Mexican officials take on drug cartels

By James C. McKinley Jr.
Monday, January 21, 2008

RIO BRAVO, Mexico: The shop Jesus Vasquez runs stands just a few doors down from a state police station. Across the street sits a walled compound that until recently was used as a safe house by gunmen for the Gulf cartel known as the Zetas.

For years, the police station and the drug dealers' den lived a corrupt but peaceful coexistence. But that balance was shattered recently when federal agents tried to arrest men carrying machine guns near the house.

A gun battle erupted. Grenades exploded. Machine gun fire ripped the air. Vasquez, 65, hugged the cement floor behind his dusty counter, with its candy bars and stale cookies, and prayed.

"It was ugly," he recalled. "It's the first time something like this has happened."

These days, it is easy to form the impression that a war is going on in Mexico. Thousands of elite troops in battle gear stream toward border towns and snake through the streets in jeeps with 50-caliber machine guns mounted on top, while fighter jets from the Mexican Navy fly reconnaissance missions overhead.

Gun battles between federal forces and mobsters carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers have taken place over the past two weeks in border towns like Rio Bravo and Tijuana, with deadly results.

Yet what is happening is less a war than a sustained federal intervention in states where corrupt municipal police officers and drug-cartel members have worked together in relative peace for decades, officials say. The federal forces are not only hunting cartel leaders - they are also going after their crews of gunslingers, like the Zetas, who terrorize the towns they control.