MEXICO REELS AS KILLINGS ABOUND

Mexico reels as killings abound By Jeremy Schwartz

Mexico City -- Each week seems to bring some fresh horror in Mexico's
interminable drug war: In Chihuahua, gunmen execute 13 during a family
party; in the Yucatan, villagers stumble upon 12 decapitated bodies;
in Michoacan, someone tosses a grenade into a crowd celebrating
Independence Day, killing eight.

It is the worst bloodshed the nation has seen since the Mexican
Revolution, and it leaves the unmistakable impression that Mexico's
government is overwhelmed by well-armed cartels that control a $40
billion-a-year drug trade.

But other countries have passed through even worse outbreaks of
organized crime violence over the past century and lived to tell the
tale. Their experiences may offer a road map for Mexico.

From Chicago during Prohibition, to Sicily during the great Mafia wars
of the early 1980s, to the near anarchy in Colombia during the 1990s,
outbreaks of organized crime violence have periodically challenged
governments and threatened chaos.

The good news is that in each of those cases, authorities were able to
diminish the violence.

Violence in Mexico has spiked dramatically since President Felipe
Calderon unleashed the military and other federal forces on the
nation's rival drug cartels in 2006. Homicides related to the drug war
have reached more than 3,000 this year, a record, as cartels have
pushed back against the Mexican government. Increasingly, police,
prosecutors and judges have been targets.

This month the violence reached a new and ominous level with a grenade
attack on revelers during Independence Day celebrations in Morelia,
Calderon's hometown.

With that act, experts worry, Mexico may suddenly have become a lot
more like Colombia. Three men were arrested Friday in connection with
the attack; authorities said they confessed to being members of the
Gulf Cartel based in Matamoros.

"This is a new stage with attacks on the civilian population," said
Jorge Chabat, a security expert in Mexico City. "It's a very
disturbing change."

Before the Morelia attack, Mexican authorities had scoffed at attempts
to compare Mexico to Colombia. After all, the violence in Colombia
made Mexico's problems look like child's play.

While Mexican cartels largely directed their violence at each other or
at suspected dirty cops, Colombian cartels, led by the now-deceased
drug lord Pablo Escobar, embarked on a campaign of terror aimed at
destabilizing the Colombian government.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Colombian cartels bombed shopping malls
and police headquarters, blew up a commercial jet and assassinated
governors and presidential candidates. More than 1,000 innocent
Colombians were killed by cartels, and the country averaged 3,000
cartel-related killings a year.

That's similar to Mexico's current number, but in a country with less
than half the population. Adding to the chaos was Colombia's guerrilla
insurgency, which meant large swaths of the nation were beyond
government control.

The fear among officials and analysts is that Mexico is just beginning
to move down the same path.

In Colombia, cartels were resisting extraditions of top drug lords to
the United States. In Mexico, the cartels are seeking an end to
Calderon's military offensive and a return to the days when the
government tolerated drug trafficking in return for lower levels of
violence.

Eventually, Colombia succeeded in dismantling the largest cartels
through the arrests and extradition of top capos and judicial
overhauls that included anonymous judges using voice distortion
equipment. In place of the Medellin and Cali cartels, though, hundreds
of mini-cartels have sprung up. While considerably less violent than
their predecessors and preferring to keep a lower profile, the
so-called "cartelitos" continue to produce and distribute just as much
cocaine.

A similar combination of police work and judicial will helped slow
extreme Mafia violence in Italy. In the 1980s, the island of Sicily
was ravaged by a war between the Corleonesi and Inzerillo crime
families. In two years, an estimated 1,000 were killed in Sicily, an
island of 5 million. Extrapolating for Mexico's population of 110
million, the Mafia violence would have equaled 22,000 executions per
year in Mexico.

Italy quelled the violence in part by sending in police from other
parts of the country that were less vulnerable to corruption and
prosecuting hundreds of Mafiosi. The judicial victories sparked more
violence against prosecutors and judges, but they marked an important
shift in Italy's war on the Mafia.

But the relative successes in Colombia and Italy (although neither
country has come close to stamping out organized crime) only highlight
the problems crippling Mexico's anti-drug effort: rampant corruption
throughout Mexico's judiciary and police forces.

"What's different is that you had honest prosecutors and judges in
both countries," said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College
of William & Mary. "There is no tradition of a professional judiciary
in Mexico."

Mexican authorities have talked at great length about ridding its law
and order agencies of corruption, but they have made little headway.
Officials have recommended insulating judges from drug cartel
pressures through both anonymous trials and better personal security.
And Calderon has proposed a unified national police force, made up
only of vetted, well-trained and -- perhaps most importantly --
well-paid police officers to replace the present corrupt agencies.

Mexican officials also hope a $1.4 billion U.S. aid package, which
includes training and high-tech equipment, will help build reliable
police forces.

Chicago during Prohibition offers another road for Mexico, but one
that is even less likely, analysts say.

Chicago, which was terrorized by alcohol cartels for a decade,
mirrored Mexico in one important way: the bootleggers' ability to
thoroughly corrupt local officials. Despite hundreds of killings
during the 1920s, not one of Al Capone's hit men was convicted,
according to some historical accounts. The feds eventually nabbed
Capone on tax evasion charges, but the violence associated with
alcohol trafficking didn't stop until the end of Prohibition.

With the Mexican cartels so powerful -- their income is estimated at
more than 10 percent of Mexico's federal budget -- some see
legalization as the only way out of the cycle of violence.

"The only way we can alleviate or look to control [Mexico's drug
violence] is to look at how the Chicago mafias were dealt with --
either through legalization or special laws to deal with consumption
of drugs," said Hector Dominguez, a University of Texas professor
specializing in the literature of Mexican organized crime.

Dominguez said Calderon's policy of using the army to confront the
cartels risks the rise of a militarized state and could hinder
Mexico's attempts to build a functioning democracy.

But even experts who favor what some call the Chicago solution say
that legalization has few political possibilities since it would have
to come from the United States, the consumer of the vast majority of
the Mexican cartels' drugs.

"Can you imagine if McCain or Obama even hinted [about legalization],
what would happen to them?" Grayson asked. "[American politicians] are
afraid the opposing party will make hay if they discuss it."

Even within Mexico there is little clamor for legalization: Although
the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party favors it as a policy,
few Mexican politicians talk seriously about it.

Some experts say that the best Calderon can hope for is a
Colombia-like solution, in which the large cartels are fragmented into
smaller, less threatening groupings. There's some evidence that is
already happening as internal feuds within the dominant Sinaloa and
Gulf cartels increase.

But experts say Mexico's future remains uncertain. Will the country
turn ever more violent or will it hit upon a solution? If history is
any guide, things are likely to get better -- eventually.