ANXIOUS VIGIL ALONG THE BORDER

As FBI Digs, Families Fear Worst But Want To Know

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Roman Alonzo Aguilar and his brother Santos
peered through the gates at Rancho de la Campana near this gritty
border town Tuesday, waiting anxiously as investigators scoured the
property for the remains of scores of people believed killed by the
Juarez drug cartel.

They were hoping, they said, that they would learn something of the
fate of their brother, Jose Alonzo Aguilar, who vanished without a
trace on May 21, 1997.

"Really, we want to know something, if he is here or not," said
36-year-old Roman Alonzo as he clutched a newspaper article about his
brother, a mechanic who disappeared while walking with two men who
came to his shop to ask for an estimate. "The whole family, especially
our mother, feels desperate," he said, his voice breaking.

Throughout Ciudad Juarez and across the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas,
dozens of families with relatives who have disappeared over the years
shared the brothers' sense of desperation, and they prayed that the
investigators, including Mexican military and U.S. FBI agents, would
recover the bodies. They said that knowing what had happened to their
loved ones would bring a measure of relief.

The families heard about the graves by word of mouth and from the
media. Some contacted the El Paso offices of an association that keeps
a list of the missing, calling throughout the day for information and
to pass on details that might help investigators. A number of the
relatives who gathered at the Rancho de la Campana said they made the
trip because they doubted Mexican officials would release information
voluntarily.

"I feel very sad," said Santos Alonzo Aguilar, 28. "I feel bad about
what is happening here, about the bodies that are in there. I feel bad
for the families."

As he talked outside the desert ranch about 10 miles southwest of
Ciudad Juarez--next to a firing range with a weathered sign that
declared "Hidden Treasure"--Mexican soldiers armed with assault rifles
and FBI agents equipped with ground-piercing radar similar to devices
used in Kosovo pored over the property in search of more than 100 bodies.

The very size of the operation--the largest joint investigation
undertaken by Mexican and U.S. authorities in recent years-- reflected
the importance assigned by both governments to uncovering evidence in
the confounding mystery of the disappearances of so many people along
the border.

As work proceeded Tuesday, officials with a backhoe concentrated on a
barn structure in the middle of the property. Throughout the day,
investigators, some wearing ski masks to cover their faces, drove in
and out of the ranch.

At a news conference in El Paso on Tuesday afternoon, officials said
they were examining three other sites in Mexico but gave few details.
At one site, remains were found and authorities were investigating
whether they were human, said Jose Larrieta Carrasco, head of the
Mexican attorney general's Organized Crime Unit.

Larrieta said he did not know how many bodies are at the
sites.

Officials also moved to quash rumors that they were looking for the
remains of an FBI agent and a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
agent killed in the region.

Investigators began excavating the properties Monday morning,
reportedly after an informant told the FBI that dozens of bodies,
including Americans, had been buried at the site.

Authorities believe the victims were killed by members of the
notorious Juarez drug cartel, a major source of Colombian cocaine in
the U.S.

"We believe these people were killed for their knowledge or for being
witnesses to drug-trafficking endeavors," Thomas Pickard, assistant
FBI director, said in Washington.

Clinton administration officials, however, expressed skepticism about
Mexican estimates that 22 Americans may have been killed, noting that
only four or five Americans have disappeared in the area in the past
few years.

President Clinton also said he had received no confirmation that 22 of
the victims were Americans. Calling the mass graves a "horrible
example" of the excesses of Mexican drug cartels, Clinton said, "It
reinforces the imperative of our trying not only to protect our border
but to work with the Mexican authorities."

Jorge Madrazo, the Mexican attorney general, said the list of missing
people the investigators are using includes more than 100 people.

He reiterated that the list includes at least 22 Americans.

"That does not mean that in the places we are examining there are 100
cadavers," he said in Mexico City. Madrazo called the joint
investigation one of the largest in Mexican history.

In El Paso, in the offices of the Association of Relatives and Friends
of Missing Persons, Ernesto Ontiveros Godinez clutched a photograph of
his son Victor, a Mexican army lieutenant who disappeared in 1996.

Ontiveros said he had called the hot line established by the Mexican
and U.S. authorities and offered to send dental records to the FBI.

"All I want is to see my son one more time," said Ontiveros, 60, a
special education teacher who lives in Ciudad Juarez. "But I really
hope that they do not find my son out there in the graves, because I
hope that he is still alive."

Men in uniforms, who the Ontiveros family believes were federal police
officers, abducted his son, Victor Hugo Ontiveros Gomez, as he walked
the four blocks from his house to his father's house, witnesses told
the family. He thinks his son was kidnapped because he had information
about traffickers.

For the first six months after his son disappeared, Ontiveros went to
the state police every day, seeking information and demanding an
investigation.

He also went to the federal police. "They did not do anything to help
me. Mexico is a country that is 100 percent corrupt," Ontiveros said.
"But we never gave up."

Many of the families of the disappeared have felt similar frustration
and neglect by Mexican officials, who they said suggested the
relatives ran away or had personal troubles.

"They were not interested in investigating," said Jaime Hervella, one
of the founders of the Association of Relatives and Friends of Missing
Persons. "They tried to humiliate us."

Hervella's godson, Saul Sanchez Jr., an American, and Sanchez's wife,
Abigail, who is Mexican, are among the missing.

They were last seen outside a theater in Juarez on May 24,
1994.

Sanchez was developing a listening device to help Mexican authorities
eavesdrop on drug traffickers. Hervella thinks that is why he
disappeared.

A witness who last spoke to the couple said they planned to meet a
federal police commander outside the theater, relatives said.

Ciudad Juarez is a key link in a distribution chain that begins in
Colombia, where large shipments of cocaine are sent to Mexican ports
via commercial shipping or fast boats.

Authorities believe that the killings were the result of a power
struggle within the Juarez cartel after the death of onetime drug
baron Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who died during plastic surgery in
Mexico City in July 1997.

Meanwhile, Astrid Gonzalez, director of the Committee Against
Violence, praised the Mexican government for investigating the
disappearances, noting it marked a new era in Ciudad Juarez.

"The queen of Ciudad Juarez in the past six years was impunity," she
said. "If somebody disappeared, nothing was done."