MEXICAN TRAFFICKERS DEFY CRACKDOWN WITH GORY PUBLIC CHALLENGES

Gangs Use Brazen Displays to Intimidate

MEXICO CITY -- Drug traffickers are waging a highly effective
publicity campaign in Mexico that began with a chilling show of
brutality in Acapulco: two police officers' heads, streaming with
blood, were stuck on metal spikes outside a downtown building with a
fluorescent cardboard sign. "So that you learn to respect," it read
in thick black letters.

The spectacle a year ago in the Pacific resort set off a ghoulish
trend among the drug lords battling for billion-dollar smuggling
routes into the United States. They have since left a trail of bodies
and bloodstained notes across Mexico, with a goal of spreading fear
- -- a sense of dread so deep that rivals, police, witnesses and even
President Felipe Calderon won't dare cross them.

Regular citizens used to be left out of crime battles.

No longer. The drug gangs now publish newspaper ads and tack
threatening notes to corpses with ice picks or tape them to trash
bags filled with body parts for public display. They are even using
the Internet, posting a video on YouTube.com that showed the apparent
beheading of an alleged hit man.

"Before long, they're going to have their own TV program,
'Narconews,' where they drag out their dead for show," drug expert
Jorge Chabat joked grimly.

Drug-related killings using corpses as message boards have been
carried out in a dozen Mexican states in the past year -- an
indication, experts say, that Mexico's rival Gulf and Sinaloa cartels
hope they can frighten the population to the point that Calderon will
retreat from his nationwide military crackdown.

In many areas, it is working: Police are resigning in record numbers,
newspapers are censoring themselves and witnesses rarely expose
themselves to a justice system seen as inefficient and corrupt.

"Without a doubt, this is part of a strategy by organized crime to
terrorize the population and destabilize the government," said Nuevo
Leon Deputy State Atty. Gen. Aldo Fasci Zuazua, whose state bordering
Texas has seen nearly three dozen drug-related killings since
January, including one threatening the top state prosecutor with a
message stuck to a corpse with an ice pick..

Drug lords have long used grisly killings and torture to communicate
with rival gangs and police. The former Amado Fuentes Carrillo cartel
in Ciudad Juarez used to cut off the fingers of snitches and shove
them down their throats. Others who crossed drug lords were given a
"Colombian necktie," in which the victims' tongues were pulled
through their slashed throats.

Now such messages go straight to the public.

In Calderon's home state of Michoacan, The Family, a shadowy group
believed allied with the Gulf cartel, took out a newspaper ad saying
it wanted to stop kidnapping, robbery and the sale of
methamphetamines in the state. The ad blamed violence on a rival gang.

"Perhaps at this time people don't understand us, but we know that in
the most affected regions, they understand our actions," it said,
adding: "People who work at any decent activity have no reason to worry."

The group delivered a similar message in much more grisly fashion
last year, rolling five heads across a dance floor in a Michoacan
town with a note that said The Family "doesn't kill innocent people,
only those who deserve to die. Everyone knows that."

One of the boldest displays yet was a video posted on YouTube this
month. It showed a man in his underwear, tied to a chair with a "Z"
written on his chest -- an apparent reference to the Zetas, former
military operatives who now are Gulf cartel hit men. The video, which
was covered by newspapers across the country, called on Mexicans to
"do something for your country, kill a Zeta." Then the man is shown
apparently being strangled and beheaded.

Anyone can post a video on YouTube; there was no way to confirm the
video's authenticity or determine who made it. Police have not found a body.

Steve Robertson, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent
who worked for 17 years on the U.S.-Mexico border, said the publicity
campaign is only the latest tactic traffickers are using to control their turf.

"The drug-trafficking organizations are a business, and like any
successful business, they are using the latest toys, like e-mail,
cell phones or BlackBerries," he said. "They use fear to control
their area and intimidate citizens into not becoming involved and
cooperate with law enforcement."