MEXICAN DRUG LORDS FLEX MUSCLE IN SLAYINGS: EXPERTS

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - High-profile killings show Mexico is experiencing
new levels of drug-related violence as the country's increasingly powerful
drug lords flex their muscles, experts said on Friday.

In the latest in a string of murders raising fears of heightened violence
around the upcoming presidential election, Oaxaca police chief Javier
Orlando Guzman Monforte was shot about 25 times with AK-47 rifles by at
least six assailants on Wednesday.

His killing came more than a month after Tijuana police chief Alfredo de La
Torre died in a hail of bullets. At least three other federal agents and
police officers have been murdered in recent months in execution-style
killings.

``It is clear that the drug lords are sending a message that they are strong
enough now to face the Mexican government,'' Mexican newspaper columnist
Sergio Sarmiento told Reuters. ''They never felt so strong in the past. Just
the fact they can kill police officers so easily is an indication.''

De La Torre was murdered two days after President Ernesto Zedillo visited
Baja California and vowed to crack down on drug traffickers, and analysts
said that and other slayings may have come in direct response to the
government's tougher stance toward the drug trade.

``This is a frontal struggle between the government and an increasingly
powerful enemy -- the drug trafficker,'' political analyst Jorge Chabat
said. ``What's new is that the Mexican cartels have become stronger since
the mid-'90s and this new climate of violence is not likely to disappear
soon.''

MUDDIED ELECTORAL WATERS

Analysts agreed the violence could contribute to political instability
around the July 2 election, although they discounted any direct effect on
the process or the outcome as in previous election-year crises, such as the
1994 assassination of presidential candidate Donaldo Colosio.

``This is a very specialized crime wave involving the assassination of law
enforcement officials involved with drugs, different from an ordinary crime
wave where you have real fear and loathing on the streets,'' said political
scientist Federico Estevez of Mexico City's private ITAM University.

``Three or four more bodies in the Tijuana dumps don't change much the mood
in that city,'' he said. ``This doesn't appear to have the makings of a
full-blown political crisis.''

But the killings have served to muddy electoral waters and could serve as
campaign fodder as questions persist surrounding the alleged involvement of
high-level government officials in the drug trade and related violence.

In addition to investigating a small, local drug cartel, Guzman was probing
government and police collusion with drug traffickers, an investigation that
had landed several agents in jail, Mexico's Attorney General's Office said
this week.

``The rumor mill in Mexico is about all we have to go on,'' Estevez said.
``The government will argue that precisely because it is dealing heavy blows
to drug lords these things occurred, and the rumor mill transforms that into
something no one can get a grasp on -- that they're all involved, they're
working for the drug barons.''

But such rumors are nothing new to voters. The ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI), facing in this year's campaign one of the
stiffest challenges of its 71 years in power, is widely associated with
corruption.

``It doesn't much change the population's perception of the PRI as a party
with high levels of corruption and involvement with criminals, suspected or
proven,'' Chabat said. ``Rather, the killings reinforce that opinion,
developed over years.''