Pubdate: Mon, 28 Mar 2011
Source: Brownsville Herald, The (TX)
Copyright: 2011 The Brownsville Herald
Contact: http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/sections/contact/
Website: http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1402
Bookmark: http://www.drugsense.org/cms/geoview/n-mx (Mexico)

CARTELS, MILITARY BATTLE FOR PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE

Violent players have sprayed bullets and spilled blood in a real-life 
and ongoing struggle between Mexico's Gulf Cartel, its erstwhile 
allies, the Zetas, and the Mexican government.

Against this backdrop of violence - which has claimed more than 
35,000 lives since December 2006 - the trio has also waged a 
concerted war for the hearts and minds of the populace. Using public 
relations tools that include banners, leaflets and releases to the 
news media, each has sought to cast itself in a more positive light 
than its enemies.

Public support has its benefits for the cartels, not least of which 
is the ability to conduct their illicit business without drawing 
undue attention and interference from the authorities, said George W. 
Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William & Mary 
and author of "Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?" Indeed, 
that was largely how the cartels operated in the '80s and '90s.

"They could import, store, transport and export as long as they 
followed the rules," Grayson said. "The (rules) included no 
kidnapping, no selling drugs to children and if they had any issues 
among themselves to take it outside" areas where innocents might 
otherwise get caught up in the violence.

Such were the good ol' days, and by many accounts from Grayson and 
others familiar with the cartels, the criminals long for a return to 
that halcyon era.

Mexico's cartels have long used banners to publicly taunt and 
threaten one another, but early last year they began increasingly 
targeting their public messages at, well, the public in an apparent 
bid to curry favor.

When an alliance of the Gulf Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel and the 
Familia Michoacana -- collectively known as Carteles Unidos -- 
declared war against the Zetas in late February 2010, kicking off an 
armed conflict that persists to this day, the troika's agents put up 
banners warning of the imminent violence and seeking to win public consent.

Since then, narco-banners --also known as "narco-mantas" -- have 
appeared across Mexico, particularly in areas with major cartel 
activity such as Ciudad Victoria, Matamoros, Monterrey and Reynosa. 
The banners are usually placed in the early morning or late at night 
in a high-traffic area such as a bridge or a major thoroughfare. 
Onlookers promptly gather to read them and snap photos before 
authorities arrive to take them down.

For years the Zetas -- a paramilitary organization founded by former 
members of Mexico's special forces -- served as the armed wing of the 
Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel. Now, having turned against their former 
masters and grown into a powerful cartel in their own right, the 
Zetas are locked in a bloody struggle with their erstwhile allies for 
control over smuggling routes into the United States.

In early March 2010, just days after that struggle began, banners 
signed by the Gulf Cartel appeared throughout Reynosa, blaming the 
Zetas for rapes, kidnappings and extortions. The banners proclaimed 
that the Gulf Cartel had banded together with the Sinaloa and Familia 
organizations to eliminate the Zeta menace.

"People of Tamaulipas, don't be afraid. We are only looking out for 
your wellbeing," read one such sign. "We are trained individuals, not 
children. We respect women. We don't kill civilians. ...We are from 
Tamaulipas and we respect our own."

Leaflets were soon strewn about, warning the public to stay indoors 
at night. An e-mail with a similar message was also sent out to media 
outlets, telling residents that the trucks being used by the Gulf 
Cartel and its allies would have logos identifying them as CDG or XXX 
and asking the public to report any Zetas to them. Be patient, the 
Gulf Cartel urged; the conflict will soon be over.

Unwilling to stand for such abuse, the Zetas responded by posting 
their own banners throughout Tamaulipas, countering the accusations. 
They pointedly noted that they had carried out executions and 
kidnappings under orders from the Gulf Cartel when the Zetas served 
as their enforcers. The Zetas' banners also accused the Gulf Cartel 
of killing civilians and burning homes simply so they would have 
atrocities to blame on the Zetas.

More recently, the criminal groups have in effect publicly tattled on 
each other in an apparent effort to concentrate the attention of 
authorities on one another.

Two days after the February slaying in Mexico of Jaime Zapata, a 
special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Carteles 
Unidos issued a communique blaming the Zetas for his murder. The 
troika also pointed the finger at the Zetas for several other 
high-profile cases, including the February slaughter of 18 civilians 
on a passenger bus in Padilla, Tamps., and the slaying last year of 
U.S. citizen David Hartley on the Mexican side of Falcon Reservoir.

About the same time Carteles Unidos issued that release, the Zetas 
posted a banner blaming the Gulf Cartel for the deaths of the 
civilians in Padilla.

And early this month, the Gulf Cartel distributed leaflets in the 
southern Tamaulipas town of Ciudad Mante, warning the local residents 
that they would be making a big push to remove the Zetas from the 
region and asking the public to stay indoors after dark.

Most recently, Carteles Unidos posted banners across Reynosa 
addressed to Mexican President Felipe Calderon, distancing themselves 
from any attacks on federal buildings and authorities and calling for 
a "frente comun," or common front, with the armed forces to eradicate 
the Zetas.

"Afterwards," the message to the president continues, "you can come after us."

Early on, Carteles Unidos' messages to the public were somewhat 
effective in swaying opinion, said Grayson, the College of William 
and Mary professor. Now, though, they mostly fall on deaf ears.

"A year ago, with the triple alliance against the Zetas, those 
banners had some credibility," he said. "Now, the violence has become 
so widespread that the average person doesn't believe one cartel is 
more humane than the other they are all now looked at as killers 
pursuing an agenda."

Marcos Herrera, a middle-aged farmer from San Fernando -- a hotbed of 
cartel violence about 85 miles south of Reynosa -- said residents 
have even taken to joking about the banners.

In some cases, the twist of the joke is that the cartel is making a 
perfectly vanilla pronouncement about, say, the weather or a sale on 
produce at the local grocery. By likening the cartel messages to the 
most commonplace of declarations, the teller, in just a few words, 
completely saps them of their self-importance.

"Did you hear about the 'manta' near the supermarket downtown?" 
Herrera said, reciting one such joke. "It says, 'Tomatoes: two for one.'"

In the early '80s and in the '90s, drug cartels weren't necessarily 
seen as evil because they mostly abided by a certain code of conduct 
and kept to themselves, going about their businesses outside the 
public's view, Herrera recalled.

"Now, you have these drugged-up kids with machine guns that have 
ruined our town," he said.

The public relations push has not been limited to the cartels. The 
Mexican military also has sought to become a doctor of spin in the 
war on drugs. Part of that effort has been a tendency to make its own 
action more widely known than in the past.

Historically, readily available information about military operations 
targeting drug cartels was very limited; however, in recent years the 
armed forces have not only issued timely news releases on a regular 
basis, but they also have adopted social media tools such as Twitter 
and Facebook to tout their successes.

These days, an army or navy arrest of a suspected drug dealer or 
gunman is promptly followed by a news release and photos that are 
then widely disseminate via media outlets, often despite skepticism 
by critical observers about the true standing of the suspects.

"Every time the military arrests someone, they make them out to be 
the biggest, baddest 'sicario' (hit man) ever," said Grayson, the 
College of William and Mary professor. The effort to inflate the 
value of any suspect is also related to a rivalry among the Mexican 
army, the Mexican navy and the Mexican federal police, who rarely 
cooperate or share intelligence and routinely try to outdo one another.

While the banners' messages are often aimed at the public, the Zetas 
have brazenly posted some mantas tantamount to recruitment messages 
targeted at members of the Mexican military, complete with promises 
of decent wages and better food.

"Soldiers are typically given packages of dried noodles," Grayson 
said. "The Zetas promise them that if they join they won't have to 
eat them anymore. ...

"Going from a government institution like the army into a drug 
cartel, you at least triple your salary and, depending on what you 
think is respect, you get to assert yourself as an individual, 
whereas in the army the emphasis is placed on being part of organization."

The recruitment efforts have produced results, Grayson said.

"(Mexico's Federal Institute for Access to Public Information, known 
by its Spanish acronym IFAI) shows that defense officials lost 125 
special ops soldiers in the past two years," Grayson said, "even 
though the government increased military pay by 115 percent since 2006."  
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake