MEXICO IS REDUCING KILLINGS, DRUG SUPPLY

Recent Success Spurred by New Technology, Focus on Gulf Cartel

MEXICO CITY - The Mexican government has scored key victories in the
drug war in the last several months - reducing gangland killings and
squeezing the cocaine supply in American cities - senior Mexican and
U.S. officials have told The Dallas Morning News in recent interviews.

And it's doing so by employing new technologies and focusing chiefly
on the Gulf cartel, based along the Texas-Mexico border, officials
said.

Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora's acknowledgement that
the government is using more resources to eradicate the
Tamaulipas-based Gulf cartel and its paramilitary enforcement arm, the
Zetas, is a rare admission by senior officials.

"They have a more violent behavior, and it's more feasible to get them
because of that," Mr. Medina Mora said. "Arrests have also been made
in the Sinaloa cartel. But they have adapted a more low-profile
strategy. They are not as vicious or as violent."

Among the most spectacular blows against the cartel since President
Felipe Calderon took office Dec. 1:

.Army soldiers in late August burst into a restaurant in an upscale
Mexico City neighborhood and arrested the Gulf cartel's purported
chief link to Colombian cocaine suppliers, Juan Carlos de la Cruz
Reyna, or "J.C."

.Authorities in the Texas-Mexico border state of Coahuila said last
month that federal police and soldiers had arrested 27 members of a
Zetas cell dedicated to drug crimes and kidnapping.

.In the last six months, authorities have captured five high-ranking
Zetas, including so-called original Zetas, former Army special forces
soldiers who defected to the Gulf cartel in the late 1990s.

Members of the Gulf cartel and the Zetas have said for years that they
are being unfairly targeted and that law enforcement officials are in
the pocket of the Sinaloa cartel. The Gulf cartel has lodged
complaints through media outlets, faxes and e-mails to government
officials. It's even posted messages on rivals' dead bodies.

But Mr. Medina Mora calls the strategy a rational one.

The Sinaloa cartel's profits generally originate from marijuana, which
it cultivates in the states of Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa, known
as the Golden Triangle. And the enterprise assures it of a healthy
cash flow.

The Gulf cartel is more focused on cocaine from Colombia. And since
the government crackdown has disproportionately hurt cocaine
smuggling, cartel members and their Zetas enforcers have resorted to
more violent practices to make money, including kidnappings and
extortion, Mr. Medina Mora said.

"We're also pursuing the Sinaloa cartel," Mr. Medina Mora said. The
strategy is to dismantle the "operational leaders" of both cartels,
who deal with logistics, marketing and support, he said.

No cartel is getting an easy ride, said Public Security Minister
Genaro Garcia Luna.

"We have arrested cartel leaders from both cartels," he said, but the
Gulf cartel's systematic use of violence to invade territory
controlled by its rivals has set off "red alerts" that draw law
enforcement.

The government is fighting "against them all, and I have the
statistics," Mr. Garcia Luna said.

In all, the government has captured 333 drug traffickers, including 25
from the Sinaloa cartel, 133 from the Gulf cartel, 24 from the Tijuana
cartel and 151 from others.

And taking a page from U.S. police forces, it's gearing up to use
computer databases, modern training techniques and powerful scanners
to check cargo ships for weapons and drugs.

Drug prices up U.S. and Mexican senior officials credit Mr. Calderon's
tough crackdown for increasing the price of cocaine in the U.S. - from
New York City to Houston to California.

And former DEA administrator Phil Jordan, who lives in Dallas and
follows the trends closely, said prices for the drug on North Texas
streets have risen at the same pace.

Mr. Jordan said that bad weather across Latin America, along with a
massive earthquake in Peru, was also partially responsible for the
disruption in cocaine distribution and the subsequent rise in the
street price.

John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy in Washington,
released details Tuesday of a Southwest Border Counternarcotics plan
that cites rising cocaine prices in 37 cities across the nation - with
the average price per gram going to about $119, from $96.

Mr. Medina Mora says the price of cocaine in general has increased by
nearly 25 percent while purity has fallen from about 80 percent to 60
percent.

Deputy Chief Julian Bernal, the Dallas Police Department's narcotics
commander, said that he has heard of some cocaine shortages in the
Dallas area, but that the city's proximity to the Mexican border
usually keeps the price of cocaine from fluctuating.

"Where you are going to see that is more in the northern cities, the
cities farther from the border," he said. "We're hearing that there
are shortages and the price is going up there, but here, locally,
we're not seeing those prices rising."

Chief Bernal said that there has been some change in the cartel
activity level in the Dallas area. But authorities largely attribute
it to Operation Puma - an effort that in August targeted more than 30
people in North Texas and around the state who were believed to be
affiliated with the narcotics distribution network of the Gulf cartel.

"We took out a huge chunk of the cartel in the D-FW operating here,
and it was a major success for us," Chief Bernal said. "We are looking
for some changes. It's very hard to gauge, though, especially so close
to the border. [Cartels] are just like any other business: They try to
fill the void as quickly as possible."

Any time the narcotics supply chain is interrupted, in Texas or
Mexico, the effect is felt, he said.

"Those cause a momentary shortage, but they're quickly replaced based
on our proximity to Mexico."

Fewer executions? Mexican officials also say gangland-style executions
and kidnappings in the country have generally fallen, though that
assertion is not borne out by the overall death rate for this year in
a recent report from the lower house of Congress, the Chamber of Deputies.

Ernesto Mendieta Jimenez, a security analyst, said the government's
strategy has been successful in the "reactive part."

But he said it so far lacks the critical element that will cut the
cartels off at the knees: drying up their access to billions of
dollars that buys police departments and politicians alike.

Estimates by media organizations show that the number of drug-related
executions has risen to about 7.5 per day through July of this year.
Last year, the report said gangland killings were at about 6 per day
or 2,200 for the entire year.

Mexican officials acknowledged that killings rose as police and the
military stepped up their fight against drug cartels after Mr.
Calderon took office Dec. 1.

But in recent months, the cartels have toned down their
violence.

In August, federal police reported 195 executions, or about 6.5 a day,
down from 319 in March, or more than 10 a day, Mr. Medina Mora told
The News.

The string of attacks in recent weeks serves as a reminder of the drug
traffickers' persistence, impunity and strategy. Drug kingpins
continue what some U.S. law enforcement officials have described as a
systematic campaign to assassinate police chiefs, police officers and
politicians.

A study by Reforma, the Mexico City newspaper, reported that at least
58 police chiefs, 160 agents and 22 military officers have been
assassinated in the last nine months - and none of those cases has
been solved.

"We're in the thick of it, folks," said a senior U.S. law enforcement
official speaking on the condition of anonymity. "It won't be easy."

"This is a muddy, bloody, uphill climb. ... Failure is not an option,"
he said, citing a favorite phrase of Mr. Calderon.

Most disturbingly, he said, not long after the arrest of Mr. de la
Cruz Reyna, suspected drug traffickers tracked down two members of a
super-elite federal police unit, killing one commander and two police
officers traveling with another in Monterrey. The attack was a sign
that drug traffickers are taking on law enforcement in new,
sophisticated ways.

Additionally, a former mayor of a small town in the state of Durango
was seriously hurt in an attempted assassination.

In Texas, Mario Espinoza Lobato, a businessman and city councilman
from Ciudad Acuna, was gunned down last week at his home in Del Rio.

And in Baja California this week, an attack on a police station left
two officers killed, prompting Gov. Eugenio Elurdoy to declare: "Let's
be clear: This is war."

"This is far from being over," Mr. Medina Mora said.