SPRING-BREAKERS PARTY ON AMID ACAPULCO DRUG WAR

US spring-breakers are guzzling beers and slamming back tequilas in
the Mexican Pacific beach resort of Acapulco, unfazed by a violent
drug war that has killed police and left body parts strewn about town.

Famed for its cliff divers and sweeping bay, the once glamorous
resort city has seen daytime shootouts between police and drug hit
men who have dumped severed heads in public as part of turf battles
that killed 2000 people in Mexico last year.

Gunmen disguised as soldiers killed seven people in an attack on two
police stations in February and heavily armed federal police now
patrol the resort day and night as part of a nationwide crackdown by
new President Felipe Calderon.

But with the beachfront strip largely unaffected by the violence,
college students are packing hotels and vast dance clubs in what
officials hope will be record numbers, most of them blissfully
unaware of the drug war raging nearby.

"We don't necessarily think about any of that, it's more just coming
down here and having a good time," Western Michigan University
student Caitlin Murray said at the Copacabana hotel's pool, scene of
wet T-shirt and beer-drinking contests.

Hundreds of students splashed, danced and yelled to hip-hop music
behind her as youths in giant boxing gloves slugged it out in a ring
for a top prize of $100 and a bottle of tequila.

Nearby, federal police with machine guns frisked drivers and searched
cars for drugs and arms at one of many checkpoints aimed at keeping
tourists safe from Acapulco's darker side.

Jilted by the Jet-Set

The resort is a shadow of the jet-set magnet that led Frank Sinatra
to sing "We'll beat the birds down to Acapulco Bay" in his 1950s hit
Come Fly With Me, but its economy still pulsates when students flock
in for a week of sun and fun.

In early February, two Canadian tourists were shot in the legs by
unknown gunmen the same weekend police found a man's chopped-up body
in plastic garbage bags, but the violence has for the most part not
affected the beach front hotel strip.

Tourism officials said there had been no significant cancellations
and expected a spring break record of 30,000 students this season.
Hotel occupancy is higher than 2006 and seen reaching 75 per cent
despite a US State Department warning about drug-related violence in
the resort.

Students say the only noticeable effect of the crackdown is a
scarcity of illicit drugs. Cocaine and marijuana, readily available
in most Mexican resorts, have been hard to find, boosting usage of
prescription drugs such as painkiller Vicodin.

"Kids are less likely to go searching for drugs in the street.
Everyone who comes down here now wants to get their Vicodin. Kids are
still getting that from the drugstore," said a University of Michigan
undergraduate, requesting anonymity.

With tourism driving the local economy, locals dread what would
happen if drug violence spread to the beach.

"We live from tourism. If we don't take care of tourists, they'll
leave. If they do, there is no work, no economy, no nothing," said
Agustin Serrano at the state tourist office.

Robert Wehmeyer, a University of Michigan graduate student on his
second consecutive spring break in Mexico, agreed.

"If one American tourist is killed here, my parents would never let
me come back," he said.