DRUG GANGS' KIN ENSNARED IN MEXICO CRACKDOWN

MEXICO CITY -- Drug trafficking has long been a family affair in
Mexico, handed down through the generations. Relatives often launder
drug profits through seemingly legitimate businesses, while sons and
daughters learn the tricks of the trade as armed enforcers or
distributors of bribes.

But in recent weeks, a series of cases has led Mexicans to grapple
anew with the question of familial bonds in the criminal underworld,
as the relatives of some top drug traffickers have found the spotlight
focused on them and drug mafias have complained publicly that the
authorities are harassing their innocent relatives without cause.

A Mexican senator, Ricardo Monreal, temporarily left his post last
week after the authorities confirmed that 14.5 tons of marijuana had
been found in a warehouse belonging to one of his brothers, Candido
Monreal. A second brother is the mayor of Fresnillo in Zacatecas
State, the town where the cache was found.

The case is intertwined with a major jailbreak that took place earlier
in the month, in which a group of armed men dressed as federal police
officers sprang more than 50 inmates from a Zacatecas prison,
apparently with the aid of prison authorities. Two of the escapees had
previously been captured in the drug raid on the Monreal family property.

The senator, who was accused of ties to traffickers in the past, has
professed his innocence and taken a leave while the investigation runs
its course. He has said that his family is not linked to any drug gang
and that the drugs, found in a warehouse used to dry peppers, were
probably planted by political enemies.

In another case, the newspaper El Universal reported last week that
Francisco Villarreal, the brother of one of the most wanted men in
Mexico, had received a contract to set up the sound system at a recent
rally attended by President Felipe Calderon, who has made fighting
traffickers the cornerstone of his presidency.

Mr. Villarreal is the brother of Sergio Villarreal, who is known as El
Grande and is considered a leader of the Beltran Leyva cartel. Nobody
has accused the sound technician of any misdeeds, but the newspaper
argued that the president's office should screen its contractors more
thoroughly.

Mr. Villarreal said that he had not spoken to his brother in more than
five years and that he was not responsible for anything he might be
involved in. "The only things I know about him are from magazines or
newspapers," he said, adding: "You don't choose your brothers. God
sends them."

While it is true that not every trafficker comes from a family full of
vice, Mexico has a history of notorious crime families, like the
Arellano Felix brothers and the Beltran Leyva brothers, who have kept
their organizations alive across generations.

Mexican authorities often lean hard on relatives of traffickers,
presuming that the criminal in the family is no black sheep. But the
government is also routinely criticized as being too lenient on family
members, even giving agricultural subsidies to the relatives of some
of Mexico's most wanted drug suspects living in rural areas, a policy
that is regularly attacked in the local press.

The Mexican Army said last week that Octavio Almanza, suspected of
belonging to the Gulf Cartel, gave up information on his brother,
Raymundo, after being arrested in February in connection with
masterminding the killing of an army general. Raymundo was arrested
last week in other crimes.

But the culpability of family members is not always so clear cut. The
Mexican federal police broke up a party in Cuernavaca, outside Mexico
City, this month and arrested the elderly parents of Alberto Pineda
Villa, who is accused of being a top boss for the Beltran Leyva
brothers, as well as some of his siblings and other relatives. The
charges against them were unclear.

Those arrests prompted drug traffickers in many parts of the country
to hang protest banners on overpasses, which is how the Mexican
underworld often communicates its views to the public and
politicians.

"We are aware of our acts, but we're in total disagreement that our
parents, siblings and other relatives are involved," said one banner
found in Acapulco.

Another banner directly addressed the president. "Felipe Calderon,
please don't mess with the family because it is very sacred," the
message said. "Show respect or face the consequences of our people.
They are tired of atrocities."

Of course, Mexico's ruthless drug gangs rarely respect families
themselves, and the Mexican authorities took their complaints to be
veiled threats against public officials' relatives. Kidnapping
children, after all, is one of the gangs' side businesses, and threats
against wives and children are a tried-and-true method they use to
spread fear.

For his part, Mr. Calderon has portrayed his government's deployment
of 45,000 soldiers to root out traffickers as a way to stick up for
Mexican families, or at least law-abiding ones.

"It is worth the trouble to reiterate that our struggle isn't to just
liberate children and youth from the claws of slavery that addictions
represent," Mr. Calderon said recently in Ciudad Juarez, where
soldiers have taken over the duties of the local police. "It's also
because crime has directed itself against the citizenry."