Surge in drug violence highlighted in Mexico
Exbeauty queen shot dead in Guadalajara
Reuters News Service

MEXICO CITY The Mafiastyle hit of a former beauty queen and
alleged gobetween for army generals and drug traffickers has
highlighted a surge in drugrelated violence in Mexico.

Police said two gunmen aboard a motorcyle pumped at least six
bullets into Irma Lizette Ibarra, 44, Tuesday as she waited at a
stop light in the western city of Guadalajara. She died in the
hospital, and her killers are still at large.

The slaying in broad daylight evoked the brazenness with which
hired assassins, known as "sicarios", killed scores of officials
on the orders of druglords in Colombia in the 1980s.

Authorities said Ibarra's death days after a magazine reported
her racy relationship with generals and druglords had the
stamp of a classic drugrelated hit. The killing stirred fears
Mexico was descending into Colombianstyle bloodletting.

It followed two recent drugrelated murders in the city and what
authorities said was a failed shooting attack last Friday on a
key witness in the trial of the former head of Mexico's top
narcoticsfighting agency.

The spate of shootings also came within weeks of the July 4 death
of Mexico's mostwanted drug trafficker, Amado Carrillo Fuentes,
head of the socalled Juarez Cartel. His death, narcotics experts
said, has unleashed a power struggle in Mexico's multibillion
dollar drug trade.

In the cartel's hub, Ciudad Juarez, which borders the Texas town
of El Paso, drugrelated killings have surged since Carrillo
Fuentes' mysterious death after undergoing liposuction in a
plastic surgery operation.

Against the backdrop of bloodshed, Mexico's news weekly Proceso
published a report on military documents that seemed to show
links between former army generals and some of Mexico's most
notorious traffickers.

In the upper ranks of Mexico's drug underworld, which has long
relied on the complicity of corrupt law enforcers, it suited no
one that more shadowy connections came to light, experts said.

"Those in power in the drug world the traffickers, the police,
some members of the military are shutting down sources of
information," Eduardo Valle, a former narcotics special
investigator in Mexico, said in a telephone interview from
Harlingen, Texas.

"They're saying `you can't talk, man': bang, bang."

Ibarra was gunned down after Proceso magazine reported that she
was closely linked to army generals and druglords who made
regular visits to her house for private lunches.

In a similar case, the brother of the attorney for jailed
druglord Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo was gunned down in his car
in Guadalajara, Jalisco state officials said.

On Friday, former military official Hector Ixtlahuac Gaspar, who
had been a prominent statelevel politician, suffered a similar
fate in his car. Guerra said police were investigating links
between the different killings.

The same day, Mexican authorities said Ricardo Cesareo Vazquez, a
key witness in the trial of Mexico's former drug czar Gen. Jesus
Gutierrez Rebollo, was shot at in Guadalajara but escaped unhurt.

Gutierrez Rebollo, who headed the National Institute for
Combating Drugs until his arrest in February, is accused of
taking payoffs from Juarez druglord Carrillo Fuentes, a charge he
denies.

The general's arrest was the first time a top military official
had been charged with drug links in Mexico, and it marked the
start of a painful but eyeopening scrutiny of the military's
growing role in the war on drugs.