Pubdate: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 2005 San Jose Mercury News Contact: http://www.mercurynews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390 Author: Susana Hayward, Knight Ridder Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/mexico GOOD GUYS TURN BAD IN MEXICO NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - A car whipped across the street, cutting off the taxicab. Six men, sporting military-style crew cuts and sunglasses and toting AK-47 assault rifles and walkie-talkies, quickly emerged and encircled the cab. ``What are you doing taking photos around here?'' one demanded. He examined the photographer's press ID, which had been passed nervously through the window. Then, as quickly as they'd appeared, they vanished into the gloom as darkness approached. The men were members of the Zetas, former Mexican elite commandos -- trained to combat drug traffickers -- who've switched sides. As the government dispatches federal police and soldiers to cities along the U.S. border in an effort to stanch a war between rival drug gangs, the Zetas are the major challenge it faces. Work along border No one knows precisely how many former elite commandos are in the employ of drug cartels. But their work is well known in the cities of Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Matamoros, hard against the U.S. border, where they control neighborhoods and watch for any outsiders who might be government spies. They're thought likely to have been responsible for the murder Jan. 20 of six prison employees near the federal maximum-security prison at Matamoros. And it was fear that they were plotting to bust out jailed drug traffickers that prompted a crackdown Jan. 15 at La Palma prison in central Mexico, where one of the country's best-known drug bosses, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, was housed. ``There's no antecedent to this type of phenomenon,'' said Jorge Chabat, a political analyst who studies the drug trade. ``The majority of other criminals don't have this type of training. They move like guerrillas, appear in one city and then another. They're not a traditional army. . . . Their violence is sophisticated, and that should worry the Mexican government.'' The attorney general's office for years dismissed the Zetas as decimated. But officials now acknowledge that curbing them is a main goal of the current crackdown, in which hundreds of federal agents have been sent to border cities and dozens of inmates have been transferred within the correction system to break up prison gangs. Maximum-security prisons at La Palma, outside Toluca, and Matamoros remain under virtual military occupation, and Cárdenas, for whom the Zetas are thought to work, has been transferred to Matamoros. Another major drug boss, Benjamin Arellano Félix, remains imprisoned in La Palma. Whether the government can beat the Zetas is an open question. Many think the Zetas are better trained and better armed than their government opponents. When 100 soldiers encountered a reported eight drug traffickers Jan. 28 in the state of Sonora, the troops withdrew. News reports quoted army commanders as saying, ``They have better weapons. We could do little.'' In the beginning The Zetas drew their name from the serial numbers they were given when the commando unit they once were a part of was formed in the second half of the 1980s, under the organized-crime unit of the attorney general's office. Each number began with the letter ``Z.'' The unit's training included air and sea assaults. In the 1990s, drug dealers recruited former members of the force, primarily as hit men, largely along the U.S. border. Prosecutors say they now control nearly all illegal activity along the border. They're accused of more than 200 slayings and are thought to be responsible for drive-by slayings and kidnappings. They extort money from small border businesses for protection, from used-car dealers to beauty shops. They have ranged far beyond their original home on the border. Last May, Zetas dressed in military-type uniforms aboard pickups sprang two dozen inmates, including five members of Cárdenas' Gulf Cartel, from the Apatzingan prison in Michoacán state in central Mexico, a thousand miles south of their first base of operations. Fear of the Zetas is palpable along the border. ``Everyone's afraid,'' said a businessman from Laredo, on the U.S. side. ``Business is down on both sides. You don't mention the Zetas or traffickers. Word gets around.'' ``You say one wrong thing to the wrong person and you and your family end up dead in a ditch,'' one homemaker said. Police keep low profile Federal police agents, on patrol in Reynosa, south of Brownsville, Texas, asked that they not be identified. ``We don't want to die,'' one said. But they also said they believed they would overcome the Zetas eventually. ``Sooner or later, something's got to give. They'll have to come out to resume their dealings. We call it the cockroach effect: They run, but come back to the place where there's food,'' said an officer who helped capture Cárdenas in Matamoros in 2003. The Zetas are just one sign of the strength of Mexico's drug gangs even from behind bars. The military takeover of La Palma found that drug traffickers jailed there had set up a parallel administration for the prison. Knight Ridder correspondent Janet Schwartz contributed to this report. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin