POLICE SEARCH FOR CLUES IN MEXICO MASSACRE

MEXICO CITY, (Reuters) - Police on Friday searched for clues in the
brutal massacre of 19 members of two northern Mexican families, but
suspicion quickly fell on the region's powerful drug lords.

Police interviewed neighbors of the Fermin Castro and Flores families.
The victims were dragged from their beds Thursday as they slept in a
quiet ranch complex near Ensenada, just south of the U.S.-Mexican
border, lined up against a wall and executed. Media reports also said
police questioned a 15-year-old girl who reportedly survived the
massacre by hiding under a bed or in a closet, but police declined to
confirm this.

Most observers said the killings bore the hallmarks of Mexico's
powerful and well-armed cocaine mafias, although Mexicans were shocked
at the sheer atrocity of the crime. Five children were killed,
including a one-year-old, as well as a woman who was eight months pregnant.

``The massacre...appears to be a vendetta among drug traffickers, not
only for their vast firepower, but for their sheer lack of human
sentiment and the impunity with which these groups operate,'' Mexico
City daily La Jornada said in an editorial on Friday. Five members of
the families worked for the powerful Arellano Felix cocaine cartel
based in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, California,
according to Jesus Blancornelas, editor of a local weekly newspaper
which closely follows the drugs trade. Several theories about the
killings emerged. Some said it could be an internal fight for power
within the Tijuana cartel, whose leaders, a set of brothers, have been
forced to keep a low profile under intense persecution by judicial
authorities.

Others suggested the rival Juarez cartel from Ciudad Juarez -- across
the border from El Paso, Texas -- could be taking revenge for efforts
by the Arellano Felix clan to take over that cartel following the
death of its former kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes last year.

``It could be revenge for some other recent violent episode, or a
`calling card' from a new drug trafficking group that wants to
establish itself in the region,'' Peter Smith, head of U.S.-Mexico
studies at the University of California at San Diego, told the
government news agency Notimex.

``There is a battle for power. If the Arellanos are trying to get
Juarez, this could be the Juarez cartel's way of telling them don't
mess with us,'' said Victor Clark, a leading member of a binational
human rights group based in Tijuana.

The killing came in the aftermath of the execution in Juarez of Rafael
Munoz Talavera, a top drug capo there who had been trying to take over
from Carrillo Fuentes and who law enforcement officials say may have
struck an alliance with the Arellano Felix organization.

But one thing seems sure: by killing women and children and not just
the one or two intended victims, the gunmen broke an unwritten code
among organized criminals.

``Until now, the unwritten rule that was almost sacred among drug
lords was not to touch the families, the wives, kids, parents,
grandparents,'' said Clark. ``But this is starting to change. The code
of honor, so to speak, is breaking down.''

Observers like Clark fear the tit-for-tat violence in the region will
degenerate into widespread and indiscriminate killings. Phil Jordan,
former head of the DEA Intelligence Center in El Paso, Texas, said the
killings could be the start of an all out war between rival cartels
along the border region.

``This suggests a wider war in the Mexican drug underworld,'' Jordan
told Notimex.

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady