Mexico: The Staff of Death

At first it looked as if a Tijuana dairy operator had carelessly put a batch of spoiled milk on the market. A few children died, local authorities impounded all local milk, and a tragic, but minor, episode seemed closed. It was not; Tijuana's children kept dying for no apparent cause. By week's end 17 youngsters were dead—and more than 300 others had been treated for poisoning at local hospitals. Lab tests turned up traces of a deadly pesticide called parathion in the tissues of victims, and the poison was soon traced to bread from their tables. Tijuana police closed all bakeries and other stores selling bread; sound trucks even warned against eating tortillas. The almost certain source of the poison was a government warehouse in Mexicali that distributed flour and sugar to Tijuana. There, sitting amid the ingredients for making bread, police found a huge stock of the deadly insecticide.