Macabre messages are new tool of Mexico drug lords

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Breaking with years of secrecy, Mexico's drug gangs are battling it out in public with audacious hit-lists and threats on banners strung up on streets as drug murders soar out of control.

While President Felipe Calderon wages a media campaign to win support for his army-backed war on cartels, drug kingpins are using strongly worded messages to instill fear in police and troops and try to win public opinion over to their side.

The banners, which personalize the vicious sparring between rival cartels and security forces in cities like Ciudad Juarez on the northern border, come as drug murders have surged past 1,600 so far this year.

One cartel fighting for control of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, hung eight banners across busy roads this month vilifying Mexico's most-wanted kingpin, Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman, for taking "innocent lives."

"Don't be deceived by ... Chapo Guzman and his filthy workers," the large spray-painted message said, using an obscene term to describe Guzman. "We too are parents and have family."

Drug violence has killed more than 500 people in Ciudad Juarez this year as Guzman fights drug baron Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, boss of the Juarez cartel, for control of the city and its lucrative smuggling corridor into the United States.

Narcotics gangs in the city have posted lists in public with the names of police officers they plan to kill and have so far murdered 10 of those picked out.

Further west, in the Pacific state of Sinaloa, drug traffickers posted a message in May aimed at the military in the state capital Culiacan. Signed by drug lord Arturo Beltran, it read: "I am boss of this turf and this is the beginning."

Another mocked the army: "Little lead soldiers, straw federal police. This is Arturo Beltran territory."

George Friedman, head of U.S. security consultancy Stratfor, said the moves were psychological warfare.

"The drug gangs want to demonstrate a sense of overwhelming power, and the killings, the threats, the messages are a very public demonstration of what they are capable of," he said.

NEW TURF WARS FLARE

The graphic openness of the messages is in sharp contrast to the situation in the 1980s and '90s, when drug trafficking rivals disappeared without a word, their bodies never found.

As authorities put more pressure on cartels over the last few years, even before Calderon's army assault kicked off in December 2006, hitmen began leaving tortured bodies and severed heads in public to serve as warnings.

Messages left with bodies that a year ago were brief and cryptic are now often full-blown tirades against rivals -- part boast and part threat.

Drug gangs sometimes leave follow-up messages on the video Web site "YouTube", like one posted this month by "Businesses United -- The Squadron of Death" that warns of "justice" against those who get in the way of drug trafficking.

In Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, near Texas, the east-coast Gulf cartel has hung banners that openly advertise for army troops to desert and join it, promising fat wages.

"These are perfect examples of how brazen the cartels are," said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It shows just how huge Calderon's task is to transcend this culture of impunity," he added.

A breakdown of Guzman's alliance of drug gangs from Sinaloa has caused new turf wars to flare, escalating violence to unprecedented levels and sparking more messages.

A U.S. anti-narcotics official told Reuters the messaging war may eventually fade, because ultimately gangs want to get drugs into the United States with the minimum fuss.

"Traffickers aren't dumb, they know if they create havoc, the military are going to come. It's not like the old Mexico. They know too much attention is bad for business," he said.

(Additional reporting and writing by Robin Emmott; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Cynthia Osterman)