DRUG TRADE TYRANNY ON MEXICO'S BORDER

Cartels Rule With Bribes and Murder

TIJUANA -- The killers prowled through Loma Bonita in the pre-dawn chill.

In silence, they navigated a labyrinth of wood shacks at the crest of
a dirt lane in the blighted Tijuana neighborhood, police say. They
were looking for Margarito Saldaia, an easygoing 43-year-old district
police commander. They found a house full of sleeping people.

Neighbors quivered at the crack of AK-47 assault rifles blasting
inside SaldaA?a's tiny home. Rafael Garcia, an unemployed laborer who
lives nearby, recalled thinking "it was a fireworks show," then
sliding under his bed in fear.

In murdering not only Saldaia, but also his wife, Sandra, and their
12-year-old daughter, Valeria, the Loma Bonita killers violated a
rarely broken rule of Mexico's drug cartel underworld: Family should
remain free from harm. The slayings capped five harrowing hours
during which the assassins methodically hunted down and murdered two
other police officers and mistakenly killed a 3-year-old boy and his mother.

The brutality of what unfolded here in the overnight hours of Jan. 14
and early Jan. 15 is a grim hallmark of a crisis that has cast a pall
over the United States' southern neighbor. Events in three border
cities over the past three months illustrate the military and
financial power of Mexico's cartels and the extent of their reach
into a society shaken by fear.

More than 20,000 Mexican troops and federal police are engaged in a
multi-front war with the private armies of rival drug lords, a
conflict that is being waged most fiercely along the 2,000-mile
length of the U.S.-Mexico border. The proximity of the violence has
drawn in the Bush administration, which has proposed a $500 million
annual aid package to help President Felipe CalderA?n combat what a
Government Accountability Office report estimates is Mexico's $23
billion a year drug trade.

A total of more than 4,800 Mexicans were slain in 2006 and 2007,
making the murder rate in each of those years twice that of 2005. Law
enforcement officials and journalists, politicians and peasants have
been gunned down in the wave of violence, which includes mass
executions, such as the five people whose bodies were found on a
ranch outside Tijuana this month.

Like the increasing number of Mexicans heading over the border in
fear, the violence itself is spilling into the United States, where a
Border Patrol agent was recently killed while chasing suspected traffickers.

Drawing on firepower, savage intimidation and cash, the cartels have
come to control key parts of the border, securing smuggling routes
for 90 percent of the cocaine flowing into the United States,
according to the State Department. At the same time, Mexican soldiers
roam streets in armored personnel carriers, attack helicopters patrol
the skies, and boats ply the coastal waters.

"The situation is deteriorating," Victor Clark, a Tijuana human
rights activist and drug expert, said in an interview. "Drug
traffickers are waging a terror campaign. The security of the nation
is at stake."

Dominated by a Private Army

More than 1,900 miles southeast of Tijuana, the city of Reynosa
stretches along the Rio Grande across from south Texas. This is Gulf
cartel country, a region dominated by the cartel's private army, Los
Zetas. Their arsenal befits a military brigade, exceeding those of
some Mexican army units.

Led by Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, Los Zetas are a highly disciplined
mercenary squad composed of former elite Mexican troops, including
officers trained by the U.S. military before they deserted. The group
has become an obsession of Calderon's administration, which has sent
more than a thousand troops to Reynosa and neighboring cities.

Soldiers crowd the slender canal bridges that crisscross Reynosa,
stopping drivers at random and staring across the cityscape with
their fingers on the triggers of heavy weapons. The tense atmosphere
has led to mistakes.

On Feb. 16, soldiers fatally shot Sergio Meza Varela, a 28-year-old
with no apparent ties to the drug trade, when the car he was riding
in didn't stop at a checkpoint. "You're scared to leave your house,"
Alejandra Salinas, Meza's cousin, said in an interview outside the
family tire shop. "We're just in the way."

In Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo, the growing Sinaloa
cartel is fighting rivals over smuggling routes. But in Reynosa,
police say, only Mexican soldiers threaten the Gulf cartel's control.

To prepare for battle, Los Zetas have stocked safe houses with
antitank weapons, assault rifles, grenades and other heavy weapons,
including some that Mexican law enforcement authorities believe once
belonged to the U.S. Army.

"How can I fight them?" said Juan Jose Muniz Salinas, Reynosa's
police chief. "It's impossible."

On Feb. 7, soldiers stormed the dusty "El Mezquito" ranch outside
Miguel Aleman, west of Reynosa, and found one of the largest illegal
arsenals in recent memory: 89 assault rifles, 83,355 rounds of
ammunition, and plastic explosives capable of demolishing buildings.
Two days later in nearby Nuevo Laredo, soldiers found a weapons cache
that included eight military uniforms used as disguises.

The mounting evidence that cartels have infiltrated many border
police forces has prompted drastic action.

In Reynosa, soldiers disarmed the entire police force in January,
leaving them without weapons for 19 days while ballistics tests were
conducted. Police officers, who make $625 a month, were also forced
to provide voice samples for comparison with recordings of threats
made over police radios, Mayor Oscar Luebbert Gutierrez said in an interview.

"It wasn't worth it," said Muniz Salinas, the police chief. "They
come after us, but it's other authorities that are really involved.
Look at the state police, the federal police and the military."

The Enemy Is in the House

It was New Year's Day in Tijuana, the hilly city at the foot of
America's busiest border crossing. City workers prepped for
celebrations, but Jesus Alberto Rodriguez Meraz and Saul Ovalle
Guerrero, both veteran police officers, had other plans.

They were going to get rich.

The officers stole one ton of marijuana from the Arellano Felix drug
cartel. But before they could sell the load they were kidnapped. Four
days later their bodies were found, Tijuana's new police chief,
Alberto Capella, said in an interview.

The killings barely registered in Mexico, lost in an avalanche of at
least 30 police officer murders in the past three months and dozens
more in the past year. Their case illuminates the pervasive police
corruption created by drug money.

One of every two police officers murdered in Mexico today is directly
involved with drug gangs, according to estimates by police officials,
prosecutors and drug experts.

Capella, nicknamed "Tijuana Rambo" because he fought his way out of
an assassination attempt shortly before taking office, estimates that
15 percent of the city's 2,300 police officers work for drug cartels,
earning a monthly stipend as body guards, kidnappers or assassins. In
Baja California alone, Mexican justice officials estimate that 30
percent of the local and federal police force is on a cartel payroll.

"We have the enemy in our house," Capella said.

The killings in Loma Bonita here were related to a police corruption
case, Capella and other police officials said. A few days earlier,
Tijuana police had killed an officer working as a bodyguard for a
drug gang that tried to rob an armored car.

Cartel assassins, using police radios, vowed revenge. Within a week,
SaldaA?a, his family, and two other officers had been murdered.

Some of the killings have come with specific messages taunting
Mexican authorities.

During one week in mid-February, six bodies were found with signs
lashed to them that included information such as the phone number and
address of the Mexican army office set up to receive tips about
organized crime. According to analysts, such "narco-messages," some
of which are carved into the bodies, are intended to keep residents
from reporting tips.

The decline of the Arellano Felix cartel's dominance of Tijuana has
had the unexpected effect of deepening police corruption.

After one brother was assassinated and two others were arrested, a
war erupted because the cartel's new leadership -- including a
sister, Enedina -- refused to share territory with the Sinaloa
cartel, a police official said on condition of anonymity. Once loyal
to the Arellano Felix cartel, some police officers switched sides.

"The police became armed wings of the warring cartels," the police
official said.

At the same time, tighter border enforcement following the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks has made it harder for cartels to smuggle
drugs into the United States. So the cartels developed a local market
by giving out free samples of drugs, according to Clark, the
Tijuana-based drug expert and human rights activist.

The estimated number of addicts in Tijuana doubled from 100,000 in
2004 to 200,000 in 2007, Clark said. The number of small stores or
houses where drugs are sold increased fivefold -- to 20,000 outlets
- -- over that time. Each outlet pays protection money to police, so
their proliferation meant more payoffs.

In response, authorities in Baja California and several other border
states have begun giving police lie-detector tests. The questions
range from the innocuous to queries such as "Have you ever worked
with a drug trafficker?"

Rommel Moreno Manjarrez, Baja California's attorney general, said in
an interview that out of every 1,000 officers tested, 700 fail.

"It's impossible for the narco to succeed without the help of the
police," he said. "The success that the narco has been having is
because of the police."

Transformed by Drug Money

About 20 minutes south of Tijuana, high-rise condominiums line the
coast near Rosarito Beach. Once a sleepy hideaway for Hollywood
stars, the town had over time exploded into a gaudy party magnet,
drawing tourists to the beach and the studio where the movies
"Titanic" and "Master and Commander" were filmed.

Rosarito's further transformation has been propelled by drug money
and culture, turning the surfer's haven into a key transshipment
point for cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines. City hall is now
an armed encampment. Soldiers in armored personnel carriers guard the
front entrance.

The new police chief, Jorge Eduardo Montero Alvarez, now occupies an
office inside the cordon. His headquarters was rendered uninhabitable
by a December attack.

Investigators believe Rosarito Beach police -- working on behalf of
the drug gangs -- were behind the attack, which killed one of Montero
Alvarez's bodyguards. Days later, Mexican soldiers disarmed the
entire 149-officer Rosarito police force.

"I'm more afraid of the police than the narcos," said Jorge Luis
Quiones, a Rosarito Beach physician and businessman, reflecting a
feeling that has built for years among many of the surrounding area's
150,000 residents.

In June 2006, three Rosarito Beach police officers were beheaded. For
Hugo Torres Chabert, scion of the wealthy family that founded the
famed Rosarito Beach Hotel, it was a grim wakeup call.

Convinced that almost every level of the city's government had become
tainted with drug money, Torres Chabert ran for mayor and won. Soon
after taking office last December, he fired 80 of the city's 500
employees. But he says he hasn't been able to press for arrests for
lack of evidence.

"They were corrupt, but not stupid," he said.

To the children of Rosarito Beach, narco gunmen had already became
local heroes because they drove the fanciest cars, wore the latest
styles and acted like they owned the town. "Black commandos," the
drug cartel hit men, began openly flashing their weapons, snorting
cocaine and strutting through the beach town.

"It became impossible to avoid drug dealers -- your kids go to school
with their kids," Aurelio Castaeda, a Rosarito Beach bar owner and
merchants association official, said in an interview. "You'd go to a
bathroom in a bar, and they'd be selling cocaine. They don't even try
to hide it, and there was nothing you could do about it, nobody you
could turn to."

Castaeda's once-busy bar, El Torito, is often empty. He says his
business is down 80 percent since 2001, when Rosarito Beach's drug
violence spiked, scaring off most surfers and other tourists.

Beyond the flash of the bars and hotels, Rosarito Beach is a warren
of impoverished neighborhoods where developers, after paying off city
officials, did not bother to install water lines or electrical
connections. The dismal living conditions created fertile recruiting
grounds for drug traffickers, who have found many willing to "mule"
their product across the border for $500 a trip.

But great quantities of drugs stay in Rosarito and are sold at
hundreds of convenience stores or private homes that thrive under
police protection. Not long ago, a Baja California journalist began
digging into the problem. The cartels found out and, in a series of
phone calls, threatened to kill him.

It wasn't the first time. He'd had enough. Terrified, the journalist
left the business.

"I was saying to myself, 'This is an important subject,' " the
journalist said on condition of anonymity, fearing for his safety.
"But I wasn't willing to lose my life over it."