WITH DRUG WAR, `ANARCHY REIGNS' IN MEXICAN CITY

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- The banner headline splashed across the front page
of a local newspaper blared, "Another two found in the trunk of a car."

The victims, both men, had been strangled, each found with a green cord tied
around his neck.

The article mentioned a possible motive: drugs.

The residents of Ciudad Juarez could have guessed that.

In fact, many people have become inured to the drug-related violence that
has changed their city and the way of life of its more than 1 million
residents.

This city, just across from El Paso, Texas, is home to arguably the most
powerful drug-running organization in the world, the Juarez cartel.

With the death of its leader last year, a full-scale drug war has erupted
with all the trappings, including gangland-style murder, official
corruption, increased domestic drug use and a sullied international
reputation.

"This is a city where anarchy reigns," says a local newspaper editor.

Billions of dollars are at stake. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
estimates $200 million a week flows through the hands of Juarez-area drug
dealers. Most of it, officials say, comes from helping cocaine move from
Colombia to the U.S.

A struggle has broken out over control of the trade. In Ciudad Juarez,
cartel hitmen have entered restaurants in search of their enemies, shooting
indiscriminately and killing innocent people.

Last month in Ensenada, Baja California, 19 people were massacred. The
victims included women and children. Mexican and American officials say the
massacre was a drug-related revenge killing.

As a result, citizens of Ciudad Juarez are changing the way they live,
choosing to stay at home or avoid crossing the border for entertainment.

"I don't go out at all," said Lucia Hernandez, 20, who works at one of the
maquiladoras, or factories, that dot the border.

"I don't like Ciudad Juarez. But I came here to work, not to play."

A newspaper reporter said he no longer takes his family out.

"Here, you go out to dinner, to play, you know something can happen," said
the journalist, who says he has received death threats for reporting on
drugs and corruption.

"Just like here," he said during breakfast at a popular restaurant, "they
could come in and kill everybody, just because they are looking for one
(person)."

To hear police officers tell it, there is not much they can do. Despite an
army of Mexican and American law-enforcement officials stationed along the
border, authorities from both countries say their actions are doing little
to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S.

Javier M. Benavides, the city's newly appointed police chief, until recently
was helping to lead the charge in the drug war nationally as a federal field
commander.

"We will never be able to guard the border completely. Not even with the
best technology from the gulf war," Benavides said. "You can bring in the
Marines. You can put submarines in the Rio Grande."

But, he added, "So long as there is demand, there will be a problem."

In places such as Ciudad Juarez, drug barons generally operate with
impunity. The now-deceased leader of the Juarez cartel, Amado Carrillo
Fuentes, reportedly was spotted in town last year campaigning with a
politician.

American law-enforcement officials say they learned a bitter lesson last
year, after Mexico's top drug fighter, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was
arrested on charges of protecting the Carrillo organization in exchange for
money, cars and a luxury apartment.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Gutierrez's U.S. counterpart, had lavished Gutierrez
with praise in the days before his arrest. Gutierrez is now in prison.

Last year, the Juarez cartel lost Carrillo, once described by the DEA as the
world's most powerful drug chieftain, to plastic surgery gone awry.
Carrillo, who apparently underwent the procedure to disguise his identity,
did not survive the lengthy operation, possibly because of a reaction
between the drugs used during surgery and the cocaine in his system.

His death, according to the authorities, prompted the latest bloodbath in
the city. The ensuing yearlong power struggle has left more than 50 people
dead.

In the last five years, officials in Ciudad Juarez estimate some 200 people
have disappeared as narco-traffickers wrestle for control of lucrative drug
routes.

With Carrillo no longer in the way, authorities say the Tijuana cartel, run
by the Arellano-Felix brothers, apparently has tried to push into the Juarez
cartel's territory. Officials believe that following Carrillo's death in a
woman's clinic in Mexico City on July 4, 1997, the Tijuana group banded with
the Ciudad Juarez-based narco-trafficker, Rafael Munoz Talavera.

Munoz Talavera was making a run at the leadership of the Juarez cartel until
he was shot to death a month ago in Ciudad Juarez.

During his reign, authorities say Carrillo helped keep the peace in this
city, preferring negotiations or bribery to violence to settle disputes.

Officials believe that his younger brother, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, 36,
has taken over control of the organization. The younger Carrillo, described
by law-enforcement officials as a vicious boss, was indicted in the U.S.
this month on drug-trafficking charges. He remains at large.

In the 15 months since the death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the drug flow
into the U.S. has not skipped a beat, said Robert Castillo, special agent in
charge of the El Paso field division of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

"The organization was not going to fall and die because Amado got killed,"
he said. "They've got to meet the demand."

Trouble began brewing in Mexico early in this decade when the Colombians,
facing increased pressure from U.S. interdiction in the Caribbean, switched
cocaine-trafficking routes to Mexico.

The State Department estimates annual drug trafficking in Mexico yields
between $27 billion and $30 billion in revenue.

Castillo said the stakes in Mexico are higher now because unlike the old
days, when the Colombians paid the Mexicans in cash to smuggle the drugs
into the U.S., they now pay them with drugs. The Mexicans, he said, "can set
their own price."

Checked-by: Don Beck