DRUG WAR SPREADS VIOLENCE, FEAR IN MEXICO

Cartel Fights Hit Border Cities Hard

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Empty desks outnumber the students at Luis
Urias Elementary School these days, a stark measure of the fear that
hangs over the most violent city in Mexico.

In a classroom usually filled with 40 fourth-graders, a lone student
was bent over a worksheet on a recent afternoon. The class next door
had only two students -- 36 were absent.

"People feel like the schools are no longer safe," Principal Berta
Rodriguez says. "They're scared."

About 90% of the parents are keeping their children home from this
school because of recent kidnapping threats, Rodriguez says, as the
wave of drug-related violence in Mexico seeps into one of the last
refuges: the schools.

The problem is particularly acute in Juarez, a city of 1.3 million
across the Texas border from El Paso: At least 1,530 people were
killed this year.

The city's body count is rising faster than Baghdad's, as the Juarez
Cartel, the rival Gulf Cartel and the Mexican government fight a
three-way war for control. Beheadings, hangings and mass executions
have become a nightly occurrence in this city known for its
feminicidios -- the unsolved murders of more than 300 women since 1993.

On a recent Sunday, 19 people were killed. Sirens howled across the
city that night, as gunmen launched simultaneous attacks on police at
four locations, including outside a hospital emergency room. Four
police officers died, and fifth was wounded.

A few hours later, gunmen dumped a decapitated body by the curb, lined
up three other men against a wall and shot them. Then they hung
banners listing 28 police officers they planned to kill.

"Let's pray for Juarez City: we need it," says a billboard over
Triunfo de la Republica Avenue. Down the block, a sign at a Burger
King points out the restaurant's security cameras and says, "Let's
look out for Juarez."

The drug war began heating up here in December 2006, when President
Felipe Calderon dispatched the army to fight the cartels around the
country. The crackdown has turned border cities into battlegrounds, as
the cartels fight back. More than 5,300 people have died this year.

On Sunday, the decapitated bodies of nine men were found in the
southern state of Guerrero, and some of the victims were soldiers,
state Public Safety Secretary Juan Salinas Altes says.

Until recently, schools had been mostly spared, says Sergio Belmonte,
a spokesman for the Juarez city government. He says authorities don't
think the cartels are specifically targeting schools. But the drug war
has tied up police and created a sense of panic, allowing petty
criminals to take advantage of the situation.

"These are neighborhood delinquents, not traffickers," he says. "They
know that if people think there is a general breakdown in law, they're
more willing to succumb to their demands."

Since mid-November, the Juarez city government has posted guards and
installed silent alarms at hundreds of schools after parents and
teachers received extortion threats.

Other cities report similar cases. Police in the border town of
Matamoros said extortion attempts were directed at parents in three
neighborhoods. The Mexico City suburb of Cuautitlan Izcalli increased
patrols around 420 schools this month after 11 schools had extortion
threats.

Two Cuautitlan schools closed early for Christmas vacation because of
threats. "It's more like terrorism than extortion," Mayor David Ulises
Guzman says.

The Luis Urias Elementary School sits in a subdivision of concrete
houses built for thousands of factory workers at U.S.-owned
maquiladoras, or assembly plants. The pastel-colored paint on the
houses has faded and cracked in the sun. Streets are full of dusty
used cars bought in the United States.

Three times a day, former U.S. school buses chug through the
neighborhood, taking workers to the factories.

In mid-November, teachers and parents started getting telephone calls
demanding protection money or the students would be kidnapped,
Rodriguez, the principal, says. The school closed for a few days.
Teachers chipped in to hire a security guard for about $120 a week.

On a recent Tuesday, the playground was empty. Inside, teachers who
normally handle 30 or 40 students per class chatted with the few who
showed up. Meanwhile, at the school's front gate, teachers handed out
homework assignments to a dozen parents who showed up while keeping
their children home.

A few said they had not personally received threats but were playing
it safe anyway.

"I'm not taking my granddaughter there anymore, for fear something
could happen to her," Carlos Arellanes says.

At Juarez's State High School No. 7, Principal Edmundo Salazar points
to the silent alarm button that police installed in his office this
month, after two drug-related killings occurred within a block of the
school. The city is installing similar "panic buttons" in businesses
and churches.

"I don't know whether the button will do any good," Salazar says. "But
if it makes people feel safer, that's important. There's a lot of fear
in the air right now."

[sidebar]

SCHOOLYARDS BECOME PART OF MEXICO'S BATTLEGROUND

Recent drug-related violence near schools in Mexico:

. In Tijuana, Carlos Alfonso Ortiz Davila, 16, was killed as he left
Cecyte High School on Dec. 12. He was the nephew of Alfonso Duarte
Mujica, an outspoken army general who is leading the military's
anti-drug efforts in northwestern Mexico.

. On Sept. 29, 11 bodies, their tongues cut out, were dumped across
the street from Valentin Gomez Farias Elementary School in Tijuana.

. On Nov. 26 in Juarez, seven bullet-riddled bodies were found outside
Sierra Madre Elementary School.

. In Mexico City, where much of the country's wealth is concentrated,
two students were snatched on their way to private schools. On June 4,
gunmen kidnapped Fernando Marti, 14, whose family owns a chain of
sporting goods stores, while he was being driven to the British
American School. His body was found in a car trunk in August. On Dec.
11, the body of Silvia Vargas was recovered. The 18-year-old was
kidnapped in September 2007 while driving to the exclusive Alexander
Bain School.

Vargas' father, the former head of Mexico's National Commission on
Sports and Physical Culture, waged an emotional campaign to find his
daughter. Thousands protested the kidnappings in August. The federal
government held a forum last month on ways to improve school security.