UAB anthropologist Chris Kyle, Ph.D., has been visiting the Mexican city of Chilapa for two decades as part of his research. In recent years, murders and other drug-related violence have ravaged once-sleepy Chilapa and the surrounding cities in the state of Guerrero (shown below, with Chilapa at center right). Newspapers and TV stations in Mexico have been intimidated into underreporting drug-related violence, Kyle says, but with the help of blogs and other online sources, he has begun to track the incidents year by year. Below, maps Kyle has produced for the years 2008 and 2009.

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