FAMILIES WANT ANSWERS, BUT FEAR WORST IN JUAREZ

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- There is something about the discovery of apparent
mass burials outside this Mexican desert city that both attracts and
repulses people like Alfredo Medina.

He harbors a quiet fear that the digging that continues to yield bones and
personal effects at a shooting range and horse ranch just south of Juarez
might resolve his father's 1997 disappearance. Yet he hopes authorities
will find no trace of his 43-year-old father, a Juarez-based criminal
lawyer who was taken from a hotel room by men dressed in the black uniforms
of Mexican federal police.

There are more than 200 families just like the Medinas who await news of
what Mexican and U.S. investigators find at four burial sites around
Juarez. Their relatives are among those -- including several Americans --
who've disappeared from the Juarez area over the past six years.

Mexican officials say they suspect some of those missing people are buried
at the Juarez sites, which by Wednesday evening had yielded the remains of
six people as well as boots and clothes. The graves are being slowly mapped
and dug up by Mexican federal investigators, FBI agents and U.S. government
forensics specialists who have started examining the bones in a special lab
established across the border in El Paso.

The bodies were found next to or on top of each other, said Jose Trinidad
Larrieta, an assistant attorney general who leads Mexico's team in the
binational investigation.

Criminologists said that's a sure sign that the sites represent an
organized effort to get rid of a lot of people.

``That's a strong clue that this is related to narcotics traffickers,''
said Rafael Ruiz Harrel, a Mexico City criminologist who studies serial
killings and drug gangs. ``That part of Mexico is well-known for the high
number of extra-official assassinations carried out by police and the
military to shut people up. And since the area is also known for the
alliance between drug dealers and government agents, there is little doubt
as to who put the bodies there.''

Hit squads suspected

Ruiz Harrel said not all of the victims will be connected to drug dealers,
because hit squads that often include police and Mexican soldiers work for
anyone who can pay to ``make someone disappear.''

Published reports say Mexican officials and the FBI were led to the Juarez
sites by a drug suspect who became an informant -- someone Ruiz Harrel said
must have been involved in bringing people to the ranch sites.

Trinidad Larrieta said Wednesday that Mexican officials would not speculate
how many people might be buried at the Juarez ranches, but he said they
were working with a list of ``at least 100'' missing-persons reports that
could be related to drug trafficking.

But the number could go higher, according to people tracking disappearances
on both sides of the border.

``I hear it could go as high as 300,'' said Jaime Hervella, co-founder of
the Association of Relatives and Friends of Missing Persons, a grass-roots
group formed in 1997. ``You have to wonder who would do this. The cartel is
making sure all of the competition is disappearing, as well as those
working with law enforcement.''

Hervella said 196 people had vanished from the Juarez-El Paso area during
the past several years, and 18 of them are thought to be U.S. citizens.

``I expected all the time that we would find (some of these) people in
military jails. We thought this was some type of paramilitary operation and
that we would find everyone alive. Now we're not so sure.''

Hervella expressed his torment about providing concrete information to the
families of the missing while at the time being the bearer of bad news.

``I wish I could run away and hide from these older ladies, the ladies with
the wrinkled faces, tired eyes, the suffering,'' he said. ``I don't know
what to tell them.''

Young Alfredo Medina insists his father is not on that list, even though
local crime analysts say it is tough to be a criminal lawyer in Juarez and
not make enemies of either crime bosses or police.

``That's what they'll say to make excuses not to investigate these
disappearances,'' Medina said. ``That way, they hope the public will just
say it's bad people getting rid of each other so they won't care that no
one investigates -- in a way I'm happy they've found something (at the
ranches). It means our suffering won't be ignored.''

In Juarez, reaction was mixed Wednesday to the latest bad crime news
drowning a city that's tried desperately to sell itself as a booming
commercial city and a friendly gateway to free trade between Mexico and the
United States.

``Not every missing person is related to the drug cartel. These are not all
dead people,'' said one El Paso resident named Abe, whose cousin was once
on Hervella's list -- kidnapped in 1994 and later freed after his family
paid ransom. Abe, still fearful of the criminal elements that he says run
wild in Juarez, declined to give his last name.

``I think with the corruption in the Mexican government, the cartels got so
big that they can't be controlled now,'' said Abe, who suspects that his
cousin, a pecan farmer, was kidnapped by criminals lured to the area by the
Juarez cartel. ``I would urge every American citizen in El Paso not to
visit Juarez. It hurts to say that.''

Mayor speaks up

But, at a meeting with reporters, Juarez Mayor Gustavo Elizondo angrily
defended his city as an innocent victim in a war between international
elements.

``The people who produce the drugs are South American. The people who move
it are Central Americans and some Mexicans. And the people who market drugs
are Americans,'' Elizondo said. ``And there are no Juarez people in the
Juarez cartel.''

Police Chief Javier Benavides also defended Juarez, telling the Mercury
News that all the talk about local police being involved in the drug trade
and with the bodies being dug up on ranches is ``convenient speculation.''

``I was chief of the state judicial police as well and, yes, there are some
people who acted badly, but many times it is criminals disguised as police
who want to shift attention away from themselves,'' Benavides said. ``If
there is proof that police are involved, like the Americans say, I want to
see it. So far there is no proof.''