KIDNAPPINGS IN MEXICO SEND SHIVERS ACROSS BORDER

FELIPE ANGELES, Mexico -- Four hooded men smashed in the door to the
adobe home of an 80-year-old farmer here in November, handcuffing his
frail wrists and driving him to a makeshift jail. They released him
after relatives and friends paid a $9,000 ransom, which included his
life savings.

The kidnapping was a dismal story of cruelty and heartbreak, familiar
all across Mexico, but with a new twist: the daughter of this victim
lived in the United States and was able to wire money to help
assemble his ransom, the farmer, who insisted that he not be
identified by name, said in an interview.

A string of similar kidnappings, singling out people with children or
spouses in the United States, so panicked this village in the state
of Zacatecas that many people boarded up their homes and headed
north, some legally and some not, seeking havens with relatives in
California and other American states.

"The relatives of Mexicans in the United States have become a new
profit center for Mexico's crime industry," said Rodolfo Garcia
Zamora, a professor at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas who
studies migration trends. "Hundreds of families are emigrating out of
fear of kidnap or extortion, and Mexicans in the U.S. are doing
everything they can to avoid returning. Instead, they're getting
their relatives out."

The reported rush into the United States by people from the state of
Zacatecas is another sign that Mexico's growing lawlessness is a
volatile new factor affecting the flow of migrant workers across
America's border. The violence is adding a new layer of uncertainty
to the always fraught issue of Mexican emigration, already in flux
because of the economic downturn in the United States.

Academics and policy makers on both sides of the border, who are
watching closely for shifts in migration patterns, say it is too
early to know the long-term impact of either the drug-related
violence or the loss of jobs by thousands of migrant workers in the
United States. But so far, earlier predictions of an exodus of
out-of-work Mexicans back to their hometowns seem to have been premature.

Instead, it appears that the pattern in the state of Zacatecas --
where many people have family in the United States -- may be a good
indicator of what is happening throughout Mexico. The country's
spiraling criminality appears not only to be keeping some Mexicans in
the United States, but it may also be leading more Mexicans to flee
their country. "It's a toxic combination right now," said Denise
Dresser, a political scientist based in Mexico City. "Mexicans north
of the border are facing joblessness and persecution, but in their
own country the government can't provide basic security for many of
its citizens."

The extraordinary increase in violence in Mexico in recent years has
resulted in part from President Felipe Calderon's war against drug
lords. His campaign to arrest the leaders of the cartels and the
military officers and law enforcement officials they have compromised
has unleashed factional fighting among rival drug groups, as well as
violence against the government.

Traditionally, most of Mexico's criminal violence has been
concentrated in northern border cities like Tijuana where cocaine
enters the United States. But law and order have been deteriorating
in many regions; and heartland states like Michoacan, Jalisco and
Zacatecas, which are the homes of millions of migrants to the United
States and are longtime drug smuggling routes, are now also reporting
spikes in killings and kidnappings.

Jerez, a town of 60,000 a few miles northwest of Felipe Angeles in
Zacatecas, was until recently a calm place, largely untouched by
organized crime, said Abel Marquez Haro, a grocery wholesaler.

But recently, scores of men driving Chevrolet Suburbans and carrying
automatic rifles established a menacing presence, threatening
residents on the street and extorting businesspeople. The identities
of the men remain a mystery, but many people in the town say they
assume they are traffickers who have abandoned another Mexican state,
perhaps to avoid an army crackdown.

On Nov. 10, a dozen of the gunmen arrived at Mr. Marquez's warehouse,
dragging him out, bashing him and several employees with rifle butts
and then hauling him away. He was held blindfolded for 30 hours as
the kidnappers demanded $500,000 for his freedom, Mr. Marquez said in
an interview. Eventually his family agreed to a smaller ransom, Mr.
Marquez said. When his son delivered the money, the kidnappers
released Mr. Marquez but seized his son, demanding a second ransom,
which the family also paid, Mr. Marquez said.

He is trying to sell his business, he said, and hopes to relocate to
some safer city in Mexico. But he said that a friend who witnessed
his kidnapping was so rattled that he had since gone to live with a
brother in California.

Residents described several other recent kidnappings and extortions
across the state of Zacatecas: a cattleman held until a daughter in
Las Vegas sent money to help pay a $35,000 ransom; a rancher who was
tied to a tree during a five-day period of captivity; a car-parts
dealer who avoided capture by immediately paying gunmen the ransom
they demanded.

Those who live in the region say such crimes -- and the attention
they receive on Spanish-language television in the United States --
appear to have frightened not only those who live here year-round.
Most years at Christmastime, hundreds of men in cowboy hats who work
north of the border return to Jerez, jamming the streets with pickup
trucks and cars with California and Illinois license plates and
reuniting with old friends and family in the town square.

This holiday season, Jerez and surrounding towns have had few
migrants return. And demographers based in Jalisco and Michoacan said
in interviews that few migrants had returned to those states either.

Those reports surprised many who study immigration, including Douglas
S. Massey, a sociology professor at Princeton University.

"What I thought would be happening this Christmas is that more
migrants would go home to Mexico than usual and just stay there," Dr.
Massey said. Surveys of Mexican migrants that he conducted last
summer in North Carolina after a large poultry processing plant
closed there showed that "people were heading back to Mexico because
they couldn't find another job" and because federal raids had spread
so much fear among migrants, he said.

"People were saying, 'If it's a matter of surviving day to day, I'd
rather do that in Mexico,'" Dr. Massey said.

Other experts also expected to see larger than usual flows of
Mexicans home this Christmas. A caucus of Mexican legislators who
specialize in migration issues predicted in October that some three
million Mexicans might return from the United States as a result of
the recession. But the same group reported in a study released in
late December that in fact fewer migrants seemed to have returned
this holiday season than in previous years, in part because of what
they delicately termed "the insecurity in Mexico."

And in Felipe Angeles, the flow of people ran north rather than south
at year-end.

Residents here were so frightened by the kidnappings of the
octogenarian and of about a dozen other people who lived in or near
this village in recent months that hundreds of them set up a
roadblock with their tractors and trucks on the main highway here
last month. They demanded that the army send troops to protect them.
Soldiers were deployed to patrol the town for a few days, but that
did leave the residents feeling secure.

"The kidnappers were targeting people with relatives in the United
States, because they knew these families have money," said Santana
Lujan, a local farmer who participated in the blockade. "It's left a
psychosis of fear and worry."

A teacher who spoke on the condition of anonymity estimated that of
the town's 400 houses, about 200 were now vacant, with 50 of them
emptied in recent weeks. About half of the departing families left
for the United States, he said, while the rest sought safety
elsewhere in Mexico.

In an interview, the 80-year-old man who was kidnapped trembled when
describing his six-day captivity. He said he was repeatedly kicked by
his captors.

His daughter has since urged him to go live with her in the United
States, but he said he felt too old to emigrate.

"But many people have left," he said, "and more are going to leave."