Pubdate: Sat, 05 Nov 2005
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2005 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Hector Tobar and Carlos Martinez, Times Staff Writers

DRUG CARTELS BRING RIVALRY AND DEATH TO SOUTHERN MEXICO

ACAPULCO - Death surprised Julio Carlos Lopez Soto near the beach as 
he stepped out of the swanky La Mansion steakhouse, where the meat is 
grilled on tabletops overlooking the Pacific.

Death came to police officer Raymundo Leyva in the hills that rise 
above Acapulco Bay, where the working people of this resort city 
live. He was shot 11 times.

A spreading conflict between rival drug cartels and the police is 
bringing the gangland-style violence of Mexico's northern border to 
the southern states of Michoacan and Guerrero.

At least 200 people have been killed in "narco-violence" in the two 
states this year, a record number for the region. The violence is 
being driven, officials say, by competition over local opium poppy 
and marijuana plantations and a growing number of laboratories 
producing methamphetamine.

The public assassinations are a new phenomenon in a region where drug 
cultivation has long been a bucolic activity practiced in verdant 
mountains while police turned a blind eye. Now police officers are 
turning up dead in unprecedented numbers, and their stations are 
being attacked by hit men wielding fragmentation grenades.

"I thought after the first funerals that would be it, but there's 
been so many more," said Alberto Lopez Rosas, Acapulco's mayor. Nine 
police officers have been killed in the city this year. Only one was 
killed last year. "We don't have an elite police force here," the 
mayor said. "Our officers are from the common people."

Across Mexico, more than 2,000 people have been killed as two cartels 
battle over drug production areas and points of sale, known here as 
plazas: the Gulf cartel, based in the border state of Tamaulipas, and 
the Sinaloa cartel, named for the Pacific state in which it is based.

The two cartels appear to have brought their rivalry southward. That 
worries Lopez Rosas, who fears that more shootings will chase away 
the tourists on which Acapulco depends.

"What Acapulco sells is not just the ocean and the beach," he said. 
"It sells tranquillity."

Two hundred miles inland from Acapulco's tropical beaches, the 
highest-ranking police officer in Michoacan was assassinated in 
September in a hail of bullets from an AK-47. Rogelio Zarazua Ortega 
was celebrating his birthday with his wife and two dozen guests in 
the state capital, Morelia, when he was killed.

On Oct. 15, in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas, two more 
high-ranking police commanders and an officer were slain with AR-15 
and AK-47 assault rifles, the latter a signature weapon of the drug 
cartels. It is known in the local slang as el cuerno de chivo, the 
goat's horn, for the shape of its bullet clip.

"The presence of these types of weapons and of the types of attacks 
we've seen show a clear desire to send a message," said Gen. Juan 
Edilberto Salinas, head of public security for the state of Guerrero, 
where Acapulco is located.

Salinas won't comment publicly on what that message might be. "The 
federal authorities are in charge of investigating these cases," he 
said. "And they don't share information with us."

But privately, federal and state officials here say they have little 
doubt that at least one of Mexico's most powerful drug gangs is 
involved: the Sinaloa cartel, run by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, which 
has traditionally controlled the drug trade along Mexico's southern coast.

In Acapulco, in addition to the slain police officials, a dozen more 
people have been shot in what the local media call "settling of 
accounts" attacks. In Michoacan, local media have reported at least 
181 drug-related executions and assassinations this year.

But many local officials have sought to play down the danger to public safety.

"Michoacan is safe," said Miguel Arellano Pulido, the state's chief 
prosecutor. "There are fewer homicides in Michoacan, [but] the 
homicides we have are committed with greater violence and in public places."

Mario Bautista, the newly appointed director of public security in 
Michoacan, was on duty the day his predecessor, Zarazua, was 
assassinated at his birthday party.

"I was on patrol, supervising my personnel," Bautista said. The radio 
announced shots fired, and at least two people killed.

"I went there as fast as I could. My biggest surprise was when I got 
there and I saw [one of the dead] was my son."

Cesar Bautista was a local police officer assigned to Zarazua's 
security detail, which was stationed outside the restaurant. After 
the gunmen killed Zarazua at the lunch table, they fled outside and 
exchanged gunfire with his bodyguards, killing the younger Bautista.

"He was a very serious, very quiet young man," Bautista said of his 
son, his face tightening. "He was given the responsibility of 
guarding ZarazuaS. He was very loyal. So much so that unfortunately 
he died close to the person who had given him that trust. And he died 
in the best situation you can: defending an ideal, defending his people."

Bautista called the assassination of Zarazua, who had led local 
police in several high-profile raids of methamphetamine labs, a cowardly act.

"They did it because they discovered a man who did his job and who 
hurt them S and that made them angry," Bautista said.

In Acapulco, the August killing of Lopez Soto outside the La Mansion 
restaurant remains clouded in mystery and innuendo. Two days before 
he was killed, local police called to a traffic accident had stumbled 
upon an arms cache inside one of the crashed cars.

The drivers fled, but officers followed them to an Acapulco home, 
where they discovered, among other things, eight AK-47s, an MP-5 
submachine gun and six fragmentation grenades, according to an 
account in the Mexico City newspaper El Universal.

Three men were detained outside the home by a police detail led by 
Lopez Soto. Later, it was discovered that the residence was being 
rented by Edgar Alonso Villarreal, an operative of the Gulf cartel, 
and its leader, Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen.

The detained men were released three hours later for lack of 
evidence. The following day, Lopez Soto transferred and reassigned 
several police commanders. Hours later, he was killed.

Two days after the slaying, one of Lopez Soto's bodyguards appeared 
and told reporters that Gulf cartel hit men had told him they killed 
Lopez Soto because he had received $500,000 from their rivals, the 
Sinaloa cartel.

Was the bodyguard's statement true, Acapulco residents wondered, or 
just a ruse?

"There's a lot of false information out there, to try and confuse the 
investigations," said Salinas, the Guerrero security chief.

For the time being, Guerrero officials are working quickly to get 
their police force the kind of heavy weaponry that is starting to 
show up in the hands of local criminals, Salinas said.

Local police in Mexico are not generally permitted to use automatic 
weapons, he said, and most police in Guerrero have never used them. 
That will change soon. Guerrero is rushing to train its first special 
weapons and tactics unit to face the new threats.

At Acapulco's City Hall, Lopez Rosas said the violence had not 
affected the local tourist trade: 5 million visit the city each year. 
Most people who come will not see the army's tanks, he said, which 
only rarely venture into the tourist hot spots.

Still, the mayor worries.

"We've never been known for being a place where so many executions 
take place," he said. "We're hoping it doesn't take root here. 
Acapulco has no other way to live besides tourism."

Tobar reported from Acapulco and Chilpancingo, Mexico, and Martinez 
from Morelia.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman