Drug Feud Slayings Take Toll on Mexico

Camelia Calleja had heard it all before. The stories of local men being gunned down at a traffic light or the cinema in this quiet city. Narcotraficantes, neighbors would whisper.

But the UCLA graduate never thought that the killings would touch her. Never, that is, until a man strode into her Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in this city in Michoacan state in central Mexico last summer, whipped out a .38-caliber pistol and pumped five bullets into a man eating lunch with his three small children.

“It makes me so angry,” said the restaurant owner, a 31-year-old with braces and a thick braid. “We want to work hard. We have nothing to do with drugs. But suddenly you’re affected.”

The killing appeared to be part of a phenomenon that is remaking the Mexican landscape.

With little fanfare, drug slayings in Mexico have mounted into the hundreds--maybe several thousand--a year, experts say. Only a few of the slayings receive much public attention, such as the recent massacre of 19 adults and children near Ensenada, 60 miles south of San Diego. But the violence is occurring in dozens of other cities and towns as the narcotics business spills beyond its traditional home in northwestern Mexico to penetrate the rest of the country.

Is Mexico becoming the next Colombia? The death toll from drug feuds would suggest so. However, drug violence has not emerged as a major political issue in Mexico, as it did in Colombia. Some say that’s because the victims are generally low-level criminals, not famous figures. But others charge that Mexican authorities conceal the extent of the problem.

“There is now a silent war in this country. The government is very guilty for downplaying this,” charged Lucio Mendoza, head of the private Mexican Institute for Organized Crime Studies.

Mexican authorities have no statistics for drug-related killings. But figures compiled by The Times from journalists and human rights activists in the capital and 16 of Mexico’s most drug-plagued states indicate that at least 500 deaths have occurred this year. Mendoza estimates that the number is higher--1,500 to 2,000, a range that authorities privately acknowledge may be closer to the truth. In the United States, with almost three times the population, there were 819 drug-related killings in 1996, the latest year available, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Many of the Mexican slayings occur in well-known narcotics crossroads on the U.S. border, such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. But they are happening in other areas too.

Residents of Mexico’s showcase industrial city, Monterrey, have been stunned by three drug-style shootings in recent months, including one at a popular restaurant. A battle between drug gangs in the southern state of Guerrero this month left three dead. Last week, five corpses turned up on a highway outside Mexico City, each shot in the head, victims of what judicial authorities called a probable narcotics feud.

“There used to be a few classic [drug] areas. It was extremely rare to see cases like this in other parts of the country,” said Luis Astorga, a sociologist at Mexico’s National Autonomous University who studies drug trafficking.

“But the change in routes is very dynamic” as traffickers constantly seek less-patrolled corridors to ship drugs to the United States, he noted. “There are more [murder] cases than before,” he said, “because the [drug] demand is stronger, there are more players.”

City’s Charm Belies Narcotics Violence

Uruapan, a city of 500,000 nestled in an emerald valley, offers a snapshot of how drug trafficking is tearing the country’s social fabric.

The city is famous for its abundant avocados, often called “green gold.” But about 20 years ago, Uruapan became a hub for another green gold: marijuana.

“It spurred the economy and apparently was going to be beneficial,” recalled Pedro Plancarte, president of the city’s main business association. “But it hasn’t been like that. It brought problems.”

That’s obvious from a glance at the local newspapers. They reveal a violence strikingly at odds with Uruapan’s small-town friendliness and quaint downtown of narrow streets and terra cotta roofs.

In addition to the attack at the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, there have been execution-style killings in the past few months at the city bullring and on a road near the Pepsi-Cola plant. Recently, two gagged and bound corpses turned up in the nearby countryside with bullet wounds to the heads--the signature drug hit.

The violence that has accompanied the drug trade has disrupted a peaceful community, say residents. But there is little public protest.

“We in this society know what’s happening. But we have no confidence in speaking up because there could be retaliation. Even the newspapers say nothing,” said Plancarte, the business leader. “We’re troubled, but our impotence makes us simple spectators.”

Fear of drug traffickers is only one inhibition. Over the years, several locals said, people have seen the security forces turn a blind eye to the drug trade--or worse. In a city such as Uruapan, it doesn’t escape notice when a reputed trafficker dines out with police.

“The worst of it? All of us who work decently, we know who the narcos are,” says Calleja, the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet owner, who is an Uruapan native.

“Many of these people are protected by the government and judicial police. I could tell you which of my customers are narcos. We all know. They are in our society, our schools--everywhere.”

The regional state prosecutor, Adolfo Castellanos de la Torre, denied that drug violence is a serious problem. He identified only two of the 27 slayings in the area this year as drug-related.

Most, he said, appeared to be linked to private feuds. Pressed about the series of execution-style slayings, however, he acknowledged that few have been solved.

And other local sources said narcotics trafficking appeared to be at the root of many killings. The city police chief, Arturo Hernandez, estimates that 30% to 40% of local slayings are related to drugs.

Uruapan is just one of dozens of communities, from Mexico City to the Yucatan peninsula, where drug killings are leaving their mark.

In northern Mexico, the violence has radiated out from a few key cities to bedevil every border state. Arturo Solis, a human rights worker in Reynosa, said drug-related killings in the city near the Texas border increased from eight in 1997 to at least 14 so far this year.

“The drug traffickers move to places where they can work easily,” he said. “Maybe next year they’ll go somewhere else because there is a lot of attention on Reynosa now.”

Many of the deaths in northern Mexico that followed linked to a power struggle after the July 1997 death of drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

But the violence is evident well beyond the border. Jalisco, a central Mexican state known for its fervent Catholic population, has racked up more than 50 drug-related slayings this year, many in the capital, Guadalajara, according to news reports.

The slayings generally attract little notice, turning up several times a week in brief mentions in the national press. There has been little response nationally from the government, political parties or the public. “It’s a taboo theme in Congress,” left-wing Sen. Layda Sansores told foreign correspondents recently. “We’re afraid of the drug traffickers.”

Public Minimizes Extent of Drug Killings

For many Mexicans, however, fear isn’t the issue. To them, drug violence simply isn’t as important as such common crimes as robbery and kidnapping, whose numbers have spiraled in recent years, affecting the average citizen more directly.

Analysts add that many Mexicans are unaware of how extensive drug violence is. Nationally, less than half of homicides of any kind result in an arrest, according to the Mexican Institute for Organized Crime Studies. Drug-related slayings can be especially difficult to solve because relatives of the victim often are afraid to provide information, authorities say.

But critics say police often don’t even try to solve drug cases.

“It could be because of the incompetence of the police, who are not efficient,” said Rafael Alvarez of the Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Center in Mexico City. But, with many police in the pay of traffickers, poor investigations could be deliberate, he said. Many elected authorities downplay the violence.

“What happens in our country is hardly any different than what happens in the United States or in any of the developed countries in Europe or in Asia,” Mexicali Mayor Eugenio Elorduy told a Times reporter after the Ensenada massacre.

But the traffickers’ growing influence is silently eroding communities’ sense of security. In Ciudad Juarez, 61% of residents feel unsafe, according to a recent poll by the Mexico City daily Reforma.

In Uruapan, authorities say drug violence isn’t a major problem. But they acknowledge that the community has been transformed by the traffickers, who have branched into cocaine and methamphetamines.

Cocaine use among young people has soared, they say. And they recognize that a recent wave of abductions is connected to the narcotics trade.

Uruapan Mayor Mary Doddoli said narcotics violence mainly affects criminals, not respectable citizens. Many residents agree. But a local restaurant manager noted that the bloodshed has had a chilling effect nonetheless. Just last year, he recalled, a man was gunned down leaving a cinema near the restaurant Los Manjares.

“Sometimes you’re afraid to go out at night,” said the manager, who identified himself only as Gustavo. “There could be a shootout.”

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Greg Brosnan of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau and Ken Ellingwood of the San Diego Bureau contributed to this report.