Massacre Survivors Leave as Drug Wars Spread

By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service

EL LIMONCITO, Mexico -- The killers came on Valentine's Day, and made this a village of widows. In the middle of a birthday party, masked men with automatic
rifles walked out of the green hills and slaughtered most of El Limoncito's men and boys, 12 in all.

Even here in Sinaloa, a Pacific Coast state known as the cradle of Mexican drug trafficking, the executions were shocking. In their savagery, they signaled the ugly
realities that stand in the way of President Vicente Fox's pledge to crack down on the violent drug industry.

"I have no voice left from screaming," said Leticia Gaspar, 39, whose husband and two boys, age 13 and 19, were among those cut down in a spray of bullets from
AK-47 assault rifles in this remote valley where marijuana and poppy fields flourish.

As the young widow tied a crucifix to a tree marking the spot where her husband's blood still stained the dirt, her 8-year-old son, Francisco -- one of the few
surviving males -- spoke up: "Bad people killed everybody."

Those bad people have not been found. The widows here tell police they have no idea who killed their husbands, or why. Their silence is typical here in Mexico's
Wild West, where local ballads warn that saying too much to police is a sure ticket to revenge and more bloodshed.

Justice, or "settling accounts" as it is called here, is often delivered personally, down the barrel of a gun. There is not much in the way of formal government in the hills
and valleys of the Sierra Madre nearly 700 miles northwest of Mexico City, the seat of Fox's government. Around here, a place like El Limoncito, with 60 people, is
practically a metropolis. The few other populated patches are connected by narrow rocky roads and illuminated at night only by the stars. These days even the police
and soldiers travel in groups. Just about everyone has a gun, most often an AK-47.

More than 200 drug gangs operate in this state and, as is often the case at the beginning of a new presidency, many are engaged in violent turf battles, Mexican
authorities say. In many cases, these groups are no more than loose alliances of families who grow marijuana and poppies that can be used to produce morphine and
heroin.

The farmers are the nuts and bolts of Mexico's drug machinery, and since Fox took office Dec. 1, they have been caught up in increasing violence. The majority of
drugs shipped to the United States go through Mexico, and many are produced here. Sinaloa is by no means the only state suffering drug violence; it occurs in
virtually all border states. But what is happening here is a snapshot of what Fox's crusade against trafficking is up against.

Before the killings in El Limoncito on Feb. 14, the gunmen had asked the whereabouts of a man believed to be the leader of a drug gang that operates nearby. To
law enforcement officials trying to solve the murders, this suggests the killings were gang-related.

"They are fighting over territory," said state Attorney General Ramon de Jesus Castro Atondo, sitting in his office in the capital, Culiacan, 32 miles northwest and a
two-hour drive on bumpy roads from El Limoncito. He and others say the "mini-cartels" are regrouping because of Fox's declaration of "war without mercy" against
traffickers.

Since Dec. 1, at least 157 killings have been recorded in Sinaloa state, many of them mob-style assassinations. So many bodies dropped in December that the
governor called Fox for help, and the president sent in more than 1,000 federal police officers. Last week's victims included a police officer riddled with 50 bullets
and two people tortured, stuffed in blood-soaked sacks and left at the side of a road.

The traffickers' regrouping is being compared to the shifting structure and strategies of a corporation adapting to a changing environment. After past anti-drug
offensives and the capture of key directors of giant drug organizations, many big cartels broke into smaller gangs. Now there are signs that some of these groups are
trying -- or being forced -- to reconsolidate to survive.

When a new president takes office each six years in Mexico, there typically is a turnover among law enforcement officials and a spike in violence as drug traffickers
forge alliances with new policemen, soldiers and judges. Even officials that start honest often end up corrupted by the drug lords' "silver or lead" offer: Take a bribe
or a bullet. As a result, traffickers have been able to buy almost anything -- police escorts of drug shipments to the U.S. border as well as immunity from arrest and
prosecution.

One of the most ruthless drug cartel leaders in Sinaloa history, Joaquin Guzman, known as El Chapo, bought his way out of a maximum security prison last month.
Since his escape, 73 prison guards and officials have been arrested for helping him go free and allowing delivery to his cell of wine, prostitutes and Viagra.

Fox's war on traffickers has sent thousands of police and soldiers into Sinaloa; altogether, 30,000 soldiers are to be assigned nationwide. In the first 80 days of his
administration, there have been nearly 2,000 arrests connected to drug trafficking. Fox is also pledging to extradite traffickers to the United States if they are wanted
on drug charges there.

When President Bush met with Fox on Feb. 16, Bush said the Mexican president's anti-drug effort had "certainly caught my attention." Bush also spoke of the nexus
between Mexican supply and U.S. demand for drugs. "The main reason why drugs are shipped through Mexico to the United States is because United States citizens
use drugs," Bush said in an unusually blunt admission by a U.S. president.

Around here, people have been saying that since World War II.

"Do you know why Sinaloa is the cradle of drug trafficking? Because of the U.S. government," said Juan Miguel Ponce Edmonson, the former head of Interpol in
Mexico.

During the 1940s, the U.S. government encouraged poppy cultivation in these fertile hills because it needed morphine to ease the pain of wounded American soldiers.
Ever since, poppy growing has been big business, too lucrative to resist for many farmers who would otherwise be earning much less growing the tomatoes for which
a local baseball team is named.

In the 1960s, the marijuana trade here expanded with the American appetite. Year-round sunshine made the plants easy to grow and the unpopulated valleys and
hills made them easy to hide. To this day, many of the joints smoked in American college dorms and living rooms contain marijuana grown by Mexican farmers in
little places like this.

In just the last few days, 21 tons of Mexican marijuana have been seized near the border, much of it stuffed in cookie boxes and headed for sale on American streets.
Every year, more than 2,000 tons are seized heading north and everyone knows that represents only a fraction of what is shipped.

Drugs are as much a part of life in Sinaloa as hot Pacific breezes, and the violence here is extreme, even by mafia standards.

"Italian [mobsters] kiss on the right and left cheek and then kill with one bullet," Ponce Edmonson said. "Here they kill with 40 or 50 bullets."

State Attorney General Castro, who recently visited California to see how schools administer anti-drug programs, said his state needs to educate its children better
about drug violence. It will not be easy: In the state capital stands a shrine to the man considered to be the patron saint of drug traffickers, Jesus Malverde. He was a
Robin Hood-style thief who gave to the poor -- an image the traffickers have cultivated by pumping money into local roads, schools and houses.

"We have to confront the culture. Kids are dreaming of owning their own AK-47," said Leonel Aguirre Meza, a human rights lawyer. Aguirre has taken up the work
of his brother, Jorge, a former prosecutor and an outspoken critic of traffickers who was killed two years ago in a town near EL Limoncito. In the 1990s, nearly 50
lawyers who crossed paths with traffickers were killed in Sinaloa.

Asked why he would continue such a dangerous, and seemingly hopeless, battle, Aguirre said: "Everybody has a role in their life, and I have this role. I want justice
for my brother. We are fighting the drug traffic so it ends. I am a dreamer, but not the only one."

In El Limoncito, there is no such hope. On a recent afternoon, all the widows were packing, hauling their belongings into trucks and abandoning this centuries-old
town that was once more famous for its deer than its drugs.

"How could we live here when we know this is the place where our husbands' lives ended?" said Guadalupe Villegas, 43. "The town of El Limoncito is dead."

                                               © 2001