FOX TAKES ON DEALERS - NO EASY TASK

Note: Mexican leader faces swift counterattack.

Flush with success in toppling a 71-year regime, Vicente Fox became
president in December geared up for a wider battle - the war on drugs.

Within weeks, he ordered a huge crackdown on drug cartels in the northern
state of Sinaloa, and thousands of suspects were rounded up.

Directing the raids was the new attorney general, retired Army General
Rafael Macedo, whose appointment, Fox said, had been intended to signal his
seriousness in fighting the drug gangs.

Fox also supported a decision by the Mexican Supreme Court that, for the
first time, opens a way for traffickers to be extradited to the United
States for trials.

This further upset a delicate, and often cozy, peace that had existed
between the drug cartels and the government.

Fox may now be seeing the bitter fruit of his actions.

The first repercussions were felt in December and January, with the
assassinations of two top prison officials, allegedly by traffickers, and
with a surge in violence in areas under the traffickers' control. Then came
the jailbreak of Joaquin ''El Chapo'' Guzman, a reputed drug trafficker,
followed by several highly publicized escapes by convicted traffickers.

On Saturday, four inmates scaled the walls of a high-security prison in
northern Tamaulipas state.

The escapes appeared to have been a result of Fox's efforts to challenge
what, authorities said, had been a secret of Mexico's war on drugs: In
return for token arrests of a few kingpins, traffickers were given carte
blanche to run empires from within a gilded cage.

That is how analysts and human rights groups view the relationship that,
until recently, kept drug lords from unleashing violence such as has
terrorized many Latin American countries.

''There is nothing coincidental about these events,'' said Joel Estudillo,
an analyst with the Institute of Political Studies in Mexico City. ''These
groups are showcasing their power in the hope that the government will put
things back the way they were.''

Estudillo said that under the government of the Institutional Revolutionary
Party, the authorities had established ''networks of complicity'' with
leading drug dealers. By arresting the odd trafficker, the officials
''managed to legitimize themselves in front of society and make it look like
they were doing something,'' Estudillo said.

Fox has vowed to change that relationship. Appearing unfazed by the recent
wave of violence, he has assured US officials that he would take the drug
war to its ''ultimate conclusion.''

High-level officials have said that the war would not be easy to win.

''We truly mean it when we say we're going to fight corruption ... and the
drug traffickers that are its greatest beneficiaries,'' said Adolfo Aguilar
Zinser, Fox's national security adviser. But, he said, ''how successful we
will be is another matter.''

The relationship between authorities and the traffickers was vividly
portrayed in the film ''Traffic,'' which chronicles the fall of Mexico's
disgraced former drug leader, who was convicted of working on behalf of the
Tijuana cartel.

But prison sources say the film tells only part of the story.

A recent report by the National Human Rights Commission painted a picture of
privileges granted to jailed traffickers, including periodic day trips
outside of prison.

While poorer inmates sleep eight to a room or in hallways, the drug lords
have lived in decorated suites with Jacuzzis and pool tables, according to
the report.

Other privileges include unlimited access to prostitutes and narcotics, and,
more alarming in terms of the war on drugs, personal cellular telephone
service. The phones allowed the drug lords to continue directing their
operations from inside the prison.

Critics say the prison officials are only partly to blame for bowing to the
traffickers' demands.

''If I'm the director of prison, I have two options: Either I concede to the
luxuries, or I die,'' said Manuel Castillo, a defense lawyer who works in
the Mexico City prisons. He described drug lords keeping computerized data
banks with the personal details of prison officials and their families.
Those who refuse bribes in return for personal favors risk seeing their
family members killed, he said.

According to the human rights report, some of the traffickers were allowed
periodic trips outside jail. The traffickers usually had chosen not to flee,
preferring to serve out lighter sentences arranged by influential lawyers,
authorities said.

All that changed with the Supreme Court ruling, under which dozens of drug
traffickers could face extradition to the United States. Among those at risk
was Guzman, the head of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, whose escape on
Jan. 20 from a maximum-security prison in northern Jalisco state was a major
embarrassment for Fox's new government. Prison officials said the drug
kingpin had been banking on making parole as early as next year. But when he
got word of the extradition ruling, he decided that he had no choice but to
flee.

That fear may have prompted four drug convicts to stage a daring escape from
the Islas Marias high-security prison on Feb. 12. The jail, which sits on a
group of islands miles off the Pacific coast, is Mexico's version of the
Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. Almost nobody has managed to break free. But
police said the inmates must have bribed their way through the prison
security and onto a passing fishing boat.

''It was very disagreeable surprise,'' Guadalupe Loeza, a columnist in
Mexico City, said after news broke of Guzman's escape. ''We're being forced
to look face-to-face in the mirror and say, `Hey, so that's how our
government thinks it's going to win the war on drugs.'''