ACAPULCO'S LOSS OF INNOCENCE

Resort No Longer Off-Limits To Violence Of Drug Cartels

ACAPULCO, Mexico - This seaside resort was once a place of fairy
tales, where the world's rich and famous vacationed in villas while
their yachts bobbed on the waves of Acapulco's bay.

Even Mexico's drug traffickers played a role in the illusion. For
years, they set aside their rivalries and came here with their
families to take a holiday from crime, law enforcement officials say,
shielding Acapulco from the drug wars that ravaged other Mexican cities.

But a broad-daylight shootout last month between drug traffickers and
police shattered the last vestiges of Acapulco's idyllic image. Four
traffickers died and an arsenal of guns and grenades was left behind,
forcing law-enforcement officials to acknowledge the cease-fire
between cartels had ended.

"We've always heard the narco-traffickers have certain places that
are off-limits to violence so they can vacation. Obviously, Acapulco
is no longer in that category," said a U.S. official who spoke on the
condition of anonymity.

Today, Acapulco is a battleground for the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels,
which are warring over a lucrative drug corridor stretching from
Mexico's Pacific Coast north to the U.S.-Mexico border.

The drug crimes that have long rocked the Mexican border cities of
Tijuana, Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo now occur with frightening
regularity here and in the nearby resort of Zihuatanejo.

Only four cities in Mexico - Guadalajara, Culiacan, Tijuana and
Mexicali - have more overall crime per 100,000 residents than
Acapulco, according to a recent study by the Citizen Institute for
Studies about Insecurity, a Mexico City-based think tank.

"It alarms us," said Fernando Tenopala, president of Coparmex
Acapulco, an organization of business leaders in this city of
900,000. "We don't want to live through what Nuevo Laredo is experiencing."

Law enforcement officers who dare to confront the cartels fear for
their lives. Acapulco's police chief resigned after his officers
killed the four traffickers in last month's shootout. Last week, two
grenades were tossed at the house of Zihuatanejo's police chief,
seriously injuring a guard.

In Guerrero state, where Acapulco and Zihuatanejo are located, drug
crimes are also increasing in the countryside. Guerrero produces more
opium poppies that any other state in Mexico. It ranks ninth in the
production of marijuana.

When other Mexican cities have been terrorized by drug killings,
President Vicente Fox has responded by sending in soldiers and
hundreds of federal police. However, stationing military patrols
outside posh hotels could decimate Acapulco's already fragile tourist
industry, which has lost business to newer resorts such as Cancun and
Los Cabos.

"Acapulco cannot have streets full of soldiers. What are the tourists
going to say?" said Victor Manuel Bosque, the retired army general
who commands the state police force in Acapulco. "If the army starts
to patrol, the tourists will stop coming."

Instead, units of federal, state and local police cruise the city's
crime-ridden neighborhoods day and night, their semi-automatic rifles
at the ready. Operating under an umbrella program that Fox dubbed
"Safe Mexico," they set up roadblocks, searching cars for weapons and
drugs and arresting drivers whose names show up on a database of
wanted criminals.

Bosque said he believes the patrols have been effective. However, in
the five months since Safe Mexico began operations in Acapulco, not
one major drug trafficker has been captured.

International visitors When Acapulco threw open its doors to the
world in the early 1950s, celebrities flocked to the Pacific resort.
Liz Taylor married her third husband, Hollywood producer Michael
Todd, here. Frank Sinatra was a regular. John F. Kennedy and his
wife, Jackie, chose Acapulco for their 1953 honeymoon.

One of the world's first international resorts, Acapulco has long
since lost its luster.

Now, most of Acapulco's visitors are families from Mexico City who
pile into their cars and make the four-hour drive south in search of
a cheap weekend getaway. Only 15 percent of the resort's visitors
come from international destinations.

Mexico City residents are accustomed to crime, but business leaders
worry that increasing drug violence will make them think twice about
vacationing in Acapulco.

Authorities reported 51 drug-related homicides last year, several of
them on Acapulco's main tourist strip. When a deputy director of
Guerrero's state ministerial police was slain outside a popular
restaurant in August, the killings began to attract national attention.

Fox acknowledges that at least a dozen Mexican cities - including
Acapulco - have been racked by the drug war.

Since the beginning of this year, Mexico has recorded 272
drug-related deaths. In Tijuana, one person a day was killed in drug
violence last month. In Nuevo Leon state, four police officials have
been slain in the past seven days.

Additionally, a chilling message was delivered when two grenades were
hurled at the car of prison security chief Luis Mendoza last week as
he left La Palma maximum-security penitentiary outside Mexico City,
where Tijuana drug kingpin Benjamin Arellano Felix and Gulf cartel
leader Osiel Cardenas are held.

Fox has responded by vowing that cartel leaders like Arellano Felix
and Cardenas will soon be extradited to the United States for prosecution.

"The people of Mexico will not fold, nor will the federal government,
nor will the security institutions of this country," he said.

However, the once-firm resolve of many public officials to combat
drug trafficking is being eroded by fear. Like top-ranking officials
in other states, Guerrero Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca is beginning to
talk about leaving the fight to federal authorities.

"I have children, I have a family. That is why I am afraid,"
Torreblanca said in an interview this month. "What I am learning is
how to control my fear so that it does not paralyze me."

'A critical player' The point man in Acapulco for the Sinaloa cartel
allegedly is an American wanted in the United States on
cocaine-trafficking charges and in Mexico on murder charges.

Edgar Valdez Villarreal, 32, a native of Laredo, Texas, is described
by U.S. law enforcement as "a critical player" for the cartel in Acapulco.

His nickname, "La Barbie," belies his ruthless behavior, authorities said.

"He is involved in the day-to-day operations - shipments, extortions,
killings," said a U.S. law enforcement official who spoke on
condition of anonymity. "He is dangerous, and the Mexican authorities know it."

For nearly 20 years, Valdez's bosses have controlled the
drug-trafficking route from Acapulco to the border.

Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman once owned an
oceanfront mansion in Acapulco and installed a slide from his
third-floor bedroom to the swimming pool. His lieutenants and their
families were part of Acapulco's social scene.

When Guzman was arrested in 1993, two lieutenants, the Beltran
brothers, remained in Acapulco and ran the business. People here
describe them as professional and low-key - different from the
ostentatious, gun-slinging narcos who ran cities like Tijuana.

The turf war began after Cardenas, who heads the Gulf cartel, was
arrested in March 2003. By then, Guzman had staged a daring escape
from a maximum-security prison in a laundry cart and was making an
ambitious bid to take over drug corridors in border cities from
Tijuana to Matamoros.

In August 2003, the Beltran brothers sent 200 men, led by Valdez, to
Nuevo Laredo to seize control of Cardenas' territory, according to
testimony given by a protected witness in a Mexican court.

The Gulf cartel responded by sending its hit squad known as the Zetas
to Acapulco, and the truce that had brought stability to the resort
for so many years was broken.

'Huge problem' As the violence mounts in Acapulco, police have mostly
left drug enforcement to federal forces. That is why last month's
shootout was so startling.

Somehow, poorly equipped municipal police managed during a 20-minute
shootout to kill the four traffickers, who were armed with automatic
weapons and had grenades strapped across their chests.

A man identifying himself as "El Tiburon," or The Shark, suggested
during a phone call to the Acapulco newspaper El Sur that a miscue
in communications between traffickers and police resulted in the
fatal shootings.

El Tiburon said Safe Mexico officials had guaranteed safe passage for
a convoy transporting a high-level trafficker, the newspaper reported.

However, word apparently didn't reach Acapulco police Chief Genero Garcia.

Garcia "screwed up," the caller told an El Sur reporter. Now, "he
has a huge problem with the cartel."

Gov. Torreblanca declined to comment on published reports that Garcia
received death threats before he resigned. However, Torreblanca said
"a good police officer has to measure his actions."

"Taking a kamikaze attitude in this situation doesn't do anything but
cost you your life," said Torreblanca, of the leftist Democratic
Revolution Party, or PRD. "You shouldn't try to be valiant. You have
to be honest and intelligent. And intelligence sometimes means that
you don't get involved in federal matters."

Drug trafficking is a federal crime in Mexico.

The new interim chief has said his men will not try to halt
drug-trafficking activities. And Acapulco's media-loving mayor, Felix
Salgado of the PRD, is dodging interviews and refuses to hand out his
daily agenda in advance. On several occasions, he has abruptly
canceled public appearances.

In an interview with local reporters after the shootout, a visibly
shaken Salgado seemed to be speaking directly to traffickers.

"Enough of this violence," he said. "We want peace."