VICTIMS' DRUG TIES LIKELY BEHIND MEXICO MASSACRE

ENSENADA, Mexico -- Still baffled by the brutality of the act, Mexican
officials said Friday they are all but certain that 18 people were
slaughtered near this seaside community because some of the victims were
linked to the drug trade.

"The motive appears to be problems between two or three groups involved in
drug trafficking," said Baja California state Attorney General Marco Antonio
de la Fuente.

Police have detained 10 people for questioning in relation to the massacre,
De la Fuente said at a news conference. Marijuana and weapons that may be
linked to the crime have been seized in the town of Tecate along the
U.S.-Mexico border, he said.

Members of an extended family -- including a 1-year-old baby in diapers and
seven children between the ages of 2 and 16 -- were dragged from their beds
before dawn Thursday, herded against a low wall and shot with automatic
weapons and pistols.

"We can't begin to measure the brutality of the attack," de la Fuente said.

Attacks on rivals' family members is rare in the Mexican drug underworld.

Federal and state authorities said the apparent target of the attack was
Fermin Castro, head of a small marijuana-smuggling gang based in Ensenada
that allegedly had loose ties to powerful gangsters in Tijuana.

Castro, 38, a cattle rancher and rodeo promoter nicknamed the "Indian
Cowboy," survived the shooting but is in a coma with a gunshot wound to the
head.

Authorities said that Castro had apparently been tortured before he and the
others were shot.

Jose Luis Chavez, the top federal law enforcement official in Baja
California, said a chair in Castro's house was stained with blood, as if
someone had been interrogated there. There were indications that Castro had
been beaten, Chavez said.

Those killed include Castro's wife and their 2-year-old son; the sister of
Castro's wife, her husband and their children; and Castro's sister, her
husband, and their children. One of the five women who lost their lives was
eight months pregnant.

A 12-year-old nephew of Castro is hospitalized with bullet wounds. A
15-year-old niece apparently hid from the assailants and escaped unharmed.

"It has been violent here, but never like this," said Gerardo, a neighbor of
the victims who declined to give his last name. "I can't believe this. These
were good people."

Castro is well known in El Sauzal, a suburb of Ensenada about a 90-minute
drive south of the U.S. border that is a confused jumble of fish canneries,
U.S.-owned electronics factories and neat houses of wealthy retirees from
California.

Castro had put on a rodeo Tuesday not far from his home to help celebrate
Mexico's independence holiday.

Members of his extended family lived in a small walled compound of three
houses tucked behind a ceramics factory.

Soldiers guarded the compound Friday, refusing access to reporters and other
visitors, as law enforcement investigators went through the houses and the
yards.

Old cars and trucks, some on cinder blocks, sat in the tall grass behind the
houses. Castro's horses and cattle grazed in a small pen, munching on large
piles of hay.

Neighbors in small houses near the compound stayed indoors behind drawn
curtains. A salty breeze blew off the fog-draped Pacific Ocean, a half-mile
from the Castro compound.

Officials said Friday that the Ensenada area, a favorite weekend and
vacation destination for people from Southern California, has become
increasingly caught up in the drug trade in recent years.

"We had indications that the problems here in Ensenada were getting worse,
that drug trafficking was getting worse," Chavez said at the news
conference. "This is all because of the proximity to the border. This is a
corridor."

Murder usually is a state crime in Mexico. The Mexican federal police have
become involved in the investigation into the Ensenada killings because of
suspected links to drug smuggling, a federal crime.

Chavez said authorities had been watching Castro's organization for some
time but had failed to act on their suspicions. A recent article in Zeta, a
weekly newspaper in Tijuana, listed Castro's group among about a half-dozen
drug smuggling organizations that it said were flourishing in the Ensenada
area.

Chavez said Castro's small smuggling band unloaded marijuana-laden planes on
clandestine airstrips near Ensenada and transported the drug to the border
for sale in the United States.

Many such small gangs operate in Baja California, paying fees to larger drug
organizations for the right to smuggle, Chavez said.

Castro's and other small bands in the Ensenada area paid protection money to
an associate of the powerful Arellano Felix drug gang in Tijuana, Chavez
said.

But Chavez and other officials said there was no evidence that members of
Castro's group directly worked for the Arellano Felix organization or were
killed because of that gang's ongoing power struggle with other smugglers.

Many experts consider the Arellano Felix organization, headed by four
brothers from a well-to-do Tijuana family, as the most important criminal
organization in Mexico. U.S. and Mexican authorities say the group smuggles
tons of cocaine and other narcotics into the United States each year.

The gangland killing of entire families happens rarely in Mexico. Still,
there have been 250 murders so far this year in Baja California, most of
them in Tijuana. Authorities have linked many of those to the drug trade.

De la Fuente said Friday that although drug trafficking was likely behind
the Ensenada killings, there is no evidence linking the 18 deaths to a wider
gangland power struggle.

Having federal police on the case may not assure some people in Baja
California. Critics say that widespread corruption has kept many federal
officials in the pockets of drug smugglers for years.

Noting that witnesses describe the attackers as dressed in black -- the
uniform of the federal anti-drug police -- several Mexican reporters
pointedly asked Chavez on Friday about police involvement with area
traffickers.

The official said there was no evidence of any police involvement in
Thursday's massacre and vowed that the case will be solved. He said,
however, that the investigation may be hampered by human rights concerns.

"We can't touch a hair on any detained person, because it would be violating
their rights," Chavez said. "That's why this is so difficult. (But) I think
we're doing OK. We're working very hard."

Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau

Checked-by: Don Beck