Drug Turf War Flares in Mexico Prison

The Mexican government has put its highest-security jail under military siege as rivalry between the country's drug lords reaches a new pitch.

Tanks were yesterday guarding the approaches to the jail, known as La Palma, while federal agents patrolled the buildings that house some of the country's most prominent drug traffickers.

The operation underlines both the continued power of the jailed drug lords and the seriousness of the wars between the country's cartels, which have left dozens of people dead in recent months.

The government said there were "risks to the physical integrity of some inmates and the possibility of an escape" at the prison.

The action comes two weeks after Arturo Guzman, nicknamed the Chicken, was killed by another prisoner, who shot him seven times with a 9mm pistol smuggled past seven checkpoints into the jail. He was the third inmate murdered in less than a year.

The war is rooted in the traffickers' response to an unprecedented government crackdown in the past three years that has put several of the biggest dealers behind bars.

One of the main figures in the war is Guzman's elder brother Joaquin. He escaped from a high-security prison four years ago and joined the loosely organised Juárez cartel just across the border from Texas, a big player in the smuggling of South American cocaine into the US.

Guzman sought to expand east along the frontier, challenging the control of the Gulf cartel, whose leader, Osiel Cardenas, was detained in 2003 and taken to La Palma prison. A group of military deserters, Los Zetas, remained loyal to Cardenas, and sought out and killed any interlopers on his turf.

It has been reported that it was the fear that Los Zetas would try to bust their leader out of jail that led to the military cordon around the prison this weekend.

Cardenas has also built up his influence inside La Palma. Letters written from there, recovered in a raid on a safe house, include instructions for a creche for families of inmates on his payroll, and death sentences for his enemies. He has reputedly also bought himself privileges, such as unlimited visiting hours. All this makes him a prime suspect for the murder of Guzman's brother in La Palma.

The drug wars are not, however, just a matter of turf battles and personal vendettas.

Perhaps even more worrying for the authorities, who traditionally show little concern for traffickers killed by each other, is the fact that the conflicts also provide the backdrop for some previously unthinkable alliances, such as the teaming up of Cardenas and Benjamin Arellano Felix.

Once the head of the violent Arellano Felix cartel, based in the westernmost border city of Tijuana, Arellano Felix was arrested in March 2002 and is also in La Palma.

Both Cardenas and Arellano Felix have now been moved to cells far away from each other.

At the weekend the interior minister, Santiago Creel, told reporters that the government was determined to "clean up" La Palma and all federal prisons: "This is a full frontal and direct struggle against corruption. There will be a firm hand in the fight against organised crime and the mafias."

Luis Astorga, a Mexican expert in drug trafficking, said Mexican traffickers were particularly adroit at reorienting their corruption networks when they had to, and neither the crackdown nor the ensuing wars had stopped the smugglers moving their drugs into the US market as efficiently as ever.