Pubdate: Sat, 23 Jun 2001
Source: Brownsville Herald, The (TX)
Copyright: 2001 The Brownsville Herald
Contact:  http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1402
Author: Julie Watson, The Associated Press

MEXICO OFFICIALS WORRY ABOUT DRUG VIOLENCE

Cartel: Armed raid on police station raises fears of organized crime.

MATAMOROS, Mexico - The six state police officers handed over their 
guns and laid down on the floor of their headquarters, obediently 
following the orders of the masked assailants.

Another dozen heavily armed assailants stood outside the Tamaulipas 
State Police Ministry as the late afternoon sun beat down on busy 
Lauro Villar Boulevard, where people came and went from nearby stores 
and traffic whizzed by only blocks from the Texas border.

As the group hurried into the getaway trucks, a frustrated officer 
ran from the building and fired his gun. The group showered the 
building with bullets.

Then they disappeared.

The dozen AK-47 toting men dressed in black and wearing bulletproof 
vests had controlled the three-story police building within minutes 
and rescued a man who was being questioned in connection with a 
drug-related kidnapping.

"At first we thought it was a joke by the federal police," Officer 
Ulises Rodriguez said. "But upon seeing their assault weapons we 
obeyed their orders."

While authorities assured residents that Tuesday's assault was an 
isolated incident, it gave a sobering peek at the strength of 
organized crime in this border city, where such drug violence had 
become rare since the fall of reputed kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego.

The Gulf Cartel - whose name comes from Mexico's northern Gulf coast, 
where it is most active - was the strongest of the border-based 
Mexican cartels until 1996, when Garcia Abrego was sentenced in 
Houston to 11 life terms for drug smuggling.

The cartel was reportedly revived by drug lord Osiel Cardenas but has 
stayed out of the public's eye until recently.

Police believe cartel members may be behind Tuesday's raid that freed 
Juan Ramon Davila, 22. The soldier from Tijuana had told police he 
was hired to kidnap businessman Ricardo Garcia Garcia and his wife 
"to settle accounts," Officer Isidro Torres said.

Davila would not say who hired him to do the job, Torres said. 
Authorities arrested two assailants late Wednesday and continued 
searching for 20 others, including Davila and Garcia Garcia.

Mexico's state-run news agency, Notimex, quoted state police 
commander Jaime Yanez as saying that the two held in custody 
confessed to being members of the Gulf Cartel. Yanez did not return 
repeated calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.

In April, the administration of President Vicente Fox captured the 
cartel's lieutenant, Gilberto Garcia, and 19 of his subordinates, 
scoring its biggest success in apprehending purported high-ranking 
drug lords.

Some fear more violence is yet to come as the new administrations in 
the United States and Mexico heighten the drug war and traffickers 
fight for the openings left by the arrests.

Matamoros knows the wrath of drug traffickers well.

In 1984, gunmen ran down the hallways of a private hospital where a 
rival drug smuggler was being treated, shooting into the rooms and 
killing five people. In 1991, a drug ring organized inside a state 
prison rioted, burning down the jail and killing 18.

"This is not new to us. It's part of the enormous power of the drug 
traffickers, and I don't see any possibility of stopping them by the 
way we are doing things," local historian Andres Cuellar said. "The 
only results have been deaths, which number in the thousands each 
year, in exchange for nothing. What are we winning? The drugs keep 
going to the United States and people keep using them."

Cuellar believes the answer is to legalize certain drugs and launch 
public service campaigns about their health dangers.

But for Torres, who was on duty but not in the building when the 
group seized it, the only way is to match the drug traffickers' 
force. Hundreds of federal police arrived in Matamoros this week to 
back the state police. Dozens of soldiers were also sent to guard the 
building.

"If they want war, bring it on," said Torres, standing outside the 
police ministry surrounded by soldiers carrying assault rifles. 
"We're ready to face them."
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe