MEXICO DRUG WAR TURNS BARBARIC, GRISLY

Gangs Brazen, Brutal As They Target Officials, Each Other.

URUAPAN, Michoacan -- Norteno music was blaring at the Sol y Sombra bar
on Sept. 6 when several men in military garb broke up the late-night
party. Waving high-powered machine guns, they screamed at the crowd to
stay put and then dumped the contents of a heavy plastic bag on the
dance floor.

Five human heads rolled to a bloody stop.

An underworld war between drug gangs is raging in Mexico, medieval in
its barbarity, its foot soldiers operating with little fear of
interference from the police. Its scope and brutality are
unprecedented, even in a country accustomed to high levels of drug
violence.

In recent months the violence has included two dozen beheadings, a
brazen raid on a local police station by men with grenades and a
bazooka, and daytime kidnappings of top law enforcement officials.

At least 123 law enforcement officials, among them two judges and
three prosecutors, have been gunned down or tortured to death. Five
police officers were among those beheaded.

The violence has claimed more than 1,700 civilian lives this year, and
federal officials say the killings are on course to top the estimated
1,800 underworld killings that occurred last year. Those death tolls
compare with 1,304 in 2004 and 1,080 in 2001, these officials say.

Mexico's law enforcement officials maintain that the violence is a
sign that they have made progress dismantling the major organized
crime families in the country. The arrests of several cartel leaders
and their top lieutenants have sparked a violent struggle among
second-rank mobsters for trade routes, federal prosecutors say.

Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca said a steadily rising tide of
drug addiction within Mexico has spurred some of the murders, as
dealers fight for local markets. At the same time, more and more
honest police officers are trying to enforce the law rather than turn
a blind eye to drug traffickers, often paying with their lives,
prosecutors say.

But those assessments, other officials say, are overly rosy and might
explain only part of the picture. Some experts say the Mexican police
forces, weakened by corruption and cowed by assassinations, are simply
not up to the task of countering the underworld feuds unleashed by the
arrests of cartel leaders during the past six years.

Many of the dead made their living in the drug trade and perished in a
struggle for territory between a federation of cartels in Sinaloa, on
the Pacific Ocean, and the Gulf Cartel from the northeastern state of
Tamaulipas, prosecutors say.

The five men beheaded in Uruapan were street-level methamphetamine
dealers, addicted themselves to the drug. They were linked loosely to
the Valencia family, which once controlled most of the drug trade in
Michoacan and is a part of the Sinaloa group, the police say. The
killers came from a gang called The Family, thought to be allied with
the Gulf Cartel.

A day before, the killers had kidnapped the five men from a mechanic's
shop. They sawed their victims' heads off with a bowie knife while
they were still alive shortly before going to the bar, law enforcement
officials said.

"You don't do something like that unless you want to send a big
message," said one U.S. law enforcement official here, speaking on the
condition of anonymity.

The beheadings, in fact, have become a signature form of intimidation
aimed at criminal rivals and federal and local authorities. In the
tourist town of Acapulco, killers from one drug gang decapitated the
commander of a special strike force, Mario Nunez Magana, in April,
along with one of his agents, Jesus Alberto Ibarra Velazquez.

They jammed the heads in a fence in front of the municipal police
station. "So you will learn to respect," said a red note next to them.

"This year has been one to forget, a black year," said Jorge Valdez, a
spokesman for the Acapulco police. "It's the most violent year in the
last 50 years, and the acts are barbaric, bloody, with no trace of
humanity."

Arrests have been made in only a handful of the assassinations of
police officers this year. The overwhelming majority remain unsolved
because witnesses fear testifying against drug traffickers. Even
seasoned investigators are afraid to dig too deep into the murders.

While attacks on the police have risen, they have been far outpaced by
grisly gangland killings. Nearly every day, new victims are found in
states along the major drug shipment routes, especially Quintana Roo,
Michoacan, Guerrero, Tamaulipas and Baja California.

In the towns hardest hit by the gangland warfare, the fear is
palpable. For two years now, Nuevo Laredo has been the main
battleground for a fight between gunmen loyal to Joaquin "El Chapo"
Guzman of Sinaloa and the remnants of the Gulf Cartel, whose leader,
Osiel Cardenas, is in prison awaiting trial.

Many local journalists have stopped covering drug violence for fear
they might become targets themselves. Tourists no longer spill across
the border from Laredo to swig tequila, buy trinkets and run wild.

Church attendance is down, said the Rev. Alberto Monteras Monjaras of
Santo Nino Church, because even a Sunday morning can be dangerous.

"People used to sleep outside on the porch if it got too hot," he
said. "Not anymore. You stay inside, and you put three or four locks
on the door."