Mexico drug wars suspected in deadly shootout
At least 8 are killed in a highway gun battle between alleged rival traffickers, officials say.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
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"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexshooting21-2008may21,0,1723698.story
From the Los Angeles Times

Mexico drug wars suspected in deadly shootout
At least 8 are killed in a highway gun battle between alleged rival traffickers, officials say.

By Ken Ellingwood
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

9:00 PM PDT, May 20, 2008

MEXICO CITY — At least eight men were reported dead Tuesday in the northern Mexican state of Durango after a gun battle between suspected drug traffickers, authorities said.

The early morning shootout took place on a highway near the town of Vicente Guerrero, about 400 miles northwest of Mexico City.

Officials shed little light on possible motives for the gun battle, the latest in a wave of violent incidents that have erupted around Mexico in recent weeks.

A spokesman for the Durango state attorney general's office said officials discovered fragmentation grenades and high-powered firearms at the scene.

None of the dead bore identification, said the spokesman, Ruben Lopez.

All were dressed in black, he said.

"The initial theory is that it involved a confrontation between organized crime groups that until now we have not been able to identify," Lopez said.

Authorities also found a dozen late-model vehicles that had been reinforced with armor, he said.

Durango, about 300 miles south of the border city of Ciudad Juarez, is not known as a hot spot for drug violence. But it abuts the states of Chihuahua and Sinaloa, both of which have been the scene of violent turf wars between drug traffickers.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon dispatched 2,000 soldiers and federal police to Sinaloa last week amid warring between rival factions of a major drug cartel, violence that has killed more than 200 people this year, according to Mexican media tallies.

One of those factions is believed to have been behind the May 8 assassination in Mexico City of Edgar Millan Gomez, the acting chief of the Federal Preventive Police.

Authorities suspect that Millan Gomez was targeted by Arturo Beltran Leyva, formerly a top aide to drug lord Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman. Beltran Leyva has reportedly broken off and allied his faction with a group known as the Zetas, which has served as the armed wing of the so-called Gulf cartel.

In Chihuahua, the Gulf cartel has been locked in a bloody turf war with the group that has dominated drug trafficking there from its base in Ciudad Juarez.

Also, the Baja California attorney general's office said that a California woman whose body was among four discovered fatally shot on a hillside outside Rosarito Beach on Sunday had a criminal record in Mexico.

Libey Gianna Craig, 28, of La Mesa, a suburb of San Diego, had been arrested several times on drug, weapons and human-smuggling charges, according to Mexican authorities.

The other three victims were Mexican citizens. Two had criminal records in the U.S., authorities said. Police still have not discovered a motive in the case, which is the latest in a string of homicides in the Tijuana area.

Craig, whose purse was found containing her passport and a hypodermic needle, according to authorities, had been reported missing by her father on May 8, authorities said.

More than 1,300 people have been killed nationwide this year, according to media tallies. Most of the slayings have taken place in half a dozen states that are hubs for drug trafficking and organized crime.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

Times staff writers Cecilia Sánchez and Richard Marosi contributed to this report.

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New phase seen in Mexico's drug war
The recent killing of the country's top drug cop has prompted a crackdown, but the cartels have struck back.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexwar18-2008may18,0,5575316.story
From the Los Angeles Times

New phase seen in Mexico's drug war
The recent killing of the country's top drug cop has prompted a crackdown, but the cartels have struck back.

By Héctor Tobar
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 18, 2008

MEXICO CITY — To strike back at narcotics traffickers suspected of ordering the assassination of Mexico's top drug cop, President Felipe Calderon dispatched 2,000 army troops and federal police to the gang's home base, the western state of Sinaloa.

The traffickers struck back themselves with a paramilitary-style ambush of a police station, and taunted the newly arrived troops with mocking signs on the streets.

Analysts say those moves last week show that the killing of Edgar Millan Gomez on May 8 has opened a dangerous new phase in the country's drug war.

Millan Gomez, the 41-year-old acting director of Mexico's federal police, knew he was a target, and he shuttled among three homes in a bid to outwit his nemesis: Arturo Beltran Leyva, the leader of one faction of the so-called Sinaloa cartel.

The police official lost that battle.

In the days since he was gunned down, officials have revealed that Millan Gomez's killers probably knew that he slept in more than one home. They even had the keys to his front door, a stunning illustration of the cartels' power to gather intelligence about government operations.

Officials and analysts argue that the assassination was actually a sign of weakness. Pressured by the government, they say, the Sinaloa cartel is in retreat and disarray, split into factions that have turned on each other. Several mid- and high-ranking members of the gang have been arrested, and army troops already deployed in the region have seized drug shipments, destroyed opium poppy fields and seized more than 100 airplanes believed to be used by traffickers.

Killing Mexico's No. 3 public-safety official was a reckless act committed by cornered criminals, the government says.

"We have damaged their financial and logistical operations," Calderon said Monday. "And this has apparently provoked these criminal acts of desperation in which they seek to recover the protected spaces they've lost."

Millan Gomez, who coordinated joint efforts of the army and federal police, had struck several blows against the Sinaloa cartel. The biggest was the seizure of 23 tons of cocaine in October at the Pacific port of Manzanillo.

But the investigation into Millan Gomez's killing has also revealed the power and reach of the cartel.

In Mexico City, Millan Gomez's bodyguards and several of his aides have been forced to take polygraph examinations. Investigators believe a top official close to Millan Gomez must have betrayed him to cartel hit men.

At least one federal police officer has been arrested in the killing: Jose Antonio Montes Garfias, a 14-year veteran assigned to the regional headquarters of the federal police in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state.

Details also have emerged on the extent to which Mexico's drug organizations rely on former army soldiers and serving policemen.

The Sinaloa cartel is one of the oldest in Mexico. Founded by a few close-knit families and once dominant in Mexico's drug trade, it has been challenged over the last decade by the so-called Gulf cartel, based in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas. But the Sinaloa traffickers still control Pacific smuggling routes that U.S. officials say have become the most popular for shipment of Colombian cocaine to the United States.

Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, the fugitive leader of the gang, is fighting for control of the group with his former top henchman, Beltran Leyva, officials say. The animosity between the factions may have led to the killing of Guzman's son, Edgar, on May 8, the day Millan Gomez was slain.

Millan Gomez was directing an operation against Beltran Leyva just hours before he was killed, officials said. His police officers had cornered the drug baron on a highway outside Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City. But they found themselves outgunned by a well-coordinated team of bodyguards, led by several former members of the 43rd Infantry Battalion of the Mexican army.

Two men on each side were killed, authorities said. Nine of Beltran Leyva's bodyguards were arrested.

But Beltran Leyva escaped. That evening, his plan to rid himself of the tenacious Millan Gomez moved toward fruition, authorities said. According to federal police, the cartel leader contracted Millan Gomez's killing to a criminal gang in Mexico City.

Millan Gomez's schedule was a closely guarded secret, known only to a few associates, officials said. But as he headed home accompanied by two bodyguards in an armored sport utility vehicle, four cartel hit men were waiting behind his front door.

The bodyguards dropped off Millan Gomez, who entered his home alone. Seconds later, they heard gunshots.

Though wounded by at least eight shots, Millan Gomez was able to grab one of the attackers, officials said.

"Who sent you?" he demanded. "Who sent you to kill me?" He died at a hospital, the third high-ranking federal police official killed in Mexico City in a week.

His bodyguards were wounded in an exchange of gunfire with the fleeing assailants. One man, a petty criminal with two convictions for auto theft, was arrested. At least three escaped.

Several analysts said Mexico was entering a new phase of the drug war. The government offensive, they said, had caused cash shortages and splits in the cartels.

Newspaper columnist Jorge Fernandez Menendez compared the Mexican traffickers' predicament with that of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar and his Medellin cartel during its decline in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

"The weaker Escobar became, the more enemies he made . . . and the less money he had, the more he resorted to violence to take revenge on his enemies and strike fear in them," Fernandez Menendez wrote in the newspaper Excelsior.

On Tuesday, Calderon's "security cabinet," including the Interior and Defense secretaries and attorney general, made a point of traveling to Sinaloa's capital for a meeting. Then, the troops were dispatched.

"If necessary, we'll bring even more troops," Defense Secretary Guillermo Galvan said. "Organized crime is not, and can never be, stronger than Mexico."

Officials quickly moved to close 20 of the 22 currency exchange houses in Culiacan and audit their operations. Such businesses often are used by traffickers to launder profits.

The drug traffickers responded with the guerrilla-style attack against the police station.

On Wednesday, as many as 40 cartel operatives launched an attack on a police station in Guamuchil, a city 60 miles northwest of Culiacan. They came in 10 late-model pickups, and wore jackets bearing the logo of a federal police agency.

As the half a dozen police officers inside scrambled for cover, the attackers sprayed the building with automatic-weapons fire and set off at least two grenades. Two officers were hurt before the attackers fled, leaving behind several hundred spent ammunition casings.

The traffickers have also posted signs on Culiacan street corners that taunt the government efforts.

"Little soldiers of lead, generals of straw," read one sign, painted on a sheet.

"This is the territory of Arturo Beltran."

hector.tobar@latimes.com

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Mexico vows to continue war on organized crime
Top officials mourn a colleague allegedly killed by a drug cartel. 'We will not be intimidated,' one says.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
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http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
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"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexdrugs10-2008may10,0,5610979.story

From the Los Angeles Times
Mexico vows to continue war on organized crime
Top officials mourn a colleague allegedly killed by a drug cartel. 'We will not be intimidated,' one says.
By Ken Ellingwood
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 10, 2008

MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials vowed Friday to press their war on organized crime despite the brazen killing a day earlier of a top federal police official by a gunman believed to be working for a drug cartel.

"We will not be intimidated," federal Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said during an official memorial service in Mexico City for Edgar Millan Gomez, who was acting chief of a federal police agency.

President Felipe Calderon, visiting the violence-plagued northern border town of Reynosa later in the day, said organized crime groups were striking back against the federal government "because they know we are hitting their criminal structure."

"We are determined to recover streets that never should have ceased being ours," said Calderon, who had attended the memorial.

Millan Gomez, a veteran officer, oversaw the drive against organized crime before taking over as chief of the Federal Preventive Police last month. He was the highest-ranking Mexican official to be slain since Calderon launched the anti-crime initiative in late 2006.

The attack on Millan Gomez, 41, the third high-ranking federal security official killed in the capital in a week, was the most audacious blow against the government during months of bloodshed.

Authorities believe that Millan Gomez was targeted by drug traffickers as revenge for the arrests of some of their allies, including Alfredo Beltran Leyva, allegedly a top operative of the so-called Sinaloa cartel.

Millan Gomez was shot eight times at close range after four bodyguards accompanied him to his home in Mexico City in the early morning hours Thursday.

Police arrested a 34-year-old convicted auto thief named Alejandro Ramirez, who was found in the home wearing latex gloves and armed with a handgun equipped with a silencer.

Mexican media reported Friday that authorities suspected that Millan Gomez was betrayed by someone who knew his plans and movements.

After being wounded, Millan Gomez was able to question his attacker, according to a report in the daily Reforma newspaper.

"Who sent you? Who sent you to kill me?" he asked, according to the report, citing accounts of two of his bodyguards.

Two bodyguards who went in the house with Millan Gomez were also wounded in the barrage. When the other guards forced their way in, they confronted Ramirez wielding a gun but out of ammunition, the newspaper said.

Mexico has registered more than 3,500 drug-related killings, many victims of violence between rival gangs, since the government offensive against trafficking groups began in December 2006, according to unofficial tallies. The death toll has climbed above 1,000 this year.

Some saw the latest police slayings as evidence that traffickers are feeling the sting of the government crackdown, which has sent more than 25,000 soldiers and federal police agents into the nation's key drug-smuggling corridors.

"We are at war," read the headline on an editorial in the El Universal newspaper.

"The growing number of bloody deeds around the country points to a prolonged and ever-widening conflict that society cannot remain indifferent to," the newspaper said.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com



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Drug cartel suspected in Mexico City killing
The nation's top organized crime officer, Edgar Millan Gomez, is shot dead in his home, the third police killing in a week. Officials blame the Sinaloa drug cartel.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
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http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico9-2008may09,0,7074614.story
From the Los Angeles Times

Drug cartel suspected in Mexico City killing
The nation's top organized crime officer, Edgar Millan Gomez, is shot dead in his home, the third police killing in a week. Officials blame the Sinaloa drug cartel.

By Héctor Tobar
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 9, 2008

MEXICO CITY — The national coordinator of Mexico's battle against organized crime was slain Thursday by an assassin hiding in his home in what appeared to be the latest revenge killing by one of the country's most notorious drug cartels.

Edgar Millan Gomez, 41, was the third leading federal security official to be killed in Mexico City in a week.

Police sources said the so-called Sinaloa cartel was behind the attack on Millan Gomez, the nation's third-ranking police official and acting director since April 1 of the Federal Preventive Police, an elite, 22,000-member force.

The Sinaloa cartel is one of several organized-crime groups that have grown rich transporting Colombian cocaine, locally manufactured methamphetamine and other illicit drugs to the United States.

The assassination came a week after Millan Gomez held a news conference in the capital of Sinaloa state to announce the arrests of a dozen suspected cartel hit men.

His killing is a dramatic escalation in the drug war, analysts said, and a clear indication that the Sinaloa-based traffickers have been hit hard by recent government raids and arrests.

Seven mid-ranking federal police officials have been killed in the last month. Like Millan Gomez, they were linked to recent actions against drug traffickers. In all, more than 1,000 people have died this year in violence related to organized crime, according to tallies kept by Mexican news media. Federal officials estimate that 2,500 people were killed last year.

"This morning, Mexico lost one of its most valuable men, a security professional who placed himself at the service of his country," Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said in a news release.

Millan Gomez, a college- educated professional with 20 years of law enforcement experience, was the kind of man President Felipe Calderon is counting on to rebuild Mexico's tarnished and ineffective police forces.

Calderon, speaking at an event in the central state of Guanajuato, called the killing a "cowardly" act.

"The example of his life gives us strength to continue the struggle against those who attack the tranquillity and health of the Mexican people," he said.

Jorge Chabat, a professor and security analyst here, said the slaying of such a high-ranking official was a clear attempt by the cartels to send a message to Calderon's government.

"Their daily operations have been seriously hurt by the authorities, to the point that even their cash flow is affected," Chabat said. "This killing is intended as a warning. It's the only explanation for such a brazen action."

Millan Gomez was shot eight times at point-blank range about 2:30 a.m. at his home in the Guerrero district of central Mexico City.

Authorities said the assassin was waiting in the home when two bodyguards dropped him off after a long day at work. The guards heard gunshots from inside the house and went in to investigate. They came under fire but were able to detain a suspect.

The bodyguards were hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening.

Alejandro Ramirez, 34, was arrested at the scene. He was wearing latex gloves and was armed with a handgun fitted with a silencer, officials said. Media outlets reported that at least two people escaped.

Officials said Ramirez had served two prison sentences for auto theft. They released a photo taken moments after the arrest, showing a young man drenched in sweat, a bandage over the corner of one eye.

Drug-related violence has risen as the Mexican government has stepped up efforts to crack down on cartels. As many as 15 people were killed last month in Tijuana in a gun battle between organized crime groups. Last weekend, 16 people were killed in two ambushes, the first at a cattleman's convention, in southern Guerrero state.

Millan Gomez was a high-profile warrior in the government offensive that Calderon announced shortly after taking office in December 2006. He was responsible for coordinating the work of special task forces that united the efforts of federal police with the army and other agencies, a post he took in 2006 and continued to hold while acting as chief of the Preventive Police.

In his May 1 news conference in Culiacan, Millan Gomez announced that 12 suspected Sinaloa cartel hit men had been detained a day earlier after a shootout with soldiers and police officers. He displayed to the news media an impressive cache of weapons and more than $350,000 in cash.

Later that day, Roberto Velasco Bravo, director of a federal organized-crime unit, was shot down outside his home in Mexico City'supscale Polanco district. A day later, Jose Aristeo Gomez, chief of staff of Federal Preventive Police in Mexico City, was shot and killed in a southern district.

Millan Gomez was born in Mexico City and received a law degree from the Universidad del Valle de Mexico. He began his career in 1988 as an agent for Mexico's top intelligence agency, the Center for National Security Investigations.

He moved to the Federal Investigations Agency, the Mexican equivalent of the FBI, and eventually headed its anti-kidnapping unit. In 2005, his team rescued Ruben Omar Romano, coach of the Cruz Azul soccer team, after 65 days of captivity. A dozen people were arrested.

He also worked as an observer on United Nations peace missions.

Millan Gomez was involved, along with army and other police officials, in the seizure of 26 tons of cocaine in October at the Pacific port of Manzanillo. Authorities said the cocaine was destined for the Sinaloa cartel.

Millan Gomez was a trusted subordinate of public safety coordinator Garcia Luna, who has said Mexico needs to professionalize its police forces to win the war against organized crime.

Garcia Luna has tried to purge the federal police of corrupt elements, and introduced stricter standards and improved training for recruits. Last June, Garcia Luna suspended 284 top officials from the Federal Investigative Agency and Federal Preventive Police pending polygraph and drug tests.

At the Federal Investigative Agency, the increasing number of college graduates is gradually changing the culture there, Garcia Luna said in a news conference last year.

"The presence of people with a different perspective, people with a different ethic and training, is the starting point for the fight against organized crime," he said.

Jorge Fernandez, who has written extensively on the drug trade, said the killing marked an escalation akin to the violence set off by Pablo Escobar in Colombia in the 1990s.

"What's troubling here is that [the government] knew that a war of this nature was coming," Fernandez said in a radio interview.

"When the cartels are weakest is when they become most violent . . . And yet a commander as important as Edgar Millan had so little security."

hector.tobar@latimes.com

Cecilia Sánchez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.

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Mystery surrounds Tijuana drug shootings
Newspapers are full of unattributed accounts of who was involved and who was killed. Mexican officials remain tight-lipped.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-drugwar28apr28,1,2912650.story

From the Los Angeles Times
Mystery surrounds Tijuana drug shootings
Newspapers are full of unattributed accounts of who was involved and who was killed. Mexican officials remain tight-lipped.
By Héctor Tobar
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

April 28, 2008

MEXICO CITY — On Sunday, following one of the bloodiest days in Tijuana's history, authorities held no news conferences. The death toll in the gangland-style shootings early Saturday between rival drug traffickers increased to 15 from 13, after two men died of their injuries. But not even the names of the dead were released.

Instead, speculation, rumor and scattered news leaks filled the information vacuum after yet another battle in Mexico's drug wars.

And there were only tentative answers to the larger questions that worry many here: Is this violence between drug dealers a sign that the Mexican government is winning the wars? Or is it just another symptom of a country slipping deeper into an abyss of lawlessness?

Official silence is common in Mexico, where thousands have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006. But many analysts believe that Calderon's decision to send thousands of army troops to Baja California, Veracruz, Michoacan and other states to crack down on the drug trade is reaping a type of dividend.

The government's efforts have disrupted agreements between trafficking organizations and corrupt officials, setting off turf wars among weakened organizations, analysts and government officials say.

"We wouldn't see so much bloodshed if the Mexican government were more complicit with these [criminal] organizations and just letting them have their way," said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

At the same time, the Tijuana shootout was just one of several seen in border communities in recent years. And unless officials decide to reveal more about who was involved and what happened, the true meaning of the bloodshed is likely to remain a mystery.

On Sunday morning Tijuana residents awoke to a rogue's gallery of criminal names in their newspapers.

"According to reliable sources," reported, the shootout was between rivals within the Arellano Felix gang.

Or maybe not. The national daily El Universal reported that the so-called Sinaloa cartel was to blame.

Several newspapers reported that among the dead was "Crutches," a.k.a. Luis Alfonso Velarde, a reputed local drug lord with a handful of YouTubevideo tributes to his name.

Another, even bigger "cartel" operative nicknamed "Mr. Three Letters" might be dead too, along with "La Perra," reported El Sol de Tijuana. And they may all have been ambushed by another cartel leader known as "El Cholo."

But no one was willing to confirm any of that on the record.

Official silence, many here argue, helps feed the culture of corruption. It is a widely recognized truth that drug traffickers operate in Baja California and elsewhere with the protection of some public officials.

On Tuesday, Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito, the commander of troops in the Baja region, took the extraordinary step of writing an open letter to a local newspaper that identified several law enforcement officials he alleged were linked to organized crime.

The letter's implicit argument was that officials who protect organized crime are likely to escape prosecution thanks to the culture of secrecy that surrounds law enforcement here.

"Isn't this corruption?" the general asked. "What a disgrace for the society of Baja California!"

Calderon's government has worked hard to clean up law enforcement. His top police official, Genaro Garcia Luna, has purged the Federal Investigative Agency of corrupt cops. Soldiers have temporarily disarmed police in Tijuana and other cities, and several reputed drug bosses have been extradited to the United States.

Yet the widespread violence shows few signs of abating. An estimated 2,500 people were killed in drug-related violence last year, officials say. So far this year, more than 850 people have been killed, according to tallies by news agencies.

The objective measures by which U.S. officials determine the strength of the drug trafficking business also offer a mixed bag.

The supply of cocaine declined in several U.S. cities during the first half of 2007, according to the U.S. National Drug Threat Assessment, a multi-agency report on the problem.

The drop in availability was probably a combined result of several large seizures of cocaine shipments en route to the United States, Mexico's anti-drug efforts, and warfare among rival Mexican traffickers, the report says.

By late 2007, supply "appeared to be returning to normal" in some U.S. markets, the report says. At the same time, the amount of cash smuggled in bulk from the United States to Mexico continued to increase, a sign that traffickers' revenues are still healthy.

"Mexican drug-trafficking organizations are the dominant distributors of wholesale quantities of cocaine in the United States, and no other group is positioned to challenge them in the near term," the assessment says.

Privately, top Mexican officials say that a decisive victory over the so-called drug cartels is impossible as long as demand for cocaine, methamphetamines and other drugs remains high in the United States.

The more realistic goal, one senior official said recently, is to keep the drug traffickers from dominating civic life in the regions where they are most powerful, including border cities such as Nuevo Laredo and Tijuana.

Although Calderon's efforts have reduced drug-related slayings in central Mexico, problems have "ballooned" along the border areas of Tijuana and Chihuahua state in part from narcotics traffickers moving their activities northward, Shirk said.

Shirk also said that the number of federal troops dispatched to Baja Norte and Chihuahua appeared to be lower, both per capita and in absolute terms, than those dispatched to Michoacan and other states where killings have diminished in recent months.

He said he was surprised to encounter only one checkpoint during a trip he took Friday to Tijuana, Ensenada and back via Tecate.

"Having troop inspection points plays a really important function of making the city less navigable," he said. "You can't just kill somebody and escape back to their lair."

hector.tobar@latimes.com

Times staff writers Reed Johnson in Mexico City and Richard Marosi in Tijuana contributed to this report.

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Death toll rises to 15 in Mexico shootout near US border

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-tijuana29apr29,1,4162421.story

From the Los Angeles Times

Death toll rises to 15 in Mexico shootout near US border

From the Associated Press

April 29, 2008

TIJUANA — Mexico's military posted soldiers around a major hospital Monday to guard suspects wounded during weekend gunbattles that raged across Tijuana.

Two more deaths raised the toll to 15 from the pre-dawn Saturday shootouts in the violence-plagued Mexican city across the U.S. border from San Diego, local news media reported.

All of the dead were believed to be drug traffickers, possibly rival members of the same drug cartel, Baja California state Attorney General Rommel Moreno said.

He refused to specify the cartel. The Tijuana-based Arellano Felix gang has been shaken by the arrests or deaths of many of its key leaders.

Police did not identify any of the dead or wounded.

In one of the shootouts, gunmen exchanged fire between sport utility vehicles speeding down a six-lane boulevard in Tijuana.

The first shootout claimed seven victims. Three subsequent gunbattles -- one outside a hospital -- claimed five more. Police said the body of the 13th victim turned up at a city hospital, and local news media reported the deaths of two others who were hospitalized.

The attorney general's office said eight suspects were being treated at the heavily guarded hospital, and local newspapers said it canceled outpatient services and laboratory work. Hospital officials could not be reached for comment.

In 2007, gunmen opened fire on state police guarding the same hospital, where gang members were being treated for gunshot wounds.

The suspects are being held on suspicion of weapons possession among other possible charges.

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