EXPERT: JUAREZ VIOLENCE A 'TERRORIST WAR'

EL PASO -- The Juarez drug murders are attracting attention not only
for their numbers, but also for the increasing brutality with which
they are being carried out.

Mutilations, beheadings, torching women's bodies, shooting children
and suspending bodies from street overpasses are some of the ways
armed criminal bands are terrorizing the border city. Several experts
weighed in on what may be happening and what could be done to end it.

"What Mexico is experiencing is narco terrorism," said Richard
Valdemar, an international gang expert and retired California law
enforcement officer. "The battle between the cartels has become a
terrorist war. We also have two gang cultures that have come together
- -- the U.S. prison-based gang culture and an increasingly violent
Mexican gang culture. Together, they are sinking to the lowest common
denominator."

The kind of beheadings that are taking place in Mexico occurred among
gangs in the Middle East for many years before they were seen in this
part of the world. "In this hemisphere, we began to see this type of
brutal violence in Colombia, and then it moved its way up north," he said.

Cartels recruit youths who believe they have nothing to lose, and
therefore are willing to do anything for a chance at reaching the
upper echelons of the cartels. Many of the suspects in Mexico's
drug-related slayings are mere teenagers.

"There is so much money in drug-trafficking, and with the competition
involved, there aren't any boundaries anymore," said Valdemar, who
has been featured on TV specials about criminal gangs and the Mexican
drug cartels. "We're also beginning to see an erosion in the codes of
conduct of U.S.-based gangs, which used to be against attacking women
and children."

He said youths must be given hope for the future if they are to stay
away from violent gangs and drug cartels.

Ventura Perez, a professor of biological archaeology at the
University of Massachusetts in Amherst, said brutality accomplishes
several things, one being the obliteration of the individuality of
persons targeted for attack.

"With this gratuitous violence, the human being is lost. The victim
ceases to be an individual, and becomes invisible," Perez said.

Despite the presence of thousands of soldiers, armed criminal bands
still appear to control the Juarez region.

Recently, an armed group of men showed up at a community baseball
game in the Valle de Juarez and shot to death several players in
front of a shocked crowd. They left without police or the army
intercepting them.

Sergio Gonzalez, a Mexico City author who has studied drug violence,
said some hit squads send messages to rivals by writing notices on
their victim's bodies, or by leaving banners near the bodies to make
a point. Some groups also want to create a unique imprint or
signature through decapitations and other mutilations.

His book released this year, "El Hombre Sin Cabeza" (Man without a
Head), explores the symbolism of brutal drug cartel murders.

"Dismembered bodies, decapitations and mutilations serve to make it
clear to rivals, the authorities and the general public that each
criminal group is strong and can continue to operate without a
problem," Gonzalez said. "Besides instilling terror, these acts also
serve as ritual sacrifices for the groups to attain greater power and
impunity."

Jose Rene Blanco, vicar general of the Juarez Catholic Diocese,
created a stir earlier this month when he alleged in the press that
the recent murders of children and women were the work of "narco
satanicos," drug dealers who worship the devil and who used the
deaths as human sacrifices.

Alfred Blumstein, a top criminologist in the nation, agreed the
cartels' brutal crimes act as messages between rivals and as warnings
for targets of revenge.

He said the notorious Italian Mafia gangs, which also made brutality
one of their trademarks, differ from the way Mexican mafias operate.
He also suggested that the drug cartels themselves may hold the
solution for ending the violence.

"They are operating on a mutual deterrence basis, sending the others
a message that they are each increasing the certainty and severity of
their retaliatory strikes, hoping to scare their competitors out of
the business," said Blumstein, a professor at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh. "My sense of the (Italian) Mafia gangs is
that they too engaged in brutal killings, but much more at an
individual level, one at a time, and not in the same mass-killing way.

"With the Mafia, it took some leadership by some key gang members to
recognize that continuing the retaliatory activity was benefiting no
one and hurting all, and so they called together a 'council' that
would adjudicate disputes -- in effect, a court with agreed-upon
rules serving the gangs just like a civilian court," Blumstein said.
"It would seem most desirable for the Mexican gangs to find some
leaders they all can trust willing to initiate such a process."