DRUG WAR HAS MANY PLAYERS

Violence's Origins Are Extensive

Angel Torres, spokesman for Mexico's Procuradura General de la
Republica shows a vehicle with bulletproof glass mounted behind the
windows. The violence that has plagued Juarez in recent months has
many causes.

Reputed Sinaloa drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, accompanied
by an army of sicarios (hit men), strolled into Juarez one day
claiming the city's lucrative smuggling corridor as his own, so the
rumor goes.

Whether true or not, Juarez and other parts of the Mexican state of
Chihuahua this year have become ground zero in a battle over
drug-trafficking routes that have been under the control of the
Carrillo Fuentes drug organization for more than a decade.

The violence, which has included kidnappings, car-to-car shootings on
boulevards and victims pelted by machine guns in broad daylight, has
left about 400 dead and has Advertisement Juarenses looking over their
shoulders as they try to go about their daily lives.

What sparked the bloodshed in Juarez is unclear, but somehow
agreements between the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels apparently
crumbled, leading to fighting among smaller organizations, said Mexico
experts and U.S. anti-narcotics officials.

It is difficult to gauge the size of each of the drug-trafficking
organizations, although it is clear that the estimated $10 billion in
drug money and weapons that flows into Mexico from the United States
each year supplies traffickers with enough money to corrupt
authorities and to buy weapons, equipment and technology.

The animosity between Chapo Guzman's Sinaloa cartel and "La Linea," as
the Juarez cartel is also known, is evident as the death toll mounts,
including several corpses recently found with threatening notes aimed
at Guzman's associates.

"This will happen to those who keep supporting El Chapo. From La Linea
and those who follow it," stated a note found next to two men slain
last week in the Loma Blanca area outside of Juarez.

The suspected head of the Juarez drug cartel is Vicente Carrillo
Fuentes, who is believed to have taken control of the organization
after the 1997 death of his brother, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who was
nicknamed the "Lord of the Skies" because of his use of airplanes to
smuggle cocaine.

Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, 45, was indicted in 2000 by a U.S. federal
grand jury on a long list of charges, including 10 counts of murder
and the distribution of tons of cocaine and marijuana bound for New
York, Chicago and other markets throughout the nation.

A Mexican federal police, or PGR, commander identification card
bearing a photo of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes was recovered by the FBI
from a West El Paso home in 2000, El Paso Times archives showed.

A high-ranking U.S. anti-narcotics official has said that to survive
the recent upheaval, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes allied himself with
reputed drug trafficker Heriberto "Lazca" Lazcano, one of three
leaders of the Gulf cartel.

Lazcano is believed to be the leader of the Zetas, a group of trained
assassins formed years ago by deserters from the Mexican army.

John "Jack" Riley, head of the El Paso division of the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration, confirmed encounters involving Zetas in
Juarez and the town of Palomas across from Columbus, N.M. But the
squad, he said, is not the threat it is said to be.

Juarez is only one battleground in a war taking place across Mexico as
narco-gangs battle each other during an unprecedented crackdown by the
military and federal forces.

"You have the president of Mexico (who) is doing something no other
president has done before, that I can think of. He has basically
declared war on the cartels," said Robert Almonte, executive director
of the Texas Narcotics Officers Association.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent more than 2,000 soldiers
and federal police to Juarez as part of a strategy to take back areas
across Mexico besieged by drug violence.

While Calderon has made his intentions clear, so have the
cartels.

A hit list naming police officers, similar to the ones found in
Juarez, was hung on a banner last week in Chihuahua City, which is
also experiencing a rash of gangland-type shootings.

Mexico and anti-narcotics experts said the conflict has three fronts:

- - Intra-cartel: Internal struggles and the elimination of "traitors" within
an organization.

- - Inter-cartel: Fighting between different organizations.

- - Government vs. cartels: The military and law enforcement's fight against
drug organizations.

The deaths are not limited to drug dealers. Businessmen, lawyers and
others have also been killed in mob-style hits carried out by
commandos armados, or bands of armed men. In addition, nightclubs,
bars and a car lot were recently torched.

"There is a series of vendettas being worked out among the drug
lords," Tony Payan, a political science professor and Mexico expert at
the University of Texas at El Paso, said recently.

"The different people involved in hits ... (include) people who took
money from the drug lords and perhaps some of them who took money in
the past and haven't delivered as they promised," Payan said.

The foundation of the current war in Mexico is a drug-trafficking
problem, which grew in size, sophistication and ruthlessness over
decades, all while being funded by the multibillion-dollar U.S. drug
market.

In the 1980s, Mexican drug-smuggling groups began growing as Colombian
cocaine traffickers shifted trafficking routes to seaports and
clandestine airstrips in Mexico, offering access to the U.S. drug
market, according to a history of the DEA by the agency.

By the mid-1990s, the cocaine routes that ran through the Caribbean
into Florida, which gave rise to the Miami cocaine cowboys period,
shifted to Mexico. The Mexican drug traffickers were paid in cocaine,
leading to an explosive growth in profits, power and ability to
corrupt police and officials at the highest level of government.

During that time, an unspoken code in Mexico separating police from
criminal forces -- in which police would take money to look the other
way -- broke down, and many in law enforcement became employees of
criminal groups, said Payan, who has studied drug trafficking for years.

"I think (former Mexican presidents, Carlos) Salinas (de Gortari) and
(Ernesto) Zedillo allowed this problem to get worse and worse and
allowed these cartels to get more sophisticated and powerful over
time," Payan said last week at a forum on the violence in Juarez. "The
number one problem in Mexico ... is corruption."

Corruption has allowed drug traffickers to elude authorities, and when
some cartel leaders have been sent to prison, their stays have been
short.

Guzman, reputed to be one of the most powerful of the drug kingpins in
Mexico, escaped from a maximum-security prison in Mexico in 2001.
Guzman, 54, has also been indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on
charges of cocaine trafficking.

There are separate $5 million rewards for information leading to the
capture of both Guzman and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. The men are
natives of the eastern Mexican state of Sinaloa, which has been
described as the equivalent of Sicily to the Italian Mafia.

"The media portrays these guys in suits and ties like if they are the
board of AT&T. They are not," said John "Jack" Riley, the head of the
DEA in El Paso, in an interview earlier this year. He was referring to
the glamorized images of drug traffickers and gangsters populating
television, music and film.

"They are thugs, killers really. They would eat each other if they
could make a dollar," Riley said.

U.S. authorities say the recent violence may be an indication that the
tide is turning against the cartels.

As an example, the DEA said, cooperation with Mexican authorities is
at its best level ever. In the past decade, Mexico has begun
extraditing drug cartel leaders to face punishment in the U.S., and
authorities feel the violence is a sign of turmoil making the cartels
vulnerable. The once-powerful Tijuana drug cartel, hit by high-level
busts through out the years, is now said to be in disarray.

At a border governors conference in Mexico City last week, Calderon
asked that the U.S. do its part in the fight against organized crime
and illegal gun trafficking.

"It is fundamental everyone comprehend that the narco-trafficking
problem, which is the origin and the principal cause of the violence
on the border, is fundamentally due to one clear fact: The American
drug market is the largest market in the world," Calderon said.

"It is a problem whose origin is the American consumer, but there are
those who pretend that Mexico should confront and resolve it alone,"
Calderon said in Spanish. "The battle in Mexico daily costs the lives
of Mexican police; nevertheless, the majority of the consumers are
Americans."

Times reporter Erica Molina Johnson contributed to this
report.

Terms and players
The Mexican drug-trafficking underworld has its own terminology, leaders
and practices. Here is a glimpse:

- - Juarez drug cartel: Drug-trafficking organization based in Juarez. A
few years ago, the U.S. government stopped identifying cartels with
names of cities. Also known as Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization.

- - Cuerno de chivo: "Goat's horn." Nickname for theAK-47 assault rifle
because the ammo clip curves like a horn.

- - Encobijado: A dead body found wrapped in a cobija, or blanket.

- - Plaza: A territory controlled by a particular drug cartel.

- - Gatekeeper: Person responsible for controlling drug smuggling across
the border.

- - Piso or toll: Fee charged to smugglers to use a particular smuggling
route.

- - La Linea: Another name for the Juarez drug cartel, includes corrupt
police officers protecting drug traffickers.

- - La Limpia: The cleansing, nickname for the current violence in Juarez,
including the cleaning up of traitors.

- - Vicente Carrillo Fuentes: Reputed leader of the Juarez drug cartel.

- - "J L": Mysterious top lieutenant in the Juarez drug cartel reputed to
be in charge of the state of Chihuahua. Also known as "Ledesma" and "El
Dos Letras" (Two Letters).

- - Pedro Sanchez Arras: Reputed lieutenant in the Juarez drug cartel.
Nicknamed "El Tigre" and "El Sol." He is believed to be the
highest-ranking cartel leader to be captured by the Mexican army during
the recent crackdown.

- - Joaquin Guzman Loera: Reputed head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, known
as El Chapo.

- - Zetas: Assassins group founded by Mexican army deserters. An
enforcement arm of the Gulf cartel.

- - Gulf cartel: Drug-trafficking organization based in Tamaulipas state
and South Texas.

- - The Federation: An alliance of drug-smuggling groups in various parts
of Mexico.

- - Joint Operation Chihuahua: Current operation by the Mexican army and
federal police targeting organized crime in Chihuahua. There is also
Joint Operation Chihuahua South in the southern part of the state.