WITH BEHEADINGS, DRUG GANGS TERRORIZE MEXICO

URUAPAN, Mexico -- 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.

"This is not something you see every day," said a bartender, who
asked not to be named for fear of losing his own head. "Very ugly."

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 unprecedented,
even in a country accustomed to high levels of drug violence.

In recent months the violence has included a total of two dozen
beheadings, a 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 2 judges and 3
prosecutors, have been gunned down or tortured to death. Five police
officers were among those beheaded.

In all, 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 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 drug cartel
leaders and their top lieutenants have set off a violent struggle
among second-rank mobsters for trade routes, federal prosecutors say.
The old order has been fractured, and the remaining drug dealers are
killing one another or making new alliances.

"These alliances are happening because none of the organizations can
control, on its own, the territory it used to control, and that
speaks to the crisis that they are in," said Jose Luis Santiago
Vasconcelos, the top federal prosecutor for organized crime.

Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca said a steadily rising tide of
drug addiction within Mexico had spurred some of the murders, as
dealers fought 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 authorities say, are overly rosy and may
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 over the last six years.

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

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

A day before, the killers had kidnapped the five men from a
mechanic's shop they had been using as a front for selling "ice," as
crystal methamphetamine is called on the street. 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 United States law enforcement official here,
speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The beheadings, in fact, have become a signature form of intimidation
aimed at both 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."

The violence is by no means limited to Acapulco. In mid-July, about
15 gunmen attacked a small-town police station in Tabasco State at
dawn with grenades, a bazooka and machine guns in an attempt to
liberate two of their gang members, who were arrested after a bar
fight the night before.

Two police officers died in the assault. The authorities said the
attackers were dressed in the commando outfits of federal agents and
belonged to the Zetas, former soldiers who work for the Gulf Cartel.

One reason for the wave of law enforcement killings is that the
Mexican police do a poor job of protecting their own. 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.

"There is an atmosphere that affects us, of distrust, of terror
inside the police force," said Jesus Aleman del Carmen, the head of
the state police in Guerrero, where 22 law enforcement officials have
been brutally assassinated this year.

One of the officers killed was Gonzalo Dominguez Diaz, the state
police commander in Patzcuaro, Michoacan. In February, he received a
death threat from a local businessman who law enforcement officials
say has links to the Valencia crime family.

The threat came just minutes after Commander Dominguez arrested two
men on weapons possession charges. He arrived home that night pale
and shaken, said his widow, Fanny Carranza Dominguez. His anxiety
grew over time, after prosecutors released the men he had arrested,
for a lack of evidence, his wife said.

In early May, he told his wife that he had heard on the street that
gunmen were looking for him. "He said, 'I know that if I arrest them
I am risking my life,' " she recalled. " 'I bring them to the
capital, and they let them go.' "

On May 8, a car cut off Commander Dominguez's police car as he was
driving home alone about 6:30 p.m. Within minutes, he was shot point
blank in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun and twice in the chest with
an AK-47. He never unholstered his sidearm. So far, prosecutors have
made no progress in solving his murder. He was 47, the father of three.

"I think the commanders that haven't been killed are in the game, and
the ones that have been killed, it is because they attacked crime,"
Mrs. Carranza Dominguez said.

"The prosecutor seems asleep here," she added. "He doesn't do
anything but collect his salary and go home."

Commander Dominguez was one of 16 state and federal police commanders
assassinated this year across Mexico, along with 2 judges handling
drug cases and 2 federal prosecutors. Local police chiefs have also
been targets. Eight have been murdered, most of them in Michoacan.

Most were ambushed in their cars or outside their homes by men with
machine guns. A few were kidnapped by men posing as federal agents.
In these cases, the bodies were found later, shot full of holes,
often showing signs of torture.

Commander Candido Vargas, 40, the second in command of the state
police in Uruapan, died that way in August. Prosecutors say he was
walking to his car when he was surrounded by about 15 heavily armed
men dressed in black commando outfits like those used by federal
agents. It was 3:30 in the afternoon, and he was just 100 yards from
the police headquarters.

The men hustled him into one of their vehicles and sped off. He was
found the next day on a nearby ranch, shot 25 times. A sign next to
his body read: "For playing with two bands."

No one from the police department visited his wife and three
children, who live in another town, to tell them of his death. "We
found out through the newspaper," said Paula Vargas, his wife of 23
years. "It was as if the whole world fell down on me."

The state prosecutor in Uruapan, Ramon Ponce, says he has found no
evidence of Commander Vargas's being corrupt. Neither does he have
any leads, he said. "The atmosphere is very tense," Mr. Ponce said.
"It's very difficult."

While attacks on the police have risen, they have been far outpaced
by grisly gangland killings. In Michoacan, The Family is believed to
be responsible for the beheadings of a dozen people besides the ones
they delivered to the Sol y Sombra bar. The heads have often been
accompanied by cryptic messages declaring the killings divine
justice, accusing the victims of crimes, or daring their rivals to
send more henchmen.

Nearly every day, new victims are found in states along the major
drug shipment routes, especially Quintana Roo, Michoacan, Guerrero,
Tamaulipas and Baja California. Most are bound, gagged and shot to
death, their bodies dumped on lonely roads.

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 (Chapo)
Guzman of Sinaloa and the remnants of the Gulf Cartel, whose leader,
Osiel Cardenas, is in prison awaiting trial.

"I wouldn't be human if I said I wasn't afraid," acknowledged
Elizabeth Hernandez Arredone, a state prosecutor in Nuevo Laredo who
has taped to her door a photograph of a female judge who recently disappeared.

The effects are everywhere. Many local journalists have stopped
covering drug violence for fear they may become targets themselves.
Tourists used to spill across the border from Laredo, Tex., to swig
tequila, buy trinkets and run wild. Not anymore.

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."