DEATH OF A MEXICAN VILLAGE

Massacre Of Survivors Leave As Drug Wars Spread

EL LIMONCITO, Mexico -- The killers came on Valentine's Day, and made this
a village of widows. In the middle of a birthday party, masked men with
automatic rifles walked out of the green hills and slaughtered most of El
Limoncito's men and boys, 12 in all.

Even here in Sinaloa, a Pacific Coast state known as the cradle of Mexican
drug trafficking, the executions were shocking. In their savagery, they
signaled the ugly realities that stand in the way of President Vicente
Fox's pledge to crack down on the violent drug industry.

"I have no voice left from screaming," said Leticia Gaspar, 39, whose
husband and two boys, age 13 and 19, were among those cut down in a spray
of bullets from AK-47 assault rifles in this remote valley where marijuana
and poppy fields flourish.

As the young widow tied a crucifix to a tree marking the spot where her
husband's blood still stained the dirt, her 8-year-old son, Francisco --
one of the few surviving males -- spoke up: "Bad people killed everybody."

Those bad people have not been found. The widows here tell police they have
no idea who killed their husbands, or why. Their silence is typical here in
Mexico's Wild West, where local ballads warn that saying too much to police
is a sure ticket to revenge and more bloodshed.

Justice, or "settling accounts" as it is called here, is often delivered
personally, down the barrel of a gun. There is not much in the way of
formal government in the hills and valleys of the Sierra Madre nearly 700
miles northwest of Mexico City, the seat of Fox's government. Around here,
a place like El Limoncito, with 60 people, is practically a metropolis. The
few other populated patches are connected by narrow rocky roads and
illuminated at night only by the stars. These days even the police and
soldiers travel in groups. Just about everyone has a gun, most often an AK-47.

More than 200 drug gangs operate in this state and, as is often the case at
the beginning of a new presidency, many are engaged in violent turf
battles, Mexican authorities say. In many cases, these groups are no more
than loose alliances of families who grow marijuana and poppies that can be
used to produce morphine and heroin.

The farmers are the nuts and bolts of Mexico's drug machinery, and since
Fox took office Dec. 1, they have been caught up in increasing violence.
The majority of drugs shipped to the United States go through Mexico, and
many are produced here. Sinaloa is by no means the only state suffering
drug violence; it occurs in virtually all border states. But what is
happening here is a snapshot of what Fox's crusade against trafficking is
up against.

Before the killings in El Limoncito on Feb. 14, the gunmen had asked the
whereabouts of a man believed to be the leader of a drug gang that operates
nearby. To law enforcement officials trying to solve the murders, this
suggests the killings were gang-related.

"They are fighting over territory," said state Attorney General Ramon de
Jesus Castro Atondo, sitting in his office in the capital, Culiacan, 32
miles northwest and a two-hour drive on bumpy roads from El Limoncito. He
and others say the "mini-cartels" are regrouping because of Fox's
declaration of "war without mercy" against traffickers.

Since Dec. 1, at least 157 killings have been recorded in Sinaloa state,
many of them mob-style assassinations. So many bodies dropped in December
that the governor called Fox for help, and the president sent in more than
1,000 federal police officers. Last week's victims included a police
officer riddled with 50 bullets and two people tortured, stuffed in
blood-soaked sacks and left at the side of a road.

The traffickers' regrouping is being compared to the shifting structure and
strategies of a corporation adapting to a changing environment. After past
anti-drug offensives and the capture of key directors of giant drug
organizations, many big cartels broke into smaller gangs. Now there are
signs that some of these groups are trying -- or being forced -- to
reconsolidate to survive.

When a new president takes office each six years in Mexico, there typically
is a turnover among law enforcement officials and a spike in violence as
drug traffickers forge alliances with new policemen, soldiers and judges.
Even officials that start honest often end up corrupted by the drug lords'
"silver or lead" offer: Take a bribe or a bullet. As a result, traffickers
have been able to buy almost anything -- police escorts of drug shipments
to the U.S. border as well as immunity from arrest and prosecution.

One of the most ruthless drug cartel leaders in Sinaloa history, Joaquin
Guzman, known as El Chapo, bought his way out of a maximum security prison
last month. Since his escape, 73 prison guards and officials have been
arrested for helping him go free and allowing delivery to his cell of wine,
prostitutes and Viagra.

Fox's war on traffickers has sent thousands of police and soldiers into
Sinaloa; altogether, 30,000 soldiers are to be assigned nationwide. In the
first 80 days of his administration, there have been nearly 2,000 arrests
connected to drug trafficking. Fox is also pledging to extradite
traffickers to the United States if they are wanted on drug charges there.

When President Bush met with Fox on Feb. 16, Bush said the Mexican
president's anti-drug effort had "certainly caught my attention." Bush also
spoke of the nexus between Mexican supply and U.S. demand for drugs. "The
main reason why drugs are shipped through Mexico to the United States is
because United States citizens use drugs," Bush said in an unusually blunt
admission by a U.S. president.

Around here, people have been saying that since World War II.

"Do you know why Sinaloa is the cradle of drug trafficking? Because of the
U.S. government," said Juan Miguel Ponce Edmonson, the former head of
Interpol in Mexico.

During the 1940s, the U.S. government encouraged poppy cultivation in these
fertile hills because it needed morphine to ease the pain of wounded
American soldiers. Ever since, poppy growing has been big business, too
lucrative to resist for many farmers who would otherwise be earning much
less growing the tomatoes for which a local baseball team is named.

In the 1960s, the marijuana trade here expanded with the American appetite.
Year-round sunshine made the plants easy to grow and the unpopulated
valleys and hills made them easy to hide. To this day, many of the joints
smoked in American college dorms and living rooms contain marijuana grown
by Mexican farmers in little places like this.

In just the last few days, 21 tons of Mexican marijuana have been seized
near the border, much of it stuffed in cookie boxes and headed for sale on
American streets. Every year, more than 2,000 tons are seized heading north
and everyone knows that represents only a fraction of what is shipped.

Drugs are as much a part of life in Sinaloa as hot Pacific breezes, and the
violence here is extreme, even by mafia standards.

"Italian [mobsters] kiss on the right and left cheek and then kill with one
bullet," Ponce Edmonson said. "Here they kill with 40 or 50 bullets."

State Attorney General Castro, who recently visited California to see how
schools administer anti-drug programs, said his state needs to educate its
children better about drug violence. It will not be easy: In the state
capital stands a shrine to the man considered to be the patron saint of
drug traffickers, Jesus Malverde. He was a Robin Hood-style thief who gave
to the poor -- an image the traffickers have cultivated by pumping money
into local roads, schools and houses.

"We have to confront the culture. Kids are dreaming of owning their own
AK-47," said Leonel Aguirre Meza, a human rights lawyer. Aguirre has taken
up the work of his brother, Jorge, a former prosecutor and an outspoken
critic of traffickers who was killed two years ago in a town near EL
Limoncito. In the 1990s, nearly 50 lawyers who crossed paths with
traffickers were killed in Sinaloa.

Asked why he would continue such a dangerous, and seemingly hopeless,
battle, Aguirre said: "Everybody has a role in their life, and I have this
role. I want justice for my brother. We are fighting the drug traffic so it
ends. I am a dreamer, but not the only one."

In El Limoncito, there is no such hope. On a recent afternoon, all the
widows were packing, hauling their belongings into trucks and abandoning
this centuries-old town that was once more famous for its deer than its drugs.

"How could we live here when we know this is the place where our husbands'
lives ended?" said Guadalupe Villegas, 43. "The town of El Limoncito is dead."