MEXICAN SLAYINGS BRING TROUBLE TO PARADISE

ENSENADA, Mexico - ''Where else would I find this for less than a million
dollars?'' Peggy Schaumburg asked as she stood on the porch of her tiny,
white-bricked cottage with its endless view of the Pacific Ocean.

For the last 20 years, Schaumburg, 82, has rented this house in the hamlet
of San Miguel, about five miles south of Ensenada. She uses it as a weekend
refuge from the urban sprawl she lives in back in her native Southern
California.

''It's quiet, close, and it's my second home,'' she said.

Officially, California ends about 65 miles north at the border.
Unofficially, however, Schaumburg and tens of thousands of her fellow
Americans - most of them from the Golden State - have turned this stretch
of the Mexican coast into a favorite weekend hot spot and the ideal place
for a summer home, much like Cape Cod, the Berkshires, or southern Maine.

But even as this California Culture appears to be pushing farther south,
there are still reminders that this can be an unfamiliar and dangerous
frontier, as tourists and residents here learned last week when 18 members
of three families - including two children ages 1 and 2 - were executed in
what authorities believe was a drug-related massacre.

None of the victims of the killings were Americans, and officials say
violence of this type has never been seen in these parts, against tourists
or residents. And whether such a grisly episode will affect the area's
laid-back American loyalists remains to be seen. But the incident is
crystallizing a new reality, for visitor and resident alike, that Ensenada,
population 330,000, is no longer the sleepy fishing and surfing town that
it once was.

''Sadly, yes, this is beginning to feel more like a big city, like this
place is in some sort of transition to something bigger,'' said Felizardo
Palacios Perez, an Ensenada native and spokesman for the local tourism
office.

Every week, large cruise ships from Los Angeles pour thousands of tourists
onto Ensenada's ''malecon,'' - the shoreline boulevard filled with
Spanish-style buildings that sell everything from fish tacos to
papier-mache figurines - for a day of shopping and dining. On average, each
passenger spends about $40 during each 6-hour visit, Palacios said.

The fishing industry remains the area's top economic engine, although it
has been hurt in recent years from a ban on catching tuna. The area also
depends heavily on the manufacturing plants that dot the sides of the new
north-south toll road, the world-class wineries that have sprouted to the
east, and on tourism from Mexicans and Americans.

Just off the main highway north of Ensenada sit the million-dollar hillside
homes of Villas Cibola del Mar, where bright red and purple bougainvillae
spill over bright white walls. About 70 percent of the residents in the
development are from the United States, said Jose Ramirez Garcia, the
development's director.

''What could be better than this? Live here and you're an hour's drive from
the largest cities in the richest country in the world,'' he said, adding
that he believed the slayings were from ''elements from outside Mexico.''

New commerce and communities have also brought new problems, like traffic,
noise, and illegal activity. City and tourism officials say they are
building new streets to ease the congestion. They say they trust the
authorities to tackle the crime.

But there are questions about the police and their willingness to stop the
growth of the marijuana and heroin trade that has trickled into this area.
Even as they try to piece together Thursday's pre-dawn attack at a ranch in
the suburb of El Sauzal, there are suspicions law enforcement offcials here
and throughout the state have helped the
major drug cartels by failing to arrest them or even by doing their dirty
work for them.

''This is too much, to see how these drug bands have become so powerful and
ruthless here that they kill women and children and the police act like
they don't know who did it,'' said a 46-year-old woman who gave her name
only as Marta and lives near the ranch where the massacre occurred. ''They
know who did it, but they don't arrest their bosses.''

There have been inconsistencies in the police's handling of the case.
Officials have described Fermin Castro, the owner of the ranch who was
apparently the gunmen's main target, as a small-time player who was
involved with a band of drug dealers who paid fees to one of the larger
cartels. But several residents interviewed since the attack have described
Castro, 38, as Ensenada's biggest dealer. Ten people have been taken into
custody for questioning.

Authorities also have taken the only two witnesses of the crime - a
12-year-old boy and a pregnant 15--year-old girl - into protective custody.
But those close to their families say they have not been told where the
children are and fear they may never return alive.

When asked why authorities have not done more to break up the drug cartels,
Jose Luis Chavez, a federal investigator, replied angrily that ''we cannot
touch a single hair on someone's head unless we follow the law, and that is
what we try to do.''

The controversy surrounding the attacks did not appear to dent this
weekend's hectic schedule of activities: There was the annual chili cookoff
at the Papagayo Hotel. There was the surfside wedding in San Miguel for
Milt, 82, and Beth, 70, a California couple who met years ago in Ensenada.
And there was Randy Masterson, a San Diego businessman, who was relaxing
near the pool at the Coral Hotel and Marina, the largest resort in the
state of Baja California Norte.

''Yeah, I heard about what happened,'' he said when asked about the
killings in El Sauzal, which he'd learned about from watching a California
news program on the hotel television. ''I feel badly and maybe a little
worried. But from here that seems pretty far away. Don't you think?''

(c) Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.

Checked-by: Joel W. Johnson