IN MEXICO'S DRUG TRADE, NO GLITTER FOR GRUNTS

Despite Being Portrayed As Hip Gunslingers, the Unskilled Workers Who
Toil for Traffickers Are an Expendable Lot Who Often Die in Obscurity.

GUAMUCHIL, MEXICO -- Jose Alan Montoya died far from the beloved
roosters he raised on his patio, far from the tortilla shop his
mother ran, far from the people who still weep for a man gunned down
on a marijuana plantation in the mountains of Michoacan.

Montoya was born and raised in a humble, orderly neighborhood just
outside this town in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. He died more
than 600 miles to the south, shot and killed by army troops who say
he opened fire on them.

Drug traffickers are mythologized throughout Mexico by a subculture
that portrays them as lavishly paid gunslingers. But most of the
5,000 who have lost their lives in the last two years in the business
are people of limited horizons who die in relative anonymity.

The oldest of six children, Montoya had little education. In
Guamuchil, he held odd jobs at hospitals and construction sites where
he rarely made more than $20 a day, relatives said.

"Someone told him he was going to make a lot of money, that he could
send money to his family," said Elva Camacho, his mother. "They must
have filled his head with big dreams."

The employees of Mexico's drug-trafficking groups are a varied bunch,
including cannon-fodder "trigger men," drug- and cash-hauling
"mules," accountants and communication specialists.

Many sell their souls for sums that are less than princely: In
October, 25 officers of the Federal Preventive Police in the city of
Tampico were arrested after allegedly receiving monthly payments of
as little as $450 each for providing intelligence and protection to
the Gulf cartel.

No one in Montoya's family knows how much he was offered to work for
the drug traffickers. But his story is emblematic of the many myths
and deceptions about the misnamed "cartels" that operate throughout Mexico.

Genaro Garcia Luna, Mexico's top police official, said the typical
drug-trafficking operative is young, 25 to 30.

"There is a tendency to give them this aura of power," Garcia Luna
said this year. "But when you have a chance to see them face to face
. . . you see they are really people of low circumstances."

In Guamuchil, Montoya lived with his mother and didn't have enough
money to put his roosters to their intended use: cockfighting. He had
once crossed illegally into the United States and worked for a while
in Las Vegas, but he was apparently deported.

At 33, he seemed to have few ambitions. He was an easygoing man who
joked with his relatives and traveled about town on a bicycle. In the
U.S., he had "Sinaloa" tattooed on his stomach.

In October 2006, he announced to his relatives that he had been hired
to work on a construction project in the southern state of Michoacan.

"When I'm gone, you'll be the oldest," he told his 28-year-old
sister, Arely, on his last day home. "Try and visit our mother every
day and look after her."

He called home from Michoacan several times. But during his three
months away, he sent money home only once: the equivalent of $180 so
his brother could buy a clarinet.

His mother asked him if he was eating well. "There's a whole bunch of
us here from Sinaloa," he said. "There's a lady who cooks for us every day."

The family learned of his death in a local newspaper. On the
Internet, they found a picture of four soldiers carrying his body,
one holding each limb, as if they were dragging away an animal they
had hunted. The Sinaloa tattoo was visible on his midriff. His burial
cost almost $3,000, including shipping his body to Sinaloa.

Days after his funeral, an anonymous caller telephoned to promise his
mother that "everything you are spending will be repaid to you." But
the family never heard from the caller again.

"Normally, the traffickers take people from here who are not
involved" in organized crime, said Carlos Cota, a Sinaloa lawyer and
Montoya family friend. "In the mountains, they recruit people to work
from the poor neighborhoods, people who don't have full-time jobs."

Cocaine arrives in Mexico by the ton via sea and air routes from
South America, U.S. officials say. But it's typically smuggled into
the United States by the pound. In between, drugs must be offloaded,
transported overland and protected against bajadores, bands that
specialize in stealing shipments from rivals.

Although "cartel" suggests that one group controls all aspects of the
drug trade, drugs are actually shipped through the region thanks to
alliances among local and regional crime groups.

When deals between groups are broken, violence ensues, said Luis
Astorga, a Sinaloa native and Mexico City academic who has written
extensively on trafficking. Gunmen and support personnel are needed
to staff a large, quasi-military infrastructure.

"Given the high levels of profit in the business, [personnel] costs
are very small," Astorga said. Some traffickers have hired former
special operations soldiers and high-ranking police officers, he
said. But the vast majority of their employees are unskilled.

In Apatzingan, a city in Michoacan notorious for drug trafficking,
Claudia Cortes sold used clothes before being recruited by local
traffickers to work at a safe house, neighbors and officials said.

She would later become known as the "hit woman of Apatzingan." But in
her neighborhood she was known as the daughter of a plumber and the
quiet single mother of two young boys. She was 26 when she died.

"They're honest, hard-working people," one neighbor said of the
Cortes family, who live in a cinder-block home on the outskirts of the city.

At some point, Cortes was recruited to work in another middle-class
neighborhood near central Apatzingan. Neighbors there remember seeing
her carrying "bundles" from the home. According to authorities, it
was a base for drug traffickers.

"She was a calm person who hardly ever spoke, and who looked serious
and decent," said Maria Romero, 50, a neighbor.

On May 7, the army moved in. The people inside the safe house fired
back, with submachine guns and hand grenades, officials said. The
ensuing battle lasted an hour and a half.

Three soldiers were seriously wounded and four alleged traffickers
inside the home were killed, including Cortes. Her body was found by
the doorway of the half-destroyed home, next to an AK-47 and spent shells.

"They say she was the one who fought the hardest and who started the
whole thing," said Mario Flores, a worker in a nearby butcher shop.

Her funeral at Apatzingan's Municipal Cemetery was a low-profile
affair, without the usual graveside Mass, said Jose Cantu, the
cemetery manager. It was over in about 20 minutes.

"There were only a few people," Cantu said. "Her two boys were there.
They were crying. Poor kids, it's not their fault. But they're the
ones who suffer the most."

The location of Cortes' grave reveals her humble circumstances.

Apatzingan's more illustrious families have reserved the plots near
the cemetery entrance, paying an annual fee of about $200, Cantu
said. But Cortes was buried in one of the cheapest plots, near the
back, where the fee is $30.

A recent visitor found no name at Cortes' plot, just a wooden cross
with the words "Rest in Peace."

Claudia's parents have moved out of town with their grandsons because
of "the shame of knowing their daughter had taken a bad road,"
neighbor Horacio Cruz said.

Montoya, the collector of roosters, was also briefly in Apatzingan on
his journey home: His body rested in the morgue there; sister Arely
arrived from Sinaloa to identify him.

She found his hands stained green, apparently from handling the
marijuana plants in his care. Tissue oozed from a gaping wound in his skull.

The authorities told her he had been shot after opening fire on army
soldiers engaged in a marijuana eradication campaign near Aguililla,
in the mountains 50 miles southwest of Apatzingan.

An attorney general's news release and a newspaper report called him
a "trigger man." Soldiers retrieved two semiautomatic weapons at the
scene and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

"I told the investigator that my brother was a good man, that he had
never hurt anyone, and that he was always at home when he wasn't
working," Arely recalled.

The investigator replied, in a sarcastic tone: "Well, he wasn't that
good! He was taking care of a marijuana crop."

Montoya was buried near his home in the Villa Benito Juarez neighborhood.

A year has passed since his death. But his 17-year-old brother, Jose
Maria, still sees his older brother, known in the family as Chito, in
his dreams.

In one dream, Jose Alan returns home carrying a stack of papers and
walks through the front gate that leads to the patio where he raised
his roosters.

"Chito, what are you doing here?" his brother calls out.

"They sent me back," Jose Alan answers. "They let me go."