CARTELS, MILITARY BATTLE FOR PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE

Violent players have sprayed bullets and spilled blood in a real-life
and ongoing struggle between Mexico's Gulf Cartel, its erstwhile
allies, the Zetas, and the Mexican government.

Against this backdrop of violence - which has claimed more than
35,000 lives since December 2006 - the trio has also waged a
concerted war for the hearts and minds of the populace. Using public
relations tools that include banners, leaflets and releases to the
news media, each has sought to cast itself in a more positive light
than its enemies.

Public support has its benefits for the cartels, not least of which
is the ability to conduct their illicit business without drawing
undue attention and interference from the authorities, said George W.
Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William & Mary
and author of "Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?" Indeed,
that was largely how the cartels operated in the '80s and '90s.

"They could import, store, transport and export as long as they
followed the rules," Grayson said. "The (rules) included no
kidnapping, no selling drugs to children and if they had any issues
among themselves to take it outside" areas where innocents might
otherwise get caught up in the violence.

Such were the good ol' days, and by many accounts from Grayson and
others familiar with the cartels, the criminals long for a return to
that halcyon era.

Mexico's cartels have long used banners to publicly taunt and
threaten one another, but early last year they began increasingly
targeting their public messages at, well, the public in an apparent
bid to curry favor.

When an alliance of the Gulf Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel and the
Familia Michoacana -- collectively known as Carteles Unidos --
declared war against the Zetas in late February 2010, kicking off an
armed conflict that persists to this day, the troika's agents put up
banners warning of the imminent violence and seeking to win public consent.

Since then, narco-banners --also known as "narco-mantas" -- have
appeared across Mexico, particularly in areas with major cartel
activity such as Ciudad Victoria, Matamoros, Monterrey and Reynosa.
The banners are usually placed in the early morning or late at night
in a high-traffic area such as a bridge or a major thoroughfare.
Onlookers promptly gather to read them and snap photos before
authorities arrive to take them down.

For years the Zetas -- a paramilitary organization founded by former
members of Mexico's special forces -- served as the armed wing of the
Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel. Now, having turned against their former
masters and grown into a powerful cartel in their own right, the
Zetas are locked in a bloody struggle with their erstwhile allies for
control over smuggling routes into the United States.

In early March 2010, just days after that struggle began, banners
signed by the Gulf Cartel appeared throughout Reynosa, blaming the
Zetas for rapes, kidnappings and extortions. The banners proclaimed
that the Gulf Cartel had banded together with the Sinaloa and Familia
organizations to eliminate the Zeta menace.

"People of Tamaulipas, don't be afraid. We are only looking out for
your wellbeing," read one such sign. "We are trained individuals, not
children. We respect women. We don't kill civilians. ...We are from
Tamaulipas and we respect our own."

Leaflets were soon strewn about, warning the public to stay indoors
at night. An e-mail with a similar message was also sent out to media
outlets, telling residents that the trucks being used by the Gulf
Cartel and its allies would have logos identifying them as CDG or XXX
and asking the public to report any Zetas to them. Be patient, the
Gulf Cartel urged; the conflict will soon be over.

Unwilling to stand for such abuse, the Zetas responded by posting
their own banners throughout Tamaulipas, countering the accusations.
They pointedly noted that they had carried out executions and
kidnappings under orders from the Gulf Cartel when the Zetas served
as their enforcers. The Zetas' banners also accused the Gulf Cartel
of killing civilians and burning homes simply so they would have
atrocities to blame on the Zetas.

More recently, the criminal groups have in effect publicly tattled on
each other in an apparent effort to concentrate the attention of
authorities on one another.

Two days after the February slaying in Mexico of Jaime Zapata, a
special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Carteles
Unidos issued a communique blaming the Zetas for his murder. The
troika also pointed the finger at the Zetas for several other
high-profile cases, including the February slaughter of 18 civilians
on a passenger bus in Padilla, Tamps., and the slaying last year of
U.S. citizen David Hartley on the Mexican side of Falcon Reservoir.

About the same time Carteles Unidos issued that release, the Zetas
posted a banner blaming the Gulf Cartel for the deaths of the
civilians in Padilla.

And early this month, the Gulf Cartel distributed leaflets in the
southern Tamaulipas town of Ciudad Mante, warning the local residents
that they would be making a big push to remove the Zetas from the
region and asking the public to stay indoors after dark.

Most recently, Carteles Unidos posted banners across Reynosa
addressed to Mexican President Felipe Calderon, distancing themselves
from any attacks on federal buildings and authorities and calling for
a "frente comun," or common front, with the armed forces to eradicate
the Zetas.

"Afterwards," the message to the president continues, "you can come after us."

Early on, Carteles Unidos' messages to the public were somewhat
effective in swaying opinion, said Grayson, the College of William
and Mary professor. Now, though, they mostly fall on deaf ears.

"A year ago, with the triple alliance against the Zetas, those
banners had some credibility," he said. "Now, the violence has become
so widespread that the average person doesn't believe one cartel is
more humane than the other they are all now looked at as killers
pursuing an agenda."

Marcos Herrera, a middle-aged farmer from San Fernando -- a hotbed of
cartel violence about 85 miles south of Reynosa -- said residents
have even taken to joking about the banners.

In some cases, the twist of the joke is that the cartel is making a
perfectly vanilla pronouncement about, say, the weather or a sale on
produce at the local grocery. By likening the cartel messages to the
most commonplace of declarations, the teller, in just a few words,
completely saps them of their self-importance.

"Did you hear about the 'manta' near the supermarket downtown?"
Herrera said, reciting one such joke. "It says, 'Tomatoes: two for one.'"

In the early '80s and in the '90s, drug cartels weren't necessarily
seen as evil because they mostly abided by a certain code of conduct
and kept to themselves, going about their businesses outside the
public's view, Herrera recalled.

"Now, you have these drugged-up kids with machine guns that have
ruined our town," he said.

The public relations push has not been limited to the cartels. The
Mexican military also has sought to become a doctor of spin in the
war on drugs. Part of that effort has been a tendency to make its own
action more widely known than in the past.

Historically, readily available information about military operations
targeting drug cartels was very limited; however, in recent years the
armed forces have not only issued timely news releases on a regular
basis, but they also have adopted social media tools such as Twitter
and Facebook to tout their successes.

These days, an army or navy arrest of a suspected drug dealer or
gunman is promptly followed by a news release and photos that are
then widely disseminate via media outlets, often despite skepticism
by critical observers about the true standing of the suspects.

"Every time the military arrests someone, they make them out to be
the biggest, baddest 'sicario' (hit man) ever," said Grayson, the
College of William and Mary professor. The effort to inflate the
value of any suspect is also related to a rivalry among the Mexican
army, the Mexican navy and the Mexican federal police, who rarely
cooperate or share intelligence and routinely try to outdo one another.

While the banners' messages are often aimed at the public, the Zetas
have brazenly posted some mantas tantamount to recruitment messages
targeted at members of the Mexican military, complete with promises
of decent wages and better food.

"Soldiers are typically given packages of dried noodles," Grayson
said. "The Zetas promise them that if they join they won't have to
eat them anymore. ...

"Going from a government institution like the army into a drug
cartel, you at least triple your salary and, depending on what you
think is respect, you get to assert yourself as an individual,
whereas in the army the emphasis is placed on being part of organization."

The recruitment efforts have produced results, Grayson said.

"(Mexico's Federal Institute for Access to Public Information, known
by its Spanish acronym IFAI) shows that defense officials lost 125
special ops soldiers in the past two years," Grayson said, "even
though the government increased military pay by 115 percent since 2006."