Mark Stevenson of the Associated Press reports that the Sinaloa cartel in the heartland of Mexico is setting up roadblocks and killing people based on what contacts or chats they have on their phones. It’s not just your chats: If a person is traveling in a car with others, one bad contact or chat can get the whole group kidnapped or killed. Stevenson writes:

Cellphone chats have become death sentences in the continuing, bloody factional war inside Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel.

Cartel gunmen stop youths on the street or in their cars and demand their phones. If they find a contact who’s a member of a rival faction, a chat with a wrong word or a photo with the wrong person, the phone owner is dead.

Then, they’ll go after everyone on that person’s contact list, forming a potential chain of kidnapping, torture and death. That has left residents of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, afraid to even leave home at night, much less visit towns a few miles away where many have weekend retreats. […]

The new tactics are reflected in the huge wave of armed carjackings in and around Culiacan. Cartel gunmen used to steal the SUVs and pickups they favor for use in cartel convoys; but now they focus on stealing smaller sedans.

They use these to go undetected in their silent, deadly kidnappings. […]

Laura Guzmán, the leader of the local restaurant chamber, said about 180 businesses in Culiacan have closed, permanently or temporarily, since Sept. 9 and almost 2,000 jobs have been lost. […]

For those looking to get away from the violence temporarily, the seaside resort of Mazatlan used to be only 2½ hours away by car. But that’s not an option since last month when cartel gunmen hijacked passenger buses, forced the tourists off and burned the vehicles to block the road to Mazatlan.

That leaves just one option, and one only open to some.

“Those who have the economic resources get out of the city by airplane to take a break,” Guzmán said.

Read more here.