Editor’s note: This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center and co-published with Puente News Collaborative.

LA CIÉNEGA, Mexico – 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 who walks the streets risks being caught

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