In Mexico's drug battle, the public is missing in action

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Mexico's drug battle, pg. 2

And he said he was talking to Israeli firms about purchasing top-of-the line surveillance and security equipment.

"The important thing is to have the information," he said. "How did we come by the information? Doesn't matter to me. . . . Just bring me the information."

He said that those who worried that the squads would run amok could relax because they would be under his control.

"It is not within the law, but it's not against the law either," he said.

Consuelo Morales, a nun who stands not quite 5 feet tall, was one of the people condemning Fernandez. No one wanted to hear her.

Not unusual, she says.

"Citizens are sick and tired of corruption and impunity and tempted to take justice into their own hands," she said. "But if we permit citizens to form groups to settle scores, because the authorities don't function at any level, then you create a monster."

As head of a human rights organization, Morales for years has been trying to shine light on the misdeeds of officials, police and others, with little success.

On her laptop computer, the nun stores videos of vicious beatings of suspects in jails. In one, a young man sinks to the floor yelping and writhing in pain as uniformed police officers pummel him with a long, flat board.

The video was aired on television. The reaction? Zilch, Morales said. "If this doesn't mobilize people, then I hate to say we are paralyzed."

In Catholic countries torn by strife, the church has often served as a catalyst for change. But in Mexico, the Roman Catholic Church has failed in that mission, top clerics say.

Much like the broader society, the church is caught between fear and complicity, between the impulse to take a stand and the desire to avoid conflict.

"The church has been content to follow its same rhythm of always, when it should be revving its engines," said Hector Gonzalez Martinez, archbishop of the tense, rough state of Durango.

Gonzalez made a splash this year when he said that Mexico's top fugitive drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, was living in a Durango mountain village and that "everyone knows" it, including authorities who had failed to capture him.

Four days later, two army officers were found slain in the area the cleric had singled out, with a sign attached to their bodies: "Neither officials nor priests will ever be able to handle El Chapo."

This year, a priest and two seminary students were killed in the state of Guerrero, presumably by traffickers; in Durango, a region where gunmen "own the night" in village after village, "every priest has been threatened," Gonzalez says.

Gonzalez continued to visit remote parishes up and down the Sierra Madre foothills that march through western and northern Durango.

Until August.

A village mayor ran to the visiting Gonzalez to report that gunmen in several SUVs were gathering nearby. Then Gonzalez's cellphone rang. A state official in the Durango capital said U.S. drug agents had learned of a plot to kill the archbishop.

The official dispatched a helicopter to whisk him to safety.

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Mexico's drug battle, pg. 3

Gonzalez now travels with bodyguards and is awaiting delivery of an armored car.

He laments that Mexican society lacks a sense of solidarity when it comes to facing drug violence.

"Every time there's another murder, another headless corpse, another kidnapped person, the immediate family members are very concerned, but it doesn't move society as a whole," said Gonzalez, 70, who moves and speaks with grave deliberateness, as if he had a great weight on his shoulders.

"We have too rapidly become accustomed to having these evils in the middle of our society."

In some parts of the country, priests have used money from traffickers to pay for church repairs, special chapels or other community projects. One senior priest was quoted a few years ago praising the drug lords' propensity to tithe.

"They make us accomplices," said an outspoken bishop, Raul Vera of Saltillo. "A steeple built with drug money has blood gushing from its rafters."

Nuevo Laredo was once the most violent city in the country. It is an exhaust-choked trucking hub on the border across from Laredo, Texas, where four years ago spectacular gunfights between rival drug gangs left residents afraid to leave their homes. A police chief was assassinated hours after taking the oath of office.

The shootouts have largely ebbed, replaced by a calm that most residents attribute to a pact between the warring groups that left the city under the control of the Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf cartel that often operates on its own.

But the quiet in Nuevo Laredo is thick with fear and a feeling of helplessness.

The Zetas have proved to be ruthless overlords. They have kidnapped businessmen, demanded protection money from merchants, taken over sales of pirated CDs and DVDs and muscled into the liquor trade by forcing restaurant and bar owners to buy from them.

"Imagine this is 1920s Chicago and Al Capone is the boss," said one longtime resident, who like others in town voiced his belief that the gang is protected by local law enforcement.

Jittery residents hesitate to say "Zeta" in public. A joke making the rounds has it that the gang, whose name is the Spanish for "Z," left Nuevo Laredo with one less letter in the alphabet.

Many residents say they don't trust the authorities enough to report crime or suspicious activity. Threats and attacks have cowed journalists into slanting their reports.

In October, local news outlets received ominous calls from a purported representative of the group after a rolling shootout that involved Mexican soldiers, according to a newspaper editor who declined to be named out of concern for his safety.

The gist of the message: Make the army look bad.

The news media obliged, reporting that soldiers had ignited the shootout, in which an elementary school filled with children was sprayed with gunfire.

"Soldiers Provoke the Clash," read one headline. The accompanying article said troops had fired in an "indiscriminate" manner.

"Everyone published stories criticizing the army . . . because of pressure," the editor said.

"It wasn't necessarily false. It was manipulated, inaccurate, because of what the bad guys wanted known."

Residents mobilized briefly during the carnage of 2005. Civic leaders held meetings and issued a decal bearing the image of a white dove and a plea for "Peace in Both Laredos." Many residents stuck them on their cars.

Activists planned a peace march from the international border to a statue of 19th century Mexican President Benito Juarez two miles away. A few days before the march, gunmen opened fire in front of City Hall, where a group was protesting the arrest of police officers who were suspected of having criminal links. A man was killed.

Organizers called off the peace march.

"We considered the consequences," said Carlos Martinez, who runs a secondary school called Nuevo Laredo City College. "It was the last serious effort by people to take action."

Some residents call the atmosphere in Nuevo Laredo a calma chicha -- a fishy quiet.

Martinez said the drug trade will never end, so the best border residents can hope for is not to be bothered by the traffickers.

"We don't care what deals they make," Martinez said. "What we want in the city is peace. At least leave us alone."