In Mexico, Fear Survives the Death of a Sinister Rural Boss : Crime: ‘El Toro’ ruled by the gun. As proof, they are still unearthing bodies on his ranch.

Even before officials pulled pieces of 30 bodies from mass graves on his ranch, the savagery of Toribio Gargallo was a legend that everyone knew but few dared recount aloud.

His face scarred by bullets, Gargallo was a sinister figure racing through central Veracruz state in a pickup truck with sentries waving automatic rifles. He ruled the towns and rich sugar plantations of this region like a feudal lord, exacting tribute from peasants and tolerance from politicians.

For a time, he carried a police badge and even stood as best man in the wedding of a local police commander. He claimed to keep order in the countryside on behalf of a system that has long engaged such rural bosses to maintain political control.

In the end, the system apparently decided he had to go.

Gargallo and four of his henchmen died last month at what officials said was a roadblock set up to confiscate illegal pistols from motorists--a roadblock of more than 40 officers. El Toro (The Bull), as the 40-year-old Gargallo was nicknamed, took at least 17 bullets, including one at close range between the eyes.

“There was a time when Gargallo was on the side of the law, in cooperation with the government,” said an official in the nearby city of Cordoba. But, he surmised, “people like him stop being useful and become a problem. Maybe he was getting too big.”

Eight of Gargallo’s men, rounded up after his death, led officials to the mass graves of Gargallo’s victims and to the facts that no one had wanted to face. Authorities are still digging for what they believe may be dozens more bodies.

In custody, his henchmen also have said that Gargallo killed for hire, on contracts put out by leading farmers and businessmen. Many of them have since run for cover. Other associates refuse to speak about him lest his relatives seek revenge.

Even in death, El Toro inspires fear.

Gargallo was what Mexicans call a cacique, a Caribbean word meaning “boss of the house.” These rural bosses, a fixture in Veracruz and other farming states, typically rule through a mix of violence and benevolence--shooting their enemies while throwing Christmas parties for the poor.

But Gargallo apparently forgot about giving and governed only with a gun.

He began his murderous career as a teen-ager when he decided to get even with a farmer who had killed his father over a piece of land. According to local reporters, Gargallo picked off his father’s assassin and each member of his family, women and children included.

The young Gargallo joined the gang of another cacique, Tomasin Sanchez Vitorero, and become his right-hand man. After police killed Sanchez Vitorero, Gargallo took over as chieftain of the region.

In the last 20 years, police and rivals had tried to fell Gargallo at least three times. The first attempt distorted his face and speech. The second sent him to Houston with multiple gunshot wounds in his torso and a crippled arm. Gargallo identified his third attacker as a police commander. After recuperating from his wounds, he had the man kidnaped and murdered him.

“He said he would take revenge, and he did,” recalled a Cordoba police reporter.

Everyone knew that when El Toro issued a threat, he meant it. Cordoba reporter Jorge Castaneda certainly did. After writing in a newspaper article 1 1/2 years ago that Gargallo’s nephew had admitted to killing his own stepmother and two half-brothers with his uncle’s blessing, Castaneda was picked up by Gargallo’s men and taken to the chief.

“He said, ‘This is the first time and the last time you write about me.’ I said OK, no problem. The truth is, we journalists couldn’t touch him,” Castaneda said.

Gargallo didn’t deny the violence, although he insisted that he never killed for money. In a 1985 interview with Proceso magazine, he said he had “lost count” of the people he had murdered. He and other caciques , he said, had divided up the state.

“Each one respects his zone. . . . We are necessary in this system. We are people who maintain control and calm in these places,” he said.

Gargallo was a member of the San Pablo Ojo de Agua ejido, or collective farm, about 190 miles southeast of Mexico City. Officially, each member has only 30 acres, but Veracruz newspapers report that Gargallo owned 7,500 acres of rich farmland.

San Pablo Ojo de Agua sits at the end of a dirt road that runs through luminescent fields of sugar cane and bananas, past the smokestacks of mills rising like rural skyscrapers out of a tropical expanse.

Just beyond the village school and church is Gargallo’s new cement house, with an altar to the Virgin of Guadalupe next to the front door. It is the only two-story building in town.

Even with Gargallo dead, fear still overshadows this village of 500 residents like afternoon thunderclouds.

“He was practically our boss,” said Pascual Cruz, 55, sitting in the shade of a tamarind tree. “He organized us to cut the cane, and then he took 20 tons from each of us.”

“There was nothing we could do about it,” said Antelmo Morales, 38. “He had bought off all of the authorities. Who were we going to complain to?”

Residents say they avoided Gargallo and tried to look the other way when he showed up in his solid gold bracelets, neck chain and gold Rolex watch. Now they worry that another strongman will try to take over from Gargallo.

“The few of us who are here are going to organize so that nobody can take what’s ours again,” Cruz said.

Officials expect a fight for Gargallo’s turf. In backward areas of the country, caciques have long been tolerated and even courted by the official Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has ruled Mexico for 62 years. Newer caciques use less blatant violence, wooing and conning the people instead. They often become power brokers, negotiating with the official party for aid in exchange for votes at election time. And over the years, caciques have become increasingly involved in the growing drug trade.

“Caciques are in the interest of the state,” explained peasant leader Margarito Montes. “It reproduces them, needs them to maintain political control.”

Reporters and local officials speculate that Gargallo’s murderous ways may have become too blatant. He is blamed for the murders of Sixto Diaz, the ruling party mayoral candidate in Yanga, and his brother, Rafael, a leading cane grower. The two were slain Aug. 9.

A week after the Diaz murders, cane growers Venustiano and Angel Lara Rico disappeared from Omealca. Their bodies are believed to be among the 30 so far found on Gargallo’s land--bodies that have so gruesomely certified what everyone suspected all along.