WHAT'S IN A NAME? BAD ASSOCIATIONS, MAYOR SAYS

Cartels: Juarez Official Gets Mexican Government To Change Monikers Of
Mafia Groups.

MEXICO CITY -- The mayor of Juarez is shocked -- shocked! -- that his
border city is more commonly associated with corpses than
corporations.

So Mayor Gustavo Elizondo is doing something about it: He has
successfully petitioned Mexico's attorney general to change the names
of the country's top narcotics Mafias.

According to a recent directive to Mexican judicial authorities, the
Juarez cartel no longer exists. The drug gang, as well as cartels from
Tijuana and Sinaloa, officially have been rebaptized with the names of
their top henchmen.

``I decided to launch a campaign to rescue the name of Juarez,''
Elizondo said, noting that drug trafficking plagues many cities, not
just his. ``We will not accept that people talk about a cartel of
Juarez but not a cartel of El Paso (Texas), Brownsville (Texas) or Los
Angeles.''

Elizondo's campaign is cheered by local business executives. But
critics say it's a classic example of how, in the war against drugs,
style often wins out over substance.

``The problem isn't the image,'' said Jorge Chabat, an analyst of drug
trafficking at the Center for Economic Investigation and Teaching in
Mexico City. ``It's that the narcos exist, they operate in Juarez as
in other cities and they generate violence. They kill people. This is
a fact.''

Like several other Mexican border cities, Juarez has a split
personality. It is a booming manufacturing center with 200,000 people,
many of whom work at U.S.-owned assembly plants known as
``maquiladoras.''

It is also a city of criminal mayhem. Juarez has been shaken by the
killings of scores of women in recent years, many of them factory
employees. On top of that is fierce drug violence: executions,
kidnappings and occasional wild gunfire at restaurants as traffickers
try to kill rivals, a technique drug agents call ``pray 'n' spray.''

But the worst moment for Juarez's image came in November, when U.S.
and Mexican agents descended on several ranches near the city,
announcing that they had information about mass graves of victims
slain by drug traffickers. U.S. officials spoke of possibly finding
from 100 to 300 bodies.

In the end, only nine corpses were found.

For Elizondo, the event was a nightmare.

``It was made to seem as if everybody in Juarez formed part of this
criminal organization,'' he said in a telephone interview last week.
Tourist bookings plummeted.

Elizondo struck back. He took out an ad in the Washington Post
emphasizing that Juarez is not a narco graveyard but a ``competitive
regional development pole.''

He convinced Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cuellar to change the name
that the Mexican government uses when referring to the Juarez crime
group to the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes cartel, after its late alleged
leader. Recently, Elizondo wrote to President Clinton and the heads of
the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration, urging them to adopt
the name change as well.

``I am waiting for their answer,'' Elizondo said. ``After that, we are
going to carry out some other actions to reposition Juarez, reflecting
what it really is: a community of work, investors, employment growth,
production.''

Not everyone is convinced the name change will stick. Chabat, the
professor, cites practical problems: Cartel leadership changes often,
what with arrests and executions.

He notes that the practice of identifying drug cartels by location or
ethnic group is common.

``You have the Sicilian Mafia. I don't think there was any protest
from Sicily about this,'' he said. ``The Russian Mafia is called the
Russian Mafia. This doesn't mean all (Russians) are Mafiosos.''

Others are more critical. Those hurt by the violence committed by the
Juarez cartel say the mayor is trying to gloss over a serious problem.
``It's Mickey Mouse,'' said Jaime Hervella, founder of the Association
of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons. ``The executions keep
on happening.''

For their part, U.S. anti-drug authorities seem puzzled. They say
they've always referred to most Mexican narcotics groups by their
leaders, although the Drug Enforcement Agency's Internet page uses the
Juarez cartel name. Asked about the issue, DEA spokesman Terry Parham
sought to do some semantic spin-doctoring of his own.

The agency, he said, has been campaigning to have people drop the word
``cartel'' altogether.

``The word `cartel' lends itself to, in a public-image way, some
legitimacy,'' he said in a telephone interview from Washington.

``We're promoting a change to refer to them as criminal organizations
or criminal Mafias. It's to let the public know they're criminals, not
legitimate businessmen.''