GRAVES SHOW DRUG CARTELS ARE STILL THRIVING

MEXICO CITY - When cocaine boss Amado Carrillo Fuentes died in July 1997
during plastic surgery to disguise his identity, some analysts predicted the
collapse of his Juarez cartel, one of the hemisphere's premier
drug-smuggling gangs.

But the four suspected cemeteries of Juarez cartel victims discovered this
week near the border city of Ciudad Juarez provide gruesome evidence that
Mexico's major drug gangs remain powerful and vicious threats, both to
Mexico and the United States.

The key Mexican drug cartels, U.S. and Mexican officials agree, have evolved
constantly in recent years even amid a crackdown against them. A new
generation of younger traffickers, sometimes called "narco-juniors," has
added a cold, high-tech sophistication to the arsenal of old-fashioned
corruption and brutality.

Thomas Constantine, who resigned recently as head of the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration, assessed the power of the cartels on ABC's
"Nightline" this week, declaring that the "drug cartels in Mexico are really
more powerful than the government. The reason I say this is they make
hundreds of millions of dollars, they kill hundreds of people, they are
charged time and again in U.S. courts, and they are never arrested."

Richard Fiano, the DEA's current chief of operations, agreed with that
conclusion in testimony to a congressional subcommittee in September. The
country's four major cartels, he said, "are in many ways the 1990s versions
of the mob leaders and groups that U.S. law enforcement has fought since the
beginning of the century."

The four major cartels, smuggling drugs ranging from marijuana to Colombian
cocaine and Mexican-grown heroin, dominate Mexican cross-border trafficking
to U.S. cities. The DEA estimates that these cartels provide 60 percent of
the cocaine and 14 percent of the heroin consumed in the U.S. The Juarez
cartel is considered one of the two most powerful cartels. The other is the
Tijuana cartel, run by Benjamin and Ramon Arellano-Felix. A third major
cartel, run by Miguel Caro-Quintero, is based in Sonora in northern Mexico.
The fourth significant player, according to DEA analysts, is the Amezcua
brothers' methamphetamine smuggling operation based in Guadalajara. Three
Amezcua brothers are in custody and awaiting extradition proceedings that
would bring them to the U.S. for trial.

Constant killing has occurred within the Juarez cartel after the bizarre
death of Carrillo Fuentes. Still, the Juarez cartel not only survived but
spread its wings.

That operation apparently even corrupted the governor of Quintana Roo state,
Mario Villanueva, who went into hiding in February on the day his term
ended. Prosecutors have indicted Villanueva in what they call the
"maxi-process" against the Juarez cartel, which names more than 100
defendants, some now in custody and others on the run. But arrest warrants
and prosecutions don't necessarily mean convictions and jail time for
Mexican traffickers.

The DEA's Fiano told the congressional subcommittee that the Mexican
cartels' "ability to avoid arrest and continue to ship drugs into the United
States is attributable to their ability to intimidate witnesses, assassinate
and corrupt public officials."

The international scope of the cartel was underlined yesterday when Juan
Miguel Ponce Edmonson, director of Interpol in Mexico, disclosed that
Argentine police had arrested suspected money launderers for the Juarez
cartel and had seized a number of properties. Ponce said evidence showed the
cartel also had operated in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay.

While the Juarez cartel has suffered some substantial blows from Mexican law
enforcement initiatives, the Tijuana cartel of the Arellano-Felix brothers
appears to have survived relatively unscathed.