VIOLENCE FROM ITS TWIN CITY SPILLING INTO LAREDO

LAREDO, Texas - As the United States debates how to protect its
border, Sergio Martinez ponders how to protect his life.

Martinez lives just across the muddy Rio Grande in Nuevo Laredo,
Mexico, where competing drug cartels are killing people at the rate of
nearly one a day.

"I can't go out at night. There is no law," said Martinez, 28,
standing in the doorway of his small bodega on the main street just
south of the border. His business has dwindled by half, as frightened
Americans stay away from once-popular Mexican shops, restaurants and
clubs.

At least 115 people have been killed this year in the Mexican city of
330,000. There have been no arrests. And the escalating violence has
occasionally spilled across the border into booming Laredo, increasing
tensions between the two countries as border security takes center
stage in Washington.

President Bush has announced plans to send up to 6,000 National Guard
soldiers to the Mexican border, to assist the Border Patrol with
intelligence, surveillance, and other support activities.

"When the National Guard gets here, they're going to be running into
guys with automatic weapons," said Rick Flores, sheriff of sprawling
Webb County, which includes Laredo. "This is the hottest spot on the
Texas-Mexico border."

Police are killed with impunity in Nuevo Laredo. On May 16, the chief
of the homicide division and another officer were shot to death just
after finishing lunch at a local restaurant. On May 3, five Nuevo
Laredo police were wounded by gunmen who attacked them in a restaurant
with AK-47 rifles. A month before, four federal officers were killed
in a daylight attack on a downtown street. There has not been a police
chief since the last one resigned two months ago; his predecessor,
Alejandro Dominguez, was assassinated on his first day in office.

And last summer, when Mexican federal agents were sent into Nuevo
Laredo, they were met with gunfire - from city officers. Notoriously
corrupt, the city police force lost most of its members last year when
they quit or failed lie-detector tests.

On the American side, Sheriff Flores said his deputies have been fired
upon from the other side of the border. And U.S. Border Patrol agents
here have been shot at five times this year from Mexico, said Vittorio
A. Ramirez, assistant chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol in Laredo.

Two American men were killed in a drive-by shooting at a Laredo
stoplight, an attack Flores said was related to the Mexican drug wars.
And six Laredo residents, suspected of being hit men for one of the
Mexican cartels, were arrested last year in Laredo.

The taint of corruption, so prevalent in Nuevo Laredo, has also
appeared on the U.S. side. A Border Patrol agent and his brother were
convicted last year of helping Mexican drug traffickers get their
shipments into the United States. And in April, the FBI arrested the
deputy commander of the Laredo Multi-Agency Narcotics Task Force on
charges of taking payments from drug traffickers in exchange for protection.

In Nuevo Laredo, the murder rate this year projects to an annual toll
of about 88 homicides per 100,000 residents, making it one of the most
dangerous cities on the continent.

By contrast, there have been 10 homicides this year in Laredo, Texas,
about half believed to be drug-related. That gives the Texas city an
annual murder rate of about 12.7 killings per 100,000 residents, above
the national U.S. average of 5.5 homicides per 100,000, but about half
the murder rate in Philadelphia (25.3 per 100,000).

"There is a world of difference between our side and their side," said
FBI Special Agent Norman Townsend. "Certainly there has been a
spillover, but it's been more like a spillover from an inner city to a
suburb."

The warring Gulf and Sinaloa drug cartels are believed to have "safe
houses" and weapons stashes on the U.S. side of the border, law
enforcement officials say, and some killers may be hiding on the U.S.
side.

"We know there are sleeping cells on this side," Flores said. "We're
very fortunate we're not seeing murders every week or every day like
they are in Nuevo Laredo."

The two cities - "dos Laredos" - are closely linked by blood and
heritage. Laredo is 95 percent Latino, and many families have members
on either side of the border. Thousands of Nuevo Laredo residents come
to the U.S. each day to work and shop, and vehicles with Mexican
license plates are nearly as prevalent as those with Texas plates in
the mall parking lots. Spanish is the favored language on both sides
of the border.

The challenge for American officials here, as all along the border, is
to balance security and commerce. That is at the heart of the debate
in Washington, too, where the House in December passed a bill that
focuses on security, while the Senate on Thursday passed a measure
that would admit 200,000 guest workers a year to meet U.S. employers'
demands for cheap labor.

Laredo's economy is flourishing, as the city of 200,000 is a hub for
import and export traffic: It is the busiest land port in the U.S.,
with 4,000 trucks entering the country from Mexico each day. Customs
brokers' warehouses are sprouting in industrial parks on the city's
north side, and everywhere, new housing is being built. Between 1990
and 2000, Laredo was the nation's ninth-fastest growing city.

As a busy border crossing, Laredo is a magnet for drug smugglers, who
hide cocaine and marijuana in legitimate loads. This week, U.S.
customs officials seized $23 million worth of cocaine, hidden in
shipments of clay tiles and in the gas tank of a bus.

All of which makes Laredo officials especially concerned about what
they see across the Rio Grande.

"When they get a cold, we cough," said Laredo Mayor Elizabeth Flores
(no relation to the sheriff). "It does matter what happens over
there... if the border is not safe, neither is the U.S. But nobody
cared about the southern border until after 9/11."

The mayor said Border Patrol forces and equipment have been stripped
from Laredo to send to Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as to other
border areas, such as Arizona. (The number of border agents in the
Laredo sector has fallen to 942 from 1,025 in 2003.)

"What's up with that? Are we really interested in controlling the
border? Send us what we need - more Border Patrol agents."

And Flores said the U.S. should focus more on helping Mexico and less
on rounding up illegal immigrants.

"For the long term, the future depends on us both being healthy
economically."

Now, though, the violence in Nuevo Laredo has sent Mexican residents
and businesses fleeing for the safety of the U.S. side. Once-popular
tourist restaurants, unable to draw Americans to Nuevo Laredo, have
followed their clientele to the north side of the border. And affluent
Mexicans are buying houses in Laredo, tired of the constant threat of
killings and kidnappings on the southern side of the border.

Isabel Huacuja, 23, who grew up in Nuevo Laredo, said: "The economy
used to be tourism and drugs. Now, there is no tourism."

Daniel Hernandez, the Mexican consul in Laredo, said sales have
dropped by 90 percent for merchants in Nuevo Laredo who relied on the
tourist trade. Hernandez acknowledged that Mexican police have failed
to quell the violence, but he said part of the blame fell to the
United States, home of most of the drug consumers and gun sellers.

"I get the sad sense that the populations of the two cities are being
placed at odds with each other... the old tradition of being one
family is being broken down. It becomes increasingly difficult to work
together."

Litzo Perez, a dentist in Nuevo Laredo who used to get patients from
Laredo, San Antonio, Dallas and Chicago, now sits in an empty office.

"The best we can hope for is that one side or the other wins in the
drug war," he said this week, "so that things can go back to the way
they were."