Grisly drug war close to home for Mexico's Calderon

URUAPAN, Mexico - A morgue worker wheels the mutilated remains of a pregnant woman past two severed heads - all victims of a Mexican drug war that has descended into barbarity and is terrorizing once-quiet towns.

Narco gangs that killed around 1500 people last year are now torturing and beheading each other in Michoacan, the home state of President-elect Felipe Calderon who has sworn to crack down on crime after he takes office on Dec. 1.

Hospital workers struggle with the number of casualties.

"Sometimes there is nowhere to put the bodies," said Maria Hilda Hernandez, an emergency room supervisor just down the corridor from the hospital morgue.

Nestled between lush sub-tropical hills in the western state, the town of Uruapan once drew Mexican tourists visiting nearby lakes and waterfalls.

But it has been rocked by scores of grisly drug murders in recent months. The killings hit a low point last week when gunmen in ski-masks rolled five severed heads onto the dance floor of a seedy bar.

One of few locals willing to risk being seen talking to a reporter about the crime wave, 38-year-old resident Ruben Cortes, said he had already sent his older son away from the town and that he and his infant daughter would soon follow.

"The criminals have all the freedom in the world, to be able to do something like this," he said, clutching the sleeping girl as he glared at gory photographs of the heads at a newsstand.

As in areas on the US border, the Uruapan killing spree is thought to stem from a feud between Mexico's two major smuggling gangs, the Gulf cartel from northeastern Mexico and an alliance of narcos from the western state of Sinaloa.

"It is a war that will continue until one of the cartels wins, and it may last years," said Mexican security analyst Jorge Chabat.

A local gang, known as Los Valencia, is also adding fuel to the fire of the feud in Michoacan.

The unidentified woman in the morgue was killed days before the beheadings and police fear her murder might be related to the drug fight.

A long-established marijuana-growing area, Michoacan's rugged coast is a drop off point for US-bound cocaine shipments from South America. More recently, methamphetamine labs have sprung up in villages around Uruapan.

Drug murders have shot up in the state to 345 so far this year compared with 211 in 2006, according to a tally by a national newspaper.

Mixed patrols comprising scores of heavily armed soldiers and police creep from block to block in convoys of trucks in Uruapan, near the picturesque Lake Patzcuaro.

Calderon, a lawyer from Michoacan's state capital Morelia, says fighting organized crime will be one of his top three priorities in government, along with reducing poverty and creating jobs.

A court named Calderon, a former energy minister, president-elect last week after throwing out charges by a leftist rival of fraud at the July 2 election.

The Uruapan murders came just days before he visited the state to celebrate his election victory. He was shocked by the ferocity of the murders.

"Together we must confront these expressions of barbarity and crime in a co-ordinated manner," Calderon said in Morelia.

President Vicente Fox's government says the cartels are fighting each other because federal authorities have jailed leading smugglers, causing a power struggle.

A government crackdown on drug violence in the resort of Acapulco and in cities on the US border have done little to halt the killings.

- REUTERS