A Mexican cartel army's war within

Hit men known as the Zetas are aiming at their own as a power struggle spreads.

VERACRUZ, MEXICO — The two thoroughbreds sprinted down a country track, a few million dollars in the bettors' kitty and an old-fashioned camera waiting at the finish line.

When the race was over, as veterinarians guided the expensive equines back to their air-conditioned trailers, gamblers at the private track began to argue over the nose-to-nose conclusion. Among them were members of a band of hit men known as the Zetas, employees of the Gulf cartel of drug traffickers.

Let's just wait for the film to be developed, someone said.

Then, above the din, another voice rang out. "I've come to kill you!"

A new chapter was being added to the violent saga of Mexico's most notorious drug ring. More than a dozen people may have been killed in the gunfire that followed, an ambush in which the hit men appear to have attacked one another.

The Zetas were Mexico's first drug cartel army, and in many ways they and their employers are responsible for the militarization of the country's drug conflict. President Felipe Calderon deployed the national army this year to fight traffickers in several Mexican states.

The March shootout at the Villarin track was one of many bloody episodes in what appears to be an escalating power struggle within the Gulf cartel. Experts say the increase in tension was triggered by the January deportation of reputed cartel leader Osiel Cardenas to face trafficking charges in the U.S.

"The cartel has split," Genaro Garcia Luna, public security minister and Mexico's top cop, said last week. "This has generated a new wave of violence as they fight over the regions Osiel controlled."

The cartel, based in the border state of Tamaulipas, grew wealthy and powerful....

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