Slaying Points Up Mexico’s Weak Grip

The New Year’s Eve slaying of a narco-trafficker’s brother in Mexico’s highest-security prison resulted Wednesday in the detention of the prison warden and renewed criticism of the government’s seeming inability to curb the power and reach of the nation’s deadly drug cartels.

Arturo Guzman Loera, brother of Sinaloa-based drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, was shot seven times by an assassin in an area of La Palma prison set aside for inmates to talk with their attorneys. Guards arrested inmate Jose Ramirez Villanueva, who is already serving time for murder.

Revenge killings are common in Mexico’s drug underworld, but Guzman Loera’s slaying was the third case of a high-profile trafficking suspect being killed inside the prison in a year. The incident has raised questions about the ability of President Vicente Fox’s government to protect inmates and provide justice.

In May, drug trafficking suspect Alberto Soberanes was strangled in a shower room at La Palma, and in October, Miguel Angel Beltran Lugo, an alleged lieutenant to Joaquin Guzman, was shot to death in the prison cafeteria. A key question is how the weapons used in the killings got inside the prison, which has multiple security checks.

“You can understand one, but three?” said Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City professor and expert on organized crime. “This is an embarrassment to the country, and it has some political cost for Fox because it shows he’s not very efficient. It shows the Mexican state is very weak.”

Guzman Loera was indicted on drug charges in a U.S. federal court several years ago, and U.S. officials were in the process of requesting his extradition at the time of his slaying. His brother Joaquin escaped from the Puente Grande prison in a laundry basket in January 2001. The United States government has offered a $5-million reward for information leading to his capture.

La Palma warden Guillermo Montoya Salazar was fired Tuesday and detained Wednesday for investigation.

Ramirez Villanueva told investigators that he was ordered under a threat of death to carry out the killing, but did not say by whom. One theory is that Guzman Loera’s slaying was ordered by Juarez drug cartel leader Vicente Carrillo Fuentes in revenge for the September slaying of his brother Rodolfo outside a Culiacan mall.

John Fernandes, special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s San Diego division, said the assassination resulted from a “repositioning for power” among cartels weakened by recent arrests on both sides of the border.

“This killing is typical of the trade, without question, when you have the degree of destruction that the trafficking organizations in Mexico have had to deal with,” Fernandes said.

Ernesto Lopez Portillo, director of the Institute for Security and Democracy think tank in Mexico City, said the killing was the culmination of organized crime’s decade-long bid to take control of the Mexican penal system. The process has been hastened by the arrival of several captured traffickers at La Palma, including Benjamin Arellano Felix, the alleged leader of the so-called Tijuana cartel.

“It shows the carelessness of the government not to have foreseen the escalation of violence that could result and the necessary controls required to avoid it,” Lopez Portillo said.

In addition to Arellano Felix, La Palma houses Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and Rafael Caro Quintero, the Sinaloa-based drug traffickers who were convicted of ordering the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.

Since Guzman Loera’s killing, Mexico City newspapers have been full of revelations about the case, throwing light on the problems in the country’s penal system.

On Wednesday, it was reported that the Guzman family sent a letter in October warning the government that Arturo’s life was in danger and that he should be moved to another prison.

Prison guards walked off the job at La Palma briefly Tuesday after prison systems chief Carlos Tornero Diaz accused unnamed prison employees of “high treason” for allowing Ramirez Villanueva to carry out the killing. Guards returned when Tornero Diaz issued an apology.

Some members of opposition parties in the Mexican Congress want more officials fired, including Tornero Diaz and federal Secretary of Public Security Ramon Martin Huerta.

“The people charged with keeping order in the prisons give evidence of a high level of incompetence, which is why it is imperative to remove them,” said Jose Nava Altamirano, a deputy belonging to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a member of the Democratic Revolution Party and a possible presidential candidate in 2006, said that army troops should take over security at La Palma prison until “honorable” guards and administrators could be trained.

Fox and his National Action Party have stood behind public security minister Huerta, who came under pressure to resign last month after two Federal Preventive Police members were attacked and killed by a mob in a Mexico City suburb.

Officials in Fox’s government have admitted that their control over the penal system is tenuous.

In August, deputy attorney general for organized crime Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcellos said the Zetas, a group of corrupt former anti-drug police turned traffickers, were planning to break into La Palma to free narco-traffickers held inside.