In the middle

Nick Miroff (The Washington Post): IN YECORA, MEXICO A twisting federal highway passes through this mountain town in the western Sierra Madre, halfway between the states of Sonora and Chihuahua.

The Sinaloa drug cartel controls one side. The Juarez cartel rules the other. In the middle is the Rev. David Beaumont, a Franciscan priest from Hempstead, N.Y.

When Beaumont arrived here 20 years ago as a young missionary, the roads were unpaved, there was no electricity, and there was little to eat besides beans and tortillas. He'd been sent to serve dirt-poor Pima Indians, some of whom were still living in caves, but they ran and hid whenever he arrived in their villages.

"Sometimes I think it was easier back then," said Beaumont, 50, laughing at that memory as he rumbled along a dirt road in a pickup truck and the tattered brown friar's habit he wears over bluejeans.

-eddie