CIUDAD JU?REZ, Mexico - The massacre of 18 people at a drug rehabilitation center near the Texas border is part of a final push by one drug cartel to finish off another, authorities and analysts say.
The killings - the largest mass slaying in recent memory in the country's most violent city - raise the three-day death toll in Ju?rez to nearly 40, despite the presence of 10,000 federal troops and police.
"We're witnessing the extermination of the Ju?rez cartel," said Alfredo Quijano, editor of the Norte de Ciudad Ju?rez newspaper and an authority on the war between the entrenched Ju?rez cartel and the rival Sinaloa cartel. "The Linea, or Ju?rez cartel, is down to its last line of defense."
Sinaloa hit men, he said, are "killing people at will, hitting them like sitting ducks."
August set a record for killings in Ju?rez, across the border from El Paso, with more than 300 deaths, raising the city's total for the year to about 1,500.
Drug violence killed more than 1,600 people in Ju?rez in 2008, the year the two cartels, which once formed part of an alliance known as the Federation, declared war on each other.
The two men reportedly in charge, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes of the Ju?rez cartel and Joaqu?n "El Chapo" Guzm?n of the Sinaloa cartel, are bitter rivals and have accused each other of targeting family members - a situation that makes any reconciliation virtually impossible, analysts and authorities have said.
Gradually, the Sinaloa cartel has been pushing the Ju?rez cartel toward the western part of the city and gaining the upper hand, Quijano and others said, and the attack on the rehab center in western Ju?rez is part of a final push against the resident cartel.
A U.S. investigator, speaking on condition of anonymity, generally agreed with Quijano's assessment but cautioned: "We're a ways off from declaring one group the winner. For now, I'd say the Sinaloa cartel clearly has the upper hand."
A Mexican federal law enforcement official also supported Quijano's assessment.
At 7:30 Wednesday evening, as residents of the Aliviane rehab center were gathering for their regular AA-style meeting, about a dozen men dressed in commando-style garb walked into the center and, list in hand, called out the names of several men, witnesses and authorities said. The men were lined up against a wall of the center and sprayed with bullets from AK-47 rifles.
Over the past year, experts say, rehab clinics such as Aliviane have been targeted by rival gangs because they also serve as recruiting grounds for cartels looking for hit men.
Aliviane was known as an informal base for members of a gang known as the Aztecas, whose membership has spread into El Paso and Los Angeles, analysts said. Aliviane officials were not available for comment.
"My basic interpretation of what happened is that it is part of the back-and-forth series of massacres between the Cartel de Ju?rez/Aztecas and Chapo - similar to massacres between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq," said Howard Campbell, an expert on Mexican drug cartels and author of an upcoming book on the drug war.
"The rehab places in that area are filled with Aztecas, so it would seem to be enemies of the Aztecas who did it."
On Thursday, the rehab center's hallway and patio remained covered in blood, and a trail of bloody footsteps led outside. Chained inside was a chocolate-colored pit bull whimpering for water. The body of another pit bull lay nearby in the hot sun. The dog had been shot during the attack.
Across the street, a middle-age couple arrived home after spending the night at a hotel. They had heard the gunshots the night before and left in a hurry.
"I don't even know what to think anymore," said the woman as she clutched her hand to her chest.
"We heard the gunshots and took off, decided not to come home until daylight," her husband said. They declined to give their names.
Down the street, two American women, Barbara Lampe and her mother, Diana Gordon, pushed a grocery cart on their way to shop in El Paso a few blocks away. Both women moved from California five months ago to escape the high cost of living. They now rent a $130-a-month apartment in Ju?rez.
During Wednesday's massacre, the women hid inside.
Gordon questioned her daughter's decision to move to Mexico.
"It's a lot cheaper," Lampe replied, adding that her husband lost his job in California and now lays pipes in El Paso.
"It was scary," Gordon said. "I'm ready to move."
Angela Kocherga is border bureau chief for Belo Television, based in El Paso.
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akocherga@belo.com
