JUAREZ REFUSES TO LIE DOWN AND DIE

There is no curfew yet in Ciudad Juárez, a bleak and sprawling border
city in Mexico's northern desert but the atmosphere is distinctly
reminiscent of martial law.

Masked federal police man roadblocks on the main streets. At the
border crossings, soldiers with automatic rifles search cars entering
from El Paso, Texas.

The heavy military presence is the latest response of the
administration of Felipe Calderón, the president, to a rise in
drug-related violence that has turned Juárez into just about the most
dangerous place on Earth. Last month, more civilians were murdered in
the city of 1.6m people than in Baghdad.

The centre-right government has in recent weeks sent 5,000 soldiers
to Juárez to back up a force of 2,000. It has also dispatched an
extra 1,800 federal police to complement at least 500 in place.
"We've come for as long as it takes," says General Pedro Gutiérrez,
who heads the federal police operation.

In perhaps the clearest sign of concern, control of the local
commerce, prison services and police ministries has been handed to
the military. It is the first time since at least the revolution of
1910 that the army has had so much power.

Jaime Torres, spokesman for the city government, says: "There was
corruption in these institutions and we needed to guarantee the
security of our citizens."

In better times, Juárez was associated with thriving factories that
made electrical components for big US carmakers and, more recently,
flat-screen television sets.

Today, the dusty outpost is associated with drugs and death. Recent
violence, thought to stem from a battle between the incumbent Juárez
cartel and its Sinaloa rival for the domestic drugs market and a
vital smuggling corridor into the US, claimed 1,640 lives last year
alone. That is 0.1 per cent of the city's population and a quarter of
all drugs-related deaths in Mexico in 2008.

They [the cartels] are killing us," says an employee of a seafood
restaurant in Juárez who preferred not to give his name for fear of
reprisal. "This is a city of the dead."

He has seen the death throes first hand. On a late January evening
two customised pick-up trucks bristling with gunmen drew up outside
the shabby restaurant and emptied their magazines into five people.
"We've been trying to get the business on its feet again but it's
been hard," he says.

Other businesses have suffered. Retailers say the cartels have
started to demand protection money ­ probably, authorities say, to
supplement lost income as anti-drugs efforts and inter-cartel
bloodshed take their toll.

Fear has spread among foreign-owned manufacturing plants. Alvaro
Navarro, Juarez's economic development minister, says his department
has had to offer companies "panic buttons" in each factory with a
promise to respond within five minutes. "We've installed hundreds," he says.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that most people have welcomed the
security presence. In The Future, a neighbourhood of shoddy,
single-storey houses and flea-infested dogs, José Reynaldo says he
feels safer now that Juárez has been militarised.

They drive by every half an hour or so," says Mr Reynaldo, a
mechanic. "It's a reassuring sight."

At the city morgue, the workload is the lightest in months. Héctor
Hawley, the assistant director, says he might frame a report for
March 6 that reads: "The shift passed without incident."

There are even signs the measures are translating into drug seizures.
In a raid tinged with moments from a Keystone Kops script, police
used a battering ram on a door only to discover it was unlocked and
opened the other way and then confiscated 700kg of marijuana.

In spite of the relative calm in Ciudad Juárez, many people say it is
only a matter of time before the cartels return. "They're biding
their time," says Pedro Torres, deputy editor of El Diario, the
city's leading newspaper. "The power of the narcos and their ability
to bribe is very strong."