MEXICAN DRUG GANGS ASSUMING GOVERNMENT ROLES

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - The "police" for the Zetas paramilitary cartel
are so numerous here - upward of 3,000, according to one estimate -
that they far outnumber the official force, and their appearance
further sets them apart.

Most are teens sporting crew cuts, gold chains and earrings, with
shorts worn well below the waist and cellphones pressed to their ears.
These "spotters" seem to be everywhere, including elementary schools,
keeping tabs on everything and everyone for the area's most dominant
drug cartel.

"Get the (expletive) away from my child!" Thelma Pena, a young mother,
yelled at a Zetas spotter as she took her son to school.

"Am I afraid of being killed?" she later said of her outburst. "We're
already dying, little by little, day by day."

The omnipresent cartel spotters are one aspect of what experts
describe as the emergence of virtual parallel governments in places
like Nuevo Laredo and Ciudad Juarez - criminal groups that levy taxes,
gather intelligence, muzzle the media, run businesses and impose a
version of order that serves their criminal goals.

"President (Felipe) Calderon's war on drug cartels has been such an
abysmal failure that entire regions of Mexico are effectively
controlled by nonstate actors, i.e., multipurpose criminal
organizations," said Howard Campbell, an anthropologist and expert on
drug cartels at the University of Texas at El Paso.

"These criminal groups have morphed from being strictly drug cartels
into a kind of alternative society and economy," Campbell said. "They
are the dominant forces of coercion, tax the population, steal from or
control utilities such as gasoline, sell their own products and are
the ultimate decision-makers in the territories they control."

Calderon and his top aides insist that the government is making gains,
that new data show a decline in killings in the second half of 2010,
proving that the cartels are losing and, in desperation, are resorting
to kidnapping, extortion and piracy.

Alejandro Poire, Calderon's spokesman for security issues, said that
two years ago the government identified the top 37 cartel leaders.

"The fact is, 20 of these 37 have been brought down, so these criminal
organizations have been weakened, have been significantly weakened,"
Poire told The Dallas Morning News.

Poire later insisted that even northern Tamaulipas state - where 183
bodies have been recovered from clandestine graves in the past month,
including many victims believed to have been abducted at gunpoint from
public buses traveling on major highways - "is under the control of
the Mexican state."

Still, across Mexico, despite the presence of thousands of troops and
federal and state police, the government appears unable to restore
order.

In Ciudad Juarez, the Juarez cartel, which is defending its territory
against the Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, is
quietly installing its own rule.

In interviews with at least a dozen vendors, businessmen, cabdrivers
and shoe shiners, all talked of paying monthly extortion fees to the
cartel. Fees range from about $9 for street vendors, to $45 for
cabdrivers and $70 for junkyard owners.

The Juarez cartel and its enforcers, the La Linea gang, have even set
up bank accounts so businessmen can make direct deposits. Many of
those interviewed said they were not even bothering to pay federal
taxes anymore.

"What does that tell you?" asked Manuel Valdivia, a mechanic and
cabdriver. "Because to me it tells me everything I need to know about
who's in charge."

Eric Olson, a security expert for the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said the lines
of authority are truly blurred in some places.

"There is no question that the lines between the state and organized
crime have been blurred in some areas of Mexico and, in some cases,
obliterated altogether," he said. "In such cases, local governments
continue to function 'normally' while protecting the interests of
organized crime over those of the citizens.

"In local areas where the state is unable to guarantee the safety and
well-being of citizens, organized crime provides de facto security and
even guarantees services for the public," Olson said. "So far, this
has been observed in limited areas of Mexico, but unless more is done
to control organized crime and strengthen the state, the potential for
expansion is very real."

"There is no question that the lines between the state and organized
crime have been blurred in some areas of Mexico and, in some cases,
obliterated altogether."