MEXICO CHANGES CARTEL NAMES TO SAVE CITIES' IMAGES

MEXICO CITY - Mexican judicial authorities are helping the cities of Juarez
and Tijuana try to overcome their image problems by changing the names of
the drug cartels based there, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Mexico City daily Reforma said the attorney general's office (PGR) issued
an internal edict to prosecutors after the mayor of Ciudad Juarez, across
the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, sent it a petition.

The Juarez cocaine mob will now be referred to as the cartel of Vicente
Carrillo, after its suspected capo. The Tijuana organization will be called
the cartel of the Arellano Felix brothers, after the clan that runs it,
Reforma said.

Both northern border cities - Juarez in the state of Chihuahua and Tijuana
in the northwestern state of Baja California, across from San Diego - are
renowned for their drug-linked violence, corruption and anarchy.

About two thirds of the cocaine consumed in the United States passes
through Mexican territory and across the 2,100-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

The cartel based in Juarez used to be Mexico's top drug-smuggling
organization until the death in 1997 of its leader Amado Carrillo Fuentes,
known as the "Lord of the Skies" because he flew stripped out passenger
jets stuffed with cocaine from Colombia to near the U.S.-Mexican border.
Carrillo Fuentes' brother Vicente has now taken over, U.S. officials say.

The Arellano Felix clan is regarded as Mexico's most bloodthirsty cartel.
One of the three brothers suspected of running it is on the FBI's 10 most
wanted list.

The mayor of Ciudad Juarez, Gustavo Elizondo, complained in December about
the media attention his city received when FBI agents and Mexican
investigators began a high-profile dig there for the remains of drug cartel
victims.

Elizondo asserted that the cartel was made up of outsiders - "South
Americans, bad Mexicans and bad Americans" - and had nothing to do with his
city.

Operators of the so-called maquiladora assembly plants in Juarez threatened
to sue international news organizations for denigrating the image of the
city by publishing accounts of its violence.

Juarez officials say they would rather their city became famous for its
maquiladoras - booming assembly plants that import components duty free and
re-export finished products, mainly to the United States - than for its
drug cartel.