RIVAL DRUG GANGS TURN THE STREETS OF NUEVO LAREDO INTO A WAR ZONE

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - The lucrative drug trade on the Mexican border
seemed up for grabs after Mexican authorities arrested the powerful
leader of the Gulf Cartel nearly three years ago. The rival Sinaloa
Cartel sent Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a young upstart known as La
Barbie, to do the grabbing.

The wave of killings that followed has turned into an all-out drug
war that has spread to almost every corner of Mexico, leaving about
1,000 people dead since March 2003 and bringing harsh criticisms from
Washington about the failure of President Vicente Fox's government to end it.

The most spectacular gunfights began here last spring, federal law
enforcement authorities said, and usually took place from 8 in the
morning to 1 in the afternoon, on the elegant Avenida Colon.

While the number of killings has gone down since Mr. Fox sent a
battalion of federal officers to try to take back control of the
city's streets, the violence has not ended but moved to other parts
of Mexico, especially the central state of Michoacan and the Pacific
coast resort of Acapulco.

The rise of men like Mr. Valdez, 32, Deputy Attorney General Jose
Santiago Vasconcelos said in an interview, helps explain why. He is
part of a younger generation of rash and ruthless traffickers, Mr.
Vasconcelos said, who are fighting to take over the drug trade after
the Fox administration put at least a dozen of the older drug bosses in jail.

[Last week, law enforcement authorities linked Mr. Valdez to a
videotape that appeared to show the interrogation of four bruised and
bloody men who admitted to being hired killers for the Gulf Cartel.
The video, which was sent in an unmarked envelope to The Kitsap Sun
in Washington State and was posted on the Web site of The Dallas
Morning News, ended by showing one of the men being shot in the head.
The authorities said they suspected that Mr. Valdez was conducting
the interrogation.]

The prize is the lucrative land drug routes that carry more than 77
percent of all the cocaine and about 70 percent of all the
methamphetamines sold in the United States.

The more experienced drug kingpins, Mexican prosecutors said, were
more willing to reach peace among themselves, to respect one
another's territories and to stay out of sight in order not to cause
trouble for local authorities.

New operatives like Mr. Valdez, however, fight for all or nothing,
Mr. Vasconcelos said. And they seem willing to keep up their fight,
no matter what the cost.

"Why are we in this situation?" Mr. Vasconcelos said. "Because the
only leaders who can contain the violence are the ones who are in jail."

"The structures they used to maintain - of corruption and obstruction
of justice - when we took those away, they were forced to use
violence," he said. "It's a beast."

Mr. Valdez, a k a La Barbie, does not look like a monster. He gets
his nickname, the authorities said, because he has the light
complexion and blue eyes of a Ken doll. Law enforcement authorities,
however, have described him as the mastermind of numerous killings
and kidnappings across the country. They have raided homes that they
believe had been rented by him and found grenades, automatic weapons
and police uniforms.

Mr. Valdez' illegal career took off after the arrest in March 2003 of
Osiel Cardenas, who controlled the drug trade in Nuevo Laredo, the
busiest port along the 2,000-mile border between the United States
and Mexico. Then his rival, Joaquin Guzman, known as El Chapo,
decided to make a move for control of this area.

Mr. Guzman could not do it on his own, though. He had escaped from
prison in 2001, and immediately became one of this country's most
wanted fugitives. So while he hid in the mountains of Sinaloa state,
the authorities said, he gave Mr. Valdez, who is originally from
Laredo, Tex., command of a well-trained unit of gunmen to lead the
assault against the Gulf Cartel across the Rio Grande in Nuevo Laredo.

Mr. Valdez and another lieutenant, Arturo Beltran Leyva, went to
Mexico City in March 2003 with a $1.5-million bribe for Domingo
Gonzalez Diaz, a commander in the Federal Investigations Agency,
Mexico's F.B.I., Mexican authorities said. In exchange for the money,
the authorities said, Mr. Gonzalez sent a close confidant to command
federal forces here, with instructions to provide protection to the
Sinaloa Cartel and to help it fight its rivals.

Two months later, that federal commander, Adolfo Ruiz Ibarra, was
shot with his brother Edmundo in a blaze of gunfire. It was one of
the first clear signs, the authorities said, that the Gulf Cartel
would not surrender easily.

Mr. Cardenas, the leader of the Gulf Cartel, managed to keep control
of his gang from inside Mexico's main maximum-security prison, La
Palma. The Nuevo Laredo police department served almost entirely at
his pleasure, federal law authorities said, helping not only protect
the Gulf Cartel, but also kidnapping and killing suspected rivals.
And a group of special forces officers, known as Los Zetas, who had
deserted from the military and served as Mr. Cardenas's personal
security detail when he was out of prison, were deployed to protect
the Gulf Cartel's turf - especially Nuevo Laredo.

Mexican authorities say they believe Mr. Cardenas was behind the
killing in December 2004 of El Chapo's brother, who was also being
held in La Palma. After that, authorities said, the fight between the
Gulf Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel turned personal.

Kidnapping and revenge killings became common. The Zetas would leave
scathing notes near the bodies of their victims, and it was through
such a note that mentioned Mr. Valdez by name that the authorities
learned he had crossed the border into Nuevo Laredo.

He did not have much of a criminal record before he left Texas,
according to the Laredo police - just a reputation as a small-time
drug dealer and a drunken driving charge nine years ago. "As far as
we're concerned," said Juan Rivera, a spokesman for the Laredo Police
Department, "he's nobody here."

But since then, his name has appeared on most-wanted lists from the
United States Drug Enforcement Agency, which issued a warrant for his
arrest in 2003 on charges of cocaine smuggling, and by the federal
authorities in Mexico.

Rafael Rios, the deputy secretary for public security, described Mr.
Valdez as "an operator in charge of distribution of drugs and of
recruiting" soldiers for the cartel. Most recruits come, as he did,
from north of the border, and have helped expand the Sinaloa Cartel's
operations, and its violence, into the United States.

In September 2004, Mr. Valdez bought an entire page in El Norte, a
daily newspaper here, to declare his innocence and ask President Fox
for justice. He described himself as a legitimate businessman who had
been forced to leave Nuevo Laredo and move to the neighboring state
of Coahuila because he was being harassed for bribes from local
police officers.

"I ask you to intervene to resolve the insecurity, extortion and
terror that exists in the state of Tamaulipas, and especially in the
city of Nuevo Laredo," the letter read. In a later paid advertisement
in the newspaper El Manana, Mr. Valdez asked the question on many
Mexicans' minds: "Could it be that the Mexican Army and the attorney
general lack the means and tools to finish these delinquents?"