BEHIND THE MASK IN SUNNY ACAPULCO

You Needn't Go Far To Seek Drugged Kids And Besieged Farmers

ACAPULCO, Mexico - There's no nicer place for Canadians in the middle
of January, right?

Sandy beaches, warm Pacific waters and an abundance of cold cervezas.
All true. But this western Mexican city also sits on a coastline
critical to cocaine trafficking routes north in Guerrero state, where
drug violence is among the bloodiest in the country.

A few blocks from the fancy hotels, bars and restaurants of Boulevard
Miguel Aleman, drugged-out kids stagger on street corners, unheard of
even a decade ago in what was a favourite destination of Hollywood
stars. From narcotiendas (little drug shops), it's easy to find
dealers selling both drugs and soft drinks, as well as ritzy new
subdivisions funded by mysterious sources - believed to be drug money
- - in a country devastated by recession.

"It's almost impossible to prove," says narco-trafficking expert
Victor Clark Alfaro, "but then that's the point of laundering money."

A few kilometres inland in any direction from this tourist capital,
Mexico's most impoverished farmers - largely indigenous - eke out a
living in the arid highlands of the Sierra Madre mountain chain. They
live in another century at the end of bad roads inaccessible to all
but the most intrepid visitors.

Guerrero used to be mainly an opium poppy and marijuana growing
state, but it's evolved in recent years into a critical distribution
centre for cocaine from the rest of Latin America. From here, routes
snake out everywhere, by land, sea and air. Traffickers use small
beaches all up the Pacific tourist coast as landing strips for small
planes. A U.S. congressional report last year said 90 per cent of the
cocaine destined for the U.S. and Canada comes through Mexico.

Signs of a parallel drug economy - with inherent struggles for power
- - are evident in the local press.

"Just look," says editor Maribel Gutierrez, pointing to the day's
edition of El Sur, a respected Acapulco-based newspaper. A report
describes the state hierarchy of the governing Democratic
Revolutionary Party appealing to Mexico City after the disappearance
of a party official. Another story is about a man found dead up the
coast in Petatlan with his ears and a finger cut off, a sure sign of
a drug hit.

Petatlan and neighbouring city Zihuatanejo are popular among
Canadians, a million of whom visit Mexico annually.

Tourists occasionally see fallout among cartels battling for control
in Guerrero. In February, a bus on the Zihuatenejo-Acapulco highway
passed a burned-out truck, where four police officers died in a
shootout with drug cartel gunmen. Police held up the bus for two hours.

What they don't see, according to Gutierrez, is how farmers
throughout the hardscrabble mountains of Guerrero too often pay for
the government's war on drugs with their lives, liberty and livelihood.

The government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, like his
predecessors, cites the army as a critical tool in the battle.

"The evidence shows (the army) isn't fighting the big
narco-traffickers, but instead poor campesinos," says Gutierrez.
"People are vulnerable to repression. But progress against drug
trafficking? Really, we see nothing, nothing."

International human rights groups routinely document peasants
disappearing after police and army raids. Reports of torture and rape
are numerous.

In February, two indigenous leaders - from the Association for the
Development of the Mixtec People - disappeared from their Guerrero
village after being arrested by men reputing to be police. The bodies
of Raul Lucas Lucia and Manuel Ponce Rosas were found days later.

Changing governments to the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary
Party in 2005 made no difference in claims the army is using drugs as
a pretext for counter-insurgency campaigns against farmers and social
organizers. By the end of its session last October, the
Washington-based Inter-American Human Rights Commission had 215
complaints against authorities in Guerrero over four years.

Farmers grow marijuana and opium poppies across the state. But
Guerrero is one of Mexico's poorest states and subsistence farmers
have little alternative to more lucrative drug crops. That's why
eradication efforts appear to be so futile.

A report in the national magazine Proceso argues the state is fast
returning to the abuses of the Dirty War years of the 1970s, a period
of "crimes against humanity" recently documented by an extensive
internal security investigation.

Mexico's National Defence Secretariat ignored a request for an
interview from the Toronto Star.

The state is replete with evidence of high-level corruption. In
December, Zihuatanejo's police chief was arrested with 22 officers
and civilians - and charged with crimes linking then to the cartels.

El Sur documents what it can, but journalists can't get to the heart
of internecine battles among cartels. Moreover, it's simply too dangerous.