MEXICAN DRUG VIOLENCE CLAIMS NEARLY 500 LIVES

While The Crackdown On Cartels Has Had Some Success, Critics Charge
The President With Playing To The Media

MEXICO CITY -- Nearly 500 people have been killed in Mexico's drug
wars this year, according to media reports here, despite a crackdown
on the illicit trade by President Felipe Calderon.

The dead include dozens of police officers, the daughter of a retired
army general, and a suspected cartel hit man in the northern city of
Monterrey left with a knife sticking out of his chest and a message
to local officials affixed to his body.

"Attorney General: Don't be a fool," the note said. It accused local
officials of protecting Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, leader of the
Sinaloa cartel, the bitter rival of the Gulf cartel, which is based
in the border state of Tamaulipas. "This is just the beginning."

According to a tally kept by the Mexico City newspaper El Universal,
along with other media reports, the number of drug-related killings
had reached 492 by Friday.

Calderon's government, which took power in December, promised a
get-tough approach against the drug trade, which claimed more than
2,000 lives last year.

This year, Calderon sent troops into the southern states of Guerrero
and Michoacan, and to the border cities of Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo.

In Tijuana, federal forces disarmed the police in January in a bid to
fight widespread corruption in the municipal force.

But the measures have been criticized by many observers here.

"These operations are not designed to directly confront the organized
crime groups," said Jose Arturo Ya-ez, a researcher at the
Professional Police Training Institute in Mexico City. "They are
designed to have an effect in the media, so that the federal
government can be seen in action."

Still, the government has scored some key successes. In January,
Mexico extradited 15 suspected drug cartel leaders to the United
States, including Osiel Cardenas, who was reputed to have been
running the Gulf cartel from his cell at a maximum-security Mexican prison.

And last week, Mexico's organized crime unit confiscated more than
$207 million in cash from alleged methamphetamine producers operating
in a Mexico City mansion.

This week, authorities revealed that they had miscounted the cash and
added more than $1 million to the total.

The huge haul included just 50 counterfeit U.S. $100 bills,
authorities said. Karen P. Tandy, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, praised the raid as "the result of tremendous police
work by Mexican law enforcement."

The anti-drug campaign has also suffered some serious setbacks.

Seven police and security officials were ambushed and killed at two
police stations in Acapulco on Feb 7. On Sunday, the police chief of
the town of Boca del Rio in Veracruz state and two of his officers
were ambushed and slain.

"These massive executions of police officers are a new phenomenon,
and no branch of the government is doing anything to stop them,"
Ya-ez said. In many cases, he added, government officials have
suggested that the slain officers were linked to organized crime.

"On the one hand, you have organized crime killing officers, and on
the other the government is investigating officers and firing them,"
Ya-ez said. "No one protects them."

On March 6, the top security official in the state of Tabasco
survived an assassination attempt that killed one of his bodyguards.
On Feb. 19, a congressman from Nuevo Laredo survived an attack that
claimed the life of his driver.

Authorities say drug traffickers were probably responsible for the
killing of Mireya Lopez Portillo, the daughter of a retired general,
and her husband, Jordi Peralta, in the capital's wealthy Bosques de
Las Lomas neighborhood March 17.

Some officials have suggested that the killings may be linked to the
huge cash seizure, which took place two days earlier.

In an interview Thursday with Reuters, Calderon said his family had
received numerous threats from traffickers.

"It's a war, it's an issue I know will be with us a long time," Calderon said.

"I probably won't see the end during my presidency."