MEXICAN CITY'S JOURNALISTS SCARED SILENT

Rival Mexican Cartels Employ Violence To Ensure Silence

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - Here, it's better not to know.

Information can be poison in this border city. When there's a
shootout downtown, even the most ambitious radio reporter will not
necessarily rush to the scene.

So it went the day last month that four undercover federal police
officers were ambushed and killed in thick lunch-hour traffic on the
city's busiest street.

The offices of several newspapers and radio stations were just blocks
away - but the news broke 700 miles to the south, on the Mexico City
wire services.

The war between the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels has been blamed by
Mexican federal officials for about 230 deaths in the last 15 months.

The journalists who ordinarily would report on such violence have
been silenced by cartel operatives who kidnap reporters and
repeatedly phone in threats to newsrooms.

Violence and intimidation have created a culture of silence in this
city of 500,000 people.

Municipal officials rarely comment publicly on the killings. Law
enforcement authorities seem powerless. And people here are
hard-pressed to remember the last time anyone was arrested or
prosecuted for such sensational crimes as the killing of more than a
dozen police officers.

"When a crime is committed, there should be an investigation, an
accused, a punishment," says Carlos Galvan, the owner of two
newspapers here. "As long as those things don't happen, speculation
eats up [the reputation of] the victim."

Indeed, rumor and mythology are filling the information vacuum in Nuevo Laredo.

Ask why so many people have died here, and there's a good chance
you'll be told that the dead have only themselves to blame. The "vox
populi" has it that no "good" or "innocent" person is ever killed in
Nuevo Laredo.

Newspaper and radio reporters here say they would like to tell the
full story of the killings. The names of certain drug kingpins
circulate among journalists and in other border towns, but have never
been printed. Facts might help dispel the myths, they say, as well as
the aura of omnipotence that surrounds the cartels. But facts can get
reporters killed.

The cartels are a shadowy but ubiquitous presence. Longtime residents
fear their wealth, their armaments and their apparent infiltration of
institutions, such as the police force.

The pictures of the dead run in the local newspapers alongside
screaming headlines such as "A Rain of Bullets!" Some papers
routinely run stark pictures of open-eyed corpses torn up by
high-caliber bullets. But rarely will a local newspaper, or a local
official, explain why a person was killed or who the killer might be.

Last year, Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernandez Flores told residents:
"The people of Tamaulipas who behave themselves have nothing to fear"
because those being victimized in the wave of violence "are in some
way involved with organized crime."

Even people who were close to the victims wonder whether they can
ever know why their friends and relatives were killed.

The death of police chief Alejandro Dominguez shook Nuevo Laredo and
garnered international headlines. He had been head of the Nuevo
Laredo police force for just a few hours when he was gunned down.

Key facts about the drug war are unknown to the general public. For
example, it's never been reported here that criminal gangs have
threatened local radio stations and newspaper reporters to keep them
from reporting on shootings.

Nor has it been reported locally that the "narcos" have kidnapped journalists.

The mayor of Nuevo Laredo rejected requests for an interview, as did
police officials.

To escape the pervasive sense of danger, many residents, including
some journalists, seek out facts that suggest that violence is
something that happens to others.

At radio station 95.7 FM, news director Marco Antonio Espinoza
disagrees with those who say his colleague Ramiro Tellez was killed
because he was a journalist.

"The problem did not occur because of journalism," Espinoza said.
Tellez really wasn't a journalist, Antonio said. "He'd come in here
in the morning and do the weather report. Then he would leave."

Tellez, who was killed March 10, worked as director of the city's
emergency and police communications system.

"We stay away from police stories." Antonio said. "It was the other
job that caused his problem."