Pubdate: Thu, 20 Oct 2005
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2005 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  http://www.mercurynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Authors: Alfredo Corchado and Tracey Eaton, The Dallas Morning News
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Mexico
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Nuevo+Laredo

SURGING MEXICAN VIOLENCE DRAWS COMPARISONS TO COLOMBIA

EL CENIZO, Texas - When he looks across the Rio Grande into Nuevo
Laredo, Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores sees not the friendly Mexican
border town he knew growing up, but the violent trappings of another
country far to the south.

"It's a sad, scary sight," he said. "We are in the United States of
America, and just across this border, the Colombianization of Mexico
is slowly taking shape."

In describing the surging drug violence along the U.S.-Mexico border
and elsewhere in Mexico, Flores and other law enforcement officials
and analysts are increasingly referring to Colombia, where the
Medellin drug cartel and other criminal organizations waged war on the
government and killed hundreds of people during the 1980s.

The level of mayhem in Mexico still does not approach Colombia's
violence then, when politicians, dozens of judges and hundreds of
police officers were killed. Kingpin Pablo Escobar was also blamed for
the deaths of more than 1,000 civilians, including the bombing of an
in-flight commercial jetliner, killing all 107 aboard. Police
commandos killed Escobar in 1993.

Compared with Colombia, Mexico has had relative calm since the 1910
Mexican Revolution. But new, menacing signs abound:

An estimated 1,100 people have been killed in drug-related slayings so
far this year, and analysts say that the epicenter of the hemisphere's
drug war has shifted to Mexico.

Lawlessness has surged along the border. In the embattled city of
Nuevo Laredo alone, 136 people have been killed this year, including
21 current and former police officers and a City Council member,
raising concern among U.S. law enforcement officials.

Violence has flared in Mexico's interior as well, in states including
Michoacan, Guerrero and Sinaloa. On Sept. 16, suspected drug
traffickers gunned down Rogelio Zarazua Ortega, the head of
Michoacan's state police, as he dined with his wife and friends.

The Mexican government is providing protection for at least eight
federal judges handling drug cases who have received threats.

Responding to the border violence, the U.S. government last week
announced that it was sending a team of federal agents to Laredo, and
top U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials pledged to step up
cooperative efforts against the traffickers. Texas Gov. Rick Perry
said the state would devote nearly $10 million to improving border
security.

Mexican Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca acknowledged that the
seven major drug organizations operating in Mexico have increased
their reach to practically every corner of the country, corrupting
even some new members of the elite AFI agency, Mexico's version of the
FBI.

While the corruption and threats aren't new, some analysts express
concern about the long-term consequences for Mexico, particularly if
the government fails to control the violence.

"The bad news is that this is beginning to look like the violence we
saw in Colombia," said Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City expert on national
security issues and organized crime. "The good news is that this
conflict is identifiable, and it's one that the government is
responding to specifically. I'm not saying that we won't get to a
Colombia-like situation, but if the government can step in
successfully, the situation is still containable."

A U.S. investigator, speaking on condition of anonymity, was skeptical
that the violence would be contained.

"Nuevo Laredo is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many warning
signs across Mexico," the investigator said, "and how the government
responds, for example on extradition issues, will go a long ways in
responding to many of our doubts and fears. Today, Mexican kingpins
are just as powerful, if not more, than their Colombian counterparts.
The balance of power is shifting fast."

The threat in Mexico is rising because of a shift in the drug trade,
U.S. anti-drug officials and drug-trade specialists say. Mexico - and
not Colombia - is now headquarters for the Western hemisphere's most
important drug traffickers.

"Since the fall of the big Colombian cartels from Medellin and Cali,
the power center in the Latin American drug trade has shifted to
Mexico," said Ron Chepesiuk, journalist and author of "Drug Lords:
The Rise and Fall of the Cali Cartel."

"The violence is getting worse, I suspect, because the Mexicans are
playing a bigger ... more lucrative role in the trade."

The rising violence has been accompanied by reports of mutilated
bodies and brazen daylight executions.

"The violence and corruption is getting worse and worse, like a
cancer," said Aaron Pena, who became a Texas state lawmaker and
anti-drug activist after his 16-year-old son died in a drug-related
death.

"It's literally at America's doorstep, and it's about to explode," he
said. "It's a problem we can't simply blame on the Mexicans. At its
root, it's our problem. It is the demand for drugs that causes this to
happen."

Flores recently received an alert from the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, warning his office and other law enforcement agencies on the
border about a possible alliance between the Zetas, the armed
enforcers of the gulf drug cartel, and rogue members of the Kaibiles,
a Guatemalan special forces unit whose members are known for their
jungle fighting skills. Seven Guatemalans, including four thought to
be former Kaibiles, were arrested recently in southern Mexico, the
Defense Ministry said last week.

"There are now possible new players in this drug war, and we have to
take this very seriously, even if it's just an alert," Flores said.
"This opens the possibility of a definite change in the mix of
violence and dynamics that we face along the border."

Flores has advised his deputies to proceed with caution.

"I've told them to consider the consequences of their actions very
closely," he said. "Besides, we don't have the resources to even begin
a war. We're outmatched. They have rocket-propelled grenades. They've
got bazookas. They'll blow a squad car into the air."

Rami Schwartz, a Mexican radio commentator and founder of Mexico.com,
one of the country's leading Internet portals, said he believes that
drug corruption is so pervasive in Mexico - nearly half of the Nuevo
Laredo's police force was fired because of suspected collaboration
with drug traffickers - that the country is "way beyond
Colombianization."

He points out that 121 of the DEA's 535 most-wanted fugitives are
Mexicans - more than any other nation and more than three times
Colombia's 34.

Mexican authorities dispute such talk. Gen. Alvaro Moreno Moreno, who
oversees anti-drug efforts in Nuevo Laredo, has said the dark cloud
over Nuevo Laredo is lifting. Drug-related killings have declined
since the military and federal agents began the second phase of a
national anti-crime program in early August.

Local officials say they're seeing some success, too.

"Things are calming down," Nuevo Laredo Police Chief Omar Pimentel
said. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake