May 24, 2008, 12:58AM
VIOLENCE IN MEXICO
Gangland killing persists, exceeds last year's tally
At least 19 bodies, some in parts, found Friday near Texas border


By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

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MEXICO CITY — At least 19 bodies turned up near the Texas border and deep inside the country Friday as Mexico's attorney general said the tally of gangland killings was nearly 50 percent higher than last year.

Nearly 1,400 people have been killed execution-style or in drug-gang shootouts so far this year, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told a Mexican radio network. That compares with 940 killed in the same period in 2007.

At least 4,150 people have been slain in narcotics related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown on drug trafficking gangs after taking office 18 months ago, Medina Mora told Mexico City's Radio Formula.

Some 450 of those victims, he said, were policemen, soldiers, prosecutors or other government officials.

The gangland fatalities here surpass the 4,082 American troop deaths in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to Pentagon records. Mexican officials have been reluctant to announce their count of the dead.

But other officials told a congressional committee this week that more than 4,000 people had died in the violence.

"Certainly this year we have an increase over last year," Medina Mora said. "But that doesn't mean a strengthening of organized crime."

But if the gangs are weakening, they've certainly retained their ability to terrorize.


A message for a boss

Security forces in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, recovered the bodies of eight men slain execution-style just blocks from the Rio Grande early Friday.

Five of the bodies were wrapped in blankets and left in an empty lot near a factory. Another three were stuffed into a car that had been set alight.

Four bodyless heads were discovered stuffed into separate ice chests and left in a convenience store parking lot in western Durango state.

A sign announced they were left for the "friends of Chapo," an apparent reference to fugitive drug boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

The heads were left near the scene of a rolling shootout along a main Durango highway early Tuesday left at least eight — and as many as 16 — suspected drug gang gunmen dead.

Another seven bodies turned up Friday in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state that is the home of Guzman and other leading drug traffickers.

Culiacan has been rattled even more than usual in recent weeks because a reported feud heated up between Guzman and the Beltran Leyva clan, his former allies.

The bodies of two Morelos state policemen, one of them a senior commander, were found stuffed into the trunk of a car left this week on an expressway south of Mexico City. A sign left with the victims warned their fate awaited those who worked with Guzman.


Protection undermined

Many Mexican police have been killed in the line of duty. But analysts and some Mexican officials say others have been targeted because they worked clandestinely for one gang or the other.

Medina Mora on Friday blamed the increased police deaths — with local and state officers being targeted the most — on the breakdown of a more centrally controlled system of official protection that long existed in Mexico.

With this decade's advent of national democracy and greater authority and resources relegated to the cities and states, protection networks have become more dispersed and less foolproof for the gangsters, the attorney general said.

When things go wrong, he suggested, violence ensues.

"The only way to achieve peace is to recover the institutions of the country," Medina Mora said.


No peace for traffickers

The number of corrupt Mexican police is "a significant amount that is unacceptable on anyone's terms, including the government of Mexico," a U.S.official said this week. "I would hate to put a number on it. That would be unfair."

The escalating violence has stirred the beginnings of a backlash among the Mexican news media, politicians and analysts. Proceso, the country's leading newsmagazine, last week blamed the deaths squarely on Calderon.

"It's time to think of a new framework," Arturo Alvarado, founder of a public security think tank in Mexico City said in an interview. "Militarily this can be won in the long run. But it's not worth it."

Medina Mora argued in the radio interview that the escalating bloodshed reflects the frustrations of traffickers who can no longer "carry out their illicit activities in peace."

"This represents their weakness," Medina Mora said. "They have to have a violent response."






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