DRUG CARTELS IN MEXICO KILLING STREET DEALERS

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Drug dealer Hector Rodriguez Estrada had a feeling
he was next.

His boss was beaten to death and dumped in an empty lot, his teeth and
fingers missing. Then one of Rodriguez's underlings turned up in a
soccer field, his head next to his body.

Rodriguez, 30, knew his enemies could only get him if he was asleep or
high. But the thought made the longtime addict, who sold
methamphetamine in his eastern Tijuana neighborhood, more jittery than
usual.

"He felt like something was about to happen," said his mother, Maria
de la Luz Estrada.

With good reason.

Much attention is given Mexican drug cartels warring over lucrative
transport routes to the U.S. But more and more, they're battling for
an exploding number of Mexican consumers, a market that barely existed
a decade ago. While the U.S. is expected to remain the largest and
most-coveted market, local consumers are a big and rapidly growing
source of cash.

That makes street dealers like Rodriguez prime targets for assassins.
Low-level sellers are easy prey for rivals seeking to expand turf,
because they work openly on street corners without bodyguards or
armored cars.

Drug dealers account for many of the 10,800 people killed since
Mexican President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on cartels in 2006
- - particularly in border cities where the battles are fiercest. In
Tijuana, they fill at least 90 percent of the body bags, according to
top law enforcement officials.

It's much like gang warfare over drugs in the U.S., said Rafael Reyes,
the Drug Enforcement Administration's chief of enforcement for Mexico
and Central America.

"You have the Bloods and the Crips battling over drug turf," he
said.

Rodriguez fit the profile for his line of work, the third of four
children from a poor Tijuana family. His mother sold clothes on the
street. His father, plagued by mental illness, worked in the U.S. but
sent little money home.

On the streets where Rodriguez grew up - and came to control drug
sales - he was known as "the Russian" for his curly red hair, or
"Freckles," a natural fighter who began smoking marijuana around age
12 and shooting heroin three years later. He was in and out of prison
for petty crimes.

To De la Luz, he was her favorite child, helping to pay her electric
bills and bringing her flowers on Mother's Day, even after she moved
away from the family home. He was the kid who wanted things to be different.

"I'm going to work hard so that you don't have to struggle and your
house has everything," he told his mother. "He was the only one who
helped me," she said.

But livelihood for someone like Rodriguez means drug dealing, which is
all around the aging, graffiti-strewn homes, office buildings and
maquiladoras - assembly plants for manufactured goods headed to the
United States.

"When you live by the sea, you look for fish," said Samuel Rodriguez,
his older brother. "It's work."

No one knows to what extent Mexican consumers account for the billions
of dollars the country's drug gangs collect annually. A crackdown on
meth production in the U.S. during the 1990s spawned labs in Mexico,
where drug gangs found a natural market, experts say. Heightened U.S.
border security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks only
encouraged cartels to expand sales at home.

Mexico counted 460,000 drug addicts in a preliminary government survey
last year, up more than 50 percent from 2002, a figure that will
likely rise when the revised tally is released.

Rodriguez started his business in the two-bedroom, prefab home where
the family lived for 24 years. Samuel Rodriguez said his younger
brother aspired to be like the Arellano Felix brothers, the
Tijuana-based founders of one of Mexico's most notorious drug cartels.

His stints in prison put him in touch with important drug runners, and
he used his contacts to move up from corner dealing to managing a
handful of dealers when he got out.

Low-level dealers make about $20 a day on 100 hits of methamphetamine,
said Julian Leyzaola, Tijuana's public safety secretary. Many opt to
be paid in drugs instead to support their habits.

But that's still a handsome wage in hardscrabble neighborhoods where
bricklayers earn the equivalent of $5 a day and factory workers make
$60 a week, said the Rev. Raymundo Reyna, a popular Tijuana radio host
whose Roman Catholic church is in an area hit hard by murderous drug
gangs. Drug peddlers drive cars with music blaring and splurge on new
clothes and cowboy boots.

"It's a status symbol that I now have money," Reyna said. "Look, I
have a car. I have a watch."

Rodriguez lived modestly, shunning restaurants and fancy clubs. He
gave his family a few pesos here and there, and drove an old pickup
truck for a long time before trading up to a used, late 1990s Ford
Taurus.

"He never had money in his pocket," said his father, Jose Francisco
Rodriguez Ruiz.

After Rodriguez finished his last jail stint, this time for a home
invasion, the drug war was heating up in Tijuana. It was early 2008.
The Arellano Felix gang had split into warring factions after the
founding brothers were arrested or killed, and troops sent by Calderon
tried to exploit the leadership void.

Two rivals emerged: Fernando Sanchez Arellano of the Arrellano Felix
family and Teodoro Garcia Simental, a renegade lieutenant who broke
away in an April 2008 shootout that left 14 dead.

Garcia, known as "El Teo," was more zealous than Sanchez about killing
street-corner peddlers as he tried to solidify his control of eastern
Tijuana, said Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mugica, the Mexican army commander
who oversees Tijuana.

The rivalry caused many of the 443 murders during the last three
months of last year. Bodies were often left scrawled with messages to
the opposing gang: "Here are your people, pick them up."

"They are the economic foundation," Leyzaola said of the small-time
dealers. "If you want to knock down a building ... you hit the ground
floor, and the building will fall."

Twelve corpses - seven without tongues - showed up in September across
from a school not far from Rodriguez's house. Nine severed heads
turned up in a nearby empty lot in November, their eyes and mouths
wrapped in tape.

"It smelled like a graveyard," Samuel Rodriguez said of the
neighborhood.

Rodriguez's family didn't know who he worked for, other than "Gabi,"
the boss who turned up dead last year without fingers or teeth. Often
the dealers don't know who they work for, either.

The family only saw Rodriguez grow more paranoid, looking over his
shoulder frequently and asking his mother if she saw anything behind
him.

By December, just after one of his associates turned up without a
head, Rodriguez talked about quitting drugs altogether. His new
girlfriend, Arecely Lizarraga Lopez, 28, was pregnant with his first
child, and Rodriguez was excited. He introduced her to his mother,
saying, "What do you think of her? I'm going to get married."

De la Luz, who had left the family home, moved back to a vacant house
across the street with her husband and youngest son, Miguel, to keep
an eye on Rodriguez.

At 1 a.m. on Jan. 10, she crossed the street to check on her son. He
told her he was tired and walked her back home.

Around 5 a.m., Miguel Rodriguez heard several bangs but paid little
attention.

Later that morning, the family found Rodriguez just as he had
predicted.

He was shot dead in his sleep, along with his pregnant girlfriend,
their blood spattering the walls of the sun-starved bedroom. His car
and wallet were gone. His associates milled in the living room.

Rodriguez's mother suspects it was someone he knew. There was no sign
of forced entry, even though her son in his paranoia had installed a
lock on his bedroom door.

The police report said four bullet shells from a 9mm handgun and one
from a .38-caliber pistol were found on the floor. There has been no
word on the investigation since then.

There are advantages to letting the carnage continue unabated, some
law enforcement officials say - division and instability among the
ranks make it easier to arrest the big guys.

"Turbulent waters make for good fishing," Leyzaola said. "They were
killing, and we were picking people up."

The family held a small, memorial service in the living room of the
home where Rodriguez died. They buried him at Municipal Cemetery No.
12 on the edge of Tijuana's urban sprawl.

Rodriguez's parents remain in the house across the street, where the
faded drapes are torn and they keep a broken television and stereo for
decoration.

His father is now an auto mechanic, bringing home $15 on his best
days. His mother rarely leaves the house and sleeps with a metal pipe
at her side.

Miguel Rodriguez moved with his girlfriend into his brother's house,
where a "Scarface" beach towel hangs in the living room - but not into
his bedroom, where the walls are still stained with blood.

Samuel Rodriguez, who is married with five children and lives across
town, says he inherited his brother's business.

Rodriguez's tomb is a few steps from 100 unnamed graves, many of them
victims of recent drug violence who were unclaimed by family or
friends. Others sites are adorned with brightly painted wood crosses
and plastic soda bottles filled with flowers.

The family hopes to buy a sturdy tombstone but can't afford one now.
So Rodriguez is buried with a turquoise-colored wooden cross and a
hand-painted epitaph:

"You will always be remembered, Freckles."