's wall in a video from the Intercept. The Intercept downloaded and stitched together 200,000 satellite images to create a huge strip map of the U.S.-Mexican border. You can view this strip map in Visualizing the U.S.-Mexico Border, a short video which pans along the whole border.

KPBS submitted a number of Freedom of Information requests to U.S. Customs and Border Protection in order to learn more about the 653 miles of the wall that already exist. You can explore what they discovered on their interactive map America's Wall. The Reveal has also investigated where the border is already fenced. You can explore Reveal's work on their The Wall interactive map. The map shows the current fence and shows where it is a 'vehicular' and where it is a 'pedestrian' fence. The map also shows where no fence currently exists.

USA Today has also completed a whole series on the US - Mexico border. USA Today's The Wall - an in-depth examination of Donald Trump's border wall includes interviews, podcasts, virtual reality and an interactive map of the border.

Mexican Election Maps

Andrés Manuel López Obrador won Sunday's Presidential Election in Mexico. Although Obrador was the favorite to win the election the size of his victory proves that there is overwhelming support in the country for his proposed program of radical change.

The BBC has created a static map which effectively visualizes the overwhelming success of López Obrador in Sunday's election. The map simply colors each state based on the presidential candidate who won the most votes. López Obrador won 31 of the 32 electoral districts, so the whole country is colored red, except for Guanajuato, the only state won by Anaya.


While the BBC's map is effective in visualizing the scope of Obrador's victory it doesn't provide any information about the scope of his victory in each state. Univision's Elecciones Mexico 2018 provides a more nuanced view of the votes cast for each candidate in each electoral district.

Univison's map uses more shades of red and blue to show the percentage of votes cast for the winning candidate in each a state. This reveals that although Obrador took the northern states, the north-eastern states are where he picked up the least votes and his stronghold is in Mexico's most southern states.

Building Up Walls

Donald Trump wants to build a 2,000 mile wall between Mexico and the USA. This American Life has been wondering about the effect that border walls have on the lives of the people who live near them. In The Walls This American Life has compiled a number of stories from around the world. In these stories This American Life correspondents visit and talk to individuals and communities living in the shadows of walls.

The Walls is accompanied by an interactive map which shows the locations featured in all the podcast stories. This map allows you to zoom-in on the various locations and view the border walls (using Mapbox GL's extruded polygons to visualize the border walls). Each location includes aerial imagery and and a very short description of the border wall.

If you are having difficulty envisioning just how far big Trump's proposed wall would be then you can use the Berliner Morgenpost's interactive map. The Trump Wall Comparison Map allows you to overlay an outline of Trump's proposed border wall between the USA and Mexico on any other location on Earth. You can also get a good sense of the scale of construction needed to build Trump's wall in a video from the Intercept. The Intercept downloaded and stitched together 200,000 satellite images to create a huge strip map of the U.S.-Mexican border. You can view this strip map in Visualizing the U.S.-Mexico Border, a short video which pans along the whole border.

Power Plants of North America

The North American Power Plants interactive map shows the location of nearly 10,000 power plants in the USA, Canada & Mexico. The map also provides a breakdown of how much capacity is provided by each type of power plant. Currently natural gas provides over 40% of capacity in the whole of North America.

6,400 of the power plants on the map (generating one or more megawatts) use renewable sources, such as hydroelectric, wind, solar, pumped storage, biomass, geothermal and tidal. 3,300 of the power plants use non-renewable sources (natural gas, coal, nuclear and petroleum).

You can use the drop-down menu to filter the map by type of of power production. When you filter the map then the map sidebar also updates to provide a breakdown of the capacity within the selected sector. This sidebar also automatically updates as you zoom & pan the map to provide a breakdown of capacity for only the power plants shown in the current map view.


Carbon Brief also provides a comprehensive map showing How the US generates electricity. The map visualizes how & where electricity is generated in the USA and the amount of electricity generated by the different types of electricity production.

The map allows you to filter the results by type of electricity production. This allows you to see where in the country the different types of electricity production create the most output. For example geothermal power plants are all based in the west of the country while nuclear power plants seem to be mostly built in the east.

All the power plants are displayed on the map using colored scaled markers. The colors indicate the type of power plant and the size of the markers represents the plants' output capacity. The graph in the map sidebar shows the percentage that each type of production contributes to the total of electricity production in the United States. You can select a state from the drop-down menu to view the makeup of the capacity mix for that state.

Still Building Trump's Wall

Donald Trump wants to spend millions of hard working Americans' tax-dollars on a wall between the United States and Mexico. KPBS claims that 653 miles of that wall already exists, 90% of which was built in only the last 12 years by Presidents Bush and Obama.

KPBS submitted a number of Freedom of Information requests to U.S. Customs and Border Protection in order to learn where that 'wall' is and when these sections were built. You can explore the data on their new interactive map America's Wall.

Using the map you can select sections of the wall to see when it was constructed and what type of physical barrier it is. You can also use the timeline chart to see how much of this existing wall was built in any particular year. This timeline is synced to the map. When you click on the chart the map is filtered to only show the sections built in the selected year.



USA Today flew & drove along the entire 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico. During these journeys they mapped every known piece of the existing border fence between the two countries. You can view the locations of this existing border fence and also view the aerial video USA Today shot during their flight along the border on their interactive map.

Should we build a wall? A 2,000-mile search for answers not only maps the existing border fence but also explores some of the problems the USA could face in trying to build Trump's wall between Mexico & the USA. The map shows where the existing fence consists of vehicle barriers, pedestrian fencing, other fencing and where no fencing currently exists.

The beginning of 'Should we build a wall' is in a story map format. This section explores some of the geographical, economical and legal problems the USA could face in trying to build Trump's wall. You can view some of these geographical problems yourself in the USA Today's aerial videos. If you scroll to the bottom of the story map and click on the 'Explore the map' button you can click on the map to view videos of the aerial footage captured during the flight along the border.

'Should we build a wall' is just one part of USA Today's special report The Wall - an in-depth examination of Donald Trump's border wall. In the rest of the report you can read interviews, listen to podcasts and explore the border in virtual reality.


Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting, has also been collecting data on the US-Mexico border for a number of years. They have spent a long time mapping the existing border fence using satellite imagery and government PDF maps of the border.

From this data Reveal has discovered that around 700 miles of the 1,954 mile-long U.S.-Mexico border is already fenced. Trump's new wall will therefore need to be at least 1,300 miles long. That's a lot of Chinese steel. You can explore Reveal's work on their The Wall interactive map. The map shows the current fence and shows where it is a 'vehicular' and where it is a 'pedestrian' fence. The map also shows where no fence currently exists.

You can get a good sense of the scale of construction needed to build Trump's new wall in a video from the Intercept. The Intercept downloaded and stitched together 200,000 satellite images to create a huge strip map of the U.S.-Mexican border. You can view this strip map in Visualizing the U.S.-Mexico Border, a short video which pans along the whole border.


From Donald Trump's 'detailed' construction plans we know that the Trump Wall will be up to 15 meters high, made of concrete and steel (but also possibly fencing) and will be 1,954 miles long. If you are having difficulty envisioning just how far 1,954 miles is then you can use the Berliner Morgenpost's interactive map. The Trump Wall Comparison Map allows you to overlay an outline of Trump's proposed border wall between the USA and Mexico on any other location on Earth.

If you want to create your own Trump Wall map then you can get Reveal's data for the US-Mexico border fence on Github. You can read more about how this data was collected and mapped in the Reveal article The Wall: Building a continuous US-Mexico barrier would be a tall order.

Trump's Wall Maps

USA Today flew & drove along the entire 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico. During these journeys they mapped every known piece of the existing border fence between the two countries. You can view the locations of this existing border fence and also view the aerial video USA Today shot during their flight along the border on a new interactive map.

Should we build a wall? A 2,000-mile search for answers not only maps the existing border fence but also explores some of the problems the USA could face in trying to build Trump's wall between Mexico & the USA. The map shows where the existing fence consists of vehicle barriers, pedestrian fencing, other fencing and where no fencing currently exists.

The beginning of 'Should we build a wall' is in the story map format. This section explores some of the geographical, economical and legal problems the USA could face in trying to build Trump's wall. You can view some of these geographical problems yourself in the USA Today's aerial videos. If you scroll to the bottom of the story map and click on the 'Explore the map' button you can click on the map to view videos of the aerial footage captured during the flight along the border.

'Should we build a wall' is just one part of USA Today's special report The Wall - an in-depth examination of Donald Trump's border wall. In the rest of this examination you can read interviews, listen to podcasts and explore the border in virtual reality.


Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting, has also been collecting data on the US-Mexico border for a number of years. They have spent a long time mapping the existing border fence using satellite imagery and government PDF maps of the border.

From this data Reveal has discovered that around 700 miles of the 1,954 mile-long U.S.-Mexico border is already fenced. Trump's new wall will therefore need to be at least 1,300 miles long. That's a lot of Chinese steel. You can explore Reveal's work on their The Wall interactive map. The map shows the current fence and shows where it is a 'vehicular' and where it is a 'pedestrian' fence. The map also shows where no fence currently exists.

You can get a good sense of the scale of construction needed to build Trump's new wall in a video from the Intercept. The Intercept downloaded and stitched together 200,000 satellite images to create a huge strip map of the U.S.-Mexican border. You can view this strip map in Visualizing the U.S.-Mexico Border, a short video which pans along the whole border.


From Donald Trump's 'detailed' construction plans we know that the Trump Wall will be up to 15 meters high, made of concrete and steel (but also possibly fencing) and will be 1,954 miles long. If you are having difficulty envisioning just how far 1,954 miles is then you can use the Berliner Morgenpost's interactive map. The Trump Wall Comparison Map allows you to overlay an outline of Trump's proposed border wall between the USA and Mexico on any location on Earth.

If you want to create your own Trump Wall map then you can get Reveal's data for the US-Mexico border fence on Github. You can read more about how this data was collected and mapped in the Reveal article The Wall: Building a continuous US-Mexico barrier would be a tall order.

Mexico Earthquake Maps

Yesterday a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck central Mexico. At the time of writing there have been 216 confirmed deaths from the quake.

The U.S. Geological Survey's interactive map locates the epicenter of the quake near the town of Raboso in Puebla, 76 miles southeast of Mexico City. The USGS's Latest Earthquakes Map includes options to view earthquake activity over the last 24 hours, the last week or the last month. The map also shows plate boundaries. Mapbox's Live Earthquake Tracker is also a nicely designed map of the same USGS data, allowing you to view the location and the size of the most recent seismic activity around the world on a global map.


The New York Times has created a seismic activity map which shows that although Mexico City is 76 miles from the epicenter of yesterday's quake it still experienced intense seismic activity. Mexico City is built on an ancient lake bed. The soft soil under Mexico City is known to be prone to seismic activity. When earthquake waves pass through the soil it vibrates and magnifies the waves.

The result of seismic activity can therefore be catastrophic for Mexico City's buildings. The NYT article includes a map of buildings that have collapsed in the city and lots of photos of the devastation caused. Yesterday's quake occurred on the anniversary of the horrific 1985 earthquake which damaged around 3,000 buildings in the city. It appears yesterday's earthquake has not caused that scale of damage to the city's buildings. After the 1985 quake Mexico City introduced more stringent building codes. Those codes probably saved a lot of lives yesterday.

A Google Map, Edificios Colapsados Sismo 2017 19 Sep, is also documenting the location of collapsed buildings in Mexico City. Buildings on this map are being categorized by the degree of damage caused by the quake.

Mapping Trump's Wall

If Donald Trump becomes president he plans to stop Americans escaping to the free world by building a massive wall along the border of Mexico. More than 650 miles of the 1,954 mile long U.S.-Mexico border is already fenced. This means that the 'Welcome to Trumpland' Wall will need to be at least 1,300 miles long. That's a lot of Chinese steel.

You can get a good sense of the scale of construction needed to build Trump's wall in a new video from the Intercept. The Intercept downloaded and stitched together 200,000 satellite images to create a huge strip map of the U.S.-Mexican border. You can view this strip map in Visualizing the U.S.-Mexico Border, a short video which pans along the whole border.

An interactive map of Trump's proposed wall also exists. Doug McCune has used Mapbox GL to create a 3d map of Trump's wall. The wall is colored in a patriotic red, white and blue. However the scale of the wall is probably a little out (it appears to be at least 10 miles high on Doug's map).

The Panama Papers - Money Trail

Mexican news website Aristegui Noticias has created a story map which literally follows Juan Armando Cantu Hinojosa's money around the world as he tries to hide his fortune from the tax authorities.

The business tycoon Juan Armando Cantu Hinojosa is a close friend of the Mexican President Peña Nieto. Ever since Nieto's became president Hinjosa has made a fortune from the huge number of government contracts that he has amazingly secured. The Panama Papers leak has revealed how Hinjosa used the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to hide his wealth in an elaborate chain of offshore trusts and companies.

The Money Trail of Cantu Hinjosa is an informative story map which explains where and how Hinjosa moved his money around the world from Mexico City to New Zealand. As you scroll down the page you can follow Hinjosa's money around the world as it is moved from country to country and from offshore trust to offshore trust.

The Money Trail of Cantu Hinjosa is in Spanish.

Via: Visualoop

Mapping the Other Mexican Border

Since 2014 the Mexican government's Southern Border Program has with, U.S. assistance, sought to lessen the numbers of 'illegal' migrants crossing the southern border of Mexico. The United States has helped Mexico in this effort with money, equipment and training. This U.S. assistance has mainly been funded through the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL).

The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) has created an interactive map to raise awareness of the conditions migrants are facing along Mexico's southern border. The Migration through Mexico map plots Mexican border checkpoints, detention centers and deportation sites. It also plots reported attacks on migrants and new migrant routes that have arisen since the Southern Border Program began,

WOLA reports that Mexico's migration crackdown has led many migrants to rely on more dangerous routes into Mexico. It also reports that excessive force has been used by border authorities and that significant numbers of Central Americans fleeing violence have been refused refugee status by Mexico. You can read more about the impact of mexico's Southern Border Program in WOLA's report, Increased Enforcement at Mexico’s Southern Border: An Update on Security, Migration, and U.S. Assistance.

The Hurricane Patricia Movie Map

The Mapbox GL API is able to load video files as a layer on a map. This means that you can add drone or satellite captured moving images directly to your maps. The results can look pretty amazing.

If you don't own your own satellite or drone you can still use this video overlaid on a map feature. One option is to create an animated video from other data. This is what Mapbox has done with data from NOAA’s’s Global Forecast System. They have created a video from NOAA's predictive GFS-model of Hurricane Patricia wind gusts, from October 19th to October 26th, and overlaid it on top of a Mapbox map of North and Central America and the Central Pacific.

You can view the map on the Mapbox Blog. If you don't believe that the movie file is actually a layer on the map, then rotate (right-click and drag), pan and zoom the map  and notice how the video rotates, zooms and pans with the map.

Mapping Migrant Deaths Along the Mexican Border

Sleepless in Tucson has created a number of interactive maps exploring foreign national deaths along the Southern Arizona border with Mexico. The Southern Arizona Border post includes the above map showing the identifiable locations of migrant deaths crossing the border between 2001-2015.

The post also includes two heat-maps, One of the heat-maps shows where there is the highest and lowest density of deaths along the border. The second map shows the density of migrant deaths caused by hyperthermia. Hyperthermia is the number one cause of death of foreign nationals in the Southern Arizona desert.

It is hoped that the map showing deaths caused by hyperthermia can be used by organizations like Humane Borders to locate emergency water stations where they are most needed.


Drug Seizures Along the US-Mexico Border, from the Center of Investigative Journalism, examines the amount and types of drugs that have been seized being smuggled across the 2,000 mile border between the United States and Mexico.

The map plots 128,169 drug seizures made by the U.S. Border Patrol between Jan 2005 and Oct 2011. You can select which type of drug is plotted on the map (marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and other) using the buttons immediately beneath the map. The map also includes a timeline so that you can compare the number of each type of drug seized by year.

The amount of each drug seized at each U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint is represented by the size of the circle on the map. If you select a checkpoint station on the map you can also view details on the total number of seizures and the average weight of each seizure.

Mapping Drug Border Seizures

Drug Seizures Along the US-Mexico Border, from the Center of Investigative Journalism, examines the amount and types of drugs that have been seized being smuggled across the 2,000 mile border between the United States and Mexico.

The map plots 128,169 drug seizures made by the U.S. Border Patrol between Jan 2005 and Oct 2011. You can select which type of drug is plotted on the map (marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and other) using the buttons immediately beneath the map. The map also includes a timeline so that you can compare the number of each type of drug seized by year.

The amount of each drug seized at each U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint is represented by the size of the circle on the map. If you select a checkpoint station on the map you can also view details on the total number of seizures and the average weight of each seizure.

Mexican Drug Homicides on Google Maps

Map of the Drug War in Mexico is using the Google Maps API to map drug related homicides in Mexico.

The map uses custom map markers to display the number of homicides in different locations within Mexico. The size of the markers corresponds to the number of homicides at that location. If the user selects a marker they can view a graph showing the number of homicides over the last eight years.

It is also possible to use the provided drawing tools to search a custom area on the map.