HISTORIC CAPITAL EXPLODES IN VIOLENCE

MEXICO CITY - Nothing could save Fernando Marti, 14, from being
kidnapped and murdered last summer - not his personal bodyguard,
chauffeured bullet-proof sedan nor other precautions routinely taken
by this city's wealthy to survive the grip of organized crime.

But something turned this student, abducted at a phony police
roadblock on his way to the private British American School, into an
icon.

Maybe it was the crime's obvious link to narco-trafficking, as
evidenced by the resignation of Mexico's special drug agency chief,
Noe Ramirez, shortly after police began the kidnapping investigation,
or that charges against him ultimately connected him to the cartels.

Maybe it occurred when two senior Mexico City judicial police officers
(under the authority of the attorney-general's office) were arrested
and charged in the youth's murder. Or when Mayor Marcelo Ebrard
pledged to dissolve the entire judicial police and start over.

There were mass protests in the capital, countrywide marches,
full-page newspaper ads over the violence and, after the boy's father
reportedly paid a $5 million ransom in vain, an outpouring of sorrow
and compassion that united political leaders and ordinary citizens.

President Felipe Calderon appealed to local, state and national police
forces to stop building their own little silos and start working together.

"If we were more united by now, we surely would be more advanced (and)
much further along the road to improving the police," said Calderon,
who made ending narco-trafficking and corruption priorities in 2006.
"We must purge police forces to get rid of the infiltration by gangs."

Or, maybe, it was simply the ghastly shock of it all in a city (and
country) where kidnapping - attributed to the same drug cartels that
move drugs, cash and people in multi-billion-dollar businesses - is on
the rise, as are other forms of violent fallout from the activities of
organized crime.

Bogus police officers abducted Marti in June. Police quickly found his
driver mutilated - his teeth extracted - and dead in the trunk of his
sedan.

They also found the youth's bodyguard, badly injured, but able to
implicate police in the crime.

For two months, the search continued. In August, residents noticed a
foul odour in the southern area of Coyoacan, home to artists,
musicians and intellectuals.

The boy's decomposing body was in the trunk of a car.

"Let there be no more Fernandos," said his father, Alejandro, founder
of a sports store and health spa empire. He grieved for "a boy who
represents the suffering over everything that is happening here."

What's happening is an explosion of violence in a city that's among
the world's greatest capitals, renowned for its churches, museums,
architecture, sprawling parkland and the historic role it has played
as a political, artistic and literary leader in Latin America.

It's been very dangerous in Mexico City for a long time. Kidnappings -
the crime most often linked to narco-wars and the drug cartels - have
jumped 9.5 per cent nationwide, according to Mexican officials, with
774 cases from September 2008 to April 2009, compared to 707 over the
preceding eight months. But statistics are considered grossly low
since most people don't report kidnappings.

"The growth in the number of kidnappings comes from the success of the
government's battles against drug dealers," popular columnist Miguel
Angel Granados Chapa wrote recently in the Mexico City daily, Reforma.
He argues drug-traffickers must find other ways to augment their income.

There is the so-called "express kidnappings," in which Mexicans and
tourists are nabbed, usually by "pirate" cab drivers and their
cohorts, driven to bank machines and ordered to withdraw cash. In
"virtual kidnappings," criminals extort money from family members who
falsely believe a loved one has been seized.

A few years ago, a bogus taxi driver and pals abducted an American
journalist at a restaurant and went through the bank-machine routine.

Discovering he was a reporter for a well-known publication, a thief
urged: "Oh please, don't write bad things about my country."

Mexicans go to extremes to try to stay safe. There is a reported boom
in the sale of tracking devices that can be inserted into flesh - like
the way veterinarians insert microchips into pets - to potentially
help police find victims.

In Polanco, a wealthy northern area of homes, embassies, restaurants
and hotels in the capital, chauffeurs drive their clients in SUVs with
dark, bullet-proof glass. Parents who send their children to school
with drivers change the routes and vary their own routines to confuse
would-be kidnappers.

While there is no official warning against going to Mexico, Canada's
foreign affairs department notes kidnappers target "both the wealthy
and middle class (although) foreigners are not specifically targeted."

The U.S. State Department has a different view.

"Crime in Mexico continues at high levels, and it is often violent,
especially in Mexico City ... (and other cities)," says a recent report.

"Kidnappings, including the kidnappings of non-Mexicans, continue at
alarming rates."