MONTERREY BECOMES OK CORRAL OF MEXICAN DRUG TRAFFICKERS

MONTERREY, Nuevo Leon - Disputes between drug cartels, the capture of
several kingpins and the settling of scores in turf disputes have turned
this wealthy industrialized city into the bloodiest battleground of
Mexico's narcotics wars.

Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha acknowledged that the Gulf
Cartel, currently headed by Osiel Cardenas Guillen, has gained a foothold
in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, of which Monterrey is the capital.

One of the country's most prosperous cities, Monterrey has become a haven
for druglords vying for territory, said Roberto Benavides, political
science department head at the University of Nuevo Leon.

Monterrey "gives them the perfect cover for their operations," Benevides said.

Considered Mexico's industrial capital and located only 200 kilometers (125
miles) from the U.S. border, Monterrey is home to a big slice of the
nation's economic elite.

Against this backdrop, drug traffickers drive around in armor-plated luxury
cars, live in sumptuous

homes or on vast ranches and pass themselves off as wealthy businessmen.

"The heads of all the major drug-trafficking cartels held a famous meeting
at a restaurant in Apodaca, Nuevo Leon, in early 2001 that became the talk
of the region," Benavides said.

The conclave was called to establish "mergers" between the cartels,
exchange information, distribute routes and decide who to pay off in the
police, the investigator said.

But that attempt to create a "corporation" failed, prompting divisions
that, over recent months, have

given rise to a wave of bloody crime on the streets of Monterrey and
neighboring cities.

So far this year, law enforcement officials have recorded 42 gangland-style
slayings in Nuevo Laredo - which sits across the Rio Grande from sister
city Laredo, Texas - and 20 more in Monterrey.

Newspapers report that the conflict is between the Juarez and Gulf cartels
on the one side and the

Tijuana cartel on the other.

On another front, the Osiel Cardenas gang is trying to eliminate the
Monterrey Cartel and - last but not least - a small cell operating in Nuevo
Leon is at war with the Gulf Cartel, Raul Peqa, a Monterrey reporter, said.

"The Gulf Cartel split in two on March 31, 2001, the day the anti-drug
prosecutor and army entered the town of Guardados de Abajo to arrest drug
trafficker Gilberto Garcia Mena," Peqa said.

The arrest of Garcia Mena, the right-hand man of Gulf Cartel chief
Cardenas, resulted from his betrayal by Edelio Lopez Falcon, also known as
"The Lord of Horses."

Lopez Falcon heads the Monterrey Cartel, which the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) says ships four tons of drugs into the United States
every month.

The Tijuana Cartel - which is headed by the Arellano Felix brothers and
counts among its regional allies Nuevo Laredo's Chacos gang - was attacked
in May and suffered several dead, including gang leader Donaciano Garcia.

The DEA, in an operation launched in June 2001, finally found Eduardo
Resendez Muqoz, the Juarez Cartel's "financial wizard" and top
money-launderer. Resendez was murdered in a downtown Monterrey street,
where he was found inside a car in what may have been a settling of accounts.

The warfare among drug traffickers has left the Arellano Felix gang
practically in tatters in this region, the Juarez Cartel badly pummeled and
the Gulf Cartel the only one to come out strengthened, observers say.