Both Sides of Mexico Drug Wars Adore Stolen 4x4s : Law: A song celebrates smugglers’ ‘Suburban of Death.’ San Diego officials demand action to curb thefts.

In Mexico’s swashbuckling drug wars, the Chevrolet Suburban rules: It is a getaway vehicle, a status symbol, a war wagon whose mystique blends menace and style.

Suburbans, Jeep Cherokees and other U.S.-made, four-wheel-drive vehicles are prized by gangsters and cops, symbiotic warriors who also share a penchant for cowboy boots, sunglasses and AK-47 assault rifles.

The vehicles that symbolize rugged upscale comfort for Southern Californians have been immortalized in Mexican popular song--the street poetry of a violent underworld in which drug lords replace the revolutionaries of traditional ballads. In “The Suburban of Death,” the Monterrey-based Pioneers of the North croon about the exploits of two marauding traffickers in a Suburban stocked with machine guns and high-tech gadgetry.

“ The Suburban of Death

Is what they call it everywhere

And Customs and soldiers can’t stop it

When the federales see it, they better beware “

Four-wheel-drive vehicles have played a recurring role in a spate of spectacular drug-related incidents in Tijuana. And the new bloodshed has revived an old scandal involving the use of stolen U.S. automobiles by Mexican officials.

Mexican federal police unintentionally set off a public relations bomb this month during their surprise arrest of Baja’s deputy attorney general on corruption charges. Televised images showed dozens of raffish-looking federal officers with heavy weapons girding for combat after a brief confrontation with state police, then departing with the prisoner in a traffic-stopping convoy of Jeeps and Suburbans--some with California license plates.

When record checks revealed that up to 30 unmarked police vehicles appeared to have been stolen north of the border, outraged San Diego County supervisors demanded action by the U.S. and Mexican governments. An internal investigation ordered by Mexico’s attorney general resulted in charges against one officer for possession of a stolen Jeep Cherokee. Eighteen other officers have been questioned.

“Mexican officials were caught red-handed with the goods,” said Brian Bilbray, a county supervisor. “We have to take care of this problem. I think all of us who wanted to encourage free trade across the border didn’t mean this kind of free trade.”

About 10% of the 34,000 vehicles stolen in San Diego County last year ended up going south, according to U.S. law enforcement officials. Some Mexican police allegedly keep confiscated cars for themselves, do business with organized auto theft rings and even send paid enforcers, known as aspirinas , north to steal vehicles, U.S. officials say.

The demand for sport utility vehicles in Mexico and Central America helps explain a low 20% recovery rate, compared to an overall recovery rate of about 82% for stolen autos, according to San Diego County’s Regional Auto Theft Task Force. U.S. authorities locate about 2,400 stolen U.S. cars in Baja each year with the help of Mexican authorities.

Nonetheless, Daniel Ryan, an FBI agent who heads the multi-agency task force, told a meeting of county supervisors: “Up to 30 vehicles have been seen in and around different (police) agencies in Mexico with either license plates that don’t belong on them or actually stolen California license plates. . . . This has been an ongoing problem.”

The brazen practice endures despite crackdowns and stern words by authorities in both nations.

In 1982, the director of Mexico’s now-defunct Federal Security Directorate was indicted in San Diego on charges of running a theft operation that specialized in luxury cars. In 1991, two top commanders of the Baja California transit police were charged in Mexicali with buying five four-wheel-drive models from their alleged business partners--professional trans-border thieves.

And in March, at a busy Tijuana intersection, two Suburbans carrying an elite team of federal agents stopped a red Suburban driven by state judicial police officers. The passengers allegedly included a drug lord and his bodyguards; they opened fire, initiating a fierce, close-quarters gunfight that left five men dead and ignited a political conflict between state and federal governments.

The Tijuana shootout also proved quite a shock for the Rogers family of Poway, a resolutely middle-class community northeast of San Diego. During a news broadcast about the incident, the family saw their red 1989 Suburban, which had been stolen two weeks earlier from a restaurant parking lot and still bore California plates.

The vehicle had been transformed into the “Suburban of Death.” The grainy footage showed rivulets of blood, frenzied paramedics, sprawled bodies in the street beneath the open doors. Machine-gun volleys had shattered windows and shredded metal.

Korinne Rogers said the experience was “kind of eerie.” And it left her feeling besieged.

“One block in my neighborhood had five different four-wheel-drives stolen in one night,” said Rogers, a mother of four whose family owns a pizza parlor. “Personally, I’m getting real tired of this. Something has to be done.”

Among U.S. families, the image of sport utility vehicles is hip, not lethal. Suburbans, Cherokees and Ford Explorers have surged in popularity among that most ubiquitous of trendsetting demographic groups--affluent young professionals. The vehicles represent a stylish reincarnation of the family station wagon of yore, according to auto industry analysts.

Ironically, drug runners on both sides of the border, Mexican police and smugglers of illegal immigrants prefer the four-wheel-drive conveyances for similar reasons: powerful engines, an elevated view of the road and ample passenger and cargo space. Reckless smugglers crammed a dozen illegal immigrants into a stolen Suburban that crashed in Temecula in 1992 while fleeing from the Border Patrol, killing six people.

Moreover, the sturdy machines withstand the rough urban topography of Tijuana (where potholes can resemble small canyons) and the rural dirt roads of Mexico and Central America.

Despite their popularity, Suburbans sometimes give way to Jeep Cherokees as the vehicle of choice. The assassins who gunned down Tijuana’s police chief in a highway ambush in April were driving a Cherokee and a Ford Bronco. In San Diego, Jeep thefts have more than doubled last year’s average of about 34 a month, jumping to 88 in March.

Exasperated law enforcement experts attribute the rise in Jeep thefts, which has been concentrated along the Interstate 5 corridor, at least partly to the arrival in Tijuana of special Mexican federal police units investigating drug traffickers and the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio. Some officers are suspected of taking advantage of their proximity to San Diego to place orders for Cherokees with professional thieves, according to police sources on both sides of the border.