SMALLER DRUG GANGS FLOURISHING IN MEXICO

Fox's Reforms Haven't Changed Way Of Life In Crime-Ridden Region

CULIACÁN, Sinaloa - Candelario Sánchez Vega and José Luis González swore
they were simple farmers. But in the eyes of police here, the automatic
weapons and boxes of ammunition they were carrying marked them as gunmen on
their way to a hit.

That was a nice bust for a harried state police force that has found it
difficult to keep up with rampant drug-related crime in Sinaloa, one of the
most violent places in Mexico. It got better when the pair led authorities
to an even larger stash: 10 weapons - six of them automatic rifles - boxes
of ammunition, and bulletproof vests, caps and canteens belonging to
federal police agencies.

"Up near our ranches, there are armed people up to no good," Mr. Sánchez
Vega told police as he was being booked, saying that the weapons were for
his protection.

The heavily armed pistoleros represent a growing concern for Mexican
President Vicente Fox and his drug-busters, who have made significant gains
against the country's largest narco-traffickers.

As Mr. Fox's anti-crime reforms roll out across Mexico, he faces a
substantial challenge in keeping the Sinaloa-style, small-time trafficker
from growing and threatening the president's fragile police institutions.

As in Colombia after the sprawling Medellín and Cali cartels were broken
up, Mexico is seeing the limits of a "kingpin strategy" that focuses police
primarily on a few key traffickers.

Indeed, the huge Arellano Felíx and Juárez cartels are not what they used
to be in Mexico, after two years of intense pressure from Mr. Fox. But now
it's the smaller drug gangs that are proliferating, dominating life and
death in places like Sinaloa.

During their "perp walk" through a stifling hot police headquarters in
Culiacán, the suspects were blinded for several minutes by the rapid-fire
camera flashes of local press photographers.

The suspects remained cool, however, insisting they were innocent. But it
was hard to ignore the weapons that, by Mexican law, can be held only by
military personnel.

Agriculture, Crime

Culiacán is a thriving agricultural hub that attracts foreign investment
and briefcase-toting business people. Tomatoes from here adorn many a
McDonald's hamburger. But the city is also a gritty urban center with so
much murder and corruption that it seems immune to Mr. Fox's anti-crime
reforms. And Culiacán sits on the edge of a range of rugged, semi-arid
mountains that hide fertile valleys where contraband drug production has
ruled for a century.

"The bad guys have been killing each other off [in Sinaloa] for as long as
any of us can remember," said an American law enforcement official who
spoke on condition of anonymity.

"It's so common that people might take it for granted. But almost all of
Mexico's drug lords in recent times have gotten their start in Sinaloa as
local gunslingers moving marijuana and opiates through mountain passes
above Culicán," the official said. "It's like a rite of passage: If you can
survive the daily shootouts in Sinaloa, you graduate into a big-time cartel."

Through June, the number of homicides in Sinaloa stood at 282 for the year.
The 2001 total was 550, in a state with 2.4 million people.

This part of Mexico is easily more dangerous than New Orleans, the U.S.
city with the highest homicide rate, according to FBI data. Sinaloa had 23
homicides for every 100,000 people last year. New Orleans had a rate of
20.4 in 2000. The U.S. average was 5.5, and the Dallas rate was 8.5.

For Sinaloa, officials say 70 percent of the homicides are drug-related.
"And most of the people involved in those have some sort of local criminal
history," said Sinaloa State Prosecutor Oscar Fídel González, who admits
that local police are falling short in their fight against drug violence.

"Our police infrastructure was not prepared for the arrival here of
organized crime in the 1970s, when there was rapid growth in violence that
matched great demand for illegal drugs," he said. "That spread the seeds
for a law enforcement challenge we're still dealing with."

Mr. González has overseen plenty of change in Sinaloa's drug fight in the
two years he has been on the job. He has ordered up more training for state
police in crime-scene investigation and forensics. And he has persuaded
federal prosecutors to call in federal police to focus on arms and drug
trafficking - federal crimes that are the root of the local murder problem.

His work has drawn praise, and he captured positive attention for the state
police shootout in February in which drug lord Ramón Arellano Félix was killed.

But it has not been enough. Law enforcement sources say they fear that
Sinaloa's police corps remains thoroughly corrupt and contributes to the
violence that is the trademark of the state's many small drug gangs.

It's been this way for decades in Sinaloa.

Going Global

Early in the 20th century, small-time drug runners here gained notoriety by
corrupting politicians and killing rivals with impunity. But in the 1970s,
Mexican police and the military swept through Sinaloa's mountains,
capturing dozens of small-scale drug producers and traffickers. The biggest
drug lords fled to Mexico's western cities, but they kept strong local
connections among the poor Sinaloa farmers who grew marijuana and opium.

Then demand for illegal drugs exploded in the United States, and Sinaloa -
with its rich soil and a network of remote trails that can take a smuggler
right up through neighboring Sonora to the U.S. border - was in a perfect
position to comply.

The emerging drug barons also went global, setting up distribution deals
with Colombian cartels, while undercutting Mexican police and politicians
with rampant bribery.

By 2000, three large Mexican cartels controlled 72 percent of the cocaine
and heroin sold on American streets, according to the U.S. government.

Then Mr. Fox rode into office, backed by a posse of untouchables: elite
military commandos and a newly minted corps of federal police who booted
out the old, corrupt officers.

The Arellano Félix gang, which started in Sinaloa, was crippled this year
by the arrest of Benjamin Arellano Félix and the shooting death of his
brother, Ramón, in nearby Mazatlán.

Under The Radar

And now Mexican drug trafficking has come full circle. The old-style
Sinaloa drug traders are back, vying to fill the void left by the Arellano
Félix network. But the Mexican government has recently concentrated on the
big dealers, allowing the small but violent gangs to operate under the
federal radar. The brunt of the battle against these smaller cartels is so
far in the hands of ill-equipped and corruptible local police.

"The big groups are done," said Estuardo Mario Bermúdez Molina, the federal
prosecutor who heads Mexico's drug task force. "Now we have to worry about
the smaller 'franchise' type of dealer that seems to be the rule. ... Our
challenge is to now break up the infrastructures of many smaller groups. We
may not capture the headlines like before, but it's important work."

U.S. law enforcement officials suggest that Mr. Bermúdez Molina should
quickly implement his new strategy against the smaller gangs. They point to
a disturbing spread of Sinaloa-like violence in other parts of Mexico.

Recently, nine people were lined up and executed in rural Michoacán, three
states south of Sinaloa on Mexico's West Coast. Police suspect a drug
dispute, the likes of which authorities there had not seen in years.

And around Mexico City, small-time drug dealers reportedly aimed recent
death threats at local police and politicians. Two high-ranking police
officials and a police bodyguard were killed this summer. And Héctor
Bautista, mayor of the hardscrabble city of Nezahualcóyotl, just outside
Mexico City, took to wearing a bulletproof vest and sleeping in different
locations.

"You can't go around with high-fives and then go home and say you won,"
said the American law enforcement official. "You have to try to stop these
small gangs from killing people and growing to the point where they corrupt
and harm your government institutions."

The spectacular killing of Ramón Arellano Félix has only added to the
Sinaloa region's drug lore."It's an old story that begins with poor farmers
with good soil and no real cash crops, except for the drugs that people
have always wanted," said Jesús Cerda Lugo, a law professor and drug-trade
historian at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. "Traffickers saw the
chance to seed the crops and set up the trade routes many years ago, before
the cartels."

Mother's Day Massacre

A massacre last spring is emblematic of Sinaloa's - and Mexico's - problem
with violence among drug traffickers. On Mother's Day, men armed with
automatic weapons gunned down 11 people who had gathered for a barbecue on
a remote ranch east of Culiacán. It was a mistaken hit on an innocent
gathering, investigators said. But it came 14 months after 15 people -
allegedly employed by drug dealers - were gunned down by hooded men in
military uniforms on a remote road in the Sinaloa mountains.

In the wake of the shootings, police launched almost daily raids on
suspected trafficking dens in the rugged mountains east and south of
Culiacán. The operations have yielded dozens of arrests and a warehouse
full of illegal weapons and drugs.

Still, there's no major arrest connected to the Mother's Day massacre.
Instead, many innocent families have abandoned their foothill farms in fear
of becoming crossfire victims in Sinaloa's drug war, according to police.

"Society needn't fear the violence from these small-time tough guys, so
long as they kill each other," said Alejandro Hernández, a Culiacán student
who recently took refuge from 100-degree heat to review drug culture
history books in the Sinaloa state archives. "But when you see shootings go
beyond the narcos and corrupt police, like I fear we may see if this pace
of killing continues, then all of Mexico has a problem."

-- MAP Posted-by: Larry Stevens