Las valientes of Mexico

Heroines of Mexico: [+] Click to enlarge (ny post graphic)

At 28, Erika Gandara was, for a brief time, the only police officer patrolling Guadalupe Distrito Bravos, a dusty town one mile from the border with Texas, an area racked by the drug violence sweeping northern Mexico.

Gandara, a former radio dispatcher, was declared the de facto police chief last summer; after the 10 other cops in town had either quit or been killed. The young woman took her job as chief of 9,000 border residents seriously, going out on patrol every morning with an R-15 rifle and proudly hefting the gun in pictures for local papers.

“I am a police officer,” she declared in November, speaking to a Spanish wire service. “I am not here to do social work or humanitarian labor. I am the only police officer in town, the authority.

“Many people say the police are corrupt and that the narcos pay them. I don’t enter in that game because I know that when money comes easy, death often follows rapidly,” said Gandara, who saw numerous colleagues murdered by drug cartels during her two years on the force.

Her bravado had a cost. Gandara was snatched from her house two days before Christmas — presumably by a drug cartel, although federal police won’t comment — and her kidnappers burned her home before fleeing. Her family hasn’t seen or heard from her since, but two relatives who worked in politics in nearby towns abruptly resigned their positions shortly after she went missing.

A clerk who answered the phone at Guadalupe’s town hall last week said there is no longer a police force now that Gandara is gone.

“We don’t talk about those things here,” she said quietly.

Mexico is a nation infamous for its manly pride, its machismo — yet it’s fallen to a handful of housewives and young mothers to take on los narcos, the out-of-control drug cartels waging violent battles for control of trade routes across the border. They do it because no one else will. Because if they don’t, there is no hope. Without weapons, resources, and in several cases without a police force to back them up, these women are determined to improve the quality of life for the mostly impoverished residents — even as they pray they’ll be able to steer clear of the grisly violence.

“These cartels have shown no mercy to females in law enforcement roles. The cartels view themselves as the law in their territory, so it doesn’t matter to them whether you are male or female — eliminating police authorities or public officials sends a powerful signal,” said Fred Burton, a former US security agent and now vice president of Stratfor, an independent intelligence company.

He applauded the bravery of women like Marisol Valles Garcia, 20, police chief of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerrero, Veronica Rios, 38, police chief in El Vergel, and Olga Castillo, 44, police chief in Villa Luz, but added, “I don’t know that those are positions I would have taken.”

In the past four years, there were 34,612 drug-related killings in Mexico, according to government figures released this month. Included in that number are innocent bystanders caught in drug war crossfire, as well as security forces and drug gang members. Last year was the bloodiest on record — 15,273 people were killed in drug-related violence.

The jump is mostly due to a split among formerly allied drug cartels — Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel in northeastern Mexico, and the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels around Ciudad Juarez, which recorded more than 3,000 gang related murders last year. Zetas are made up of former Mexican army special forces who have changed sides.

The average local cop makes between $500 to $600 a month in Mexico — making them an easy target for well-funded narcos who pay quadruple that for information. Corruption among Mexican police is so pervasive that some officials want to get rid of local officers and replace them with a single, state-run domestic army.

As the violence has spread, so has the viciousness employed by the cartels, Burton said. Mass graves with dozens of bodies are common discoveries, and cartels routinely decapitate their enemies or hang the bodies of their victims from bridges.

Police officers are frequent targets, as are elected officials. Last year 14 mayors were murdered and dozens of police departments have been decimated by targeted killings.

In one recent attack, cartel gunmen brutally executed 12 members of a police officer’s family, stripped their bodies and left them outside for him to discover. “I’ve seen some videos of gang killings that would turn your stomach, it’s a jumble of arms and legs,” Burton said.

In Ciudad Juarez, among Mexico’s most violent cities, nearly 70 police officers were killed last year — several of them female beat cops. There are 540 female cops in the state of Chihuahua, officials said, about a third of the force.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon unleashed a cartel offensive, and his 50,000 state soldiers were able to take out some key players last year, starting with Arturo Beltran Leyva, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug lords. He and five bodyguards were killed during a two-hour siege in Cuernavaca, near Mexico City, which Calderon called a “decisive blow” against the Leyva cartel that controls Mexico’s Pacific Coast.

More cartel kingpins fell in the months following Leyva’s death. Mexican forces shot and killed Nazario Moreno, the “Craziest One” who worked for La Familia Michoacan cartel in western Mexico. They also got Ezequiel “Tony Tormenta” Cardenas, a Gulf Cartel boss, and Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, known as the “King of Crystal” for his meth smuggling in the Sinaloa cartel.

They’ve even taken some cartel bosses alive. Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez, born in America, and Sergio “El Grande” Villarreal, who were both trying to take over the Leyva cartel, were captured last summer.

The downside to the government’s success is the sudden surge of gruesome violence as remaining cartel members fight for succession and control of drug-smuggling corridors.

Calderon’s effort has made a dent in some of the cartels, Burton said, but not enough for the government to claim it’s eradicated the multibillion-dollar drug business.

“It’s almost like having your finger in a dyke,” he said. “Calderon doesn’t have the manpower to keep the federal forces in all parts of the country, and so he has to move them around. The minute a problem disappears here, it pops up there.”

While this war rages, the women have stepped up with more modest goals — safe communities. They often make it clear they’re not out to challenge los narcos, just keep petty crime in check so that people can go about their daily business.

Rios and Castillo, who police neighboring towns and share one rusty police pickup truck, don’t carry weapons, and neither does Valles Garcia.

“We don’t need them,” Castillo told The Post. “People think to be a cop you have to carry a weapon, but not for the type of outreach work we do.”

On an average day last week, Castillo said, she counseled town kids about how to stay out of trouble, talked to some local merchants about setting up workshops and training locations to give teenagers some job skills, and settled a few minor disputes between neighbors.

“I like my job, I like to move around outside and talk to the people, and I feel like I am able to protect them,” said the mother of five.

Valles Garcia, who garnered international attention when appointed police chief last September, has spent recent months building a new sports center for her town, distributing shoes and clothes to needy children and staging a family night between town youths and their parents to improve household communication, said her spokesman, Andres Morales.

But even these small glimmers of hope can be threatening to a cartel’s power, Burton said.

“Depending on the geography in your area, and who has control or autonomy, it’s very hard not to get involved in the extortions, beheadings and drug violence. You get dragged in regardless of your intentions. I’m not optimistic that a specific police chief would be able to stay out of harm’s way.”

It didn’t work for Silvia Molina, 40, the top administrative cop in Ciudad Juarez, who was gunned down in June 2008 as she tried to park her car in front of her house.

Her hired-gun killers, known as sicarios in Mexico, pinned a note to her chest declaring their allegiance to Joaquin “el Chapo” Guzman, a drug trafficker in the Sinaloa cartel.

A similar avoidance policy did little to help Meoqui police chief Hermila Quiñones, 38. She was gunned down in broad daylight on her way to work Nov. 29. The former lawyer had limited policing experience when she was sworn in Oct. 9 as chief of the 90-person police force, but nobody else wanted the job, says one of her former colleagues in Meoqui.

Quiñones refused to carry a gun or travel with bodyguards, but since she was murdered, top police officers in Meoqui have been ordered by federal officials to carry them.

“She was la jefa, very focused on her job, making changes to improve staff. There’s a lot of insecurity and anxiety over her death because in terms of narcos and drugs, usually we’re more tranquil here,” her colleague said. “It was a shock.”

Quiñones may not have done anything to trigger her death, Burton said. Cartels are constantly battling for control of border routes to ship crystal meth, marijuana and cocaine to the United States, and bring guns, cars and cash back. In the shifting territory, someone may simply have decided that a highly educated lawyer would get in the way, he said.

“The nature of the cartel business is such that you are going to play by their rules or you don’t play. You quit, resign or get killed.”

All of the women are acutely aware that the stakes are high. Aside from their own personal safety, they have to worry about their families.

Their nightmare scenario is being lived by María Santos Gorrostieta Salazar, 34, who was a happily married mother when she was elected mayor of Tiquicheo nearly four years ago.

Quiet and soft-spoken, Gorrostieta put her focus on improving social services for her small town and left Mexico’s drug czars to the federal police. But los narcos came for her anyway.

Today, Gorrostieta is a widow and single mom — her husband was killed in the first assassination attempt against her in 2009 — and her body is riddled with bullet holes and scars, with a colostomy bag taped to her stomach.

A mayoral spokesman who asked not to be identified said there were no suspects in either attack, the second of which was in January 2010, and investigations are ongoing.

“The mayor herself has asked why she’s had to suffer these attacks. It could be simply the violence that you find now in Mexico, although she has also wondered if maybe she was confused with someone else,” he added.

Unofficially, many suspect Gorrostieta somehow ran afoul of La Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel known for its grisly killings and beheadings.

In spite of what she’s suffered, Gorrostieta plans to run for re-election in 2012. She went public with photos of her mutilated body in Tiquicheo’s municipal newsletter as a show of strength for her supporters.

“I still have an inextinguishable determination to continue my mission of heading this administration, as I was elected to do,” she wrote. “I wanted to show you my wounded, mutilated body . . . because I’m not ashamed of it . . . it’s living testimony that I am a strong and righteous woman, and despite my physical and mental wounds, I’m still on my feet.”

All of the women have moments of doubt and fear, they have admitted in interviews. But they also have strong support systems to buck them up. Javier Melendez, mayor of the town of Samalayuca, made it part of his campaign platform that Rios and Castillo would be the police chiefs for their nearby towns once he was elected.

“When they get a little nervous, I am quick to remind them how much the people here appreciate them and what they are doing,” he said. “That revives their spirits.”