MEXICAN MARIJUANA GROWERS BOLDLY OPERATE IN CALIFORNIA

Amid dense scrub oak and manzanita high above the Coloma Valley in El
Dorado County, the marijuana growers were stocked to subsist in the
steep, unforgiving terrain.

They had seedlings, fertilizer and drip irrigation for thousands of
high-grade plants. They had solar power, cookware and months of food.
And they had a tiny, protective figurine: Jesus Malverde, the patron
saint of Mexican drug traffickers.

With a month to go in the growing season, California is shattering
records for pot seizures stemming from raids on illicit marijuana
gardens. And authorities blame intricate Mexican drug networks that
seek remote growing sites, supply and arm workers, and harvest and
traffic the product.

They are tilling vast gardens in forests, on public lands and even
close to tony suburban homes near Sacramento.

Authorities say the large gardens - law enforcement officials call
them "grows" - supply high-potency pot that is trafficked across the country.

Authorities have found no direct link to the ruthless Mexican cartels
blamed for 11,000 killings and a virtual civil war south of the
border. But they are encountering heavily armed people willing to
shoot it out to defend their cash crop.

"They used to just dump everything and run," said Lassen County
Sheriff Steve Warren, who had two officers shot in June when workers
at a pot garden opened fire as they approached.

"The change we're seeing now is they're holding their ground. We
don't know if it's a cartel thing and people in another part of the
world are saying you have to stand and fight. But they're doing it."

Plant seizures from outdoor marijuana grows, found in 40 of 58
California counties last year, exceeded the next closest state -
Washington - by eight times.

So far this year, the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting - a
California task force of nine state and federal agencies - has seized
about 4 million plants, a 1.1 million increase over last year's record haul.

"I think they're growing more and we're finding more," said Michelle
Gregory, special agent for the state attorney general's Bureau of
Narcotics Enforcement. "We would like to say that we find 50 percent
of the grows, but honestly we don't know how much we miss."

Authorities this year recovered 76 weapons and arrested 64 suspects,
almost all of them Mexican citizens. Gregory said those detained
included people who were smuggled acoss the border, laborers who were
kidnapped to work the grows and others recruited and hired locally.

Authorities also have raided extensive indoor gardens run by Asian
gangs and routinely encounter home-grown pot farmers. Yet they say
Mexican networks by far dominate the outdoor grows, of which 70
percent are on public lands.

Authorities have no evidence of Mexican-grown pot ending up in
California's medical marijuana dispensaries.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Gordon Taylor said
authorities "have not seen any direct link" to notorious cartels in
Mexico, including the Sinaloa, Tijuana, Juarez and Gulf cartels, and
other violent networks known as La Familia and Los Zetas.

"That doesn't mean the link isn't there. We just haven't seen it to
date," said Taylor, who investigates marijuana grows in rugged
terrain from the lower Central Valley to Oregon. "But there is no
question that drug-trafficking organizations from Mexico, not
necessarily tied to a cartel, are bringing up people, crossing into
the United States illegally, and using them to grow marijuana in California."

Though authorities this year have eradicated marijuana crops worth up
to $16 billion, most raids lead authorities to low-level laborers or
supply-dropping "lunchmen" who seem to have little idea who the bosses are.

By the time an El Dorado County narcotics SWAT team, reached the
freshly watered mountain pot garden above Coloma, the workers had
fled, leaving only the figurine of Malverde and a mystery of whom
they worked for.

The mustaschioed folklore character, a purported early 1900s bandit,
was once seen as a mascot for the Sinaloa cartel. His image has been
adopted by other traffickers and is revered at a shrine in the
Pacific Coast city of Culiacan.

"It's not just cartel members. Many in the drug trade tend to idolize
this supposed saint," Taylor said.

What is causing a more certain worry for authorities is an increasing
stockpile of weapons among people who tend the hidden pot gardens.

"We do a lot of outdoor eradications," said Placer County Sheriff's
Lt. Jeff Ausnow. "In every garden, every single encounter, we find weapons."

On June 16, officers for the Lassen County Sheriff's Department and
Susanville police were investigating an illegal grow on Bureau of
Land Management property when gunmen opened fire.

Lassen narcotics task force commander Sgt. David Martin was wounded
in the hand, arm, shoulder and face by a single shot from an AK-47.
Deputy David Woginrich was hit in the thigh. Officers returning fire
killed the gunman.

Jose Alfredo Zepeda, 19, of East Palo Alto and Ferrias Arroyo, 62, of
Morgan Hill were arrested in the shooting. Authorities said they
believe the men were in California illegally.

Gunmen also fired on officers in Shasta County this year. And Lassen
officers responded to a shooting among marijuana growers themselves.

The incidents stirred memories of the 2000 wounding of an 8-year-old
boy and his father in El Dorado County.

They were shot after stumbling onto a 78-year-old gunman guarding a
secret marijuana grow hidden on the El Dorado family's sprawling
mountain property. A brother-in-law, allegedly tied to Mexican
marijuana networks, also was convicted in the incident.

Since then, the number of pot seizures in California has increased twelvefold.

Drew Parenti, the FBI special agent in Sacramento and former program
manager for the FBI's drug program in Mexico, said traffickers found
that planting in the state's fertile woodlands was a far better
option than smuggling product across the border.

Despite recent shootings, Parenti said the state is unlikely to see
widespread violence because the drug networks here aren't deeply
rooted, haven't corrupted law enforcement and don't battle over their
share of the U.S. market.

"My personal view is that we will never, ever see the level of
violence here that we see in Mexico," Parenti said. "The societal
issues and political realities that exist there simply don't exist here."

Still, authorities are increasingly concerned about the burgeoning
pot grows and armed tenders close to homes and nature trails.

In 2006, narcotics officers found 2,000 marijuana plants – apparently
overseen by Southern California gang members working with Mexican
drug networks – "only a stone's throw from million-dollar houses" in
El Dorado Hills, said Taylor of DEA.

This year, El Dorado County investigators returned to the same site,
on BLM property near Salmon Falls Road, and found a new thriving
garden of 33,000 plants.

Taylor said high-grade pot, cut, dried and shipped from grows in
California, has been tracked to Illinois, Colorado and the East Coast.

Closer to home, a federal court jury in Sacramento last month
convicted three men of selling more than 320 pounds of pot to
undercover officers in El Dorado County for $500,000.

Narcotics officers made small buys at the McDonald's in El Dorado
Hills before pulling off the major transaction in the Safeway
supermarket parking lot in Cameron Park.

Authorities say a leader in the operation, Sixto Padilla-Gomez,
employed nine workers in a 6,000-plant garden near Ice House Road and
U.S. 50. El Dorado County narcotics Sgt. Tim Becker said some
laborers initially cooperated with investigators, but then went silent.

"Some of them said, 'My family (in Mexico) will die if I talk to
you,'" Becker said.

Two years ago, authorities charged Arnoldo Herrera, 44, a Mexican
citizen living in Merced, with heading a marijuana network with
dozens of employees, including California residents and illegal
laborers. More than 100,000 plants were seized in Humboldt, Butte,
Plumas and Santa Clara counties.

The operation shuttled food and weapons to growing sites, and
packaged and sold pot in 200-pound deliveries, according to the
criminal complaint.

One of the huge grows was discovered after a Fresno State University
graduate student was accosted by a man with a gun as he was hiking in
the Plumas National Forest. He fled and called 911.

Even hardened drug investigators are stunned by what they come across.

Last month, a narcotics SWAT team raided by far the largest marijuana
grow in Amador County history. Two lush pot fields, totaling 44,600
plants, climbed steep slopes of the Eldorado National Forest. The
mountainside was terraced and meticulously irrigated. A camp was
stocked with a year's food supply.

"It was just phenomenal. They had made tables out of cut wood. They
had been there for a while," said Jackie Long, a state special agent
with the Amador County Combined Narcotics Enforcement Team.

But they scattered before officers arrived.

"We're dealing with a lot of shadow people," Long said.