OFFICIALS SILENT IN TIJUANA

A Culture of Secrecy Prevails After a Drug Shootout That Killed 15.

MEXICO CITY -- On Sunday, following one of the bloodiest days in
Tijuana's history, authorities held no news conferences. The death
toll in the gangland-style shootings early Saturday between rival
drug traffickers increased to 15 from 13, after two men died of their
injuries. But not even the names of the dead were released.

Instead, speculation, rumor and scattered news leaks filled the
information vacuum after yet another battle in Mexico's drug wars.

And there were only tentative answers to the larger questions that
worry many here: Is this violence between drug dealers a sign that
the Mexican government is winning the wars? Or is it just another
symptom of a country slipping deeper into an abyss of lawlessness?

Official silence is common in Mexico, where thousands have been
killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon took
office in December 2006. But many analysts believe that Calderon's
decision to send thousands of army troops to Baja California,
Veracruz, Michoacan and other states to crack down on the drug trade
is reaping a type of dividend.

The government's efforts have disrupted agreements between
trafficking organizations and corrupt officials, setting off turf
wars among weakened organizations, analysts and government officials say.

"We wouldn't see so much bloodshed if the Mexican government were
more complicit with these [criminal] organizations and just letting
them have their way," said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border
Institute at the University of San Diego.

At the same time, the Tijuana shootout was just one of several seen
in border communities in recent years. And unless officials decide to
reveal more about who was involved and what happened, the true
meaning of the bloodshed is likely to remain a mystery.

On Sunday morning Tijuana residents awoke to a rogue's gallery of
criminal names in their newspapers.

"According to reliable sources," reported, the shootout was between
rivals within the Arellano Felix gang.

Or maybe not. The national daily El Universal reported that the
so-called Sinaloa cartel was to blame.

Several newspapers reported that among the dead was "Crutches,"
a.k.a. Luis Alfonso Velarde, a reputed local drug lord with a handful
of YouTubevideo tributes to his name.

Another, even bigger "cartel" operative nicknamed "Mr. Three Letters"
might be dead too, along with "La Perra," reported El Sol de Tijuana.
And they may all have been ambushed by another cartel leader known as
"El Cholo."

But no one was willing to confirm any of that on the record.

Official silence, many here argue, helps feed the culture of
corruption. It is a widely recognized truth that drug traffickers
operate in Baja California and elsewhere with the protection of some
public officials.

On Tuesday, Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito, the commander of troops in the
Baja region, took the extraordinary step of writing an open letter to
a local newspaper that identified several law enforcement officials
he alleged were linked to organized crime.

The letter's implicit argument was that officials who protect
organized crime are likely to escape prosecution thanks to the
culture of secrecy that surrounds law enforcement here.

"Isn't this corruption?" the general asked. "What a disgrace for the
society of Baja California!"

Calderon's government has worked hard to clean up law enforcement.
His top police official, Genaro Garcia Luna, has purged the Federal
Investigative Agency of corrupt cops. Soldiers have temporarily
disarmed police in Tijuana and other cities, and several reputed drug
bosses have been extradited to the United States.

Yet the widespread violence shows few signs of abating. An estimated
2,500 people were killed in drug-related violence last year,
officials say. So far this year, more than 850 people have been
killed, according to tallies by news agencies.

The objective measures by which U.S. officials determine the strength
of the drug trafficking business also offer a mixed bag.

The supply of cocaine declined in several U.S. cities during the
first half of 2007, according to the U.S. National Drug Threat
Assessment, a multi-agency report on the problem.

The drop in availability was probably a combined result of several
large seizures of cocaine shipments en route to the United States,
Mexico's anti-drug efforts, and warfare among rival Mexican
traffickers, the report says.

By late 2007, supply "appeared to be returning to normal" in some
U.S. markets, the report says. At the same time, the amount of cash
smuggled in bulk from the United States to Mexico continued to
increase, a sign that traffickers' revenues are still healthy.

"Mexican drug-trafficking organizations are the dominant distributors
of wholesale quantities of cocaine in the United States, and no other
group is positioned to challenge them in the near term," the assessment says.

Privately, top Mexican officials say that a decisive victory over the
so-called drug cartels is impossible as long as demand for cocaine,
methamphetamines and other drugs remains high in the United States.

The more realistic goal, one senior official said recently, is to
keep the drug traffickers from dominating civic life in the regions
where they are most powerful, including border cities such as Nuevo
Laredo and Tijuana.

Although Calderon's efforts have reduced drug-related slayings in
central Mexico, problems have "ballooned" along the border areas of
Tijuana and Chihuahua state in part from narcotics traffickers moving
their activities northward, Shirk said.

Shirk also said that the number of federal troops dispatched to Baja
Norte and Chihuahua appeared to be lower, both per capita and in
absolute terms, than those dispatched to Michoacan and other states
where killings have diminished in recent months.

He said he was surprised to encounter only one checkpoint during a
trip he took Friday to Tijuana, Ensenada and back via Tecate.

"Having troop inspection points plays a really important function of
making the city less navigable," he said. "You can't just kill
somebody and escape back to their lair."